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derdy
12-12-2013, 10:02 AM
Find this interesting. Wonder if Greenwald will comment on this:


The 50,000-pages of documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden contain extensive documentation of PayPal Corporation’s partnership and cooperation with the National Security Agency (NSA), according to three NSA veterans. To date, no information has been released as to the extent of the working relationship and cooperation between the two entities- NSA and PayPal Corporation. What’s more, the billionaire owner of PayPal Corporation has entered into a $250 Million business partnership with two journalists-Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, a journalist duo who possess the entire cache of evidence provided by Edward Snowden. Despite earlier pledges by the journalists in question, only one percent (1%) of Snowden’s documents has been released. - See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/11/bfp-breaking-news-omidyars-paypal-corporation-said-to-be-implicated-in-withheld-nsa-documents/#sthash.lYvtrkrg.dpuf

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/11/bfp-breaking-news-omidyars-paypal-corporation-said-to-be-implicated-in-withheld-nsa-documents/

angelatc
12-12-2013, 10:10 AM
Like I said in the other thread, the guy is a liar through and through. Greenwald is throwing in with a guy who will throw him under a bus in a New York second.

I missed this the other day. A journalist who was involved with Wikileaks and also traveled with Snowden reminding us all that PayPal was really quick to shut down the payments to Wikileaks:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/06/wikileaks-sarah-harrison-omidyar-greenwald-ebay-paypal

Lucille
12-12-2013, 10:59 AM
Silber called out (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/search?q=Omidyar) this deal months ago.


Oh, you don't think The Great Transformation has actually changed people's thinking that much. Fat lot you know. Read this sentence from the New York Times just two days ago:


[Greenwald] is on a double mission: to push back in the name of freedom against the post-9/11 “surveillance state” with its dragnet data trawling, and to reinvigorate journalism through “an aggressive and adversarial position to political and corporate power,” an undertaking he will pursue through a new online publication backed with $250 million from the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar ...

Isn't that incredibly cute? I think it's adorable. Corporate power will make possible journalism that will take an "adversarial position" -- to corporate power. Corporate power will tell us all when and how we can talk back to it. Corporate power will decide just how "aggressive and adversarial" journalism can be.


Shouldn't we wonder if Omidyar has connections to companies that are directly implicated in the Snowden revelations -- for example, Booz Allen? Shouldn't we inquire as to whether such connections may affect future stories about surveillance? Isn't it possible, perhaps even likely, that major conflicts of interest will arise? That companies to which Omidyar is connected in complex, non-obvious ways might not wish certain of their activities to be revealed? I would suggest these represent only the beginning of the questions that should occur to us.


Whatever else one might say, the Snowden leak is clearly not a matter of any urgency -- at least it isn't to GG & Co. Also: how does one simultaneously argue that a series of stories is MIND-SHATTERINGLY SIGNIFICANT AND WORLD-CHANGING -- and justify holding onto major parts of it for the better part of a year?

This whole thing is incredibly fucked. You could argue pretty convincingly at this point that it was the business plan that came first -- and they decided they needed a good "hook." The Snowden leak was the hook, but the business plan was the real deal.

I don't think it actually happened that way (probably) -- but the point is, it doesn't matter. Given how it's playing out, and given the impact the Snowden leak will have -- and more importantly, will NOT have -- it might as well have happened that way.

What's the line just before someone is murdered? "It's nothing personal. It's just business."

Just business. You don't get to be a multibillionaire and one of the richest people on the planet by forgetting about business. Ever. You also don't get to be Omidyar by seriously threatening the powers that be. C'mon: Omidyar IS one of the powers that be (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2013/10/fucked-baby.html).

angelatc
12-12-2013, 11:13 AM
You also don't get to be Omidyar by seriously threatening the powers that be. C'mon: Omidyar IS one of the powers that be (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2013/10/fucked-baby.html).

Yeah, when the government made it clear they wouldn't allow PayPal to function as the founder envisioned, Peter Theil got out. Omidyar got in.

Lucille
12-12-2013, 04:20 PM
A Press as Deadly as the State
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-press-as-deadly-as-state.html


I am now prepared to state without reservation that the ongoing NSA/surveillance story ranks among the more momentous and nauseating charades perpetrated on a frighteningly gullible public. Any remaining doubt I had on this question -- and, in truth, no substantial doubt remained in my own mind -- has been obliterated by this story concerning the remarks of Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, to the home affairs committee of Parliament.

All of it is shocking, but this is the worst:


Rusbridger said the leak amounted to about 58,000 files, and the newspaper had published “about 1 percent” of the total.

“I would not expect us to be publishing a huge amount more,” he said.

In the short time I've reflected on this latest article, I realized that the 1% figure actually tracks what we already knew about the extent of the Snowden documents compared with the number of pages from those documents which have been published. But to see it stated so baldly -- especially when coupled with Rusbridger's additional comment, "I would not expect us to be publishing a huge amount more" -- truly does take my breath away. If we add in the pages that have been published in outlets other than the Guardian, under the ever-watchful, "responsible" eyes of the information controllers (primarily Greenwald and Poitras), what total figure would we come up with? Perhaps 2% of the Snowden documents have been offered to the public?

In this latest story, Rusbridger repeats all the usual "justifications" for the refusal to disclose more, including this:


Rusbridger denied placing intelligence agents at risk, saying the Guardian had “made very selective judgments” about what to publish and hadn’t revealed any names.

"Very selective judgments" -- yeah, no shit. And it's a decidedly odd "adversarial" press that adopts the State's rationales with such enthusiasm (Greenwald completely adopts them, too). Why such concern with "placing intelligence agents at risk"? I suppose you wouldn't want to endanger the next coup, or throw a monkey wrench into plans for the next invasion. We're talking about "intelligence agents" who work at the direction and on behalf of a criminal, murdering, brutalizing Death State. One might argue that we don't need to protect such agents: to the contrary, we need to protect ourselves -- and other innocent people around the world -- from them.
[...]
It is certainly true that the 1% or 2% of the Snowden documents that our betters have decided it is "responsible" to share with us have provided additional details of various governments' surveillance activities. While the details may be new (and sometimes valuable), we haven't learned anything in general terms that many of us hadn't already figured out. And the severely restricted focus on the NSA represents a very dangerous shifting of focus to one agency, when the threat is far more widespread (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2013/09/when-state-floods-zone-reform-is-dead.html).

As for the Guardian doing the State's bidding (and Greenwald/Poitras/Omidyar as well, since they are all using the same rule book, which is the one devised by the State), additional details are mentioned in this Guardian piece:


During an hour-long session in front of the home affairs select committee, Rusbridger also:

• Said the Guardian had consulted government officials and intelligence agencies – including the FBI, GCHQ, the White House and the Cabinet Office – on more than 100 occasions before the publication of stories.

• Said the D-Notice committee, which flags the potential damage a story might cause to national security, had said that nothing published by the Guardian had put British lives at risk.

Consider the enormous value of the hugely restricted publication of the Snowden documents to the various States involved. Rusbridger, Greenwald, et al. all trumpet the great triumph represented by the "debate" publication has engendered -- the clamor of public voices demands "reform," so committees will be formed, investigations will be undertaken, and when the dust has settled, life for the States involved will go on almost exactly as before (remember: if the NSA were disbanded today, identical surveillance would continue via other agencies and institutions of power) -- and the States will be able to claim that the public knows the "truth," and their activities now have the full blessing of informed public consent.

This is the dream script written by the States themselves -- and it's playing out in blood-drenched, high definition video before the willingly unseeing eyes of the world.
[...]
And that is precisely what all these "adversarial" journalists are doing: they have internalized the State's demands almost completely (as I've detailed from the beginning of this saga, the journalists' arguments against disclosure track the State's justifications at every point of significance), and they continue to willingly submit their decisions to the State for its review before publication. The governments involved have made clear that they are not seriously concerned about any of the disclosures thus far -- and all the grandstanding about dangers to "national security" and the like, together with the efforts at intimidation, are designed primarily to discourage anyone who has even a stray thought about more far-reaching disclosure.

So I return to the 1% or 2% of the Snowden documents that have been made public. What would be the effect of publication of 20% of the Snowden documents -- or 50%? Now that might likely cause serious disruption of the States' operations, even at the 20% disclosure rate -- and it is painfully obvious that none of the journalists involved have any intention of allowing publication on that scale. So whose side are the "dissenting" journalists actually on? It's not the side of "the public," despite all the blather about publication of what is in "the public interest." No: they're finally on the State's side. But the charade allows the interested parties to pretend that a meaningful "debate" is occurring, and that "reforms" are in the offing that will make a serious difference. And everyone can sigh with relief that we finally know the "truth."

On the basis of 1% or 2% of the total number of documents? We don't know anything close to the truth and, with this cast of characters, we won't in the foreseeable future...

More at the link and ::sigh::

I guess Edward should have gone to wikileaks.

devil21
12-12-2013, 05:02 PM
Sounds like some classic controlled opposition going on. As much as Ive liked seeing some of the NSA's laundry out in the open, I've always felt the Snowden story was fishy. They've only released 1% of the documents! That's controlled release if there ever was.

Im also reminded that Peter Thiel, proclaimed libertarian but Bilderberg attendee, was a Paypal founder. He's also a founder of Palantir, which makes some of NSA's data-mining software (PRISM), as well as those police license plate recorder cameras and software and other police state garbage.

Controlled opposition is alive and well. ALWAYS remember that, always question motives, and always do your homework.

Lucille
05-17-2014, 12:45 PM
bump

coastie
05-17-2014, 01:00 PM
I've always been bothered by GG's "timeline" of what and when he'll release. It makes absolutely zero sense. If he was really interested in change, then he would've released the most important stuff IMMEDIATELY. Dragging this out is numbing the public to it, nobody gives a shit. Ball.Dropped. Or are we watching the wrong game?

Even he cannot articulate the reasoning good enough for me, and he is one articulate mofo...

devil21
05-17-2014, 05:56 PM
Greenwald is no idiot. He doesn't want the Michael Hastings treatment. Plus he's got a book coming out shortly.

kcchiefs6465
05-17-2014, 06:04 PM
I've always been bothered by GG's "timeline" of what and when he'll release. It makes absolutely zero sense. If he was really interested in change, then he would've released the most important stuff IMMEDIATELY. Dragging this out is numbing the public to it, nobody gives a shit. Ball.Dropped. Or are we watching the wrong game?

Even he cannot articulate the reasoning good enough for me, and he is one articulate mofo...
It takes a while to report on a story.

You could argue that he should just dump all of the files, letting anyone sift through them to get the information out there faster but that is not what Snowden wanted.

CPUd
05-17-2014, 06:12 PM
I've always been bothered by GG's "timeline" of what and when he'll release. It makes absolutely zero sense. If he was really interested in change, then he would've released the most important stuff IMMEDIATELY. Dragging this out is numbing the public to it, nobody gives a shit. Ball.Dropped. Or are we watching the wrong game?

Even he cannot articulate the reasoning good enough for me, and he is one articulate mofo...

He said in an interview that some of that stuff takes a lot longer to fact check than others. And I think the statements that are made by govt officials have some influence on what and when he releases stories. When it first started, a story would get published that directly contradicted a comment made by a govt official about a previous story.

amy31416
05-17-2014, 08:13 PM
:/

NewRightLibertarian
05-17-2014, 08:24 PM
I've always been bothered by GG's "timeline" of what and when he'll release. It makes absolutely zero sense. If he was really interested in change, then he would've released the most important stuff IMMEDIATELY. Dragging this out is numbing the public to it, nobody gives a shit. Ball.Dropped. Or are we watching the wrong game?

Even he cannot articulate the reasoning good enough for me, and he is one articulate mofo...

I think they're dragging it out to keep the story around and keep the NSA's PR nightmare going. However, I'm not too sure about GG getting in bed with this PayPal guy

RonPaulGeorge&Ringo
05-17-2014, 10:41 PM
Well, when you're fucking with the NSA, you need a billionaire backing you up. Greenwald picked his poison here.

FindLiberty
05-18-2014, 09:25 AM
IMO, this whole thing smells spooky.