The answer is: both. The two are entangled. First, it must be noted that Islamists are hardly the only people in the world angry at American actions in the world. Consider that Russians have nearly as unfavorable a view of Obama’s international policies, as well as the U.S. overall, as do people in Muslim countries. Greeks disapprove of U.S. drone strikes more than anyone else in the world, including Muslim-strong countries such as Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese and Tunisians.

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The background to the current controversy is this: A student group at CUNY's Brooklyn College, Students for Justice in Palestine, is this week hosting two speakers who will discuss their views on the BDS movement, which calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel in protest of the government's oppressive policies toward the Palestinian people. The speakers are Palestinian BDS advocate Omar Barghouti and University of California Berkeley philosopher and BDS supporter Judith Butler. The event is being co-sponsored by numerous student and community groups, as well as Brooklyn College's political science department.

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Chavez won the mandate of another six years in power (adding to his 14-year tenure) with more than 54 percent of the vote, beating challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski. A number of conservative U.S. news outlets were quick to challenge the validity of the large margin (which was nonetheless the weakest margin the socialist leader has ever enjoyed in an election).

Fox News reported that "exit polls told a different story." In an example of what Glenn Greenwald described via Twitter as "revealing and amusing … cognitive dissonance" in Western media over this election, the Fox News host decried the Venezuelan result, suggesting that even if there was no technical foul play, Chavez had overly influenced the elections with money and media monopolies.

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MEK, Iranian dissidents who lost a power struggle with Ayatollah Khomenei supporters in the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, relocated to Iraq and established allegiances with Saddam Hussein. For 15 years the group has been listed among foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department. Although considered cultish by many, MEK has preserved and fostered strong U.S. ties, especially among a handful of conservatives, who share the group's desire to overthrow Iran's government. Both Republicans and Democrats have received substantial fees to talk at MEK events, while advocating in Washington on the group's behalf.

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By Jesselyn Radack

[UPDATED BELOW]

(updated below – Update II)

For two years I have been writing about the criminalization of whistleblowing, or as Glenn Greenwald has put it more aptly, the “war on whistleblowers.”  I’m an attorney with the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization.

How did I get into this line of work?  Because I myself was a whistleblower when I worked as a Legal Advisor at the Justice Department and blew the whistle when my advice not to interrogate “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh without an attorney (and, parenthetically, not to torture him) was ignored and then “disappeared” from the file in contravention of a federal court discovery order. After I blew the whistle, the Justice Department retaliated against me by, among other things, placing me under criminal investigation, referring me to the state bars in which I’m licensed as a lawyer based on a secret report to which I did not have access, and putting me on the “No-Fly” List. (The D.C. Bar charges are still pending 8½ years later.) I write about the experience in my new book TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the American Taliban. Glenn Greenwald, for whom I am substituting here, wrote an eloquent foreword for the book.

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Following similar raids in St. Louis and Oakland, hordes of NYPD officers this morning forcibly cleared Zuccotti Park in Manhattan of all protesters; New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took "credit" for this decision. That led to this description of today's events from an Occupy Wall Street media spokesman, as reported by Salon's Justin Elliott:

A military style raid on peaceful protesters camped out in the shadow of Wall Street, ordered by a cold ruthless billionaire who bought his way into the mayor’s office.

If you think about it, that short sentence is a perfect description of both the essence of America's political culture and the fuel that gave rise to the #OWS movement in the first place.

* * * * *

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Last night in San Francisco I had the pleasure of meeting Glenn Greenwald in person for the first time and interviewing him about our ailing democracy, the occupy movement and the "too big to jail" phenomenon. (Glenn's new book, "With Liberty and Justice for Some" has just been published.) The room was packed with Glenn's fans, and he lit the place up with his razor-sharp responses to my questions — as anyone who reads his column would expect. In the clip above, he's answering my question about the servitude of our media to the nation's elite class.

Fora.TV was there filming for us, and the whole interview is now available online.

(Salon Core members, check the Core page for a coupon code to watch for free.)

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London has been ablaze for the past three nights and has experienced what is clearly its worst civil unrest in decades. The rioting has now spread to other cities in England and no one really knows how much longer it will last. I spoke to some friends in London and they described an otherworldly atmosphere of panic and disorder: rumors are now swirling that the Police have been instructed to use rubber bullets to disperse the crowds, and riot control units from the length and breadth of the entire country are converging on London to bring the situation back into some sort of control.

Using a phenomenon as complex, unwieldy, and unpredictable as a riot to score political points is dangerous. As Paul Campos of the blog Lawyers Guns & Money said, "Urban riots are usually complex events, in which people participate for many reasons, ranging from simple boredom and criminal opportunism on one end, to conscious political protest on the other."

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On July 22, 2011 a bombing and shooting massacre was carried out in Norway by an individual motived by fanatic anti-immigrant and Islamophobic beliefs; an atrocity which shocked the world and which could only honestly be described as terrorism. The perpetrator, himself an ethnic Norwegian, hoped to bring about political change through acts of wanton violence against civilians, many of them children and young adults. That this was indeed terrorism is important to note, given that at present Western civilization is purportedly at war with terrorism itself, as well as, crucially, those who provide inspiration and support to terrorists. In this battle those who are even tangentially related to acts of terrorism or purveyors of terror are liable to be incarcerated without due process, tortured, and even killed without public outcry. From the perspective of the state, such is the seriousness of terrorism and such are the extraordinary measures which must be taken to prevent terror from being carried out.

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For most citizens, one of the mysteries of life after the crisis is why such a massive act of looting has gone unpunished. We've had hearings, investigations, and numerous journalistic and academic post mortems. We've also had promises to put people in jail by prosecutors like Iowa's attorney general Tom Miller walked back virtually as soon as they were made. 

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Lake’s first article, published on July 27, is titled "Classified report: Russia tied to blast at U.S. embassy" and confidently asserts that Russian guilt has been proven by the US intelligence community. The central argument of the article is the following:

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Here is my case. First, no one who understands the American Constitution can reasonably doubt the right of the builders to build. Secondly, the building site is very close to the site of a violent tragedy that seared the soul of every American, including Muslim Americans. Thirdly, the builders of the proposed Islamic Center say they want to help heal the nation and there is a preponderance of evidence that that is true, based not least on the fact that the last administration viewed the leadership of this group as a pro-American bridge to the Muslim world.

Fourth, there are many Americans, about 65 or 70 percent, including many family members of the victims, who have very strong emotional resistance to building on this site. Some of them may have other feelings such as hate, fear, etc., but the vast majority of these people are not right-wing hate mongers.

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Last year, Glenn posted some statements from now-Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan on counterterrorism. The post contributed to pressure that led Brennan to withdraw his candidacy to be CIA Director (which is how he ended up as Deputy NSA, which doesn't require congressional approval).

In addition to passages on rendition and torture, Glenn linked to an NPR story attributing Obama's switch on counterterrorism issues -- particularly his infamous flip-flop on retroactive immunity for the telecoms that had illegally spied on Americans -- to Brennan.

What's important in that statement is Obama's reference to "the information I've received." He's advised on intelligence matters by John Brennan, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Like many intelligence professionals, Brennan says the FISA program is essential to the fight against terrorism.

By adopting Brennan's view, Obama improves his standing with the intelligence community; for someone looking ahead to a presidential administration, that's important.

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Sarah Palin and Senator Chuck Grassley are working together to spread lies regarding the substance of pending healthcare reform legislation. Last week, Sarah Palin posted a note on Facebook, which states that:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of healthcare. Such a system is downright evil.

Not to be outmatched by his conservative colleague, Senator Grassley stated yesterday that people "[s]hould not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma. . . ."

Palin and Grassley are liars

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In a previous post on my own blog, I questioned the seemingly sudden concern about the perils of "big government" among healthcare reform protestors. Many of these individuals undoubtedly failed to contest (and probably supported) governmental excess that led to "senseless wars, government regulation of uteruses, police intrusion into the bedrooms of consenting same-sex adults and the maddening state and federal governmental effort to make sure that Terry Schiavo remained in a persistent vegetative state." On Wednesday, an article distributed by the Associated Press confirmed my original understanding of the protestors' opposition to big government: It is selective and contradictory.

Big government for you, but not for me!

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If, as the latest reports indicate, Eric Holder is serious about prosecuting the worst torture and abuse of "war on terror" prisoners that occurred during the Bush administration, then there's some key evidence he's going to want to take a look at: photographs. Although Bush Justice Department prosecutors claimed they didn't have the facts to support prosecuting anyone for the mysterious deaths and disappearances of detainees hauled out of Bagram and Abu Ghraib in body bags, the photographs -- which two courts have now ordered the Obama administration to turn over -- would seem likely to provide some of the missing evidence.

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Ever since the Los Angeles Times reported last weekend that Attorney General Eric Holder is inching closer to investigating detainee torture that occurred during the "war on terror", the debate over whether the Holder probe is a good thing has intensified -- and distracted a few of us from the spectacle of the town hall brawls.

Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic called it "the worst of both worlds" because Holder is reportedly considering prosecuting the actual interrogators who exceeded the interrogation limits set out by John Yoo & Co. in Justice Department memos, rather than the authors of the memos and the torture policy themselves. That "risks essentially legitimizing the torture it does not prosecute," Sullivan argues.

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"At the Intersection: Race, Sexuality, and Gender," a comprehensive report released this week by the The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, is an excellent look at some of the third rails of cultural discussion that usually results in most conversations falling into silence for fear of conflict, offending someone, or having to realize one's own biases in front of others.'

One cannot develop cultural competency if the conversation is encouraged, but not taken in by those who need to listen and absorb the information to break down barriers. We saw the schism in the last election.

The November 2008 passage of Proposition 8 in California clearly showed what could happen when a group listens solely so it can repress others. Research has revealed that organizing efforts by religious and conservative forces were extensive, proactive and heavily funded. Such an observation is important because it also reveals that progressive -- or in this case, LGBT-specific -- organizing efforts were less effective at listening, canvassing, targeting and activating Californians in the same ways that conservative forces were. This ineffectiveness was a result of many significant forces, some of which included lack of access to populations historically left out of debates, basic information about these populations, and the resources -- including cultural competency needed -- to effectively reach the targeted populations.

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