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The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations.

Glenn Greenwald

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Glenn Greenwald
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 6
Blogger
Journalist
Lawyer
Pundit
Writer
Queens
New York
Glenn Edward Greenwald
Extremes
Accusation
Assuming
Contest
Evidence
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Willing
Presented
Opportunity
Extreme
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Blindly
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There's a huge cost to freedom in letting people talk about how you print these plastic guns or letting them say these things about arming for tyranny. There's also a cost to letting the government say these ideas can't be expressed, this is treason. It's difficult.
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An elite class that is free to operate without limits - whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior - is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power.
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It's so much easier to debate people when you can pretend that they hold moronic position that they don't actually believe.
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[N]othing is less reliable than unchecked claims from political officials that their secret conduct is justified by National Security Threats and the desire to Keep Us Safe.
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When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.
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A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.
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You can offer the ability to citizens to choose from one of the two parties and elect their leaders as much as you want. But democracy is an illusion - a sham - if the most significant acts taken by those leaders are kept concealed from the citizenry.
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As a journalist, I think the only question that you ask yourself - once you've determined that the material is authentic - is what is in the public interest to know. And then you go about and report it.
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The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.
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As always, imagine how great the press corps would be if it devoted 1/1000th the energy to dissecting non-sex political wrongdoing
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It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess.
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The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.
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It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we’ve had to learn what our government is doing.
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When you cheer for the erosion of Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs rights, you're cheering for the erosion of your own.
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The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.
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Fearlessness can be its own form of power.
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Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.
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Those [American Jews] who favor the [Israeli] attack on Gaza are certainly guilty of such overwhelming emotional and cultural attachment to Israel and Israelis, that they long ago ceased viewing this conflict with any remnant of objectivity.
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The ultimate test of a society's freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens it's how it treats its dissidents.
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To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination.
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