Yves here. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in hoping for the best from the new journalistic venture funded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar that Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, among others, have joined with much fanfare. But the fact that one wishes them well should not blind observers to the possible large flies in the ointment.
By Dan Fejes, who lives in northeast Ohio. Cross posted from Pruning Shears
Tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s soon-to-be-launched journalistic venture has been greeted with an overwhelmingly positive response. In an era of shrinking budgets for news operations, the prospect of a benefactor flush with cash jumping in and starting an investigative outlet seems almost impossibly good news.
The reaction among those who write about the press for a living has ranged from palpable relief to gushing and unqualified praise. The prospect of joining some of this era’s most respected investigators like Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill along with paragons of journalistic rectitude like Jay Rosen is certainly enough to hope for good things.
Still, it probably isn’t a good idea to leap off the deep end over it. For one, the new outlet might not be a startling and original development as much as the latest nouveau riche status symbol. Keeping up with the Bezos’, as it were. In addition, it should give one pause to see exactly the kind of uncritical adulation heaped on it that Greenwald has feasted on when practiced by establishment media towards the powerful. And make no mistake about it, Omidyar is an extremely powerful individual.
Last Friday Mark Ames and Yasha Levine published a story at NSFWCORP about Omidyar’s nonprofit group, the Omidyar Network. (The article has been intermittently unlocked for nonsubscribers. If you do not subscribe you may hit a paywall.) This venture has focused in part on privatized microfinance initiatives, and its results there have been grotesque and obscene. One group it supported, SKS Microfinance, engaged in practices that would have had to improve by orders of magnitude to qualify as Dickensian:
In 2012, it emerged that while the SKS IPO was making millions for its wealthy investors,1 hundreds of heavily indebted residents of India’s Andhra Pradesh state were driven to despair and suicide by the company’s cruel and aggressive debt-collection practices. The rash of suicides soared right at the peak of a large micro-lending bubble in Andhra Pradesh, in which many of the poor were taking out multiple micro-loans to cover previous loans that they could no longer pay. It was subprime lending fraud taken to the poorest regions of the world, stripping them of what little they had to live on. It got to the point where the Chief Minister of Andrah Pradesh publicly appealed to the state’s youth and young women not to commit suicide, telling them, “Your lives are valuable.”2
Ames and Levine also cover the foundation’s funding of DonorsChoose in America and Bridge International abroad, both of which focus on privatizing (for profit, of course) public education. Then there’s the debt peddling to the impoverished in Peru. Simply put, Omidyar is a hard core radical libertarian, a triple distilled true believer in laissez-faire capitalism. And as an obvious corollary, someone hostile to government.
That is who the new journalistic hires are lending out their good names to. It surely is no coincidence that they are known for their antagonistic stances towards government: Greenwald for his intelligence reporting,3 Scahill for his unsparing critiques of US foreign policy, and so on. I won’t hold my breath looking for an Occupy Wall Street bureau, though.
I’ve long admired Greenwald, Rosen, Scahill and the other journalists being brought on, and by all indications they will be free to pursue issues they feel passionate about. That is a good thing, but a limited thing as well.
For as promising as the new outlet is, it may in the end serve a much less noble purpose. Someone with a relentlessly antagonistic stance towards government who starts a project that is relentlessly antagonistic towards government will not be broken hearted to see popular trust in government wane. Or as Ames and Levine put it: “In other words: look out Government, you’re about to be pummeled by a crusading, righteous billionaire! And corporate America? Ah, don’t worry.”
The principals may pledge to be on guard against any signs of hedging or self-censorship, but let’s not be naive about this: It will only be acceptable to challenge certain kinds of power over there. The employees will know who is signing their paychecks, and they will be no more immune to the imperceptible erosion of their standards over time than have been the servile members of the courtier press they have so often criticized.
NOTES
1.Omidyar Network had a major stake in a nonprofit named Unitus,
which holds a stake in SKS that will be worth millions after the I.P.O. The group’s board shocked the nonprofit community this month by saying that all of the organization’s 40-person staff would be laid off and that Unitus would no longer be involved in microfinance activities.
As Woody Allen once said, no matter how cynical you are, you can’t keep up.
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2.The story at the link does not contain Pradesh’s quote. I couldn’t find an original source for it, either. The article is brief and still worth looking at though. Ames and Levine also link to this longer article on SKS which is well worth a read too.
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3.The timing on funding an effort against the surveillance state seems curious too; this stuff has been going on for years. Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations seem to have attracted the attention of the right wing grift barkers. I don’t have a problem with strange bedfellows coalitions; I think sometimes it’s useful to temporarily partner with groups that one may think are doing the right thing for the wrong reason. This is particularly true on outsider vs. insider issues like financial crime or, well, domestic spying. But the ease and credulity with which many on the left seem willing to sign on to empty headed, Gadsen flag waving, lightly repurposed teabagger rallies is a bit disturbing.
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Well, Lilliana Segura has joined Greenwald etc, her beat is among other things the private prison industry, so at least not all private firms will be exempt
It is unfortunate that Greenwald and others are signing with Omidyar in my opinion. Most likely they are working very hard to establish this new news venture. Omidyar will make money by selling political ads. Most likely in a year or so these journalist will be replaced by others because they are not living up to the founder’s expectations. Until then all the best.
Not unlikely. I’m also skeptical
See this takedown by Greenwald of an Ames-Levine 2010 piece in the Nation about a blogger’s criticism of the TSA search procedures. http://www.salon.com/2010/11/24/tyner/ Apparently, Greenwald knew nothing about Ames-Levine when he wrote the critique of their reporting on this TSA incident. Wonder if they never got over it and in part are going after Greenwald because of his critique of them. Also, pay attention to the Ames-Levine stereotyping of those who object to the TSA procedures.
Ames & co have gone completely bonkers in regard to the whole TSA thing, and also Greenwald to some extent. I think they feed themselves on the antagonism
Keep it up guys, you may just end up with a paying gig for a billionaire! Inside or outside the gate?
In fact, as that drama played out, Ames wasn’t wrong despite Greenwald’s scorched earth defense. The “touch my junk” guy is widely cited being a “libertarian blogger” which casts doubts on his bona fides. So how exactly is it a “takedown” if the substance of the original criticism is accurate?
It all seems rather nebulous. I have seen no mission statement, business plan, organizational structure, or roster beyond Greenwald and a couple of others. I have no idea what Greenwald, Poitras, or Omidyar’s role will be in this venture. I’m not even sure what media it will appear in.
The three great issues of our times are kleptocracy, wealth inequality, and class war. I have to wonder how much coverage these are likely to receive from a billionaire funded enterprise.
I don’t know Omidyar’s political inclinations, but if they are libertarian, it is hard to see how this new news organization can adopt a progressive position like Medicare for All. Like I said: nebulous. And that’s not a good thing because it allows expectations to be raised and then disappointed.
Yves,
Arthur Silber was on this early. His cynicism is entirely appropriate.
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-doctrine-of-exceptionalism-extends.html
The notes of the article quote Woody Allen, but “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up” is attributed to Lily Tomlin.
http://www.bookbrowse.com/quotes/detail/index.cfm?quote_number=263
Thanks for the note, UsualSuspect. I saw it attributed to both her and Allen, and since I initially remembered it coming from him that’s who I went with.
I think one liners and zingers should all immediately become public domain because of how quickly their provenance gets muddied. Next time I use one I’ll just act like I came up with it myself. :)
Thanks for the link to Arthur too. I hadn’t seen that post.
The only response from any of the principals in this I’ve seen has been two tweets from Jeremy Scahill:
Heading to my weekly meeting with George Soros and Ayman al Zawahiri at the Cato Institute to get my new assignments. (11/16)
My left wing and right wing trolls should get together and have a little party in their parents’ basements. (11/18)
(“Right-wing trolls” apparently in reference to criticism of his justifiable refusal to appear on stage w/ “Mother Agnes.”)
Anyway, this is not a good omen. Omidyar, his ilk (e.g., Bezos), and their vast mountains of money are emerging as a real threat to what’s left of democracy around here. We’re seeing the Revolt of the Tech Toymakers, and it could get very ugly. That Greenwald, Scahill, et al., think this is all immaterial is mind-boggling. I’m not sure it would be all that different if it were a Koch front doing the startup.
ps — Alexa O’Brien (@carwinb) has raised many excellent questions about this, esp. with regard to Omidyar/PayPal’s blockade of Wikileaks donations constituting a convenient monopoly for the new venture.
Jeremy Scahill is an unrepentant socialist as far as I’ve seen, so it will be interesting to see if his reporting will be limited to his normal beat of drone warfare and military misadventures, and/or if his tone will change.
This Omidyar fellow seems like a real monster, and Greenwald definitely has libertarian leanings. I am definitely not excited at this point.
What I’d love to see is some deep pocket socialism supporters (is that an oxymoron?) backing Taibbi, Ames and Levine in a media venture. That would be something to get excited about.
Note 1: “The group’s board shocked the nonprofit community this month”
Is this referring to the board of Omidyar Network, Unitus, or SKS?
“all of the organization’s 40-person staff would be laid off”
Which organization?
I can’t follow who is / are the evil-doers, or who are losing their jobs.
trust no one
I’ve suspected for awhile now that Greenwald was probably asked to leave The Guardian–not because The Guardian didn’t want to keep him on, but because the newspaper realized that the British people and the British parliament aren’t truly committed to freedom of the press. The Guardian is fighting for its life right now, and the tabloid press that seems to make up what passes for British journalism isn’t prepared to stand up for press freedom anymore than the rest of its citizens. From the moment Rusbridger said that national security articles would be covered from U.S. offices, it became clear that the pressure on the newspaper by British authorities had to be unbearable.
Omidyar doesn’t strike me as a particularly trustworthy individual, given some of his past (current?) associations. That doesn’t present the journalistic trio with the optimum solution. The only leverage they might have is as a package deal–a Three Musketeers approach. If, as Jay Rosen opines, Omidyar is purchasing the talents of specific individuals, rather than anonymous investigative reporters, the only negotiating strength of Greenwald, Rosen, and Scahill would appear to lie in unity. It can’t be an easy situation for them, in spite of the hype and bravado we’ve seen so far.
The really sad part for me, an historian of Britain who got his Ph.D. over there, is that the largest block of the “Great British Public” no longer gives a shit about their freedom. They want to be capably administered.
If anyone wants to see the slippery slope in action, take a careful look at what has happened to British liberties since 1939. People over there have been lied to, egregiously, by both major parties, for so long, they’ve given up imagining that they could stop the spooks. This latest announcement about the dead spy killing himself by wrapping himself up in plastic is so inherently, insultingly, stupidly false that the complete unbelievablility of the thing seems to be the point: we will lie to your face and you will take it because you are nothing, have no power, and will accept what we tell you to believe (or else you’re the next one in the bag).
Sad, appalling, and likely the template for our future here in the States.
The mainstream media is the most noxious element of our society. Their steady diet of lies has confused and misdirected the American people. Let’s wait and see what the results are of this venture. The journos involved have a record of courage, integrity and brilliance and we should give them a chance to show their stuff before we start throwing rhetorical stones at them. Russia Today and a couple of other cable shows may not have the most moral of owners but they are alternatives to the lies of CNN, MSNBC, Fox and so on.
This just seems like part of a continuing cultural and economic power shift from East Coast capitalists to Silicon Valley capitalists. Increasingly, Silicon Valley runs the economic world, so it makes sense they would seek to run the means of communication as well.
Silicon Valley tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar… letting Dobermans loose on the government?
Omidyar’s NewCo, part of a grander scheme?
Kevin Roose, “Silicon Valley’s Secessionist Movement Is Growing,” quotes Balaji Srinivasan, the co-founder of genetics company Counsyl, about “Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit,” a techno-utopian vision of a world free of the constraints of civil society:
“The best part is this, the people who think this is weird, the people who sneer at the frontier, who hate technology, won’t follow you there. We need to run the experiment, to show what a society run by Silicon Valley looks like without affecting anyone who wants to live under the Paper Belt.” [the term “paper belt” refers to the environments currently governed by pre-existing systems like the US government] “We need to build opt-in society, outside the US, run by technology.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/silicon-valleys-secessionists.html
Roose writes, “The secessionist instinct makes sense from the perspective of a tech executive who would be richer and more successful if not for the cautious, slow-moving tendencies of government.”
“Look out Government,” warn Ames and Levine, “you’re about to be pummeled by a crusading, righteous billionaire! And corporate America? Ah, don’t worry. Your dirty secrets—freshly transferred from the nasty non-profit hands of the Guardian to the aggressively for-profit hands of Pierre Omidyar—are safe with us.”
Possible very, very large flies in the ointment, indeed!
Bingo. My thought exactly. What makes Omidyar any different from the Sulzbergers or the Grahams, Knights, Chandlers, etc.? The history of newspapers in the US (and in most of the world for that matter) is all about filthy rich seeking to clean their conscience and stroke their vanity by doing work, ahem, “in the public interest” while–added bonus!–increasing their power.
There’s nothing new about Omidyar’s project. That’s why it’s depressing to see Greenwald et. al. signing on with them. The innovative thing to do would be to figure out a way to continue their work without hooking up with an egotistical billionaire.
Wikileaks is the truly innovative media model of our time. Which is yet another reason to be suspicious of Mr. “PayPal” Omidyar’s media aspirations.
Great article by Ames-Levine.
It seems appropriate that a market-oriented libertarian would use contract law and a pile of $$$ to silence two of the best reporters in the field.
My advice to Scahill and Greenwald: Read the small print
“For as promising as the new outlet is, it may in the end serve a much less noble purpose. Someone with a relentlessly antagonistic stance towards government who starts a project that is relentlessly antagonistic towards government will not be broken hearted to see popular trust in government wane.”
Seriously? What popular trust exists now? We are now worried Greenwald et al. are going to be too hard on government? That is the whole point of journalism–to expose the failings of our government, so ideally failings can be corrected. Exhibit 1–all of the excellent coverage on the Obamacare problems provided on NC. Does that mean NC is trying to ruin the people’s trust in the government?
People need to just wait and see how this enterprise unfolds, without engaging in all of the wild speculation about how the journalists might be compromised in their coverage. And if we don’t see a lot of articles about micro-finance, income inequality, corporations, who cares? We always have NC to cover those issues.
Yeah, I think maybe the Ames and Levine piece would have been stronger if it had just reported on Omidyar’s investment activities and left the editorializing out.
As From Mexico pointed out the day the NSFW article appeared here in Links, those deep in neoliberal finance are not anti-government. Rather, they wish to take over the government and run it themselves.
The neoliberal land reformer they themselves cite, Hernando de Soto, actively manipulated the Peruvian government in an attempt to grant poor people title to their dwellings in order to build a constituency for microfinance lenders.
How is the conclusion, then, that DeSoto and Omidyar are “anti-government” and that what we’re about to be bombarded by is “anti-government” propaganda?
Have they joined the Tea Party?
In other words, I think maybe Ames-Levine’s self chosen beat–seeing economic “libertarians” lurking behind every tree– is not serving their analytical capacities very well.
And as I think they clearly describe DeSoto’s land reforms, its use of a the Peruvian government and its effects on the people, their “anti-government” lens dumbs down their readers if that’s the message their readers are taking away.
Which does seem to be the case, as this post’s author, Dan Fejes demonstrates:
“Someone with a relentlessly antagonistic stance towards government who starts a project that is relentlessly antagonistic towards government will not be broken hearted to see popular trust in government wane.”
It seems to me that for neoliberalism to work, the public needs to trust the government, not distrust it. Just look at how the O-bots trust Obama’s neoliberal health insurance bill because they trust Obama.
There is a big difference between trusting this government and distrusting government to do any good for people, which is the aim of libertarians everywhere. They want us to abandon democracy in favor of throwing ourselves on the tender mercies of the rich and the “free” market.
I trust government to the extend that I can influence it by speech, vote, petition, and protest. I have ZERO trust in corporations or rich people who I have no influence over at all, but can, through their wealth and connections, hold great power over me. So a reformed government is infinitely better than a privatized world of what will amount to neo-feudalism.
This is logical: “I trust government to the extend that I can influence it by speech, vote, petition, and protest. I have ZERO trust in corporations or rich people who I have no influence over at all, but can, through their wealth and connections, hold great power over me.”
While some of us may still be lucky enough to have minor influence in school boards, committees and smaller local governments over strictly local issues, none of our petitions, votes, speeches and protests move our political elites at all. They will continue to serve the interests of big money, and continue to tell us what they think we want to hear, while doing the opposite of what we demand.
Somehow we need to wrest control of the political process away from big money. Nothing short of a populist tsunami, that washes away the Republicrat establishment and achieves radical campaign finance reform, among other reforms, will do the trick.
The kleptocrats won’t let go of their power without a very intense struggle. Our greatest consolation is that we are many, and they are few.
One of the emerging conservative talking points about Obamacare – which was not universally embraced on the left (to put it mildly) when legislation was being written – is that it proves government can’t do anything. Get people to cosign that sentiment and yes, it erodes trust even in the popular programs.
Great investigative journalism challenges power. In some cases, like the surveillance state and war policy, that means challenging the government. But there’s a whole other universe of power out there – private power. If this new outlet is dedicated to only challenging one particular sphere of power then it is essentially a libertarian Fox News. That’s a far cry from the grandiose visions it’s been hyped as to this point.
Sure it might produce useful journalism in the areas it chooses to focus on, but people should approach it with a very clear understanding of what its biases are and what power center it is dedicated to serving.
It’s not okay to ignore my point, because the “libertarian”/ anti-government lens produces an analysis of the way neoliberalism works that is factually inadequate.
In other words, your ideological leanings have you replicating the same error in understanding of which you accuse Greenwald, leaving you emphasizing the other side of the same coin of governing power.
Karl Marx didn’t call such governments “bourgeois parliament” for nothing.
Give me the bourgeois parliament of Weimer over its replacement any day. In the end, that may be our choice, and I know which side of the barricade I’ll be on if it is.
What makes you so sure we’re not working on “the replacement” already, lead into it by the nose by bourgeois military contractors?
That’s “the side” you’re going to get on?
I think we’re dealing with a semantic and not a substantive difference here. If I understand you correctly, libertarians are not anti-government because they don’t want to eliminate government so much as shove it out of the picture or interpose private power between it and citizens. While that may not technically be anti-government in the sense of calling for its complete destruction, it calls for government’s substantial retreat from public life. Whether or not one qualifies that as actively anti-government strikes me as a distinction without a difference.
I’ve already stated my point: People who are deep in global neoliberal finance are not anti-government. They need to use the government for their activities and so they seek to control the government. And in the US, I would argue they do. This is the political regime you want me to love up, and “trust.”
Calling people who are deep in global neoliberal finance “libertarians” and stating that they are “anti-government,” after the fashion of parochial American right wing populists who are putatively “small government” conservatives– they’re not either but they want, to quote Ron Paul, “to keep the money they earned”– is to engage in a disinformation campaign.
Moreover, you are engaged in a disinformation campaign that politically favors the neoliberals to whom you claim to be opposed. By attaching labels to them preferred by right wing populists, you are delivering Omidyar to them as their friend, much as Obama delivered the O-bots when tailoring his health insurance bill to order for healthcare financing neoliberals.
In attempting to master the political puppets on the liberal left by deploying the “libertarian – anti-government” dog whistle and attempting to get them to re-deploy it themselves, you are ultimately working at cross purposes with yourself.
Now there are people who are opposed to the US domestic police state and global terror state who would willingly deliver up right wing populist “libertarians” with that critical bent to Glenn Greenwald.
You seem to not care about that. Indeed, that seems to be what you’re afraid of, so if all you care about is “economics” I don’t know why you would work the libertarian angle, other than your knee is jerking.
In any case, whose cause you effectively advance is your business. I’m not advocating an ideological position.
Rather, I am calling your chosen framework–where you pick what you want from the Ames-Levine article and ignore the rest– factually inaccurate with reference to Omidyar’s neoliberal investment activities and therefore an act of irresponsible journalism.
Journalism should serve the best analysis of the political condition, not rile up the knee jerk idiots for a momentary fix.
Maybe you don’t see yourself as a journalist. Which is why I originally limited my comments about the Ames-Levine article to the way they inaccurately framed their own analysis at the end of the piece, thereby dumbing down their readers.
You were merely exhibit A of their impact on public understanding.
What I take it the three of you share is the idea that tagging Omidyar as a “libertarian” and “anti-government” is a politically effective tactic.
I don’t necessarily think that’s the case, and since I don’t think it advances understanding about neoliberal finance– which is my main concern– I don’t like it.
But it’s still a free country, and you and Ames and Levine are still free to annoy me until I refuse to even listen to you anymore. :P
This post, and any raising the redflag over Omidyar’s new venture, is welcome but it glosses over the more worrying issues of Greenwald’s behavior in privatizing the NSA secrets that NSFWCorp and The Rancid Honeytrap (http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/) have been covering.
Anyone who thinks this will be the slightest bit different or better than the “mainstream” media (I put it in scare quotes because this venture, make no mistake about it, is the mainstream) is either deluding herself or a fool. People who have been paying attention have known for a long time that Greenwald was a hardcore neoliberal with past ties to the Cato institute.
And now that I’m on my soapbox, even Greenwald’s big story about the NSA dovetails perfectly with that ideology. It’s a tacit way of saying “the state is evil and everyone is better off if you put all the power in the hands of the private sector, captial, and the corporate.” I’m not trying to defend the actions of the NSA, but why, of all the things Greenwald could have focused on, was that his choice?
‘Glenn Greenwald Will Not Be Prosecuted’ Eric Holder. 16 November 13.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/421-national-security/20462-eric-holder-glenn-greenwald-will-not-be-prosecuted
Might Greenwald”s new associations have had any influence upon the attorney-general’s most recent decision on the matter ?
Per Holder:
<a href="The Second Page, Glenn Greenwald Edition
If only MSDNC had to live up to that standard…
Yes, that “based on what I know now” is a ton weaker than the headline. That could just as easily mean, “The NSA hasn’t given me a smoking gun yet.”
Completely absurd essay and same for more comments, what cynical nonsense this amounts to.
What is happening today could be as revolutionary as what happened during the 17th and 18th centuries as the expanding wealth/power of the rising commercial classes and their financial networks in those years was ultimately too great for the established governance structures of the pre-modern era, and swept them away.
Now we have a new rising class of people who have built vast empires of information, information technologies and information networks. They have already bought a lot of the politicians, and are now buying up other forms of media. I listened to a report on the radio today about the ongoing NSA issues in which a speaker opined that the government could barely keep up with the tech field, and is fighting a losing battle.
Nobody should think that this new power source will be any more just than the capitalists who came before them. They tend to be highly individualistic and entrepreneurial, enthusiasts for laissez faire forms of organization, eager accumulators of wealth, instinctive monopolists, and convinced that their intellectual superiority to the rest of humanity gives them a right to rule. They also given to strongly anti-democratic views because they think the rubes can’t possibly understand what is going on well enough to make intelligent policy.
“….Omidyar is an extremely powerful individual.”
He is “powerful” as much as his is allowed to be by those who stand behind him, i.e. who created him.
“Simply put, Omidyar is a hard core radical libertarian, a triple distilled true believer in laissez-faire capitalism. And as an obvious corollary, someone hostile to government.”
No, he is not, he is a “product” of the system, i.e. “new economy”, remember that?
“It surely is no coincidence that they are known for their antagonistic stances towards government: Greenwald for his intelligence reporting,3 Scahill for his unsparing critiques of US foreign policy, and so on.”
Funny, this is, simply, a dialog within the system, liberal discourse. They questioned a methods, not a system itself. As far as I can tell there is nothing, nothing new in their stories.
It is fiction of an investigate journalism, or quest for the truth. All in all, what Lenin said: “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” sums up the current situation in journalism and the US.
Here is Jay Rosen at his critical best.
It seems to me that among the kinds of people you would look to to oppose the NSA, war, imperialism, the Drug War, the prison-industrial complex, and so on, would be hard-core crank libertarians. My enemy’s enemies are not necessarily my friends, but they are my enemy’s enemies and thus at least temporary allies. It’s not like we’re overwhelmed with allies.
Arthur Silber was/is right! The more I think about it the more I believe the only way the people ever have a chance at semi-decent governance is for all government information, all law, all money streams, etc., to be open source. There should be no such thing as government secrets.
Notice, up until now, the single Omidyar achievement seems to be an all stop of Greenwald publishing on the Snowden files. Imagine just how much that alone, even for a month or so, would be worth to the spook industrial complex?
In his last Guardian post he mentioned he would be posting on occasion here:
http://ggsidedocs.blogspot.com.br/
I made a note of it and checked in the next day… almost immediately the site disappeared, never to return. Nor has he mentioned it on his twitter feed which is what he’s reduced himself to as far as a common netizen like me can tell.
Curious.
Only Laura Poitras and G3 (now minus 1 G?) have the full set of snowden docs. That’s called a monopoly. The monopoly was bought by a billionaire.
That billionaire also exerts considerable control over paypal. What does he think about PP cutting off wikileaks?
Bow down before your corporate monopoly master. Truth to follow, along with a bill.
The only thing more rancid than the monopoly is the fetid group of “lefty journalists” spit shining Omidyar’s image while begging for a job.
Edward Snowden “leaked” whatever it is he leaked several months ago to a specific person, namely, a certain Mr. Greenwald. A Laura Poitras was also involved. I don’t know any of these people. What I do know is that only some of the information is public, there is no place to go to confirm any of it, and for some reason whatever is left to disseminate is being done in small amounts on some kind of unannounced schedule. Why? So far I haven’t learned anything I didn’t know in general outline. An acronymed government organization is monitoring everything I do. Yes, yes, more than likely. Now tell me stuff I couldn’t know just by connecting the dots available a year ago like how close is the relationship between “acronym” and say, Facebook, or Google. How does all this all work day to day? Give me some names, dates of meetings, what was said. Otherwise, it’s also possible all of this is a reverse psychology trial balloon conditioning the public to ubiquitous surveillance. “See, everything is out in the open. Now you know everything and no harm done. So, go back to shopping or whatever it is you do.”
What you think you know and what you can prove you know are treated very differently in the court of public opinion. The NSA revelations shine a light in dark places. They catch officials in lies and they expose the police state mentality of the programs’ authors. You simply don’t get this with what you learn, or suspect, in the wind.
The one thing I’m not certain about is whether GG and Poitras really are the only ones with a full set of Snowden docs. If so, the folks at the Guardian are total idiots. They flew Poitras and GG to Hong Kong and GG was effectively a stringer for them. Under any normal construct in the US, they’d have rights to the documents gathered on their nickel.
Back in August, BuzzFeed posted this statement from Greenwald:
Yowzers, thanks. So Ames and Levine are quite right to say that Omidyar is effectively privatizing the Snowden stash.
https://twitter.com/AsaWinstanley/status/397692326803304448
greenwald: I think it (ggsidedocs) was connected to a Guardian email that was deleted – looking into it.
In the midst of a global surveillance scandal, the notion that the Omidyar venture will chip away at people’s faith in government — and that this would be a bad thing — is one of the stupidest things I have heard in some time. Fortunate for you state worshipers, I am quite sure he intends no such thing.
While I appreciated all the factual information in the NSFW piece — the stuff on microfinance and DeSoto was useful and fascinating — the problem with Ames and Co is that in their zeal to root out the Great Libertarian Conspiracy, they posit a false binary of Corporate Power and State Power. The first is bad. The second is the beneficent tempering influence on the first. What never occurs to them is that people like Milton Friedman and DeSoto couldn’t get any of their awful programs implemented without state authority. This is why privatization and shock treatments go so well with tyranny.
With so much that is objectionable about this undertaking, though, it figures that the most prominent chatterers would glom onto the most stupid, inane objection to it. There isn’t a class of people that owes more to state power than billionaires like Omidyar — libertarian or otherwise — so why on earth would they work to destroy it? Ames and Co were on firmer ground when they pilfered from my writing on this topic and complained about the Greenwald/Poitras monopoly on leaks and how this has enabled deal-making and the potential purchase by Omidyar of some of his Silicon Valley pals dirty secrets.
I also liked he line about civic-minded billionaires being next door to the Tooth Fairy, which they got from Arthur Silber, and which is really all that needs to be said. Left journalists lending their credibility to a toxic billionaire is disgusting on its face, whether the billionaire is a closet libertarian or not, and that this is actually subject to debate surely suggests a new low in vapid left careerism and celebrity worship. That Greenwald, Scahill and Seguras have made snark and verbal abuse the go-to method for dealing with reasonable objections makes it quite easy for me to write them and their little venture off entirely. The world will turn with or without an upmarket HuffPost with a fashionable whiff of compromised dissent. F*** all these people. There are better, uncelebrated journalists doing good work without billionaire patrons and I’ll stick with them. I have found the business and tech press far more useful than Snowden’s official crew, for instance, on the topic of mass surveillance.
Finally, sad to see my name is such mud for having the temerity to dislike Saint Greenwald that even regular readers of my blog commenting here couldn’t bring themselves to mention my own work on these topics. But that’s how celebrity works, and all the more reason to reject it in journalism.
Newcomers start here:
A Harbinger of Journalism Saved
and here:
Take Your Drip and Stick It
Concern trolling for pros®
Is there any narrative that doesn’t have your rancid honeytrap as the main character?
I don’t feign humility and make no apologies for that. Nor do I apologize for inserting myself in the narrative when I think it’s warranted, like when a beloved media celebrity calls me stupid a hundred different ways, pursuant to unleashing his cult of trolls on me. Or when i muse on how I think a lot of objections to my tone and such are about status. About not knowing my place in relation to the upper middle class arbiters of correct opinions like Yves here, and Greenwald, no slouch himself in making it all about him.
But if you look at the Other Stuff/Me ratio in the comment you’re replying to, your criticism seems misplaced and weird, especially since I don’t really think we disagree that much on the Greenwald/Omidyar deal.
YOU never miss an opportunity for self-promotion, on YOUR terms.
YOU think you are the center of the world, and the world is better off because of that.
YOU viciously attack, and demand answers from anyone who dares question YOUR authority
YOU ARE THAT GUY*
*chance of winning, 1 in 7 billion
On a side note, how many people in America were genuinely surprised they were being spied on, that all their moves online were being monitored? I guess it was nice to have concrete proof, but I think the reason this story is fading is because it was a forgone conclusion. The only people really pissed off about it are the hardcore neoliberals, the Ron Paul types. It’s only a scandal for them because they aren’t connecting the dots between their free market utopia and the gargantuan levels of brute violent coercion needed to maintain it.
For the rest of us, we just grumbled a little bit and moved on because we already knew and learned to live with it a long time ago. I’m not saying it’s right, but life goes on no matter what. People lived in East Germany under the Stasi for decades.
You appear to regard your readers as your personal property. You are offended they didn’t mention your name in comments here? I see some of my regulars comment at other sites, and it literally has never occurred to me, “Oh, they are writing about XXX which is a topic I was on to early/first, I even wrote about it yesterday, and they didn’t mention me. Bad readers!” I’m actually pleased to see they get around, that means they are informed and their cred and participation at other sites will mean if readers of those other sides take a gander over to NC, they will think better of NC. But you instead think it’s appropriate to hector them.
And as for “There isn’t a class of people that owes more to state power than billionaires like Omidyar” please explain how Omidyar’s riches depend on state power? You need to make a case that Omidyar in particular has reason not to attack the state. Working for an Apple sub and getting rich from a shopping site doesn’t rely on state power in any meaningful way that I can see, but perhaps you can tell me what I’m missing.
No, I’m not offended, but I do think it’s indicative of the climate surrounding the discussion of Greenwald since June. My criticisms have been the harshest, certainly, and I have been trolled and harrassed for two months because of it. People take me aside to say they agree but don’t do it publicly. The biggest surprise to me in the whole affair is the lengths people go to to protect even meagre social capital of online networks.
This question is almost too ridiculous to dignify with an answer, but how about we start with the patent protection eBay enjoys for online auctions? How about the monopoly on state violence that works to keep pitchfork wielding mobs at bay? How about the government-prompted PayPal blockade that reduces competition from Wikileaks? How about all the contracts that keep his Silicon Valley buddies, like Palantir’s Peter Thiel — another alleged hater of state power — flush with cash?
Please. Ask a serious question.
The individual agent end game. Me! Mine!
Please. Go fuck you and yourself.
Your arrogance is way out of line with the quality of your commentary. You seem to think that because you successfully bait others who respond to you heatedly means you are brilliant. Sorry, you aren’t.
To wit: can you bother dealing with facts, as in timelines? Ebay went public in 1998. CNET even said at the time, “both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires.”
Ebay filed for its patent in October 1998. And that application clearly had nothing to do with the company’s valuation. Ebay went public Sept. 21, 1998.
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/04/20/ebay-wins-patent-online-auction-process/
And the patent was not approved till 2010. Please tell me how much value Omidyar has derived from patent suits since then.
“please explain how Omidyar’s riches depend on state power? You need to make a case that Omidyar in particular has reason not to attack the state.”
Yves, you can’t possibly be serious. This question is mind boggling. It’s like you think overt state collusion with business interests (for example, trade agreements) is required for vastly successful businessmen to benefit from the state. But that’s only the most obvious example. Furthermore, it works both ways in the sense that businessmen who comply with the state and don’t do anything to anger it benefit when the state rewards their compliance by not acting to hinder their success. The PayPal financial blockade on Wikileaks is a perfect example of this. PayPal complied, and the state left them alone for being obedient. And as an example of what happens when you don’t comply with state power, we have Lavabit as a recent example, which as we all know was essentially destroyed for clashing with state power. How can you not understand that?
The answers to your question seem self-evident.
Your response proves my point. All you libertarians paint with broad brushes and fail when forced to deal with facts.
Back to the drawing board.
Omidyar made his fortune through Ebay. It went public LONG before it bought Paypal. I’m not even sure it was a good acquisition for them. Someone I know said the upside was seen as handling online gambling payments, and I don’t believe Paypal has since made inroads in that business.
Moreover, now that Ebay is public, Omidyar is not involved in management, nor does he have veto rights. Banks, Visa, and Mastercard as well as Paypal were told to stop remitting payments to Wikileaks. This wasn’t Ebay/Paypal’s idea. Paypal is particularly vulnerable because it is basically an unlicensed bank. How they get away with that is beyond me. It would be trivial for the Feds to come down on Paypal like a ton of bricks if it kept remitting payments to Wikileaks when everyone else had come to heel.
Most important, Omidyar claims he opposed the decision on Wikileaks.
You were saying?
This was my first comment on this website, and apparently that was enough for you to label me as a libertarian. And in the same sentence, you accuse me of painting with a broad brush? Anyway…
The point I’m trying to make, and that you have failed to grasp, is that overt, open colluding with state power isn’t necessarily needed for a vastly rich individual and the state to have a mutually beneficial relationship. One doesn’t become the 123rd richest person on the planet unless they play ball. This is beyond obvious.
“Most important, Omidyar claims he opposed the decision on Wikileaks.” Notice how you can’t even honestly write that he flat out opposed the decision on Wikileaks. The best you can do is that he claims to have opposed it – and this is important? How pathetic. Whatever Omidyar claims, his actions show that he wasn’t exactly willing to do, you know, a single damn thing to meaningfully oppose the PayPal complicity in the state-advanced financial blockade. He was chair of Ebay at this time, in a position of power and influence over the decision. And when given the chance, when it really mattered, all he could muster was a column in a little-read Hawaii newspaper. In other words, he played ball. That you find this limp gesture to be of utmost importance, and that you see it as anything other than compliance with a microscopic sprinkle of objection, is indescribably dumb.
Lastly, as the financial blockade continues (i.e. as Omidyar continues to play ball) it benefits his new media company by strangling Wikileaks, who is now a competitor. And with that, the relationship between Omidyar and state power has finally reached the overt, out-in-the-open stage – and you still can’t recognize it.
Alexa O’Brien is an independent journalist who covered WikiLeaks and composed the only available transcripts for the first year and a half of Manning’s pre-trial hearings. She posted some comments about the PayPal blockade of WikiLeaks. Omidyar could have raised hell, if ending the blockade was important to him. What is more important – the existence of PayPal or the existence of WikiLeaks?
Meekly acquiescing to the blockade protects PayPal and gives Omidyar’s media enterprise a competitive advantage. Standing up for principles is extraordinarily unprofitable in a capitalist system and, as you pointed out, can lead to the extinction of your business.
Wow, this is the best you can do?
I’m being precise with my language because I can only go on what Omidyar said his views are. Or are you a mind reader and thus have better insight?
And do you know anything about the role of a chairman? I doubt this matter came up for a board vote. This is a normal business matter (believe it or not), compliance with a government order to stop dealing with a party they’d deemed to be a security threat. There wouldn’t be a basis for Omidyar calling a board meeting over this
I’m not a mind reader, but that isn’t required to parse out the gaping canyon between what Omidyar claims his views are and the actions he’s taken to actually do something meaningful about those views. So you’re wrong, we have more to go off of than what he said his views are. Once again, this should be obvious.
I can’t believe you give him a pass for writing a column in a barely-known newspaper. At the very least, a person of his stature could have had his objections published in a newspaper with a larger readership. And that stands even if I were to grant your speculation about what did or didn’t happen in Ebay’s boardroom.
Your statement about compliance with government orders being normal business proves my initial point – that successful people and businesses must play ball with the state. They wouldn’t be filthy rich if they didn’t. So of course compliance with state orders is a normal business matter. I’m glad you finally figured it out, congratulations!
Lastly, are you going to continue to dodge the issue that numerous people here (including myself) have raised regarding the financial blockade of Wikileaks and how it now conveniently gives Omidyar’s new media company a state-granted advantage over the competition?
“It would be trivial for the Feds to come down on Paypal like a ton of bricks”
Corporations that do the state’s bidding get the state’s blessing. As AmishRakeFight wrote:
“PayPal complied, and the state left them alone for being obedient. And as an example of what happens when you don’t comply with state power, we have Lavabit as a recent example, which as we all know was essentially destroyed for clashing with state power.”
I can’t believe you’re labelling someone as a “libertarian” for saying that state power was necessary for a billionaire’s wealth.
Does that make Obama a libertarian for his “You didn’t build that” line? Elizabeth Warren too?
No, reading comprehension fail.
The argument is that you need to make an argument that that’s true in the case of Omidyar. I have yet to see anyone make that case. Have you never heard of network effects? Ebay was an effective early mover in an field with extremely strong network effects. That seems more than sufficient as a reason for his success. I’ve challenged readers to tell me how Omidyar’s becoming a billionaire when Ebay became public was the result of “state power”.
I’ve had a billionaire client who made his fortune in the looting when a state collapsed, namely, the USSR, when the US promoted and Russia embraced “pro market” reforms. The record of Pinochet’s Chile is also that radical and rapid deregulation led to a plutocratic land grab, a bubble, and a depression.
I think you should file a claim with the International Criminal Court for having your intellectual property rights were violated by NC readers who used your brilliant analysis — which you describe as the “harshest, certainly.” As a result of your cutting edge critique, you have suffered emotional strain and damage — “trolled and harrassed [sic] for two months because of it,” as you describe it. Surely you deserve just compensation for your troubles.
Oh wait, you’re a libertarian who doesn’t believe in intel property nor government courts. Whoops. Looks like you’re just gonna have to go complain to mommy instead.
Yeesh, Tarzie, easy on the persecution complex. I didn’t link to or mention you in the post. Showing up to lament your name is such mud when no one was talking about you is a bit much. I’m not above a little linkwhoring myself, but I try not to nail myself to a cross in the process.
That you think it’s vapid to discuss Omidyar’s lavishly funded efforts to further immiserate some of the poorest people in the world is fascinating. This isn’t scandal sheet gossip on who he’s dating, it’s his vigorous pursuit of a rapacious economic model. One man’s trivia is another man’s relevance, I guess.
Because of his strenuously held ideology, I do not expect his venture to cover, say, organizing efforts of WalMart workers, exposes of charter schools, coverage of crime and corruption of big banks, and so on. That is a huge caveat to me. Might not be for you, that’s fine, but I’m more concerned about the rapturous reception it’s received on the left. I think many people who have sung its praises so far might be in for an unpleasant surprise.
You know, I hadn’t seen your site until today – via the link to Arthur up above – and I enjoyed reading your posts. You really should try to put as much thought into your comments. Being a dick can be entertaining, but only if it’s well executed.
Tarzie’s comment does not say it is vapid to discuss “Omidyar’s lavishly funded efforts to further immiserate some of the poorest people”. In fact, Tarzie mentions that he “appreciated all the factual information in the NSFW piece — the stuff on microfinance and DeSoto was useful and fascinating”.
What he finds inane is this concern:
Omidyar does not trust the government. That seems to be beside the point. Imagine if you expressed concern that the head of a crime family was undermining trust in another criminal syndicate. It would see a bit peripheral, especially if Crime Syndicate B acted as the protection arm of Crime Family A.
“Omidyar does not trust the government.”
But Omidyar isn’t “relentlessly antagonistic” toward the government. He’s perfectly fine with the deployment of state power when it is animated by a theory that is in his interests– and in the case cited by Ames-Levine, that interest is global neoliberal microfinance:
“Whereas “land reform” in countries like Peru—dominated by a tiny handful of landowning families—used to mean land redistribution, Hernando De Soto came up with a counter-idea more amenable to the Haves: give property title to the country’s poor masses, so that they’d have a secure and legal title to their shanties, shacks, and whatever land they might claim to live on or own.
De Soto’s pitch essentially comes down to this: Give the poor masses a legal “stake” in whatever meager property they live in, and that will “unleash” their inner entrepreneurial spirit and all the national “hidden capital” lying dormant beneath their shanty floors. De Soto claimed that if the poor living in Lima’s vast shantytowns were given legal title ownership over their shacks, they could then use that legal title as collateral to take out microfinance loans, which would then be used to launch their micro-entrepreneurial careers. Newly-created property holders would also have a “stake” in the ruling political and economic system. It’s the sort of cant that makes perfect sense to the Davos set (where De Soto is a star) but that has absolutely zero relevance to problems of entrenched poverty around the world…
Even before Omidyar committed $5 million to the dark plutocratic “idealism” De Soto represents, he was Tweeting his admiration for De Soto:
“Brilliant dinner with Hernando de Soto. Property rights underlie and enable everything.”
Indeed, property rights underlie and enable everything Omidyar wants to hear—but distract and divert from what the targets of those programs might actually need or be asking for.”
Omidyar perfectly well trusts “the government” when he can control it.
How is it that we all “read” the same article, but only some of us read it– if not that Ames-Levine concluded their article by re-framing it within a parochial American “libertarian – anti-government” framework that is not supported by their own analysis?
I take that to mean he doesn’t care what Omidyar does with the vast wealth that he has, just that he has it. I, on the other hand, think it matters a great deal what he does with his money, and how he uses it to promote his beliefs.
I think this is the rhetorical Achilles heel for libertarians – they are extremely reluctant to frankly address the impact of their ideology in the real world. They would rather, as JTFaraday does above, engage in endless and futile word games or turn the focus back to complicit government officals.
While the corruption of those officials is terrible and should be harshly condemned, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It doesn’t just randomly occur to them to pursue radical libertarian and neoliberal economic policies; it is the result of vigorous efforts by the likes of Omidyar. The fact that he and his fellow believers find ready co-conspirators at the highest levels of governing bodies doesn’t exactly let them off the hook.
Dan, you’re going to be in over your head on the internet if you can’t read the words on a screen.
It’s not a word game. Your analysis is wrong.
You’re not even reading the Peruvian situation right. Ames and Levine state that land in Peru was radically disproportionately held by “a few families,” ie., a plutocratic government.
The DeSoto reform was an expansion of the plutocratic government, which Omidyar favored and helped pay for. It did “give something” to the poor, but it gave something to the poor looking for something in return, that something being indebting them to microfinance entrepreneurs like Omidyar, who again, helped pay for it–ie., “invested in it”– because he thought he would get more back.
Where’s the pro-people government here? Here we have an expansion of an already plutocratic government at the behest of Omidyar and neoliberal finance entrpreneurs like himself.
There is not an “anti-government” moment anywhere in sight.
Nada.
No, that’s not my point. As I said, I found Ames and Levine’s piece extremely useful and I share their disgust with everything they reported. I simply reject the conclusion that Omidyar wants to attack state legitimacy, one, because the so-called ‘free market’ ideology his friends and schemes represent is reliant on a strong state and, two, as a billionaire, he benefits more than most from state legitimacy. I do not see the conflict inherent in someone like DeSoto as being between corporate power and state power. It is a conflict over the ends to which state power is put.
My larger point in regard to the Greenwald partnership is that toxic inequality is always bad thing, and I am not inclined toward the popular good oligarch vs. bad oligarch nonsense that suggests it can ever be compatible with left politics. So I think the venture is objectionable regardless of Omidyar’s politics, particularly since it involved the leveraging of the Snowden leaks.
It used to be that when you offered dissenting views on liberal sites you were accused of being a Republican. Now you get accused of being a libertarian. Please entertain the possibility that there are people who find concentrated power and authority worthy of scrutiny and criticism in both the private and public sector, and who reject the idea that corporate power and state power are ever truly separate.
We might be talking about the same thing in different ways. What you call a strong state I call a compliant or forbearing one. Rentiers want officials to fix the law to their desires, then step away. The state might provide the enforcement muscle down the line when everything goes to hell, but in the intervening period – when the damage is being done – the state is absent.
I think the attack on the legitimacy of the state is clearest in the privatized education efforts. The subtext of it is: Public education cannot be effectively done (or as effectively done as for-profit private education can), so the state is not a legitimate provider of that good.
While the other efforts aren’t that direct, the effect is largely the same: Have the government set up land rights in a way that (surprise!) ends up enriching the greedheads at the expense of the people it was ostensibly set up to help, and how will people view the government in the wake of that fiasco? Will they trust it to act in the public’s interest?
Omidyar may need a “strong” state in the “monopoly on the legitimate use of violence” sense, but the inevitable result of wealth extraction schemes is to substantially weaken the state in the “operating with the consent of the governed” sense. It’s tremendously de-legitimazing in the latter sense.
You seem to see these dynamics as playing out in terms of raw power and coercion. In that formulation, libertarians need a strong state. I think, thaough, that the only way for states to be stable over the long haul is with the assent of citizens. Neoliberal economics requires a weak (in that sense) government, and I believe Omidyar et. al. are very much attacking that kind of legitimacy.
I can’t speak to the good oligarch vs. bad oligarch stuff; I didn’t write about it and have no interest in it. But I find it interesting that you say you object to the new venture “regardless of Omidyar’s politics” – which again sidesteps the actual impact of his actions. I think those effects are hugely important, and I’m not willing to dismiss them or omit them in critiques of him.
Good God. How many times do you need to mischaracterize a person pursuant to extolling the peerlessness of your own concern? We get it. You understand what matters. The rest of us don’t. Your understanding of state power? Breathtaking!!!
We are in awe. Never stop commenting.
There is an argument to be made that spacing out the NSA stories keeps the issue in front of the public for a greater length of time. It allows the authors to whom Snowden entrusted this material greater control of the narrative. And it allows for public pressure to build.
Greenwald severing his ties to the Guardian and starting this new venture has derailed this process. He was the go to guy on the NSA mass spying programs. Stories have appeared in other outlets like the Washington Post, but we now no longer know where or when we will hear from Greenwald again. And with all the failures of Obamacare, the NSA story and the pressures it was creating are dissipating. Obama may not be real happy about his Obamacare f*ckups although said f*ckups were designed into it, but the White House could be thinking that the worst of the NSA disclosures have been made and that the story is on the wane.
Snowden appears to have been fairly careful in what he copied. If no further major revelations are in the offing, then the argument for keeping this information out of the public domain goes away. Aside from a few minor redactions, which if nothing else, would show the good faith of Greenwald et al not to put specific people at risk, the entire set of Snowden files should be released.
In this regard, I can not help but wonder if Eric Holder’s recent statement about Greenwald having done nothing prosecutable for the moment might not be a shot across the bow to make sure the Snowden files are never released as a whole.
At the time when Snowden emerged I thought, OK, now we will find out the truth. Having the information “managed” so as to “keep the issue in front of the public” is probably necessary pragmatically but really it just puts another barrier, another filter between me or you and the truth because now we have to start wondering who is managing who, and to what end? In other words, the court of public opinion is being told what someone wants to tell it and that’s little different from having to pull things out of the wind. Mr. Holder didn’t have to say what he did re Greenwald. It doesn’t make me feel better.
The specific lies we learned of were not a shock, only a detail. Confirmation of the program’s authors police state mentality is non-information for anyone following the progression from the ’68 Democrat convention in Chicago, Kent State, through the WTO protests in Seattle, to the crowd control tactics of OWS and ubiquitous SWAT teams to deal with run of the mill domestic disputes and the like.
I’d love to know what Snowden thinks now. Truly.
How many PR flacks, “journalists” and concern trolls does it take to make a group of bankers “ebay founders”?
They probably look down with pity on those paragons of banking like Jamie and Lloyd.
“Look at that, those suckers just got called in front of congress. They still haven’t figured out image management in the new media world. The press still won’t call us bankers!”
I can understand skeptcism. That I agree with.
I don’t understand wholesale making things up.
Unfortunately, your comment section and some of the people you are citing are doing that.
You can cricize the guy financing the project for his prior corruption. That’s fair game.
What’s not? Guilt by association.
This is one of the reasons the left fails.
Lacking the ability to discern what’s a reasonable criticism and what is not.
Skepticism is a hard craft to learn. It requires checking oneself as much as others. Unfortunately as with all things, people form groups that aren’t about skepticism, but about who is on the in and the out group.
This is to say- keep up the skepcism, be careful not to confuse that with belief driven analysis.
Your comment reads as if you didn’t see the underlying Ames/Levine piece, which is pretty devastating. Omidyar has consistently funded projects which are “let’s inject private business thinking and markets into places they formerly did not go” particularly in the development arena. The results have not been pretty.
So his charitable giving track record strongly suggests that his is a libertarian, or perhaps more accurately, a classic Davos Man. Thus I don’t think the questions raised are unreasonable. They are probably least problematic for Greenwald, since his focus on civill liberties won’t impinge much on Omidyar’s demonstrated strong pro-markets orientation in matters economic.
Thus there is every reason to wonder what this venture is about. And I have to say, I’d never never join a venture without knowing who the boss is (unless I had veto rights over potential hires). And the boss is NOT Omidyar, he’s not going to manage. It’s whoever he hires as executive editor and publisher.
You probably don’t realize how desperate the world of professional journalism has become. It’s like musical chairs where half the chairs were suddenly removed. That is also likely to make members of the journalistic community less skeptical than they should be (a new operation helps everyone, not just the ones who get to join).
If the object is to make money and that that involves selling ads, then whatever is written and published will have to be check stand paper quality.
Most of what is written and sold fits that mold.
That the Snowden Revelations ™ have largely ceased while @Pierre & Co. line up their ducks and ducats is predictable.
The more important matter is by what right GG & Co. “own” the NSA docs. Legally, they’re stolen; morally, they belong to the world. To unilaterally declare them to be the property of _any_ commercial entity is breathtaking, but nowhere near as breathtaking as the total lack of outrage on the score. They were not Snowden’s property to “give,” and they’re not GG’s property to use as startup capital and billionaire bait. This is absolutely fucking outrageous. Yes, others have some docs, but according to GG, only he and Poitras have the whole shebang.
Seems to me Ellsberg missed a major business opportunity by not selling the Pentagon Papers to Henry Luce, eh?
Wanna clear the air, “NewCo”? Give a complete set to Wikileaks. They have lawyers who can vet as well as yours. And need I point out that if not for Wikileaks & Sara Harrison Mister S would be sitting in the slammer right now?
But that won’t happen, and from now on we’ll be seeing only what GG & Co. deem proper. Trust all you want, but as of now, you’ll have to take their word for what’s in that black box.
.
“they’re not GG’s property to use as startup capital and billionaire bait. This is absolutely fucking outrageous.”
I agree with this point. Greenwald/ Poitras should have to answer this charge.
No doubt we’ll hear some version of the usual famous last words and oft deployed free pass– “I was just doing my ‘job’.”
Here is Jay Rosen already informing his readers that this just what he’ll be doing:
“From here on, I am a player in NewCo. I’m not just giving advice to a company that pre-dated my involvement. I am involved in the effort to create something. I am being paid $ for my participation. Unlike an “advisory” position there is no real separation between me and the people who are building NewCo from scratch. Therefore I have to publicly abandon any position as an observer or independent analyst of Pierre Omidyar’s new venture in news. Out of the press box and onto the field.
And so when I speak about it you are entitled to apply whatever discount rate you find appropriate. About the intentions of Pierre Omidyar, the journalism of Glenn Greenwald and the eventual product of NewCo I am no longer an independent analyst rendering judgment. Criticism will have to come from others.”
http://pressthink.org/2013/11/newco/
Careerism at its finest. We need a new religion.
As one who knew Jay when he was but a humble TA at NYU and has followed his (inexplicable) ascent since, I can only say that this is not a great loss.
I agree with this. Greenwald should have to answer this charge.
No doubt we’ll hear some version of the usual excuse and universal free pass “I was just doing my ‘job.'” Because it’s Greenwald, it will no doubt be highly elaborated, which would be interesting (and maybe even entertaining) in itself.
Here is Jay Rosen already begging off with the same excuse:
“From here on, I am a player in NewCo. I’m not just giving advice to a company that pre-dated my involvement. I am involved in the effort to create something. I am being paid $ for my participation. Unlike an “advisory” position there is no real separation between me and the people who are building NewCo from scratch. Therefore I have to publicly abandon any position as an observer or independent analyst of Pierre Omidyar’s new venture in news. Out of the press box and onto the field.
And so when I speak about it you are entitled to apply whatever discount rate you find appropriate. About the intentions of Pierre Omidyar, the journalism of Glenn Greenwald and the eventual product of NewCo I am no longer an independent analyst rendering judgment. Criticism will have to come from others. And I am sure it will.”
http://pressthink.org/2013/11/newco/
Careerism at its finest. We need a new religion.
I agree with those who feel Yves really has nothing to worry about here.
Everyone knows government has lost the trust of a large part of the population but none of the radical thinkers have been able to offer a substitute system of popular management. Without the vision there will be no revolution, the Fed’s issue of USD will continue as currency and political lobbying will still be great little earner for all concerned.
The Pom comedian Russell Brand had a proposal to elevate spirituality as an ethical / moral counter-balance to the Wall Street Benthamite’s “if its profitable, do it” but he did not develop it and no-one else has either.
Until something like that happens, we will not see any change. Indeed, if the present media wishfullness for recovery turns into an actual recovery, we’ll be off on another binge and the chance for change will not come til the next bust.
why do I feel the same way as when you’re a small kid and walk in on your parents having sex for the first time?
this whole thread has revealed some deeply ugly stuff. it seems like a slapping match backstage of a stripping joint over who took the last Benson & Hedges.
Footnote 2 refers to the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh as though he/she is named Pradesh. The paragraph with the footnote also misspells Andhra.