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FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asserts Pierre Omidyar decided to create The Intercept to not only take ownership of the Snowden leaks but also to continue his blockade against WikiLeaks and create a "honey trap" for whistleblowers.
WikiLeaks, the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now, the fight to silence Wikileaks is not only being waged by powerful government figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers.
As this three-part series seeks to show, these outlets and organizations are being stealthily guided by the hands of special interests, not the public interest they claim to serve. Part I focuses on the Freedom of the Press Foundation, The Intercept, and the oligarch who has strongly influenced both organizations in his long-standing fight to silence WikiLeaks.
[...] WikiLeaks, in recent tweets, has suggested that Omidyar's influence was responsible not only for the [Freedom of the Press Foundation's (FPF) decision to terminate processing of WikiLeaks' donations] but also for the unusual attacks that some FPF members have launched against WikiLeaks, particularly Assange, in recent months. The most outspoken of these members has been FPF director Micah Lee, who is employed by the Omidyar-owned publication, The Intercept.
In February of last year, Lee called Assange a "rapist, liar & ally to fascists" in a tweet — despite the fact that Assange was never charged with rape, his alleged accusers have also claimed that Assange had not sexually assaulted them, and there is abundant evidence suggesting that the rape investigation was a means of ensnaring Assange to ensure his extradition to the United States. Based on Lee's other tweets, the "ally to fascists" charge ostensibly refers to Lee's belief that Wikileaks' publications of emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta was done explicitly, with Assange's blessing, to aid the Trump campaign.
Related: Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 25 2018, @11:12PM (5 children)
(Read the title of my post in the voice of Gomer Pyle, USMC.)
Organizations acting in the public interest? They are few, and far between. Even if they started out with that purpose, they often change into something else. While Mozilla doesn't merit an "evil" tag, they have lost sight of their original mission, and they often act against the wishes of their customers today.
Always, follow the money. Money leaves convoluted trails sometimes, but if you can follow the money, you can usually eliminate that "public interest" nonsense. NPR Radio? Take a good look at it - it is partisan (more so today than in past decades) and it serves US foreign interests more than anything else. Public radio, in the public interest? Nonsense - NPR is a propaganda tool, nothing more, and nothing less.
Think tanks are fun. They usually have great sounding names, that indicate a philanthropic interest and goals. Dig into them, and they are almost always partisan. Not only are they partisan, but they all conform to national policy. They wouldn't get the prestigious "think tank" title if they weren't thinking with government approval.
Newspapers and public interest? Maybe the news outlets, one upon a time, considered "public interest" to be important. Today? Not so much. It's money, money, money. Some of them have gone the paywall route, to prevent the public's interest from being satisfied. So, maybe that isn't really evil, but believing that any news organization is in it for the public good is naive, at best.
As a rule of thumb, the grander the name, the less service to the public interest you can expect. A Koch, or a Soros is able to establish any number of organizations, in any number of cities, states, or countries. They toss a little chump change at a group of activists, and suggest that some mission might be appreciated if it were successful - and overnight, BANG! One more organization to "Explore the promise of a happier tomorrow through technology and spirituality", or some other inane doublespeak nonsense.
What is the purpose of an organization, anyway? Well, look at the Southern Poverty Law Center (isn't that a grand name?). An opinionated, partisan guy struggled for years, to establish himself as some kind of "authority" on racism, prejudice, poverty, and more. Today - he's considered an authority. How many times have we, collectively, bitched about argumentum ad verecundiam? Yet, we turn to organizations like the SPLC to decide for us who/what is good, and who/what is evil.
In summary - who here is surprised that a "Freedom of the Press Foundation" might be more interested in censorship, than in the freedom of the press?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @11:54PM (1 child)
C'mon, Runaway! You're just jealous because no one considers you, an opinionated, partisan guy, an authority on anything!! So are just being pathetic now. Please stop.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 26 2018, @10:53PM
Oh - which party am I a partisan of? Derp-a-derp, Bubba!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @01:09AM
I long asked myself about the reasons a figure like Pierre Omidyar would create a news org like The Intercept. I've been reading The Intercept semi-regularly during its early phase, but since a while back, veiled bias seems to be creeping in and the quality of articles seems to be declining. Of the original plan to have The Intercept be just one founding pillar of a larger journalistic entity "First Look Media", there is not much left now.
The way the Reality Winner case evolved made me consider the possibility of the whole org having been set up as a honey trap. Will be interesting to see what The Intercept has in response to this, if anything at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @09:57AM (1 child)
They have *NEVER* been in the public interest.
If they were it would not have taken them two years to put out a browser in the first place, which solidified M$'s hold of the market for years to come (Didn't IE6 not come out until after Mozilla was founded? And wasn't it Mozilla's abandonment of their original C based codebase that lead to IE having no competitor for 2 years, while netscape was no longer updated?)
Mozilla fucked up big with the gecko rewrite. The javascript UI was both a memory and cpu waste until the middle of the p4/athlon xp era. In fact if it wasn't for Phoenix (the browser that eventually morphed into Firebird, then Firefox, then XUL based Firefox) Mozilla as a company likely would have died. Google's cash infusion around that time staved it off, but the corporate culture of Mozilla has been toxic since the beginning. If you have any doubt, go read up on the ex-Netscape guy who bought DNA Lounge in SF. He got out at about the right time and reading the events surrounding that should help clarify just how long netscape/mozilla has been sick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @10:00AM
Had to resubmit and forgot to correct the title.