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Does Glenn Greenwald Hate America?
FrontPage Magazine
Robert Spencer
11/7/2013
Excerpt:
The Los Angeles chapter of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced that Glenn Greenwald, the far-Left journalist who publicized Edward Snowden’s information about the astonishingly broad extent of NSA electronic surveillance programs, will be its keynote speaker at its Orwellian-named “Faith in Freedom” dinner on November 16.
This will be the first time that Greenwald, who now lives in Brazil, will return to the United States since the NSA scandal broke. It is not surprising that a CAIR event would be the occasion for his return, since he has said that “there really is no organization with which I’d rather be spending my time, or with which I feel more at home than CAIR.”
Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Its California chapter distributed a poster telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI. CAIR has opposed every anti-terror measure that has ever been proposed or implemented.
None of that means anything to Greenwald. “Despite malicious attacks and coordinated smear campaigns,” he has said, “including from our own government, and various other precincts [CAIR] has continued to devote itself relentlessly and really quite heroically to the fight for what I think is quite clearly, far and away, the greatest civil liberties crisis of our generation, at least, which is the persecution of Muslim Americans, and Muslims generally, in the post-9/11 era, which is really an assault on the liberties of everyone.”
He did not propose any way to defend ourselves against jihad terror without scrutiny of Muslim-Americans and Muslims generally.
At the CAIR dinner he will be speaking along with the imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the most sought-after speakers on the Muslim speakers circuit in the U.S. Wahhaj was designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing for taking the Blind Sheik to speak at mosques in New York and New Jersey in the early 1990s.
When Wahhaj spoke at the University of Central Florida in 2011, he was asked whether he would condemn Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Instead of answering directly, Wahhaj launched into a lengthy complaint against his having been designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator.” With obvious annoyance in his voice, Wahhaj complained that that designation essentially meant nothing; an audience member drew sympathetic laughter when she asserted that it meant that Wahhaj was “innocent.” Wahhaj did not explain to his UCF audience that he earned the designation by sponsoring talks in the early 1990s by the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, in mosques in New York City and New Jersey; Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.
Wahhaj has also warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has also asserted that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”
Greenwald’s willingness to appear in such company is a telling indication of the core beliefs and assumptions that underlay his revelations of the scope of NSA surveillance. While there is no reason for the NSA to be conducting surveillance on such a massive basis, and it is a symptom of the pervasive refusal to face the reality and magnitude of the jihad threat, the chief foes of this surveillance have been Leftist and Islamic supremacist groups that have opposed every counter-terror measure that has ever been proposed, as well as libertarian groups that persist in the delusion that if American power is removed from Muslim countries, the jihad against the U.S. will cease.
That in itself is an indication that the NSA surveillance may hamper the activities of Islamic jihadists more than has been advertised. While its scope is still way too broad, it is noteworthy that in none of Glenn Greenwald’s many writings on the subject does he propose an alternative that would protect Americans’ civil liberties while also protecting them from would-be Islamic jihad mass murderers.
............................................
View the complete article at:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-...-hate-america/
FrontPage Magazine
Robert Spencer
11/7/2013
Excerpt:
The Los Angeles chapter of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced that Glenn Greenwald, the far-Left journalist who publicized Edward Snowden’s information about the astonishingly broad extent of NSA electronic surveillance programs, will be its keynote speaker at its Orwellian-named “Faith in Freedom” dinner on November 16.
This will be the first time that Greenwald, who now lives in Brazil, will return to the United States since the NSA scandal broke. It is not surprising that a CAIR event would be the occasion for his return, since he has said that “there really is no organization with which I’d rather be spending my time, or with which I feel more at home than CAIR.”
Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Its California chapter distributed a poster telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI. CAIR has opposed every anti-terror measure that has ever been proposed or implemented.
None of that means anything to Greenwald. “Despite malicious attacks and coordinated smear campaigns,” he has said, “including from our own government, and various other precincts [CAIR] has continued to devote itself relentlessly and really quite heroically to the fight for what I think is quite clearly, far and away, the greatest civil liberties crisis of our generation, at least, which is the persecution of Muslim Americans, and Muslims generally, in the post-9/11 era, which is really an assault on the liberties of everyone.”
He did not propose any way to defend ourselves against jihad terror without scrutiny of Muslim-Americans and Muslims generally.
At the CAIR dinner he will be speaking along with the imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the most sought-after speakers on the Muslim speakers circuit in the U.S. Wahhaj was designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing for taking the Blind Sheik to speak at mosques in New York and New Jersey in the early 1990s.
When Wahhaj spoke at the University of Central Florida in 2011, he was asked whether he would condemn Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Instead of answering directly, Wahhaj launched into a lengthy complaint against his having been designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator.” With obvious annoyance in his voice, Wahhaj complained that that designation essentially meant nothing; an audience member drew sympathetic laughter when she asserted that it meant that Wahhaj was “innocent.” Wahhaj did not explain to his UCF audience that he earned the designation by sponsoring talks in the early 1990s by the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, in mosques in New York City and New Jersey; Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.
Wahhaj has also warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has also asserted that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”
Greenwald’s willingness to appear in such company is a telling indication of the core beliefs and assumptions that underlay his revelations of the scope of NSA surveillance. While there is no reason for the NSA to be conducting surveillance on such a massive basis, and it is a symptom of the pervasive refusal to face the reality and magnitude of the jihad threat, the chief foes of this surveillance have been Leftist and Islamic supremacist groups that have opposed every counter-terror measure that has ever been proposed, as well as libertarian groups that persist in the delusion that if American power is removed from Muslim countries, the jihad against the U.S. will cease.
That in itself is an indication that the NSA surveillance may hamper the activities of Islamic jihadists more than has been advertised. While its scope is still way too broad, it is noteworthy that in none of Glenn Greenwald’s many writings on the subject does he propose an alternative that would protect Americans’ civil liberties while also protecting them from would-be Islamic jihad mass murderers.
............................................
View the complete article at:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-...-hate-america/