[lbo-talk] The Pierre Omidyar Trojan horse

[Eleutherios]

Greenwald mostly dodges the susbstance of the argument, which is
admittedly better elucidated in the first NSWFCorp article. Greenwald's
work has made waves and I've defended him in the past against those
arguing he's a partisan or even libertarian/neoliberal hack/tool,
partially because of the contrast to Democrat/liberal flacks that
altered their positions when Democrats led the spying and partially
because Greenwald apparently shifted left from earlier stronger
libertarian ideology. The absence of criticism of corporate actors
speaks loudly, however, as does his typical vituperative offensive
defense (a writing style which I could accept if more responsive than
evasive).

For a longer history and more analysis, this blog
http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/ has been covering these angles for
months. There is a back story to this, in that Ames and Greenwald are in
a preexisting feud, but the gist of Ames/Levine's argument remains
intact and there further issues as yet unexplored by them but better
covered in this blog.

Wojtek was right to be suspicious but government spying is indeed
pernicious and it also discredits government and the public sphere so
the NSA revelations are important and the better response is measured
criticism rather than outright dismissal. I could see Carol considering
this a distracting internecine squabble, but I do think it's important
to understand "NewCo" and the journalists involved considering their
influence, and that the dynamics of this are revealing. The Rancid
Honeytrap blog takes a more systemic, less singular, and less "personal"
view at this.

On 01-Dec-13 15:11, Steve Horn wrote:
> Here's Greenwald's response:
> 
> http://utdocuments.blogspot.com/2013/12/questionsresponses-for-journalists.html?m=1
> 
> On Sunday, December 1, 2013, Eleutherios wrote:
> 
>> Mark Ames in a followup for PandoDaily, focusing on the issues of
>> singular control of the leaked documents by Greenwald and Poitras,
>> monetization of these by Greenwald including peddling book and movie
>> rights and holding some of the juiciest revelations for these, and the
>> apparent sale of the cache to a self-interested ideological billionaire
>> (whose company PayPal is participating in the coercive
>> diminution of Wikileaks). http://pando.com/2013/11/27/keeping-secrets/
>>
>> On 24-Nov-13 19:45, Eleutherios wrote:
>>> Mark Ames and Yolanda Levine for NSFWCorp in a devastating take down of
>>> Pierre Omidyar's odious neoliberalism, countering the unquestioned
>>> praise heaped on him as the exception of a civic-minded billionaire
>>> because of his new investigative journalism outlet with
>>> Greenwald/Poitras, Scahill, etc as cover:
>>> https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/extraordinary-pierre-omidyar/