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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.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday January 26 2018, @02:15AM (1 child)
You raise an interesting issue. We're living in a time now when "argument from authority" has suffered a multi-prong assault.
One prong is that thanks to the Internet and the greater access to information it has brought, we have all seen more clearly than ever before how devoid of actual authority so many of our "authorities" are, ie. the Great and Powerful are so often not very great and really quite stupid, and so each of us asks himself, "If we live in a meritocracy, then why is it that moron is rich and powerful when I am not?"
Another prong is that knowledge has become so specialized that it's becoming harder for us to feel able to question the conclusions of specialties not our own. A person might know a great deal about circuit design, but shy from questioning the latest astonishing report from the field of chemistry.
So we're collectively finding it harder to know who to believe, and the process we're witnessing where authorities are attacking each others' authority has compounded that.
Then there's trying to fall back on logic, to carefully assess if what the person tells us makes sense. That can lead to error, too, because a clever deceiver will construct a lie that sounds plausible enough. We can probe, to see if the construct bears scrutiny, but well the day gets away from us and we get interrupted by our boss, our spouse, our kids, our chatty neighbor and we can't follow up as thoroughly as we might in a slower age.
This is the discursive breakdown we have read about so many times in history books. Old orthodoxies crumble away, new forces try to craft language that empowers them, that helps them wrest the discourse away from the status quo. They reach for new symbols, new stories to tell their truth.
This is what it feels like on the ground in the middle of a revolution. Buckle up and pay close attention, because we all have front row seats to History in the Making now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @04:42PM
Every generation says and thinks this. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't. And it is always easy to look back and assign importance to things, much like a horoscope. Regardless, every generation looks to some unknown boogeyman around the corner whether it exists or not. "It is the best of times. It is the worst of times."