Just a quick, throwaway pass. Honestly, dedicating too much analysis to this bullshit after a year is perilously close to the disease itself. I invite my readers to contribute to this list in a similar vein.
1. There certainly are a lot of credulous, infantilized dipshits eager for cheesy, dull spectacles of resistance mediated entirely by elites.
2. There is no limit to how many ways ‘The NSA Collects Phone and Internet Data in Bulk” can be made to seem new and important by careerist brownnosers on the internet.
3. Any vain journalist can be bribed with just the slim possibility of a dream job.
4. A whistleblower and his anointed journalists can smear Chelsea Manning repeatedly and no one will give a shit, not even Wikileaks.
5. Left journalists would tweet a Vine of themselves eating poo if it would yield a job with a neoliberal fanatic implicated in spreading neofascism.
6. Ignorant, Infantilized, Libertarian-Liberal Mutant Freak is the new Left.
7. Libertarians love Greenwald and Snowden the hardest.
8. Glenn Greenwald is entirely bereft of anything a healthy person would consider a quality, apart from a fondness for stray dogs.
9. Striking at the heart of empire has certainly changed since the days when Gary Webb didn’t get a Pulitzer or Polk or a movie deal or a hagiography in the New York Times or lengthy interviews on prime time television, but was instead betrayed, smeared, ostracized and finally killed by two bullets in his brain.
10. Engaging with The Spectacle and Spectacle enthusiasts is a road to certain ruin.
UPDATE
A lefty journalist eats his poo. Good old Charlie Davis, always there with the five-year-old Mark Ames article when a toxic billionaire needs a hand. I guess noting the timing here makes me misogynist. But then Charlie is clearly a neofascist. So we’re even. Funny how it never occurs to Charlie to be the Omidyar critic he wants to see in the world. #problematic
https://twitter.com/charliearchy/status/475138275519115264
Related
Good Whistleblower/Bad Whistleblower
The Rancid Honeytrap 
Lolita? What’s wrong with this machine? Where is my beer?!
Also, this from Barrett Brown, kind of going in the same direction:
http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2014/06/04/the-barrett-brown-review-of-arts-and-letters-and-jail-the-spy-who-misspelled-me/
10. Cram enough heat vampires into the Overton Window at once and that puppy starts framing discourse by its damn self, or at least with minimal prompting to the extent that it matters. (Maybe not a new lesson for some, but this past year brought that to the forefront for me via the Rancid Sector. Probably some overlap with lessons 1-3.)
11. “Adversarial” can evidently be used synonymously with both “lame”, and “shameless”.
The late F. J. Varela (Principles of Biological Autonomy) said this moment is described by our relationship to the word, “machine.” His contribution was a derivation on the word intelligence, as opposed to a stick, or a rock. “Intelligence” becomes autopoiesis and animals as well as machines can have ‘it.’ The “stick” or “rock,” then, becomes allopoiesis. Closure is the foremost premise, and makes context into an issue of sensitivity requiring maturity. As for the machinery, where IS Indira Singh? When a smart second grade student could program the intelligent software using parallel processing, which actually learns to perform better in its chosen niche, to “follow the money” around the entire globe, where do you think the skimming off of this Lolita-esque property occurs? It is not the commonwealth, except that the commonwealth knows nothing of a difference that makes a difference, like this is because of parallel processing, not serial. The serial [crimes] are, merely, what has been paired with the membrane sensitive software, only slightly negatively affecting its performance. Not much more difficult, too, the niche dependent program stops subways from crashing while increasing performance over time, or can indicate new location to drill oil wells in a given field.
10. Backward is forward?
As the crowd gathered, hours before the spectacular, multicolored fireworks display was due to begin…. suddenly an immense choir sounded out, composed of vibrant Glennbot voices…
At this sound, everyone turned toward the square, in front of which they saw the Glennbot Choir, squatting near the iPhones they’d laid on the ground, as they all joined in to sing “Jekkouka”, a kind of proud epic written by Lord Snowden, who had taken as subject the detailed narrative of his own exploits.
The melody, with its bizarre rhythm and tone, was based on a single, repetitive theme “The NSA Collects Phone and Internet Data in Bulk” repeated ad infinitum with new words added each time.
The Glennbot singers chanted each couplet, clapping their hands in unison as if they were a single man and this glorious Snowden epic, whose execution had a certain opulence, produced a rather grandiose impression.
Nonetheless, the constant repetition of the single, eternally unvaried phrase… NSA collects phone and Internet Data in Bulk…. NSA collects phone and Internet Data in Bulk…slowly engendered an intense monotony, accentuated by the inevitable opportunities for prolongation offered by “Jekkouka”, a faithful and exhaustive record of the life of Lord Snowden, whose notable deeds were many.
Suddenly, as the audience despaired of ever reaching the final verse, the Glennbot choir stopped short as the spectacular display began and the sky was lit up by more 40,000 multicolored fireworks!
At this moment Greenbacks himself chimed in……standing at left before the front row of the Glennbot chorus, GG completed the “Jekkouka” epic by phrasing solo, without changing a note of the musical motif, a supplemental canto devoted to…..long drumroll here please……the NSA Collects Phone and Internet Data in Bulk….
Put stars by it…
I love “Jekkouka.” I don’t even know why.
11. Hanging out in Russia watching The Wire apparently counts as nonviolent resistance.
11. In the light of all of the “revelations” of nefarious NSA omnipotence/wrong-doing, no matter what you do, kids, DO NOT GET OFF YOUR DEVICES OR DECREASE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCES!!
Funny how in the face of such blatant and nefarious evil-doing on the part of US intelligence agencies/corporations none of the “heroes” of said Spectacle have seriously suggested that people should change their glimmerpad lifestyles, huh? Funny that.
What, and risk missing the latest Glenntweets or Snowden Hero-Sermons?
Don’t worry, folks, I’m sure some super-kewel tech-guru will find a way to preserve our techno-lifestyles!
You mean, yet ANOTHER Spectacular hero? w00t! NSA PWND!!!
11.b The highlighting that the right – excuse me – the essential human NEED for humanity to be “wired”/online is really MORE important that all this stupid shit-talk about privacy, government overreach/illegalities, etc etc.
We’d seriously better all get together – read: wait around while online for another tech-hero – as a society to IMMEDIATELY address the people’s NEED to safely still spend mindless hours fucking around on Facebook and accessing ever more porn.
Oh yeah, and it’s like totally unconstitutional and all that jazz…
You have a worthy point, but I’d be a hypocrite if I agreed too hard.
But definitely true. Unlplugging is the obvious solution, but just not feasible for most people. Especially email.
” not feasible for most people”
Obviously, but there are so many valid and interesting points to talk about if you start on the subject of unplugging that I find the complete lack of any mention of it as an alternative a bit telling.
A couple quick points that have conspicuously not fully mentioned:
1) ummm, don’t like most real terrorist/criminal organizations already know/suspect much of the shit “revealed” in this GG/ES Spectacle? Having had to worry about old wire-tapping etc each new surveillance advancement for decades it would seem that they’ve been adapting quite well. How have they done it? Would their solutions – partial or complete – incorporate not being online? Discuss.
2) The majority of the denizens on this planet still exist in or remember a time when – don’t even say it!! – there was NO INTERNET – OMG!!! – so shouldn’t society maybe begin really addressing this relatively recent but seemingly inexorable dependence on techno-stuffs?
3) If you’re still reading Gleentweets etc, are you really that concerned as a person about the NSA and its omnipotence? Why or why not? Discuss.
4) If enough people actually got the eff offline, if would seem that the government/corporations – why the slash? – would pay more attention to issues such as privacy, security and the whole nine, right? The loss of BIG DATA?!!! Holy fuck!
These are just a few of the many topics a legitimate – i.e., not a “debate about our freedoms” proctored by the perpetrators and their assorted “heroes” – movement could address/incorporate and yet none of them have even been tangentially touched upon.
Fuckers do their best lying via omission and imagining what a genuine debate would sound like is sometimes a struggle but extremely useful. You make a lot of good points here.
Floyd’s term was “echo chamber,” wasn’t it?
I left this comment over at Chris Floyd’s and thought (hoped) it might be appropriate here. I’ll even put it in list form.
1. In the Kubricki theater we call the “media”, Glenn has the self-important role of gatekeeper to play for these newly awakened souls who thanks to Snowden are “shocked” and “outraged” at the cast net surveillance but not so upset they want to look too closely at what’s behind the curtain.
2. These truth seekers are content to channel their indignation vicariously through Greenwald and, by proxy, Snowden, and Greenwald is more than happy to oblige.
3. If Omidyar’s coattails deepen Greenwald’s access to the deep state, well, it’s a veritable journalistic coup (pun intended).
4. Any day now, Greenwald, the patron saint of whistleblowers, is going to write a scathing article on Chelsea Manning’s treatment in the bowels of the federal penitentiary system.
Fascinating idea there in three and four and very plausible. From the new Woodward to the new Hersh, creating fresh outrage, scandal, disempowerment made to order for the Deep State. There is more to this certainly than simply buying and silencing. With any luck it’ll all just flop. The idea of perennial Greenwald is just so horrible.
“Any day now,” Jeff Nguyen writes, “Greenwald, the patron saint of whistleblowers, is going to write a scathing article on Chelsea Manning’s treatment in the bowels of the federal penitentiary system.”
In suggesting that the patron saint of whistleblowers is so uninformed he fails to realize that Manning has never set foot in the federal penitentiary system, Mr. Nguyen’s tongue may be firmly in his cheek. However, on the off chance that he is serious, and for the benefit of others who may not appreciate the distinction, the U.S. penitentiary system is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), a subdivision of the Department of Justice. There are no active-duty armed forces members incarcerated in any such penitentiary.
Since August 22, 2013, Pvt. Manning has been confined to the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), the only maximum security prison within the Department of Defense, located on Fort Leavenworth, a U.S. Army post in Kansas. The USDB, run by the U.S. Army Corrections Command, is wholly separate from USP Leavenworth, a BOP-run medium-security federal prison also located at Ft. Leavenworth.
Thanks to a Kansas judge’s April 2014 approval of Manning’s legal name change, you may now address your mail to her as follows:
CHELSEA E. MANNING 89289
1300 NORTH WAREHOUSE ROAD
FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-2304
I was wondering about that myself, but didn’t look it up. I knew there had been talk of transferring in relation to Manning’s quest for sex-reassignment treatment. Thanks for the detailed clarification and for providing her address.
Good thing they put her in “the only maximum security prison within the Department of Defense.” She’s a dangerous one.
Thanks for the clarification. I knew she had been in military custody but assumed there was overlap with the federal penitentiary system. Either way, she is state property or is that incorrect also?
In May 2014, the Associated Press reported that Secretary of Defense Hagel had given the Army approval to work out a transfer with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in order to provide treatment for Manning’s gender disorder. AP said the soldier had requested hormone therapy and to live as a woman—options not available within military confinement facilities. While no decision has been made, Manning’s lawyer David Coombs promptly denounced this development. “The Pentagon’s strategic leak of this story to the media,” wrote Coombs, “is a transparent attempt to pressure Chelsea into dropping her request for needed treatment under the artificial guise of concern for her medical needs. It is common knowledge that the federal prison system cannot guarantee the safety and security of Chelsea in the way that the military prison system can.”
Pvt. Manning herself responded from prison, “I wish to clarify that my request for a treatment plan did not involve any request to be transferred. At the beginning of 2014, the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, KS and the Army Corrections Command were ready to approve and implement a treatment plan that at least conservatively met the standards set forth by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. I was content with this plan. Based on these facts I don’t understand why the Office of the Secretary of Defense would feel the need to punt this issue by transferring me.”
So, to answer Jeff Nguyen’s question: Yes, Manning would be “state property” either way. But clearly both Manning and her lawyer want no part of the federal penitentiary system, which cannot guarantee the safety and security afforded to her at USDB.
Thanks again for the added information and context. Is Manning in isolation in the military prison? Any word on her treatment by prison/military officials? I would think the federal system handles other high profile prisoners and knows how to keep them secure if they want to but might have to isolate Manning for her protection due to the political and gender issues involved. Again, thanks for the information.
Perhaps Soldier Who Leaked can recommend the best place to stay up-to-date on Manning. I think a lot of her advocates are still very active and her attorney releases a lot of updates as well. There are also Twitter accounts that are quite active, I think.
Manning has not been held in isolation since April 20, 2011, when she was transferred from Marine Corps Brig, Quantico to Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Ft. Leavenworth. In October 2013, two months after the soldier’s post-trial confinement to the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), her lawyer David Coombs wrote that Chelsea had successfully completed the indoctrination process and been placed in general population with no special limitations or restrictions. “She is able to participate in all vocational and educational opportunities at the USDB,” said Coombs, “and is able to receive visitors and correspondence. Chelsea is doing well in confinement. She feels safe at the USDB, and is being treated well by the facility and other inmates.”
The best way to stay up to date on this case remains the Chelsea Manning Support Network http://www.chelseamanning.org. However, I disagree with Tarzie that “a lot of her advocates are still very active and her attorney releases a lot of updates as well. There are also Twitter accounts that are quite active, I think.” A quick perusal of the Twitter hashtag #Manning over the past few months—and trust me, it won’t take long—will disabuse anyone of that misconception. Snowden & Greenwald have (deliberately?) squeezed all the air out of any lingering interest in Manning.
You son of a hitch. I was sipping my coke zero and laughed so hard at point 5 it came out my nose. Monster!
Even the staunchest believers in the propaganda model, and how the media should be funded are willing to completely abandon their beliefs in the name of Greenwald exceptionalism, and this includes Chomsky and Herman themselves.
Yeah that’s a good one.
Glenn’s coming down the mountain,
“Cash in now honey!”
1#. The proper channel for whistleblowing involves placing information in the hands of a respectable, media-savvy gatekeeper before it makes its way to the wider world.
1#. Knowing how much a billionaire retweets you constitutes your due-diligence for determining the toxicity of their politics.
1#. Information rises or falls based on its own merits. Rather than being amplified when it serves the interests of the powerful, information creates its own intrinsic “effect.” This effect sometimes manifests itself, like St. Elmo’s Fire or similar meteorological phenomena, as something resembling fireworks or stars.
1#. To imply that state- and oligarch-funded imperialism plays a role in the destabilization of a country is to disrespect the agency of that country’s population.
1#. The paramount crime is hypocrisy.
This seems as good a place as any to say thanks for the work, and keeping up with all this bullshit. It’s been an eye-opening year for some of us.
Brilliant!
Especially: 1#:
The Twitterverse Triumphant.
The more eyes opened, the better.
I like this too, but I’m going to quibble with the implication that Greenwald is even telling the truth about not knowing anything about Omidyar.
While it’s true GG’s rubes will accept practically anything he does or says, Greenwald doesn’t take chances. Selling the idea that what Omidyar gets up to and GG’s journalism are two entirely separate matters, has more short term salability and long-term viability than the idea that Greenwald investigated Omidyar and found nothing wrong with what Omidyar does. Where is the evidence that Greenwald’s and Omidyar’s worldview differ? Where is the evidence, really, that apart from his fixation on the Constitution, Greenwald has any strong convictions at all?
I think people really need to wake up about Greenwald and what, exactly, is going on with First Look. I find even his harshest critics giving way too much benefit of the doubt here.
I think I’m going to quibble with the implication in #1 that Greenwald is telling the truth about not knowing anything about Omidyar. I think the idea that dollar signs got in the way of prudence might be too generous.
While it’s true GG’s rubes will accept practically anything he does or says, he doesn’t take chances. That what Omidyar gets up to and GG’s journalism are two entirely separate things has more short term salability and long-term viability than that Greenwald investigated Omidyar and found nothing wrong with what Omidyar does. Where is the evidence that Greenwald’s and Omidyar’s worldviews differ significantly?
Everything about Greenwald’s politics since his Bush-induced ‘radicalization’ (as he calls it), remain a black box, apart from his insipid Constitutionalist declinism. Where is the evidence that apart from the fixation on the Constitution — that has so far aligned him with white supremacists, Citizens United, animal torture pornographers and an anti-LGBTQ fast food chicken chain — Greenwald has any strong convictions at all? In the current narrative, GG can aid and abet Omidyar while remaining a political tabula rasa on which credulous people of every stripe can project their hopes and dreams.
I think people really need to wake up about Greenwald and what, exactly, is going on with First Look. It is exceptionalist to see the neofascism in Ukraine and India as things happening ‘over there’ that have no bearing domestically except in how they impinge on GG’s journalistic independence and reputation. I find even his harshest critics giving way too much benefit of the doubt here.
This is precisely how the burden of proof should be, unfortunately Greenwald’s fans just shift the burden of proof around. When you provide proof:
“that’s from 8 years ago, his opinions have probably changed”
Oh is that so? Then why is he so reticent to express them and why are they so reticent to ask?
I thought Lorenzo was referencing Scahill’s leaked internal discussion memo on Omidyar “This guy retweets me a lot I think he’s good”.
I think Lorenzo was also obliquely referencing Greenwald’s post-Ukraine insistence that the didn’t investigate Omidyar further because Omidyar’s adventures are irrelevant to what Greenwald does. Pretty sure my comments are entirely germane.
Also Scahill’s remark wasn’t leaked. He said it in a Daily Beast interview. The quote:
There are no doubt different segments of people. His harshest critics are anon voices like yours who find the whole thing stupid and vile. The middle of the road critics are the ones still playing for their career who couldn’t care less how many people die or suffer just so long as they keep their eye on the prize.
You keep insinuating there are some principled anti-imperialist people who are supporters of Greenwald. You have yet to produce a single example of such a person who is not finally unmasked as a careerist (as just witnessed with Soghoian).
The line blurs more confusingly when it comes to the sincere, hard nosed, steady reporters who constantly engage with all the superficial information under the victimology model. The forces of unrestrained neoliberalism are bloodthirsty wolves, they say. Any information about them is good and the best is those in who the relation to police power is the closest. If it can fit in under 140, it’s an influence that can be verified.
The insincerity apparent in calling “racist” on those “ignoring” the local self determination agency of pawn states is seductive because it holds a bit of truth that is meticulously overlooked by the well meaning and politically correct left. Especially seductive to people looking for an excuse to keep believing in their own Christ like martyrdom to be. People who have nothing to hide still fear the government as if they weren’t active collaborators. Don’t tell them corporations are in cahoots and other governments can be manipulated. We’re all in this together (start trembling in solidarity).
The establishment left media’s studied helplessness to do anything but expose more oppression pr0n is part of what makes Greenwald so acceptable: he fits the model.
His funder is more obviously compromised a figure than the revenue streams of other marginal social-democrat news outlets but then again, do we really know or care to look into where they get their funding. The fact is, they are still reporting information which casts our masters in a bad light, even if it achieves nothing. That’s a step up from being surrounded by sycophants who, had they been the only game in town at the time of the rise of unions as they are the only game in town today, would have meant a world with even more exploitation than now.
Compared to ordinary nobodies, the news is still your best partner in ensuring your awareness of what to fight.
Let me ask, when all the radicals read the news, what did they read it for? What did they think they would do with the information?
Some must have thought they would use it out of fear and know what to avoid.
Some to work it into a message for the uninterested public (Matt Bors 1.1 but hoping to find an audience.
Some hoped to find a weakness in the system.
Of the last group, what did they think would be their exploit on the system? I suspect they were as clueless as what it takes to change the system as most of us normals. The difference between them and normals is normals have given up even hope. Normals always said “politicians are nothing but crooks, I don’t even follow politics”.
They were right. It feels less pitiful to take an interest, in the hope that some day, you’ll all get together and change things.
In this pathetic and unspeakably lazy fantasy, Greenwald’s non-resistance, peaceful disruption reporting theatre is no more incompatible than any of the other journalists pushing The Awful Truth They Just Learned, every article, book, minor documentary, movie.
None of this touches on the libertarian fans.
They are unique: like children, they are easily impressed by whatever is on tv and are loathe to change the channel to anything else. Greenwald is their latest cartoon and his place is assured because he plays to their other favorite cartoons: free enterprise, making it big, selling out, James Bond spy chases through hallways and airports (not the big finale chase on mega vehicles filled with explosive substances blowing up all over the place). They live in an inferior fantasy world and are too stupid too realize it.
I do wonder what it would look like if the children “woke up” but I suspect for most of them, it takes more than raising their awareness.
I have insinuated no such thing. I think there are a lot of anti-imperialists who are unprincipled by way of being stupid, ignorant or credulous, who credit GG with more anti-imperialism than he has ever expressed. Most people’s politics are half-baked at best.
I generally think everyone, including some of the people here, give Greenwald too much benefit of the doubt, such as assuming that Omidyar’s ‘toxicity’ might have mattered to GG if his greed didn’t get in the way. They credit him with politics I don’t think he has. They do the same tabula rasa thing as everyone else.
I don’t understand what you’re getting with the rest of your comment.
Now I’m confused. I thought that comment was Scahill’s contribution to the vetting of Omidyar by then-NewCo/1st look.
Now I have to understand that even That defense of Omidyar was GG? That means nobody has said anything good about Omidyar save GG himself and a couple feminist white celebrities on Twistter. Everyone else is just keeping their mouth politely shut, either too stupid to find billions of dollars interesting or shrewdly not stepping on future employer toes.
What a tough racket journalism has become that they dream of being paid to write next to nothing.
Yeah, you are confused and now I’m confused to. The remark about tweets was from SCAHILL in and interview SCAHILL did with THE DAILY BEAST which is AVAILABLE ONLINE. He said quite a lot about Omidyar.
It’s actually worth a read for the numerous ways Scahill completely contradicts a lot of the mythology Greenwald has carefully tried to build about Omidyar’s distance from the enterprise. Scahill’s remarks about independence from state authorities are also quite funny in light of the Country X dustup.
It was Greenwald who said he didn’t vet Omidyar. He said it in his angry reply to Pando’s first story about Omidyar’s meddling in Ukraine.
” [Scahill] recently founded The Intercept, a new online national security outfit, ”
Nice accidental phrasing. It is a very funny piece and I remember now that period where it was about Omidyar wanting to fight the power through reporting. How the aura has dimmed. I guess one could find out by starting conversations with any of GG’s 400k followers.
Ok right. You aren’t the one who wrote
You aren’t the one who writes about how Greenwald’s greatest toxicity is he is remaking the left by dragging all these formerly anti imperialist commies over the libertarian, security respecting, responsible journalism peeping cliff.
You’ve insinuated no such thing. I stand corrected.
What I’m getting at with the rest of my comment is that your notion that people need to wake up to Greenwald bad apples Greenwald. All of the marginal left media has always been saying their voice is more adversarial than the mainstream. All of them have always been responsible journalmists. Why has the audience not woken up to Greenwald when in fact, Greenwald never challenged the model. He challenged the model of the model, the fake misdirection: government collaborates with the mainstream that has connections. In fact, the outsider left is every bit as power serving and venal and never did otherwise. Even without a choice seat at white house press conferences.
Here’s where I differ from you and almost everyone else who puts themselves on the left: I do not see discrete, unchanging collections of principled, unprincipled, imperialist, anti-imperialist, capitalist, anti-capitalist people. I think doing that is really fucking stupid. The way religion is stupid. In fact, it is religion!
I find it more useful to see people as a more mixed bag than that, at all different levels of political formation, with varied inclinations toward conformity and status-seeking, which is why operators like Greenwald are so very useful to the enterprise of, say, making a half-congealed anti-capitalist into a fully-formed appreciator of oligarch beneficence, or making a muddle-headed anti-imperialist into someone who frets knowledgeably but foolishly over SigInt vs. HumInt in drone strikes.
In light of this vision of protean political actors all over the place, I think literally redefining terms like ‘radical’ and ‘left’ to omit traditional associations with fundamentals like anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism has very far-ranging consequences that are entirely unrelated to who calls themselves anti-imperialist right now and whether or not you think they are warranted in doing so.
So with this taken into account, where have I contradicted myself, exactly?
It is not bad apple-ing to note that certain elements within a toxic system are everything that toxic system requires and more. It is also not bad-apple-ing to note how uniquely suited certain people are to helping the system adapt and innovate in response to changing conditions. There is unquestionably a growing post-Obama, post-Occupy residue of politically disaffected people. It seems fairly obvious that, among many other things, Greenwald is helpfully getting this mob back into one happy little oligarch-managed pen. That there can’t be a person on earth right now more uniquely suited to this task than Greenwald doesn’t make him a bad apple, any more than Obama was a bad apple when he performed a similar function in 2008.
Albert on the Z Mag website brought up the point that GG’s “journalistic independence” is rather silent complicity so as not to get on the bad side of the owner/paymaster. These writers censor themselves and call it journalistic independence.
GG’s feigned ignorance about the boss man is just another episode of tailing his audience with lazy opportunism. GG got pushback because of neofascism, tenth largest wealth, shady ebay connections, and the best he could come up with was fake “I never knew” and “what’s wrong with using billions to change the world.”
He’s a user, coattail hanger-on, lazy opportunist, and bullshit grifter. Frankly, taking this angle would make a more entertaining movie than Eddie & Glenn go to Hong Kong.
There is nothing ‘silent’ about GG’s complicity at all. He’s explicitly lied on behalf of Omidyar’s PayPal position and lays in with smears every time anyone says boo about Omidyar over at Pando. Silence would be defensible on grounds that Pierre’s ‘soft imperialism’ isn’t The Intercept’s beat.
It’s everyone else that stays silent, hoping for that big First Look job, one of many important, obvious points the perennially useless Albert fails to make. Instead, he completely concedes to Greenwald’s framing that the big issue is GG’s independence, recommends that Omidyar give grants to independent journalists (yeah, more bribes, what a great idea that is!) and then does the let’s wait and see thing.
We’re thirty years ahead of that guy over here and he’s lamenting that a dialog on Greenwald on the left hasn’t happened because Glenn no longer answers his emails. One more usefully clueless asshole, like his pal Chomsky. Always has been.
Agree with everything you said.
Sorry, I just didn’t word it right, but Albert was speaking more to GG asserting “journalistic independence” when in fact its just active omission in not criticizing. Frankly, it’s not specific to GG/Omidyar, if you turn on your owners, many places you’ll get shitcanned.
But yes you’re right he not only doesn’t not criticize, he defends.
I was thinking about clarifying that one. It implies that Greenwald is too clueless or apathetic to investigate Omidyar’s politics when he’s been lying about PayPal from the beginning, and their world-views have probably been in sync from the jump. Greenwald’s proudest lawyering work was defending neo-Nazis, now he can defend entire governments full of fascists.
That “Daily Beast” quote always struck me for what it says about the ego at work. The idea that someone needs only to have their thoughts endorsed by someone else to make grand statements about that person’s legitimacy, even the most charitable read implies an ego that precludes inductive reasoning. It’s probably too charitable to bring to a discussion about the toxicity at work here, but the dopey egotism of “he retweets me a lot!” was too much to resist.
I’m glad you didn’t clarify. It was funny. I took it as a jumping off point because I had earlier taken the non-vetting thing at face value. Glenn has this magical ability to make people credulous, even me sometimes. It’s satanic.
That is a priceless comment about the RTs. I wondered if Scahill wasn’t getting a little dig in, since it really does provoke a spit-take. I have heard there is trouble in that little paradise, but who knows? An icon like Glenn would be a troublesome figure in an organization even if he weren’t a complete asshole. Working with him must be insufferable, but then, no one’s working…
Who the fuck knows what’s going on over there. Is all that Omidyar startup loot going up their noses?
Glenn has this magical ability to make people credulous
I think it’s the insidious power of a cipher–you keep things close enough to the vest, people do the work, including extending credulity. He’s so *damn* good at playing clueless.
Who the fuck knows what’s going on over there
It’s been, what, more than half a year? A quarter of a billion dollars doesn’t buy much these days. I wish I could believe that this incredibly slow launch process, coupled with the hiring of almost all white guys, would take some of the gild off the lily. However, seeing how many people want Google to be their bank is a reminder that that kind of faith of merely faith.
Is all that Omidyar startup loot going up their noses?
Hah, was it the GQ interview that you said Greenwald sounded like he was on coke? Now THAT would be a stars & fireworks end to all this!
Aside from having 400k followers with the biggest story ever and the fact that next to nobody on the left seems to look to or give a hoot about GG and his new venture, just your usual clique of scrappy, status hungry marginal journalists, you haven’t exactly demonstrated that GG is uniquely capable of being the lightning rod for self proclaimed social democrats and rag tag outsiders/radicals. If anything, with this amount of publicity GG has done almost nothing but neutralize the story itself and collect a lot of weird libertarian fans.
You need to demonstrate that a sizable chunk of this mixed bag of people that mostly supported OWS are in fact in the clutches of Pierre and the idea of good billionaires instead of just being a lump of coals that are oblivious to the problem of where the money comes from.
You need to prove GG is in fact a thought leader and not just a sideshow sitting on some glittering secrets.
Of course you don’t *need* to do anything but until you do that thing you don’t need to do, this seems like bad apple-ing to me.
I don’t need to do anything because I truly don’t care if you agree with me or not. Getting you to concede anything requires that I prove everything in line with a set of assumptions about how things work that I simply don’t share.
For arbitrary example, I think 400,000 people on Twitter can add up to quite a lot of influence, depending on who’s in that 400,000 and how many people they influence. I’m so far from where you are on this point I actually find this obvious, the way, say, marketing and advertising people find it obvious. But clearly you don’t, along with a number of other things I find obvious, which puts you in a place I don’t have the energy to argue from.
Rather than inviting me, once again, to prove shit in line with your assumptions, you should explain to Omidyar that he really has no idea how influence works, and probably shouldn’t throw away any more money on insignificant trifles like Greenwald and Snowden and a media venture with a dollar value equal to the Washington Post. Certainly his much smaller investments in Ukraine and India haven’t paid off.
Well, I don’t actually think he’s lying, so much as cultivating advantageous ignorance. The lawyerly way to do it is to never investigate further than you need to if it will interfere with plausible deniability. If you want to be able to let your client deny culpability on the stand but you don’t want to suborn perjury, then it’s probably best not to actually ask him if he did it.
Or to put it in a more self indulgent format:
So if you’re an intrepid reporter specializing in fucking with the powerful, when you receive an offer from Robert Redford the equally dreamy Pierre Omidyar, you might think to yourself that being funded by a billionaire could be a great way to amplify your ability to speak truth to power (and sure you’ll get a salary bump, but it’s not really selling out because you’ll have editorial independence). And when you find yourself thinking those noble thoughts of your growing media platform throbbing with truth, well then it’s probably best not to look too closely at where those billions came from, because, after all, you know that Jesus Christ himself couldn’t make a miracle without breaking some loaves and if your main man J.C. couldn’t make a billion dollars without breaking a few human spirits, well then you can’t in good faith throw stones at Omidyar for doing what any red blooded American oligarch would do, (i.e., imperialize) when he also does good things (or at least pays you to do good things, which is basically the same thing right?), and if anyone asks about what you know, well then you can’t lie because of your enormous…integrity, but if you admit that you know what he did, well then the fuhr…err…furor over you knowingly jumping into bed with the American East India Company will distract from your important message. Which would be worse than anything because it’s so important.
So it’s probably best not to look to hard at Omidyar’s record. For the children.
This is close to how I used to see things and no longer do.
#6 “Ignorant, Infantilized, Libertarian-Liberal Mutant Freak is the new Left.”
The new Left are Glennbots, hardcore adherents of a non-theistic Christian sect known as Glennbotism, average IQ around 65…
The most striking thing you’ll notice when you encounter a Glennbot is they’re invulnerable to contradiction. That which it is impossible to think must necessarily be embraced through faith.
If the facts are wrong, so much worse for the facts – that’s the only position that can be adopted by one of these cult members……So what if GG works for a neoliberal neo-fascist reactionary billionaire, Glenn told us that he’s independent, and some time between now and the year 2025 he’s gonna name some names…
Look how the Glennbot commenter Caliman responded to Tarzie’s comments (at Chris Floyd’s blog). Caliman’s responses are based upon a mixture of wishful thinking, deliberate ignorance, and insultingly childish lies.
For almost a year, the basic theme of the Snowden/GG/Omidyar Spectacle has been mind control, or thought-suppression…
As GG followers sever themselves from intellectual integrity, and exile themselves from all harsh truths, these truths will eventually find new allies…but for now the Left is being infected by a Zombie virus and the virus is spreading…..
The best response to GG religious fanatics is not to argue with them, that takes up a lot of energy and leads nowhere, the best response is just say “I’m an atheist, I’m an atheist”…and get the hell out of there.
The Snowden Spectacle is not merely doomed, it is doom itself….fleeing becomes an imperative….
There’s no point arguing with Zombie members of a religious cult….your best option is to look for the exit sign, and flee…
Just adding…thanks for your blog, and I had the same reaction to #5 as Tonk (above)….crack me up…these “left” journalists don’t deserve the restraint we show by not pummelling them with rotten eggs and spitting in their faces…
I always enjoy the Tarzie takedowns of Kitt Flynn, I think he’s one of the worst Glennbots and Tarzie’s sense of humor and language fucking slay me. “Hell of a work ethic though.” LOL.
I hate that asshole.
LOL. He’s got anger issues. I’m frankly scared of him. :p I don’t have the verbal shark bite that you all do but it’s not like the guy ever says anything coherent. The one where he tried to defend Greenwald as a “socialist” because of one comment at one conference comes to mind.
He’s REALLY dumb. Fond of citing quotes that don’t make his point at all.
They’re all like that to some degree because they’ve tasked themselves with proving Glenn really is just like the narcissistic projection of him they carry around in their tiny brains. It’s really hard for the half-baked lefties like Kit. Libertarian trolls are less delusional.
I’m surprised you’re scared of anybody. I credit you with having a fairly lethal shark bite of your own.
Kitt Flynn (writing at Chris Floyd’s blog): “….If it weren’t for the constant flow of “high dudgeon” coming from the “I hate Greenwald” Internet Commenter Enterprise, this post and numerous others just like it that are supposedly about Omidyar, including the endless stream of tweets about Omidyar, wouldn’t exist.”
Is this Kitt Flynn asshole for real? Is it possible for anyone to be THAT dumb?
I keep picturing him as Borat’s retarded brother, and yes, I have to agree with GTI, this does make him kind of scary:
Y’know, on re-reading that comment really sounds like victimy Glenn, who whines again and again that he’s uniquely singled out for abuse. What about Laura? What about Snowden? I wonder if GG’s famous sock puppet days are really over. Can’t imagine even Glenn is stupid or self-centered enough to see concerns over Omidyar as cover for Glenn-bashing, though. It really does betray an incredibly vapid, navel-gazing point of view. These people are awful and their identification with poor, afflicted GG is truly bizarre.
Wow, there she is in Chris Floyd’s comments, talking about how India needs fascist-mandated “free enterprise” and comparing pre-Modi India to North Korea. The friends of Glenn, indeed.
Everything about Greenwald’s politics since his Bush-induced ‘radicalization’ (as he calls it), remain a black box, apart from his insipid Constitutionalist declinism. Where is the evidence that apart from the fixation on the Constitution — that has so far aligned him with white supremacists, Citizens United, animal torture pornographers and an anti-LGBTQ fast food chicken chain — Greenwald has any strong convictions at all? In the current narrative, GG can aid and abet Omidyar while remaining a political tabula rasa on which credulous people of every stripe can project their hopes and dreams.
He’s been a political animal since he was a tyke. Suddenly, he just stops? I’ve always wondered how he discovered Townhall as his introduction to the web.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/04/3485700/columnist-who-broke-nsa-leaks.html
Oh mercy no! The legend is he was apolitical when he supported attacking in Iraq, which came after the moment in his life when he decided that people with brains should ‘fuck with power’ which was just before he went to work for one of New York’s biggest law firms, the way all brainy people who want to fuck with power do.
Until you mentioned it, I didn’t know he never walked back anything from those “apolitical” days (of calling Castro a “fat fuck” and insulting Chavistas), and even his “apology” about Iraq was a fucking tap dance. The man can’t even do his own mop-up.
He just gets Mona the enforcer to jump in and assert “that was nine years ago!” whenever anybody calls him on being a nationalist racist imperialist.
That would be Mona Holland, the hard core right-wing libertarian who threatened to cancel her Reason subscription over that magazine’s opposition to the war in Iraq and has been on GG’s payroll since 2007.
He doesn’t mop up because he doesn’t want to mop up. As I keep saying, his strength is in remaining a tabula rasa on all but the areas where libertarians and lefts intersect. Libertarians can cling to the dream that the free market loving Chavista basher still lives. Lefts can act like it’s all in the past. He certainly still despises radicals, that much is clear.
Sounds like a Zionist to me.
I know she used to spend a lot of Guardian BTL comment time supporting Palestine and making anti-Zionist comments, and she also does it on her Twitter feed. Now I see she’s just co-opting like the rest of them.
What a bunch of fucking reactionary assholes.
Sorry that’s regarding the Mona Holland person.
Snowden/Greenwald 2016!!!!
I think you mean Greenwald/Snowden 2016!!!!
WHAT, would you prefer Jeb Bush/Rubio??
For being at the top, there are those at the bottom. Indira Singh is missing. What happened to her?
So then, today, Glenn Greenwald posts an update on what he has “long believed… one of the most important journalistic stories of the last decade: The New York Times‘ 2004 decision, at the behest of George W. Bush himself, to suppress for 15 months (through Bush’s re-election) its reporters’ discovery that the NSA was illegally eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.” Holding back news about the NSA? Imagine!
P.s. Re your: “I have heard there is trouble in that little paradise [FLM], but who knows?”
I enjoyed the Michael Albert piece from May. (Yes, I am shameless.) I didn’t care about what he had to say about Greenwald. I enjoyed thinking about First Look et al in terms of the concentration of professedly alternative voices and questions like, will Matt Taibbi reach more readers through “Rolling Stone or at First Look?” I’m still really interested in the ways and means by which voices get subsumed by – or lose themselves within – structures of power.
I mention this specificly because on May 22, Doug Henwood broadcast an interview with Matt Taibbi that had been recorded “earlier” in the month. After introducing him as the author of The Divide, Henwood lists Taibbi’s accomplishments, starting with The Exile, his Buffulo paper “the Beast,” his short time at New York Press, and his arrival at Rolling Stone. He ends with “and now he’s moved on to the class divide in our crimminal justice system” – that is, with the new book.
When he first addresses Taibbi, Henwood confirms “this is your sixth book?” adding, “You’re not working for a website doing pop-ups like you were [indistinct]?”
“No, no,” laughes Taibbi.
“Still doing this long sort of serious reporting and, um, about complicted material for a… for a society with a short attention span?” askes Henwood.
“Exactly, exactly. Trying to make that whole thing work. I like to… I like to do both things, obviously.I like to do quick little columns on the internet. Those are always fun. But… you know, over the years you figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, and I think what I probalby enjoy the most [is the books].” From there on, the interview is about the book.
So, no reference to the Feb 19th announcement that Taibbi was joining First Look Media, nor to any up-coming digital magazine on financial crimes, et.. Which is okay: the Henwood interview was a book tour interview. Might not mean anything at all. (Just like Marcy Wheeler leaving FLM might not mean anything.) But Henwood certainly did give him the opening:
DH: “You’re not working for a website doing pop-ups like you were [indistinct]?”
MT: “No, no.” Laughs.
Does anybody recall ever hearing an interview with someone about their book and not have that person announce where they currently write or work? I wonder if Taibbi told Henwood to keep it off the air.
The majority of writers at First Look haven’t even begun working and the brand’s already tarnished.
And I agree with what tarzie said on his twitter: I hope every one of these people who followed Greenwald the pied piper has to carry around the albatross of working for Omidyar for the rest of their careers. The water carriers for power and imperialism, and I hope they pay the price.
I hope they realize their errors, and that the only price to pay is their own shame. Try your stone-throwing with a few variables switched around:
And I agree with what Ahmed said on his twitter: I hope every one of these people sending money to the U.S. Military has to carry around the albatross of droning houses for the rest of their lives. The water carriers for power and imperialism, and I hope they pay the price.
See, angry westerner? You are–like me–one of the people who would least benefit from a policy of harsh judgment. The Glennbots and the Tarziebots are little different–nodding their heads at what some comfy white gay dude says, while supporting, however indirectly and convolutedly, the same empire. (You’re also probably using an NSA contractor owned by elite shareholders in order to access the internet and post this stuff, ain’tcha?)
Love the ‘comfy gay dude’ angle. Of course I’m comfy; all gay dudes are. I’m gentrifying the shit out of this place, that is, when I’m not marrying people to further institutionalize patriarchy, hating on women and trans people, or raising hell about my victimization so as to run interference for white racial dominance. All my heterosexual friends wish they were so gay and so comfy and so awesomely powerful!
Y’know as my twitter feed often makes plain, I love me some homophobic lefties. I love them so much I’d break every fucking bone in their faces if given the chance, so it goes without saying I feel absolutely no obligation to publish their comments. This means your welcome here — such as it was — is withdrawn. Big mistake there, that ‘comfy gay dude’ line. Gave you right away, shithead. You need to work on your perfect little lefty act. Perhaps you’ve been hanging around with too many perfect little queers, who like you, think phony self-abnegation is a virtue. I’m not like that. I hate self-abnegating queers almost as much as I hate people like you.
Don’t put too much work into your next comment. There’s no free speech absolutism around here. You’re a self-regarding little asshole, and a phobe, doing a type of way-too-common politics predicated on guilt-tripping and entirely fake self-effacement that I find repulsive in its egotistical showboating, phoniness and utter stupidity. Your false equivalencies are too idiotic to engage with. Run along and write another long post about me on your blog that no one reads or join some of the gazillion cardboard cutouts like you who, pursuant to being the change they want to see in the world, fixate on some nobody like me to act out on as the proxy for all their dipshit demons. This is my refuge from all that — the topic in these parts isn’t comfy gay me — and you’re done here.
That is perhaps the masterpiece of ‘fuck you’s, Tarzie.
Ha ha. Thanks. I’ve gotten a lot of practice this year.
That is kinda weird. I can’t imagine First Look is so tarnished people don’t want to mention it, though.
Taibbi’s venture is still a go, certainly. Just hired two new people and they hired Alex Pareene in April.
I hope Ames ruins these people. I hope they can never fucking hold their heads up again.
I guess it’s possible he didn’t mention it because it’s not public yet. There’s no place for people to check him out if he’s not live on the site.
Tarzie, what is the context for Charles Davis’ tweet link to the old Ames article? Article seemed pretty thoughtful to me, albeit not a total examination of all the issues surrounding that mass murder.
I haven’t read the article but Davis presented it as if evidence of Mark Ames’ famous misogyny. Frequently when Pando publishes something unflattering about First Look, Davis and others trot out something from the archive to demonstrate what a terrible person Ames is.
Davis’s account is now locked — I think perhaps my trolling provoked it — but when I accused him of tweeting the article to run interference for Omidyar, he made reference to the recent mass killings in LA and wrote ‘Fuck you, Mark Ames and Omidyar’ as if to suggest, ridiculously, that this wasn’t more chimp signaling to the billionaire and his most beloeved lackey. Rather, it was the killings that provoked him to tweet a five year old article.
Ames is jerk, there is no question. But people from Greenwald Twitter think that there is no better time to remind everyone of that than when Ames has written something damning about Omidyar. As Omidyar’s predations mount up, I think this pattern is increasingly disgusting but also increasingly laughable. Davis and pals really seems to have no idea how disingenous they look when they do this.
Well, you know Greenwald fans. They hate it when people focus on the journalist rather than the story. /s
Seems to me he was just bringing up the old Ames article to try and tar Ames with with being an apologist for misogynistic violence, he probably thought it was a really timely smear considering Ames is attacking Greenwald and Omidyar, and with the recent misogynistic murders in California he was onto a goldmine of a smear that would be nicely rewarded by a job at First Look.
That is a much clearer way of putting it. Thanks.
On close reading the article is really pretty awful and Ames’ misogyny is an established fact, but the only reason Charlie’s excavating it is to shield Omidyar from scrutiny.
On second look…. Ames characterization of the killer as a “shy nerd” and “nice guy” was pretty awful. (As well as his failure to note any misogyny or critique the killer’s sense of sexual entitlement.) But his economic system critiques were distinct from that nonsense and seemed spot on.
Yeah, it’s way too sympathetic.
But I appreciate that Ames is tying these events to economic conditions. It’s unfortunate that one of the few left writers with class consciousness is such a clusterfuck of misogyny. Charles Davis is just the perfect little feminist ally, but seems to have no class consciousness at all, so he reads this as ‘guy can’t get laid, shoots women.’ and, as I said, digs it out of the archives to shield a billionaire from scrutiny, as if promoting neofascism is really no big deal at all by comparison. Charlie has become the worst kind of social climbing fake in the midst of First Look. It’s a damn shame. Used to like the guy. I have watched him become visibly dumber and more dishonest on Twitter.
As a useful comparison, see how few people respond to Greenwald’s covering for Omidyar by dredging up Greenwald’s often-shitty gender politics. If, after each assertion of his independence, someone brought up his nun-raping comment or his defense of Max Hardcore where he argued that those who thought it was possible to exploit adult women were the REAL misogynists, it would seem pretty clear they had some secondary agenda.
The revolution will be hitlerized.
Reply
Is the source here The Intercept?
Yes, sorry, it was the top comment about 15 minutes ago, and the poster barncat said he would post it again lower down in the comments where apparently Greenwald responded to it.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/06/06/encouraging-words-dean-baquet-weasel-words-james-clapper/#comment-46420
This is too much work. I can’t be bothered to do Finds on that horrible forum to partake of GG’s blathering.
It’s amazing that despite how scrupulously moderated that board is — they rarely publish anything I post — GG, Kit and Mona nevertheless manage to make complete asses of themselves.
GG is playing defense heavily in that comment section and fumbling the ball.
This appears to be where it’s going on at the moment. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/06/06/encouraging-words-dean-baquet-weasel-words-james-clapper/#comment-46437
Glenn-as-Tarzie is truly megalomaniacal narcissistic masochism. Thrive on that negative attention you give yourself as Tarzie, Glenn!
The sock puppetry here is almost as inventive as that old Ellis-Ellers-Ellensburg gambit. Look, you’ve got clever new puppet handles now!
If I wish I were as prolific as you take me for, Oxy, but I’m a better writer than Glenn. Also smarter.
Number nine, your Gary Webb comparison, is the most resonating for me; especially since it intuitively incorporates the rot and corruption of the California Empire and Silicon Valley Power (as in Omidyar, for one) – in that he was a writer for Silicon Valley’s Newspaper of Record, The San Jose Mercury News (San Francisco is not Silicon Valley, never has been), when he was mercilessly and thoroughly undone by his employers along with the Los Angeles Times, et al, of the Fourth Estate; and … in how, repeatedly, predators who made untold millions/billions off of others backs and the Fed Funded rot are repeatedly portrayed as Philanthropists!™.
(Re the “repeatedly” ‘link’ above: In whose view of actual empathy could folks scrambling on their knees for someone else’s far less than chump change – made off the skin on someone else’s back, and planted to amuse and glorify that someone el$e – while the undeserved Mil/Billionaire feasts at the restaurant yards away from those knee crawlers enjoying the “scene” (not to mention the likely police questioning when there are now criminalizing “laws” about sitting crawling and laying on the ground; and fighting over who found that much needed money first).)
(sorry, I should have placed commas … and/or perhaps at least one semi-colon …after the words: “restaraunt” and “knee crawlers,” ..as in:
Diane, I’m not helping with edits anymore. If something jumps out at me and I feel like fixing it I will. Every time you post I become your secretary.
(there are, of course, those who will insanely hone in on my mispell of the word “restaurant” to discredit – … ya lose, or never have, the ability to experience something, and you lose the ability to even ‘spell it’ – who will also be celebrating the newly minted Omidyar/Greenwald/Snowden .Holi Day!™.)
Nobody who matters gives a shit about the occasional typo.
Tarzie, I wasn’t at all requesting that you do, I was just attempting to clarify what I meant.
ok. I usually fix when you say that so as ever, my pain is self-inflicted.
Some guy trolling you on twitter who calls himself “Violent Fanon.” Morbid curiosity led me to check out this idiot, because I know a little about Fanon. Some good writing, but a horrible misogynist and homophobe. Seems your “Violent Fanon” troll hasn’t read Fanon, beyond a wiki page. Thinks he’ll acquire infallible leftie branding by being Fanon?. Weirdest hing of all is if you look at “Violent Fanon” tweets he spends most of his twitter time shaming misogynists and homophobes. I assume you’re aware Fanon believed homosexuality was a European “sickness”, that Africans were never naturally gay, and that Fanon famously attacked a well-known black woman/writer for marrying a white man. Fanon accused her of having a slave mentality submitting to a white master, argued that all black women who hook up with white men are slave-brained. Then Fanon married a white woman. And rationalized it as proof that he was now the Master dominating a white woman, and white women who hook up with black men are, again, role playing their inner slave fantasy. The academic left took Fanon apart years ago, all rather grotesque.
Seeing a white guy using a “Violent Fanon” handle to police the left, especially misogynists and homophobes, is so…what’s another word for “dumb”?. May as well call his twitter handle “Community Organizer Obama” to shame warmongers and Wall Street apologists.
I don’t pay him any mind.
wisely so
also, did you catch Charlie’s righteous indignation over the way his employer Vice exploits its workers?
http://gawker.com/working-at-vice-media-is-not-as-cool-as-it-seems-1579711577
Lots of coherent and consistent verbal reasoning being expended to get angrier and angrier. The rage here seems disproportionate to Greenwald’s longstanding limitations. Been trying to gather who doesn’t suck, and I’ve counted:
1. Silber
2. Webb
Is that it? Anyone who’s not a martyr?
i write media criticism. critics don’t usually write about who they like
Since I am not a status oriented dumbass, I realize that left media icons are but an eeensy weensy subset of humanity and there is a whole huge world outside of them, much of which I like a lot. For instance, I think the average person is much much better in almost every way than a left icon. I admire the people who comment here much more than the people I write about. I don’t like most people who are famous because I think that fame is among the rewards for service to power. I think left icons and celebrities are genuinely toxic.
I am not really interested in your opinion on how proportional my anger is. I don’t think it speaks well of you that after acknowledging “Lots of coherent and consistent verbal reasoning” that that’s the angle you went for. I don’t engage on tone trolls. I think they’re dumb and in bad faith usually.
Not sure what you mean by “not a martyr”. I do think Greenwald’s success is indicative of his harmlessness, the opposite in every way of Webb who said this:
I think Greenwald’s rising star is strong evidence that he has yet to write anything “important enough to suppress.” That so many people are taking the Snowden Spectacle at face value is indicative of a pervasive and grimly laughable ignorance and stupidity. I find it contemptible, honestly.
I don’t think journalism is particularly useful to dissidence for reasons that are encapsulated by both Greenwald and Webb.
If you are going to continue, could you engage with ideas? Offer some analysis? Otherwise, maybe you should hang out on Twitter and savor the musings of someone famous and congratulate yourself for liking them in your anger-free way.
Can we plaster this on every public wall in the country?
Fine by me.
To be honest, I like it when these people comment on your threads. Because watching you take them down is both *extremely* entertaining, but also useful. Tone trolling is a term I’m new to, but it describes what I’ve come up against in the past. Learning how to deal with these people can be come in handy and your replies provide lots of ammo.
Resist the urge to delete all the please 🙂
– The Kid
“That’s because we are guaranteed full editorial freedom and journalistic independence.” — GG
Can’t tell you how many times I awoke after midnight in the brain-dead blue glow of late night TV to that magical and weighty word “guaranteed”.
Amazing how GG seems to be able to levitate and float right over the laws of human nature, unlike the rest of us mere mortals.
Won’t hold my breath waiting for this exclusive from Glenn:
“Omidyar: Just Another Murderous Shit-Bag Billionaire Oligarch — Here’s How He Does It”
Have you seen the nazi discussion that’s now taking place in The Intercept comments?
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/06/06/encouraging-words-dean-baquet-weasel-words-james-clapper/#comment-46270
Could be the most bizarre and disturbing comment thread I’ve read in, like, ever. The entire enterprise goes over a cliff when you have Mona the blogmaiden/comment cop/spokesperson for the main writer on the website acknowledging that yes, she certainly does support Nazis disseminating information.
Then when another commenter says “I agree with Mona, it takes a Nazi,” the only response is “How interesting!”
Interspersed with the beer hall jackbooting is Greenwald in his pathetic tap dance to protect Omidyar and his own filthy lucre in the game going into a lame version of Jeopardy with “who is the good oligarch/bad oligarch.” On top of trying to deflect away from getting caught in one lie after another with “But COINTELPRO radicals!” Any supposed cred he had as the “most astounding intellectual and relevant journalist working today” just got shattered with this display of hokum.
You can’t make this shit up.
Mona is so awful. This crass vulgarian who thinks she’s the most knowing savvy sophisticate that ever lived. I’m sure she thinks it’s just super cool to get out there on that limb and insanely tout the absolute irrelevance of a person’s nazism to the fearless, adversarial journalism they fund with all that shit about ‘changing the dominant narrative’ and ‘bedazzling’ the billionaire. It’s so STUPID and so WEIRD.
I commented a couple times but naturally nothing I wrote got published. The whole thing is a contrived circle jerk of sock puppets and their idiotic fans.
Greenwald and his minions and bloggers and anybody associated with this endeavor need to be made the laughingstocks of the journalism world.It wouldn’t surprise me if the entire thread gets deleted to protect Greenwald’s “cred,” and I’ll bet they soon lock it down anyway.
But how could anybody who “admired” Greenwald see him the same after this shameful commentary, which is instructive both for what he says and for what he doesn’t say (not denouncing Mona’s and others’ comments and neofascism). The guy needs to be run out of town on a rail along with his capitalist asshole boss and the rest of the crew there.
He’s fucking scared of you which is why your comments don’t come up there. You hit a nerve, you’re right, you know you’re right, and he knows you’re right. That’s why you’re not “allowed” there. He can’t deal with the anxiety imposed by the contradictions you and others raise. Badmouthing Floyd and lying about him is another example of it.
My God, this is even worse than I’d imagined. I wish you’d kept this from me. I saw some hints dropped above, but my impulse for self preservation kept me from looking. This blog may cause me to reassess my views on Child Labeling. 🙂
well that made me look and wished i hadn’t. I can not believe it they are even more disgusting than i thought.
As for GG nobody “controls” me I remember Alexi O’Brien on twitter ripping him on that and saying it is not just about “you” GG.
The GW analogy is important. Anybody, really threatening the system does not get major coverage, book and movie deals. I was upset about what information GG might be withholding, but I no longer care. His responses on everything from PO to Manning have led me to believe he is seriously damaged narcissist. his reactions to criticism is to go on the attack, and he can be nasty, petty, and abusive- and those are some of his better qualities.
one more takeaway from this show
we can all be under the thumb of oppressive, even brutal oligarchs, but so long as GG can say what he wants without edits then all is okay with the world.
Maybe this honest, satirical take-down of Scahill and Dirty Wars by Doug Valentine will cheer you back up (if you’ve not already read it): http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/dirty-wars-as-self-indulgence/
I’m sure this point has already been made, but GG & Co are being set up as the new ‘radical view from the left’ (“drones kill!”, “the NSA is listening!” and other breakthrough observations) that are leading potential change agents down the path to no context and no systemic understanding.
This probably make Greenwald rage shit his pants.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/05/1302247/-The-18-Biggest-Myths-of-the-Snowden-Saga
That’s a lot of reactionary nonsense and Sean Penn is a moron.
As someone who’s been progressively losing his favorite news site to Greenwald-mania, I’ve got to say #7 is super true.
What site is that?
Antiwar.com just the big kahuna so far (well, last time I went to that site at least).
That’s what I thought. A lot of people complaining about that. Raimondo’s an asshole.
Breaking News! This Just in!
Speaking with David Gregory on Meet the Press this morning, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Posthumous pardon of 22 Nazi war criminals convicted in 1946 by the IMT (International Military Tribunal) of crimes against humanity, defined as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation…or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds.”
According to sources inside the Justice Dept, this Posthumous Pardon was requested by billionaire Pierre Omidyar who said if I approve murder, extermination, enslavement, etc… then these are no longer crimes…. and he instructed Glenn Greenwald to “have your lawyers get Holder on the phone (one call should get the job done, remember) tell him what I want, and tell him if he has any questions, don’t call me back, just check the balance of his numbered account in the Caymans”.
Despite its complete independence from Omidyar, The Intercept had “no comment”….
Story developing…
So I decided to take Greenwald out to Masa’s restaurant in New York. Told him it was a reward him for the excellent job he’s been doing with The Intercept.
Told him I’ve decided he can stay, for now at least. As long as he doesn’t freak out like Marcy Wheeler, all because some fucking peasants got burnt to death by some of my friends, outside a trade union building in Odessa (Ukraine) or some fucking place….
Told him Masa’s owner is a friend of mine, so I’ll order for both of us.
It will be a surprise.
GG responded, “Sir, yes sir. What time shall I be there?”
So there we are sitting at Masa’s restaurant.
For myself I ordered the usual: the fatty bluefin tuna tartare cloaked in osetra caviar, followed by a toro-and-caviar dish, then I proceeded to an elegant kaiseki-style preparation of sea trout in a shabu-shabu broth, followed by an indulgent bite of shaved summer truffles pressed onto sushi rice and I finished up with a grapefruit granité.
To wash it down, I had a 30-litre double Nebuchadnezzar-size bottle of Armand de Brignac Midas Champagne (a special order made days in advance for the occasion and priced at $127,600). And yes, we’re talking a huge fucking bottle here, weighing 99 pounds, it required two waiters to bring it out, however I didn’t offer GG a single fucking drop.
GG must have been expecting some kind of caviar dish as well, because he tried showing off his French, asking me “quel vin boire avec le caviar?” but instead I had the waiter surprise him with a Jack-in-the-Box Junior Bacon Cheeseburger along with a diet Mountain Dew.
For desert, I had the waiter bring GG a fucking Oreo Milkshake, also from the Jack-in-the-box take-out menu.
You should have seen the excited look on GG’s face when the waiter brought out my order first, licking his chops in anticipation, followed by the crestfallen look of devastation when the waiter served him his Junior Bacon Cheeseburger and Mountain Dew.
So I told him: “Listen to me, Glenn. Like I said on the phone, you can stay at First Look Media. For now. But never forget this: you and all the others, Taibbi, Scahill, all of you, now you’re nothing but cum-buckets for Omidyar Network, you spineless pieces of shit. And the funny thing about cum-buckets is how replaceable they are. Are we getting the picture now, GG? Am I making myself clear?”
“Now stop looking at me like that and eat your fucking burger.”
GG gulped, nodded that he understood, then nibbled on his cheeseburger.
But you should’ve seen the look on his face when I told him that.
Bootlicking, bowing, brownnosing, compliant, cowering, crawling, cringing, servile, slavish, sniveling, spineless, submissive, subservient, and sycophantic. All at the same time. In one look, he managed to express everything I love about First Look Media, Glenn Greenwald, and the entire US media.
Priceless.
Wonder why the smear nazi Glenbots aren’t bothered by Greenwald’s boast about how he hooked up with a poor Brazilian teenager from the slums:
“I was 38; he was 19. I was established in my career; he was poor. I grew up in a South Florida suburb; he grew up an orphan in a Rio de Janeiro slum.”
http://www.out.com/news-commentary/2011/04/18/glenn-greenwald-life-beyond-borders?page=0,2
I find nothing objectionable in Greenwald’s relationship with Miranda, which is not at all comparable to Ames’ attitude toward women, if that’s what you’re getting at.
There is more hypocrisy in the Glennbot indulgence of his remarks to feminists on Max Hardcore’s pornography, which we would probably never hear the end of if Ames had made them.
If you’re gonna try gossip around here, make it entertaining at least. Not interested in becoming the flip side of Glennbotics.
Point taken. Don’t find it objectionable either. But the Glenbots do smear pretending to be outraged over these sorts of things, and those outrage smears are designed to scare away the many more on the sidelines watching the twitter exchange. And it’s effective in that way. Smears are meant to shut down discussion by scaring away others from absorbing your critical voice. Smears do a better job of containing critical voices from catching on with a wider audience I think you give them credit for. Smears are effective. And they seem to relish in smearing you, pretending to take the high ground. For purely tactical purposes since you engage them more than most, and quite adeptly, it can be useful to shove their cult leader’s “violations” back in their faces, it’s effective with the same larger “sideline” audience that their smears are aimed at.
Or not. They seem to have a harder time smearing you now. So maybe tactically it’s pointless. And gossip, as you say.
I agree with you completely about their smears and how smears work.
I have a personal distaste for making hay over things I don’t find objectionable myself. I also don’t share their taste for lying. I would rather just point out how horrible they are. They are making everything more dumb, dishonest and infantile. I wouldn’t emulate them, even if I could.
11. Never trust a billionaire.
They don’t teach this in schools. They really should. Maybe it takes a lawyer not to know this.
12. Google are full of shit.
I choose Google because they appear to be more full of shit than the rest. In reality, it’s probably all much of a muchness, but Google annoy me more, perhaps irrationally. There never-ending legalese and ”complying with the law” schtick is, well, really dumb. I don’t for a minute thought they tried very hard to defend their customers (which is, like, most of the planet), which is unforgivable from a company housing the brightest minds on the planet. Actually, a betrayal, on careful consideration. It’s all made me more curious about their position on China, too. They feigned reluctance, but did comply with Chinese diktat, which seemed odd at the time. Is there a Greenwaldian firework to this tale? Meth, please.
13. Whistleblowers come in all sorts.
It was brave to release the docs, I couldn’t have done it. But I watched Snowden admit to, previously, working undercover with the CIA, and thought, ‘douche’. Actually, I also though ‘liar’, but his obvious pride in his CIA-ing is more relevant. Generally Snowden gives of an air of douche, at best.
Manning, I think ‘troubled’. And I don’t mean the sexuality, or gender identity issues*, of which I know very little, and it’s not beyond the Pentagon to tell us tall tales about this kind of thing, either. Manning’s personal issues have, quite evidently, been highlighted by bastards to undermine Manning himself. No, I mean troubled as in someone who has been shocked deeply, someone who has had an experience which changed them. I think Manning is genuine (I don’t know, of course), and that watching kids die in Iraq was formative. Snowden, not sure what his Iraq views are, if indeed he has any.
Good list though. Maybe my comments are sub-sets of the initial list. I’d also add that I’ve been considering 4. as well. I did defend WL previously on this score, thought Tarzie was being harsh. Tarzie did not agree, and it’s his blog. It’s a complicated one, for me. Assange has, when interviewed, defended Manning, and has done so regularly. Called him a hero, slated the NYT for their coverage of his trial etc. At the same time, he’s continued to support GG and Snowden, who were, I see, well out of line on Manning. Not only out of line, but also critical on the day of his sentencing, which was basically malicious. In the spirit of enquiry, is Tarzie contending that Assange should make a break with GG and Snowden? It’s an actual question, not being sarcastic. I ask as I don’t believe that Assange has clearly thrown Manning under a bus, but rather hasn’t defended him to the extent he might\should have. So, this makes me question if it’s divided loyalties, or just indifference. I don’t know. Assange also has douchy qualities, but has never criticised Manning, to my knowledge. And I’ve never bought the Assange as narccisist schtick. Bit weird, as all smart people are, but not the same thing.
* Full disclosure: white straight guy posting. If ‘gender identity issues’ is a crap way of putting it, apols.
“11. Never trust a billionaire.”
I reserve the right to refuse service to any billionaires.
New Director of Security at First Look coming from Google.
https://firstlook.org/2014/06/05/morganmarquis-boire/
The wagons, they be circling.
Just tweeted this. Would have h/t’d you but couldn’t find Twitter handle.
Hi Tarzie
if you agree can we add one more to your list in your post
when asked why he has published so few documenst, GG will always says go ask establishment media why they are also publishing so little
i think you can word it better but in may ways it was what started this dialogue “fuck you guardian drip stick” and has now become what GG hides bebind. for a “fearless no one controls me” reporter why does he constantly refer to other outlets when asked why has he not reported x, y z. i
am i making sense? if not i will try to explain again. but in short what i am saying is GG says ” i can work for the devil” because i can do what i want, but when asked why he has not done x he says “why are you askining me why not ask all those outlets’ which BTW I. already told you, unlike me are controlled”
total disconnect.
I GG. am free
MSM is not
But when you questioned why given my freedom i have not published “? ”
i ask you whyre you not asking those questions from MSM
Not really able to find much analysis here, positive or normative, it’s all just Mean Girls. Don’t see the point.
Oh God, ‘positive or normative’.
You might want to shield your IP if you’re gonna troll me like some dipshit, thedoctorisinthehouse, though why you’d wanna do that is beyond me.
You know, a lot of this thinking: “Libertarians love Greenwald and Snowden the hardest.” Comes from the media shut-out of the early NSA whistleblowers who were, are, Liberals. You might not care for the word, GG sure does not, but that is a fact and liberals very much can be fighters, not too many of them, but a few.
I am a big Snowden fan because I am also a whistleblower, I know what it takes. I caught big Tech sharing its user-data with the NSA in 2010. Big Tech is doing everything possible to distance itself from the scandal, money and pundits and distancing campaigns are all over Twitter, its sickening.
Snowden’s message is getting lost and the ongoing media shut out of whistleblowers coming from the Tech side of PRISM, is just stupid and exhausting.
I was asking in another comment here, Who is the Joseph Goebbels of Google? I found out, Google’s crazed, New Age gone Whack, director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil.
Director of engineering? Engineering the Media! To control the channels of public information, to control Us. That is what I have seen, the extent of which, the infiltration of the University’s for instance, enormous in scope.
Transhumanism debunked: Why drinking the Kurzweil Kool-aid will only make you dead, not immortal
http://www.infowars.com/transhumanism-debunked-why-drinking-the-kurzweil-kool-aid-will-only-make-you-dead-not-immortal/
Quite late to the thread, as it’s likely dead, but I did want to make a try at answering “What is the Intercept?” question.
It’s exactly like the seriously unfunny Jerry Seinfeld’s teevee show, billed as ‘A show about…nothing’.
What is First Look?
It’s the (Un)HuffPo World announced at Davos, dahlinks; the two cancel each other out, even as fans of FL imagine the Grand Chimera of Transformative Journalism, shimmering in hopes and dreams.
It’s Standard -Bearer that beckons folks to inoculate a Billionaire so thoroughly in defense of the worthies who will certainly publish there one day soon, that the Empire’s deep state NGOs NED and USAID become inoculated as well.
Lord luv a duck, and good-gawd-all-Friday. http://my.firedoglake.com/jpsottile/2014/02/28/things-are-getting-weird-at-first-look-media/
I both despise – for their utterly opaque, smug self centered/self consumedness and, ‘it’s our own secret code!!!!'[ishishness] – yet sometimes quite despondently appreciate acronyms for the truths they seem to unwittingly reveal about the ugliest side of those who adore them for their opaqueness.
NED ™, in Medical terminology for those with cancer, means No Evidence of Disease[!] yet ultimately means, once you have cancer, it’s there to stay and just because there’s no clear evidence of disease doesn’t mean that the disease isn’t there to stay and forever multiply and threaten your life.
NED ™, in the context you’ve commented on, reminds me of that infamous Iraq CPA™ acronym used in one of the world’s largest acknowledged thefts when the Cheney/Bush/Blair regime, et al destroyed the fertile crescent. I’ve always believed the choice of words which equated to that CPA™ acronym were quite deliberate and venal.
To further clarify, CPA™, in the context of that theft, was the acronym/code ‘word’ for:
[The ’United States’] Coalition Provisional Authority [of Iraq]
An acronym/code ‘word’ which for over one hundred years, always stood for:
Certified Public Accountant [of the ‘United States’] – one whose vocation – ideally, though that is not at all how it worked out in terms of those most well-known [US Congressional] Thought Leaders™ and succe$$ful in that profession – was supposed to protect others from embezzlement, rather than engage in it on behalf of their ‘clients.’
I’m a libertarian and I can’t stand him but I’m one of the few (probably because I read you and Silber and they don’t). It was hard choking down that red pill.
Ronan Sinatra had him on his show yesterday and when he asked about the drip-drip and said, “some say it looks like a PR campaign,” Lord Greenwald took another shot at Wikileaks, complete with an appeal to authority:
“[W]e’re not just taking documents and randomly uploading them to the internet-we’re doing actual journalism, as the Pulitzer committee and some other prizers acknowledge.”
And “very imminent,” eh? What an amazing coincidence that he’ll be releasing “The last one…where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues,” just in time for the 4th of July. What a fucking joke.
This dude is repulsive. I knew we had problem when he rejected institutional racism in his comments section back at salon.
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