The campaign to tar Snowden and Greenwald and help the NSA

[JackRiddler]

Chris Floyd is to be commended for posting in its entirety the Greenwald comment to which he responds. There's integrity in that. Then he manages to talk almost entirely past it with his own response, which conveys good reasons why he might feel personally insulted by some of Greenwald's asides (yeah, I get it, G. shouldn't compare F. to the 2003 chickenhawks, given that at the time, F. was not among them but G. was). But F.'s comment otherwise is very weak as a refutation of Greenwald's points about the issue of the Snowden documents and how they are being handled. Bottom line, Snowden chose to give Greenwald and Poitras the documents under certain conditions, to which Greenwald agreed. (By the way, speculatively here, if G. has been trying to renegotiate with S., as F. suggests he should, and if S. has insisted on his original conditions, then G. could hardly tell the details of these negotiations to F. without compromising S.) Snowden's conditions are related to the fact that the U.S. government wants to lock up S. forever, and criminalize G. as well, and that some powerful people have suggested they should be killed. And UK and GCHQ have directly threatened editors and harrassed Rusbridger and people at The Guardian. Floyd doesn't ignore the weight of the state as arrayed against G. and S., so what exactly is he expecting them to do, besides keep publishing according to S.'s conditions? The strategy can be debated, yes. All things considered, I vote that it's better that S. did what he did, instead of nothing. And I do think the strategy has proven itself. Not as the best possible strategy (since we can't rewind and try a different approach to see if F.'s preferences would work better), but as something more effective in drawing attention to the issues of government surveillance than anything else out there. The bulk of the complaints that aren't just smearing G. and S. for bullshit seem to be that golly gee, we here in RI-universe already knew everything -- although of course we didn't, we merely had a good Bayesian model thereof. Also, G. and S. are apparently insufficiently resolute in rhetoric that would further provoke the state -- even as they continue releasing the documents and scoring big stories. Are they withholding something? Maybe! Let's play at guessing what it might be!

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Chris Floyd is to be commended for posting in its entirety the Greenwald comment to which he responds. There's integrity in that. Then he manages to talk almost entirely past it with his own response, which conveys good reasons why he might feel personally insulted by some of Greenwald's asides (yeah, I get it, G. shouldn't compare F. to the 2003 chickenhawks, given that at the time, F. was not among them but G. was). But F.'s comment otherwise is very weak as a refutation of Greenwald's points about the issue of the Snowden documents and how they are being handled. Bottom line, Snowden chose to give Greenwald and Poitras the documents under certain conditions, to which Greenwald agreed. (By the way, speculatively here, if G. has been trying to renegotiate with S., as F. suggests he should, and if S. has insisted on his original conditions, then G. could hardly tell the details of these negotiations to F. without compromising S.) Snowden's conditions are related to the fact that the U.S. government wants to lock up S. forever, and criminalize G. as well, and that some powerful people have suggested they should be killed. And UK and GCHQ have directly threatened editors and harrassed Rusbridger and people at The Guardian. Floyd doesn't ignore the weight of the state as arrayed against G. and S., so what exactly is he expecting them to do, besides keep publishing according to S.'s conditions? The strategy can be debated, yes. All things considered, I vote that it's better that S. did what he did, instead of nothing. And I do think the strategy has proven itself. Not as the best possible strategy (since we can't rewind and try a different approach to see if F.'s preferences would work better), but as something more effective in drawing attention to the issues of government surveillance than anything else out there. The bulk of the complaints that aren't just smearing G. and S. for bullshit seem to be that golly gee, we here in RI-universe already knew everything -- although of course we didn't, we merely had a good Bayesian model thereof. Also, G. and S. are apparently insufficiently resolute in rhetoric that would further provoke the state -- even as they continue releasing the documents and scoring big stories. Are they withholding something? Maybe! Let's play at guessing what it might be!

Whatever Greenwald is withholding, I doubt it would shed light on his laissez faire* attitude vis a vis Omidyar's interest in USAID at the same time he professes idle curiosity of the latter.

When considering his previous position on Operation Iraqi Freedom, his ongoing support of Citizens United, and his attitude expressed towards matters in Venezuela and elsewhere, I don't suppose it is unexpected that he might tend to downplay US/NGO/EU/NATO/West nexus of influence. You know, like, as long as the taxpayer-funded black hole of operations is on behalf of private industry's right to make a killing, no real foul. Still, even if his sense of equanimity is trumped by Libertarianism, you would think he would show more curiosity as to the liberty-crushing way they go about it.

Or maybe it is the Capital in capital-L that drives his entire sense of being and that in spite of that fact, he could still have a hard-on for destroying the NSA. But that brings us back to his hooking up with Omidyar, of all people, just when his NSA star was cresting.

Don't you find this all just a bit odd?

* See what I did there?

[The Consul]

I can't hear all this talk about Snowden without thinking of Catch-22.

[JackRiddler]

I missed altogether that back on March 1st, Greenwald had responded to the Mark Ames attack on him (in which Omidyar was presented as the mastermind of the Ukrainian putsch and controller of the Snowden documents, see http://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omid ... ents-show/), just hours after the publication in Pando. I also missed that although the Pando article suggests that Greenwald and even Snowden are controlled by Omidyar since he's the owner of First Look, Pando in turn is part-owned by... Peter Thiel! The same guy involved in financing Palantir and Team Themis (which you'll remember suggested somehow breaking Greenwald as a means of going after Wikileaks). So by the logic of Ames...

Anyway, while one group attack Snowden for supposedly being Putin's slave, another attack Snowden and Greenwald for collaborating with the author of the Ukrainian coup. Fascinating stuff. What goes lost in this squeeze play is, of course, the actual stories about the NSA.

Original full of hyperlinks:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014 ... ependence/

On the Meaning of Journalistic Independence
By Glenn Greenwald 1 Mar 2014, 8:50 AM EDT 805

This morning, I see that some people are quite abuzz about a new Pando article ”revealing” that the foundation of Pierre Omidyar, the publisher of First Look Media which publishes The Intercept, gave several hundred thousand dollars to a Ukraininan “pro-democracy” organization opposed to the ruling regime. This, apparently, is some sort of scandal that must be immediately addressed not only by Omidyar, but also by every journalist who works at First Look. That several whole hours elapsed since the article was published on late Friday afternoon without my commenting is, for some, indicative of disturbing stonewalling.

I just learned of this article about 30 minutes ago, which is why I’m addressing it “only” now (I apologize for not continuously monitoring Twitter at all times, including the weekend). I have not spoken to Pierre or anyone at First Look – or, for that matter, anyone else in the world – about any of this, and am speaking only for myself here. To be honest, I barely know what it is that I’m supposed to boldly come forth and address, so I’ll do my best to make a few points about this specific article but also make some general points about journalistic independence that I do actually think are important:

(1) The Pando article adopts the tone of bold investigative journalism that intrepidly dug deep into secret materials and uncovered a “shocking” bombshell (“Step out of the shadows…. Pierre Omidyar”). But as I just discovered with literally 5 minutes of Googling, the Omidyar Network’s support for the Ukrainian group in question, Centre UA, has long been publicly known: because the Omidyar Network announced the investment at the time in a press release and then explained it on its website.

In a September 15, 2011 press release, the Omidyar Network “announced today its intent to grant up to $3M to six leading organizations focused on advancing government transparency and accountability” including “Centre UA (Ukraine)”. The Network then devoted an entire page of its website (entitled “New Citizen (Centre UA)”) to touting the investment and explaining its rationale and purpose (the group, claims the Network, “seeks to enable citizen participation in national and regional politics by amplifying the voices of Ukrainian citizens and promoting open and accountable government”).



I think it’s perfectly valid for journalists to investigate the financial dealings of corporations and billionaires who fund media outlets, whether it be those who fund or own Pando, First Look, MSNBC, Fox News, The Washington Post or any other. And it’s certainly reasonable to have concerns and objections about the funding of organizations that are devoted to regime change in other countries: I certainly have those myself. But the Omidyar Network doesn’t exactly seem ashamed of these donations, and they definitely don’t seem to be hiding them, given that they trumpeted them in their own press releases and web pages.

(2) Can someone please succinctly explain why this is a scandal that needs to be addressed, particularly by First Look journalists? That’s a genuine request. Wasn’t it just 72 hours ago that the widespread, mainstream view in the west (not one that I shared) was that there was a profound moral obligation to stand up and support the brave and noble Ukrainian opposition forces as they fight to be liberated from the brutal and repressive regime imposed on them by Vladimir Putin’s puppet? When did it suddenly become shameful in those same circles to support those very same opposition forces?

In fact, I’ve been accused more times than I can count – including by a former NSA employee and a Eurasia Foundation spokesman - of being a Putin shill for not supporting the Ukrainian opposition and not denouncing Russian involvement there (by which they mean I’ve not written anything on this topic). Now we seem to have the exact opposite premise: that the real evil is supporting the opposition in Ukraine and any journalist who works at First Look – including ones who are repeatedly called criminals by top U.S. officials for publishing top secret government documents; or who risk their lives to go around the world publicizing the devastation wrought by America’s Dirty Wars and its dirty and lawless private contractors; or who have led the journalistic attack on the banks that own and control the government - are now tools of neo-liberal, CIA-cooperating imperialism which seeks to undermine Putin by secretly engineering the Ukrainian revolution. To call all of that innuendo muddled and incoherent is to be generous.

(3) Despite its being publicly disclosed, I was not previously aware that the Omidyar Network donated to this Ukrainian group. That’s because, prior to creating The Intercept with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, I did not research Omidyar’s political views or donations. That’s because his political views and donations are of no special interest to me – any more than I cared about the political views of the family that owns and funds Salon (about which I know literally nothing, despite having worked there for almost 6 years), or any more than I cared about the political views of those who control the Guardian Trust.

There’s a very simple reason for that: they have no effect whatsoever on my journalism or the journalism of The Intercept. That’s because we are guaranteed full editorial freedom and journalistic independence. The Omidyar Network’s political views or activities – or those of anyone else – have no effect whatsoever on what we report, how we report it, or what we say.

The author of the Pando article seems to understand this point quite well when it comes to excusing himself from working for a media outlet funded by national-security-state-supporting tech billionaires whose views he claims to find “repugnant”:

It is a problem we all have to contend with—PandoDaily’s 18-plus investors include a gaggle of Silicon Valley billionaires like Marc Andreessen (who serves on the board of eBay, chaired by Pierre Omidyar) and Peter Thiel (whose politics I’ve investigated [GG: before working for a media outlet he funded] and described as repugnant.)

So he acknowledges the truly repellent politics of those who fund the media outlet where he does his journalism: Andreessen, a Romney supporter, has become one of the NSA’s most devoted defenders, while the company owned by Paypal founder Thiel, Palantir Technologies, works extensively with the CIA and got caught scheming against journalists, WikiLeaks supporters and Chamber of Commerce critics. [Including Greenwald, he omits to mention. RI thread here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31176] But he obviously believes those repellent views and activities do not reflect on him or his journalism. Indeed, any of you who are approvingly citing the Pando article are implicitly saying the same thing: namely, that media outlets funded by government-supporting tech moguls with repugnant histories can produce important journalism, including reporting on other tech moguls.

More generally, you’re endorsing the point that the political ideology of those who fund media outlets, no matter how much you dislike that ideology, does not mean that hard-hitting investigative journalism is precluded or that the journalism reflects the views of those who fund it. Anyone who thinks that The Intercept is or will be some sort of mouthpiece for U.S. foreign policy goals is invited to review the journalism we’ve produced in the 20 days we’ve existed.

Now, if you want to take the position that people should not work at organizations funded by oligarchs, or that journalism is inherently corrupted if funded by rich people with bad political views, then I hope you apply that consistently. Groups like the ACLU, Media Matters, the Center for Constitutional Rights and a whole slew of left-wing groups have been funded for years by billionaire George Soros and his foundations despite a long history of funding of and profiting from all sorts of capitalism projects anathema to the left, including Ukrainian pro-democracy groups (the same Pando writer previously claimed without evidence that the ACLU received a $20 million donation from the Koch Brothers). Or, as Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts put it:



Are Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow responsible for all the bad acts of Comcast, which owns MSNBC, or is their journalism impugned by those bad acts? Was WikiLeaks infected with Vladimir Putin’s sins, as some argued, because Julian Assange’s show appeared on RT? Or go ahead and apply those questions to virtually every large media organization or advocacy group you like, which needs substantial funding, which in turn requires that they seek and obtain that funding from very rich people who undoubtedly have political views and activities you find repellent.

That journalistic outlets fail to hold accountable large governmental and corporate entities is a common complaint. It’s one I share. It’s possible to do great journalism in discrete, isolated cases without much funding and by working alone, but it’s virtually impossible to do sustained, broad-scale investigative journalism aimed at large and powerful entities without such funding. As I’ve learned quite well over the last eight months, you need teams of journalists, and editors, and lawyers, and experts, and travel and technology budgets, and a whole slew of other tools that require serious funding. The same is true for large-scale activism.

That funding, by definition, is going to come from people rich enough to provide it. And such people are almost certainly going to have views and activities that you find objectionable. If you want to take the position that this should never be done, that’s fine: just be sure to apply it consistently to the media outlets and groups you really like.

But for me, the issue is not – and for a long time has not been – the political views of those who fund journalism. Journalists should be judged by the journalism they produce, not by those who fund the outlets where they do it. The real issue is whether they demand and obtain editorial freedom. We have. But ultimately, the only thing that matters is the journalism we or any other media outlets produce.

(4) Typical for this particular writer, the Pando article is filled with factual inaccuracies, including one extremely serious one:

Of the many problems that poses, none is more serious than the fact that Omidyar now has the only two people with exclusive access to the complete Snowden NSA cache, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Somehow, the same billionaire who co-financed the “coup” in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclusive access to the NSA secrets—and very few in the independent media dare voice a skeptical word about it. [emphasis added]

Let’s leave to the side the laughable hyperbole that Omidyar is now the mastermind who has secretly engineered the Ukrainian uprising. Let’s also leave to the side a vital fact that people like this Pando writer steadfastly ignore: that there are numerous media entities in possession of tens of thousands of Snowden documents, including The Guardian, Bart Gellman/The Washington Post, The New York Times, and ProPublica, rendering absurd any conspiracy theories that Omidyar can control which documents are or are not published.

The real falsehood here is that Omidyar himself has any access, let alone “exclusive access”, to “the NSA secrets.” This is nothing short of a fabrication. The writer of this article just made that up.

The only Snowden documents Omidyar has ever seen are the ones that have been published as part of stories in media outlets around the world. He has no possession of those documents and no access to them. He has never sought or received access to those documents. He has played no role whatsoever in deciding which ones will be reported. He obviously plays no role in deciding which documents all those other news outlets will report. Other than generally conveying that there is much reporting left to be done on these documents – something I’ve publicly said many times – I don’t believe I’ve ever even had a single discussion with him about a single document in the archive.

We’ve continued to report on those documents with media outlets around the world – in the last month alone, I reported on numerous documents with NBC, while Laura did the same with The New York Times - and will continue to report on them at The Intercept with full editorial independence. But the claim that he has obtained possession of, or even access to, the archive (in full or in part) is an outright falsehood.

Other inaccuracies pervade the article. Marcy Wheeler, whose comments were prominently featured, complained rather vehemently and at length that the article wildly misrepresented what she said.

(5) I have a long history of condemning U.S. government interference in the governance of other countries, and of the accompanying jingoistic moral narrative that this interference is intended to engender Freedom and Democracy rather than the promotion of U.S. interests. I have equal scorn for those who feign opposition to Russian interference in the sovereignty of other countries while continuing to support all sorts of U.S. interference of exactly that sort. I know little about the specific Ukrainian group at issue here – do any of you touting this article know anything about them? – and I certainly don’t trust this writer to convey anything accurately.

But what I do know is that I would never temper, limit, suppress or change my views for anyone’s benefit – as anyone I’ve worked with will be happy to tell you – and my views on such interference in other countries isn’t going to remotely change no matter the actual facts here. I also know that I’m free to express those views without the slightest fear. And I have zero doubt that that’s true of every other writer at The Intercept. That’s what journalistic independence means.

[JackRiddler]

oops double

[bks]

The Peter Thiel comparison in this context is tendentious, Jack. First Look insiders like Scahill have admitted that Omidyar is a regular participant in day-to-day discussions about operations. Peter Thiel has, to my memory, no such role. I'll find the quotes by June 1, don't worry

JR wrote:

What goes lost in this squeeze play is, of course, the actual stories about the NSA.

Which NSA stories, the ones stuck under GG's wallet, dying of suffocation?

I like to think of it as a fireworks show: You want to save your best for last. There’s a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I’m saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it.

--GGuess who?

Doesn't look good.

[JackRiddler]

bks, it will be my pleasure to take you on at Left Forum Fight Club.

[Hunter]

The Peter Thiel comparison in this context is tendentious, Jack. First Look insiders like Scahill have admitted that Omidyar is a regular participant in day-to-day discussions about operations. Peter Thiel has, to my memory, no such role. I'll find the quotes by June 1, don't worry

JR wrote:

What goes lost in this squeeze play is, of course, the actual stories about the NSA.

Which NSA stories, the ones stuck under GG's wallet, dying of suffocation?

I like to think of it as a fireworks show: You want to save your best for last. There’s a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I’m saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it.

--GGuess who?

Doesn't look good.

What is it gonna be, they can turn on our TV webcams and watch us in our homes? That can be done. I wonder what the big revelation will be. Has to be something inside the home because we already know they can see and track everything we do in public? Are we talking shower and toilet cams, what else could it be that is gonna be any bigger than what we know?

GMO foods have nanorobots in them that make their way in to our brains and we can be controlled with joysticks at the NSA? Really what could it be that is gonna rock the world the way GG seems to imply? Its gonna have to be something that really gets up close and personal to really shock anyone at this point IMO.

[JackRiddler]

He as much as said in his Colbert appearance day before yesterday that it's going to be about whom they have been spying on, with a purpose, not just generally, and why -- obviously, implying this will have nothing to do with "terrorism."

[smiths]

whatever way you look at it, there is something that doesn't make sense when PayPal is cutting off monies to whistleblowers and Wikileaks on behalf of the US Gov and extracting costs from 'hacktivists' whilst providing the forum and the wages for the great champion of free speech and truth telling, Glenn Greenwald

if Omidyar supports exposure of government secrets through Greenwald and Snowden, why crucify the grassroots activists who don't have 'names' who put themselves on the line to support transparency and exposure of government secrets

The Internet hacktivist group Anonymous is calling for protests against author and civil liberties advocate Glenn Greenwald because of his relationship with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Representing the “PayPal 14,” — a group charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after they attempted to disrupt PayPal’s operations in retaliation for PayPal’s refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks — Anonymous stated that the 14 are “struggling to raise more than $80,000 in court-ordered restitution” that must be paid to eBay/PayPal.

Anonymous claims that, while the 14 face jail and fines, Greenwald and Omidyar have been cashing in on the “digital information war.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/12/r ... llionaire/

[JackRiddler]

whatever way you look at it, there is something that doesn't make sense when PayPal is cutting off monies to whistleblowers and Wikileaks on behalf of the US Gov and extracting costs from 'hacktivists' whilst providing the forum and the wages for the great champion of free speech and truth telling, Glenn Greenwald

Paypal is doing the former and not the latter. You and Anonymous could bother to get that straight, it's a very simple idea. Omidyar, who got rich through ventures that included Paypal, invested his own money in creating First Look, for whatever reason. It is unclear if he has any say in Paypal policy today. You can judge the work published via the First Look site on its own, or you can just keep repeating "Omidyar, Omidyar" as if it proves anything.

The standards of evidence applied in making accusations against First Look and Greenwald have been non-existent. It's open season within the conspiracy merchandising community a la Edmonds, and unfortunately also for the likes of Floyd and Ames. Generally, I don't see any of them doing anything other than using a logic by insinuation that could equally be applied to them.

Among Democratic-party hacks (since the actor playing the "president" during this episode happens to bear a D label), the schtick is to call Snowden a traitor because he's ended up in Moscow with the evil Putin. Just like neocon Rogers & co. The more sophisticated Left-of-Democrat schtick is to call Snowden or Greenwald a traitor because Omidyar single-handedly sponsored the Kiev putsch, which obviously he didn't (and it's not even clear what the nonprofits he favored did, or what he thought he was paying for). Another common move is to make up gossip about hidden conflicts between Snowden and Greenwald, or Greenwald and Manning, or Manning and Assange, or Putin and Snowden, or Mother Theresa and George Clooney.

Ames meanwhile brings zero to this fight that could not also be turned on him, as someone publishing through Pando, part-owned by the far more compromised Thiel -- who is actually active in Paypal, as opposed to Omidyar, and much more obviously busy pushing an odious political agenda. Should Omidyar condemn Paypal for its policies? Sure he should! Good luck expecting that, long as he owns any shares.

Maybe you should actually be happy that Omidyar put some of his money into an independent media venture run by Greenwald, rather than, I don't know... what else could one do with one's billions, besides returning them to the rightful producers of surplus value? Let's see. One could buy a sports team! Or one could set up Team Themis to break Greenwald's legs, like Thiel did. Or try to buy off the Honduran state to allow a few of its cities to be turned into libertarian paradises, like Thiel did. One could put up a billion to wage a non-stop nationwide war on teachers so as to privatize public education, and subject every child to a harsh standardized testing regime (like Gates, and Bloomberg, and Eli Broad). One could devote the billion toward destroying and/or privatizing Social Security (like Peterson). Or mount an effort to destroy civilization altogether (like the Kochs, or Murdoch).

As far as how robber barons choose to spend their fortunes, I have to say Omidyar's choice looks like one of the least offensive to me. Unless and until you can actually provide evidence of this supposed influence over the story, or perfidy, or cover-up that's purely speculative.

It appears to be a fact that Omidyar does not control the Snowden files. Not just because Greenwald says so -- it's also the case that these are available to others besides Greenwald. But not, from appearances, to Omidyar.

The wave of illogical hits and slander against Snowden and Greenwald has coincided with a push by the NSA to make them look like super-evil traitors who are endangering Americans' lives. That is what continues to matter to me. That is why I will demand high standards of evidence for accusations against Greenwald and Snowden. Since our self-evident enemies are in the lead of making these accusations.

if Omidyar supports exposure of government secrets through Greenwald and Snowden, why crucify the grassroots activists who don't have 'names' who put themselves on the line to support transparency and exposure of government secrets

Again, Paypal is doing the one thing while Omidyar is doing the other. Anonymous is milking it as if Omidyar = Paypal, and going after Greenwald, because that's going to get more traction, and because it's the flavor du jour.

.

[Sounder]

Excellent response Jack.

Anon can be anyone, at least Greenwald is public.

Is pando a Thiel project? Ouch.

[divideandconquer]

From the blog, http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/ Rancid Honeytrap (a lot to say about Greenwald/Snowden...very interesting) Greenwald responds to blog author's criticism. http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/fuck-the-guardian-take-your-drip-and-stick-it/#comment-2725

RH on Mark Aames v Greenwald: http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/mark-ames-vs-glenn-greenwald-and-amy-goodman-on-usaid/

Last week the Associated Press reported that USAID — which provides billions in taxpayer cash for overseas “humanitarian” aid programs — created a Twitter-like platform in Cuba as a step toward fomenting a youth revolt against that country’s government. The way three ostensibly lefty journos, Mark Ames, Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald responded to this is quite interesting and revealing.

“Is USAID the New CIA?”, asked Democracy Now on Twitter to promote the Amy Goodman segment of the same name.

“Good question“, tweeted Glenn Greenwald.

Actually, it’s an astonishingly stupid and misleading question, to the extent it implies that USAID has only now wandered into the dark realm of subversion and regime change, or has always been entirely separate from the CIA in the first place. The dark side of USAID, as well as its partnerships with the CIA have been public knowledge for years, but for those in need of a refresher, Mark Ames has helpfully provided one in “The murderous history of USAID, the US Government agency behind Cuba’s fake Twitter clone.” After reminding his readers that USAID recently partnered with Greenwald’s boss Pierre Omidyar in stoking regime change in Ukraine, Ames laboriously documents some of the agency’s other projects over the years which include:

1. The Office of Public Safety.

Ames writes:

Under Kennedy’s reorganization, a police training program set up under President Eisenhower, the Office of Public Safety (OPS), was placed under USAID’s authority. The OPS had been set up in 1957 to train friendly overseas police forces how to be more professional, more democratic, less corrupt… — but in reality, the OPS was essentially a CIA proxy…its ranks covertly sprinkled with CIA spooks in hotspots across the globe.

Former New York Times correspondent A. J. Langguth wrote that the “the two primary functions” of the USAID police training program were to allow the CIA to “plant men with local police in sensitive places around the world,” and to bring to the United States “prime candidates for enrollment as CIA employees.”

The account Ames gives makes clear that there was a third function, which was the training of local police in ‘the dark arts of rule-by-terror’. Ames describes the career of ghoulish Dan Mitrioni who, on the USAID payroll, ran terror schools for cops, training over 100,000 police in Brazil alone. After being stationed in Uruguay, Mitrione sound-proofed the basement of his house before holding classes in torture for local police, where he demonstrated the use of electric shock and vomit inducing drugs on kidnapped vagrants, whom he tortured to death.

Ames goes on to describe all the extremely vicious business OPS and its trainees got up to, such as assisting in the overthrow of Brazil’s democratically-elected president Joao Goulart, and installing a right-wing military dictatorship that would last two decades; repression through murder and torture of the left-wing Tupamoro rebels of Uruguay; in Laos during the Vietnam War, partnership with the CIA in opium-smuggling and the forced resettlement of Hmong families to force them to fight the North Vietnamese; in Guatemala, training of 30,000 police to repress local leftists and later material support for death squads committing genocide against the Maya; in El Salvador, partnering with The Green Berets, the CIA and the State Department to form two paramilitaries that would ‘form the backbone’ of a death squad system that murdered 75,000 people between 1979 and 1992.

2. In Haiti, via a “democracy promotion” program, assistance to antigovernment, pro-business groups in opposition to populist, left-wing president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown in a coup in 1991, months after he had won Haiti’s first democratic election.

3. In Peru, funding for president Alberto Fujimori’s forced sterilization of 300,000 mostly indigenous women.

4. In Russia during the 1990s, funding for privatization schemes that led to the destruction of the country’s social welfare system and the handing over of public assets to a handful of oligarchs; funding for PR campaigns to promote neoliberal reforms and political candidates.

If it seems I’ve gone into quite a bit of detail summarizing Ames’ piece, it’s so you can fully appreciate the whitewashing banality and ignorance of Greenwald’s and Goodman’s responses to the same story. Goodman, in particular, who I have examined on this blog previously for her peerless ability to be usefully idiotic, outdoes herself in her repulsive opening for an otherwise typically banal treatment of the topic at hand.

Perhaps most shockingly, the Cuban Twitter program was not paid for and run by a spy agency such as the CIA. Instead, it was the brainchild of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid.

Shocking, Amy? Really? How shocking, exactly? Shocking like the electroshocks that finally killed each of those beggars in Dan Mitrioni’s basement, after an eternity of suffering? As shocking as the car battery with which OPS-trained police caused the hemorrhaging of Dilma Rouseff’s uterus, when Rouseff was a Marxist student? As shocking as the shock therapy that drove Russians into poverty? Or do you just mean shocking like how any reasonably intelligent person is shocked by your unutterable banality and incorrigible stupidity and how admired you are by upper middle class ignoramuses who think of themselves as well-informed and radical because they allow you to bore them a few times per week? That kind of shocking?

After offering up the seemingly mandatory clip of White House spokesperson Jay Carney, Goodman trots out Peter Kornbluh, of the National Security Archive. Ames’ piece borrows from National Security Archive material, so it’s exceptionally odd and frustrating that Kornbluh happily plays along with Goodman’s ‘new CIA’ bullshit.

USAID, perhaps, is the new CIA here. And this all has a whiff of Iran-Contra kind of elements, in which, you may remember, Amy, you better than anybody, you know, back in the mid-1980s, when the CIA was banned from supporting the Contras in Central America by Congress and passed the operations to the National Security Council so that they could be conducted from there. And here we may have a situation where covert operations have simply been passed to USAID, where there isn’t very much scrutiny.

It makes no sense at all from a news standpoint to go as far back as Iran-Contra without mentioning what USAID was doing in Central America only a few years before, or the cozy relationship USAID has had with the CIA over the years. No matter how you look at it, this is a whitewash that goes beyond the usual veil of anomalousness professional lefts reflexively throw over routine state repression and imperialist meddling. Goodman’s program is a deliberate lie.

Later in the interview, Kornbluh enthusiastically reports that Cuba -

is changing rapidly into a—from a communist society to a capitalist society. And we can help with that, but we can’t help with that by these silly, surreptitious and absolutely dangerous kind of covert operations.

Yes, of course, we can help with Cuba’s transition to capitalism! What Democracy Now funder listener doesn’t want to? But quit with the wacky covert stuff, USAID, and bring on the shock therapy!

Not even distorted history intrudes when Glenn Greenwald offers his second worldly-wise shrug at USAID’s regime-change meddling via The “Cuban Twitter” Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket. The first time he shrugged, it was to insist that his boss’s partnership with USAID in Ukraine had no impact on his journalistic independence, clearly the only thing about Omidyar Greenwald believes he or his readers should take any interest in. For Greenwald, the Twitter clone scheme is trivial because ever-so-many other government agencies are meddling online, not least of course, the NSA and GCHQ. What’s one more?

To make his point, Greenwald does his familiar trophy waving — this time previously published Intercept stories and new, predictably redundant documents that no one in their right mind gives a shit about by now. As ever, Greenwald can’t consider there is anything as, or more important, than what he writes about. So a Cuban Twitter clone under the complete control of U. S. government agents stoking regime change, and which attracted tens of thousands of young users, is, from his perspective, no different really from “a system to automatically monitor hotel bookings of at least 350 upscale hotels around the world. . . to detect diplomats and government officials.”

To quote GTI’s comments after I’d first posted:

[Greenwald] made a subtle pivot from “strategy to undermine anticapitalist country” to “damaging the internet.”

[He] might as well have complained that the CIA using exploding cigars to kill Castro undermined the quality of cigars.

.

[smiths]

"The standards of evidence applied in making accusations against First Look and Greenwald have been non-existent."

fair enough, my comment was sloppy and changed the facts, point taken

but in you response you clarified the problem i have with all this, and why i do connect Omidyar and payPal, and of course Thiel

i cant get the evidence i need about Omidyar's connections to the decision making at payPal, i cant get the evidence i need about Omidyar and Thiel's connections,
and i cant know the relationships they have with people in the Cabal currently controlling (CCC)

I am not sure which crime, deception or revelation it was that finally pushed me over the edge but i now have a 'zero trust for rich people policy'

what that means in practice is that i have a permanent mistrust of all Omidyar's ventures,
he made an obscene fortune on a parasitic idea that generates revenue through digital rent-seeking, it doesnt get more vampirish than that

Am I really supposed to be believe he is some decent guy who's dedicated to exposing government and corporate power on behalf of truth and democracy? gimme a fucking break

the burden of proof falls on Omidyar not me, and that goes for all these silicon valley libertarian sociopathic cunts
the default setting for me is that they are 'lying sociopathic predators'

when they start a knitting circle or a grass roots community newsletter that is the prism i will see them through

so yes, i have no evidence that Omidyar is up to no good, or that Greenwald is a stooge, or that Snowden is an asset

I have followed and read Greenwalds articles for going on 10 years and have been a massive fan of his, everything he had done up until very recently had only ever made me think well of him, but First Look concerns me

even with wikileaks i supported the whole thing with real excitement but in the end was still left wondering,
why no massive corporate scandals exposed? why no hidden machinations of American or British corporate operators exposed?
just third world governments and dictators, and often with impeccable timing ...
like how the middle east upper class got exposed just as the 'Arab Spring' show got going, and with what ultimate result?

skepticism is my position, and its them that have to show me the evidence, not the other way round

[BOOGIE66]

It seems that much of the criticism of Snowden / Greenwald is actually because they aren't releasing the documents fast enough for people who wish to (will?) profit off of said documents release, as they feel Greenwald himself is doing with the documents and First Look.

In other words "what the documents contain isn't important, greenwald and snowden possibly making a profit off of them and denying us that very opportunity is the problem". Bunch of cunts.

As to the idea the general public is now living in fear due to what the released documents reveal - it is laughable. Most people in the general public think "it's ok because they aren't listening in on my phone calls" while being too stupid to realize that because the actual content of the calls is not recorded, the metadata actually becomes more dangerous because it eliminates context. Now the government can take anything collected in that metadata out of context and use it to fit whatever assumptions they wish to make. I'm sure there are no potential problems with that....