In the Midst of This Blood Summer

It would appear that Pierre Omidyar has decided to pull the plug on his Grand Plan to Transform the Media at First Look and content himself with a blog or two that "experiment" with various means and methods of... what... exactly?

That's still something of a mystery, but the Grand Plan appears to be dead.

Some time back, Pierre put up a blog post that you wouldn't have known about unless you're following his twits or those of some of his stable of writers closely. I think I noticed it in passing through the comments on some post at The Intercept. It got little or no notice outside the world of the First Look at any rate, but it is an interesting walk back from all the promises announced and tub-thumped for so very long by the First Lookers and Interceptors -- without any discernible results for month after month, except one: the huge stable of writers Pierre had assembled essentially stopped writing once they signed with Pierre. Even the ever prolix and prolific Greenwald's output diminished to practically nothing for weeks at a time.

Reducing or eliminating output by formerly busy and sometimes power-questioning writers appeared to be the main purpose of First Look, as many observers pointed out, sometimes unkindly. Jeremy Scahill essentially disappeared; Matt Taibbi likewise. Oh they did their rounds for their book/movie tours, but that had nothing whatever to do with First Look or anything else that Pierre was involved in (so far as we know. He had his had in many ventures.) Laura Poitras has never contributed to The Intercept, nor has Liliana Segura. Marcy Wheeler bailed out months ago after contributing one piece. There were occasional pieces of generally "old news" by Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Devereaux, sometimes co-bylined by Greenwald, but likely not co-written by him. There were a few articles by Murtaza Hussain. But apart from that, practically nothing, month after month.

The lack of production and the frequency of excuses was striking, especially given all the other news startups going balls to the wall at around the same time, with special mention of Quartz, Vox, and Vice, but they are far from the only ones. They and many other online news sites have been running circles around Pierre's First Look (that was getting nowhere, with its one "magazine" that so rarely published and seemed quite flaccid when it did.) There was and is simply no comparison between First Look's practically absent content and the daily sometimes extraordinary content of a dozen or more online news ventures that were actually cranking out... erm... news.

So. John Cook appeared to order everyone to sit down and shut up and wait for however long it would take to get the operation up and running; it wasn't ready yet, and all the nay-sayers were poopy-pants. Greenwald would post when and if he wanted, and everyone else would be on hiatus until the site was "ready." So just shut up. Then he disappeared again, they said "on vacation". Who knew? Who cared?

First Look was looking more and more like the Last Look Back as news was being broken all over the media long before anything would appear in the one faltering "magazine" that was essentially a group blog on a broken WordPress platform, a group blog that hardly ever published or updated.

First Look and The Intercept were a joke.

Pierre had to intervene because this month-after-month of nothing made him look ridiculous for devoting $50 million or $250 million to... nothing. Wags made mock, to say the least.

Pierre's primary claim is that the enterprise is still very much a "startup." Which means, essentially, that it doesn't actually exist as a going concern, and it may never.

It is a still experimental experiment that may never go anywhere at all (startups are like that you know) and it is no longer positioned to be this "transformative" media thing-a-ma-bob that it was promoted as, but just what it will be, nobody knows. There will be Greenwald's blog and the now re-conceived Taibbi Thing (to debut sometime, one day... maybe) and that's about it.

Pierre will continue to support something similar to an investigative journalism enterprise, by funding things like travel and accommodations and legal fees and whatnot, but what comes of it, if anything, may be published elsewhere in already extant outlets rather than at anything new and transformative that Pierre has created out of the air.

In other words, First Look, as it was conceived is dead.

It ain't gonna be that.

And it may never be anything.

Got that?

Good.

There's a message here somewhere...
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In the meantime, Telesur English is up and running. Those devilish Chavistas. Check it out. 

Is That All There Is?

There's a long well-written piece over at the now nearly moribund Intercept that informs us that five prominent and well-connected Muslims (or four and and atheist, accounts vary, even within the piece) had their emails intercepted and spied upon by the NSA -- or maybe it was the FBI using technology provided by the NSA, accounts are unclear -- from about 2003 to about 2008, though it's neither clear nor certain when the interception started and whether it has stopped.

What is apparently clear is that the email interception and surveillance happened, and that these five men agreed to be interviewed for the Intercept, and their stories are interesting.

As I say, the article is quite long, some 8,000 words, and there are embedded videos that continue their sagas in some detail. All of these men were and are well connected in the American Muslim community, and most were very well connected with Power. Some were fairly frequent visitors to the White House and one ran for office. The idea that these men were subjected to surveillance -- by having their emails intercepted and read -- is apparently supposed to shock our consciences, as it is patently obvious that these men were not deserving of such scrutiny, even if it was legal, which is not entirely clear. It may well have been legal, but even if it was, these men of all men did not deserve the dishonor and humiliation of being surveilled by the state.

They were and are prominent, important people, you see. Men of substance, gravitas. Leaders among men. High ranking staff of important elected officials. Lawyers. These men, of all men, did not deserve to be treated like the common herd.

Should these men have been exempt from surveillance by reason of their status? That seems to be the upshot of the long anticipated story "naming names."

That only five names are named -- out of a list of several thousand email addresses that was provided by Edward Snowden -- and all of those named are Muslims (or four Muslims and an atheist) has caused something of a stir among the rabble who were so eagerly awaiting the post that would "name names" and be a "fireworks finale" and so on and so forth. Greenwald hyped this thing to the heavens in numerous teevee and print interviews over the past few months, waxing rhapsodic (well, as rhapsodic as he can wax) over the spectacle he was preparing to unleash around the end of June/Fourth of July.

Some of his thunder was stolen by Bart Gellman at the WaPo who wrote -- before the release by the Intercept -- that the NSA actually sweeps up many hundreds of thousands of emails in their surveillance dragnet, and most of them -- more than 90% -- are in no way related to investigations into terrorism or various prioritized criminality. They are "innocents."

Just as Greenwald's named names are.

Of course, in the minds of many Americans, Muslims, per se, are not innocents at all, and the more scrutiny and surveillance they are subjected to, the better. This is pure bigotry in most cases, and the article describes a somewhat astonishing level of crude bigotry that informed the actions of the FBI at the time these men were being surveilled. Good heavens! How unprofessional! Indeed. It was the Cheney era. What does one expect?

Which leads to a consideration of the letdown this supposed "fireworks show" and finale represents for many who have seen it and read it.

If that's truly all there is, it's pretty much a nothing-burger.

Airy but not very nutritious.

Everyone knew, did they not, that American Muslims were being spied upon,  sometimes very intrusively, and in great numbers, said to be justified by the threat they supposedly posed to the good order, peace and security of Regular Americans, thanks in large measure to the attacks on 9/11/2001 which killed several thousand innocents.

Their actual innocence can be disputed, but that's another issue.

The Muslim threat was and is considered real by the malefactors of the State. The threat is not to "innocents"-- the threat is to the State and to the Power of the State.

When Cheney was running things, paranoia was rampant within the government to the point where he ordered a bunker built under his mansion at the Naval Observatory. Thousands were rounded up, protesters were encaged, innocents were rendered and tortured, wars of aggression were ordered and undertaken against peoples who had nothing to do with the attacks, millions have died or been displaced.

That's the legacy of what happened one day in September so many years ago. That's the Cheney legacy, too, for Cheney let it happen -- whether deliberately or not is beside the point. He had and has another priority than the protection and security of the American people: his priority was his own protection and financial well-being and after the attacks, he concerned himself with the protection and security of the State and particularly its executive apparatus.

Anything and everything was fair so long as his priorities were met.

The loyalty he inspired and still inspires within the confines of the Government and its contractors is something of a wonder, especially given the nearly universal contempt with which his ostensible Boss, George Bush, is held.

The five men named and profiled in the long-awaited Intercept report were close to the Bush-Cheney White House, and given the paranoia of the times and the paranoid natures of the men and women in charge in those days, it's no wonder at all that these five men were placed under surveillance. They and many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of others were and are subject to the gentle kindness of State surveillance, on the basis of the lingering paranoia that seems to have wormed its way into the foundations of government today.

By no means were or are Muslims the only targets, any more than the NSA is the only or the primary surveillance outfit.

The problem with Greenwald's reporting on the topic all along has been its narrow focus and its obsession with the NSA. Well, that and the endless hype that leads... essentially nowhere.

The stories, when they are well-written as this one is, are interesting but apart from The Debate, they have led to no substantive positive changes in the surveillance state at all. In fact, the argument can be and has been made that the changes that have taken place and those to come have strengthened and expanded the surveillance state, not weakened it at all. The revelations have mostly been of "things we already knew" at least in broad outline. They've filled in details, but the details simply let us know how very pervasive corporate and government surveillance is. It hasn't provided us with tools to do anything about it; in fact, the revelations have essentially let it be known that "you can't do anything about it." And so, knowing they are under surveillance, Americans are more careful about what they say and what they do, aren't they? And isn't that the point of telling people they are -- or at least could be -- under surveillance?

These revelations serve the State, whether they are intended to or not. And this latest article does the same -- in this case by making clear to American Muslims that there is no exemption for even their highest ranking comrades. They are all considered suspect.

But we knew that, didn't we?

So really, is that all there is?

Then let's keep dancing...

While John Cook Vacations...

Once again, things are getting weird at the "Intercept" where, from its launch in February, the hype is not matched by the content and the comments generally provide more actual news -- even if only aggregates from other outlets -- than the rare published items.

John Cook, who claims to be "editor-in-chief", whatever that means, has been on vacation according to reports and cannot be bothered. He's had nothing to say for months about his editorial obligations, assuming there are any.

One doesn't know.

Greenwald made an apparently ill-advised announcement that the long-awaited story he was (he said) "working on" would be published at midnight one day. It wasn't. Instead, there was a breathless announcement that the story would be held until a new government objection was investigated.

OK. So the WaPo publishes an extensive story that doesn't name names but does reveal the kinds of "inadvertent" collections of information the NSA deals with all the time, pretty much stealing Greenwald's thunder in any case. If he ever does publish his grand finale fireworks show -- looking less and less likely by the day -- will anyone care?

Greenwald continues to defend himself and hurl insults and invective via Twitter -- so at least we know he's alive. And according to reports, he's still on book tour and doing teevee appearances, so there is that.

As for the other staff at the "Intercept," with the exception of Ryan Gallagher, they have been mighty quiet since they nestled under the Omidyar wing. They have been remarkably quiet given their prolific output prior to becoming "Intercept" staff. It's almost as if shutting them up was part of the deal. The only one who hasn't been shut up is Marcy Wheeler, who just keeps cranking stories out like sausages, though she's been mighty quiet about why she left the cozy confines of OmidyarLand back in May.

Turns out Omidyar's people have been busy bees at the White House, however.

No surprise there, I suppose, given the Omidyar penchant for global power plays.

It's been my pet theory that someone at the WH called Pierre, just as the missing Jeremy Scahill teasingly suggested might happen, and asked politely that Greenwald's story -- naming names -- be held for the time being. Pierre, being the power player he is, said "Sure, why not?" and had one of his lieutenants convey the message that there might be a "problem" with one or more of the names so... would Glenn kindly look into it? 'Kthnxbai.

Greenwald's defense has largely been one of "protecting the innocent." So he can't name names without revealing the names of innocents, and that would be wrong. Unless they want their names to be named. And then it would be right. So in order to name the names all 10,000 or 100,000 names he has have to be contacted one by one, and that's ever-so-hard, and it takes a long time, and many of them may be indisposed or otherwise unable or unwilling to respond, so what are you going to do? It's such a terrific responsibility, after all. So maybe the best thing is not to name the names, just remark on the categories of those swept up in NSA collections, but we're already pretty certain of what those categories are, so is there even a story here? One that could qualify as fireworks? Maybe so, maybe not. Well, the WaPo thought there was a story, and they managed to get one out, but Greenwald's story is so much better....

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It is Summer Shark and Missing White Woman season once again, and the Missing Greenwald Story fits right in with the season. The Absent Story is a Summer Story its own self, with dozens of mentions over the last week or so. Google it. And then there's Cryptome's cryptic non-announcement that the whole Snowden trove will be revealed by the end of the month. Or not.

It's Summertime...

"Cluelessness"

It would be sad if it weren't so stupid, but apparently there is a full-on media war between factions of the ruling class, or that's apparently what we are supposed to think now that the floundering and relatively content-free "Intercept," backed by Pierre Omidyar (eBay, PayPal), is being tweaked by the Big Bullies at Pando, led by Mark Ames and Paul Carr, and backed by a plethora of Silicon Valley billionaires headed by Paul Thiel (PayPal) and Marc Andressen (too many SV software and venture capital endeavors to count). Soon after this supposed media war began, Eric Wemple of the Washington Post chimed in with a mild criticism of disingenuousness at First Look, which had the potential to add the WaPo's owner, Jeff Bezos (Amazon), to the mix, but it seems that for the moment, he has declined. Yesterday, though, Pando published another exposé of monumental Greenwaldian hypocrisy, posting a Bloggingheads video "debate" between Greenwald and Ben Smith of Politico, wherein Greenwald rakes Smith over the coals regarding who finances Politico and what their ("obvious") influence in the newsroom must be.

I saw the "debate" when it happened in 2007, and I read and commented on Greenwald's Salon posts leading up to it. The issue seemed clear enough at the time: big ticket financial backers of media enterprises are likely to influence the way the news is covered -- or if it is covered at all -- simply because they pay the bills and the salaries of their employees. Even if there is no direct contact between the finance side and the newsroom, the influence will be there. As I put it, "Money may not be speech, but it sure talks." (NOTE: Greenwald had only been at Salon for a few months at the time, and tweaking "establishment" media for click bait was part of his "beat" as it were. This was one of the first times at Salon that his goading resulted in a real donnybrook and "debate." Of course, Salon, being the Pioneer in the Online Magazine Field, could accurately be characterized as about as "establishment" as it could get among its internet compatriots. Then again, it was always in financial crisis and needed the clicks... but that's another story for another time.) :-P

The import of this "debate" now is the contrast between Greenwald's questions and certain knowledge then -- that the well known right wing management and funders of Politico must influence the news choices and skew of Politico because they pay the bills -- and the utter cluelessness and disinterest that Greenwald and Marcy have regarding Omidyar and his influence on the virtual "newsroom(s)" at First Look (they know nothing, they care nothing, they have complete "independence" so what their funder and chief does or believes is of no consequence to them.)

In retrospect, it's clear as crystal that not only was Greenwald's 2007 "debate" over Politico's management and funders primarily click-bait, but so were many, many other set-tos between Greenwald and various legal and media personalities. Positions were taken that were for the purpose of the "debate" -- but they did not necessarily have anything to do with personal beliefs or ideology. They were merely taken for the purpose of injecting ideas and getting people to pay attention. Clicks. Forget it, Jake. It's just business.

The pretense of disinterest and cluelessness about Pierre Omidyar's various political and financial operations around the world is extraordinarily -- monumentally -- disingenuous if it is true. To assert that another media outlet's coverage of the news is obviously influenced by the acts and politics of those who fund and operate it, but that First Look is somehow not influenced in any way by Pierre Omidyar's or Glenn Greenwald's positions, acts and interests borders on an absurdist comedy. Of course there is influence, both direct and subtle, and no amount of alleged "independence" can make it go away. As Greenwald rightly noted to Ben Smith all those years ago, journalists "know the work they do ought to be pleasing to the people who sign their paychecks." Of course, it's self-evident. If their work were not "pleasing" to the man or woman with the power of the purse, the journalists in question are not there. Duh.

It was ever thus, it is true everywhere, and it is as true for Greenwald and crew as it is for anyone else in the media business -- if someone else is paying the bills. If their work is not pleasing to the man who pays the bills, their work is not there.  This shouldn't be hard to understand. If one's work is not "pleasing," one is not hired in the first place; if one's work ceases to be "pleasing," one is dismissed. One does not have the option of "displeasing" the boss and staying in one's position, and one knows this -- or at least one should.

"Independence" has nothing to do with it. Or rather, what it has to do with it is that the "independence" being asserted is part of what is found "pleasing" by the boss. Assertion of "independence" is what the boss wants. Got it? What "independence" means in practice is intentionally unstated.

Apparently, for a recent example, cluelessness and disinterest in the boss's (Omidyar's) financial and political activities and interests is pleasing to the boss. When the matter is the financial and political activities and interests of some other media outlet, interfering government agency or targeted organization, however, be it Politico or what you will, cluelessness and disinterest are replaced by dogged investigation, accusation and exposure, which in that case is also pleasing to the boss. You see how this works?

Well of course. It's glaringly obvious.

Further Thoughts on the Boy's Club (and a Few Gurlz) Assembled Around The Philanthropic Billonaire

Practically anybody with a Wordpress or Blogspot site produces more content than Pierre Omidyar's flagship entry into the New Media Market.

"The Intercept," so far, has proved itself to be essentially a self-indulgent, self-congratulatory bust. Gawker and Politico, to name but two, easily run rings around them in terms of content, but so do hundreds of thousands of, well for lack of a better word, workaday blogs.

There still is (practically) no "there" there, and it seems that's the point of it. To assemble as large and as previously productive a team of journalists and commentators as possible, to bring along as many of their fans as possible, and to have them all sit around admiring the furnishings, smiling and laughing and telling one another how wonderful they are, recycling stories of past glories, and wondering when the party will start.

Well, it hasn't started yet, that's for sure.

And we must ask why, if "The Intercept" is supposed to be the start of something truly transformational and amazing, it is so very weak and enervated. Almost as if the life had been sucked out of it even before it emerged on the 'Zine scene a little less than two weeks ago.

Was that the point all along? To have a kind of empty vessel, where various media contrarians could be assembled and offered a permanent safe haven to say and do whatever they wanted and get paid for it at whatever the going rate was (or more), and where they could party hardy if they wanted, or just kick back and relax if that was more their inclination, but where they would not be required under any circumstances to do anything they didn't want to, where there would be no schedule, no demands, no production expectations, and no need to... perform?

Is this the transformative media Omidyar and others associated with him in this venture had in mind all along, and are they laughing now that they could so easily bamboozle those awaiting with such breathless anticipation the debut of this Grand New Media Thing?

Well, in a way, pretty much the same thing worked for Obama, didn't it? Gin up a huge body of fans, work them expertly, suggest -- but not really promise -- something new was on the horizon, tell them hope and change was nigh, hold their attention, but either provide nothing at all, or actually take more from the bamboozled than even the flim-flam artists of the Cheney Regime, and call it wonderful?

Is that the model for Omidyar's New Media?

Why not? It works so well in the political realm. Obama neither invented it nor does he do it all that well, though he's better at it than House Cheney has been (viz: Liz's political implosion). It's basic to post modern PR and marketing.

As an experiment, I went back through the archives, my own and at Salon, to explore perspectives on the Citizens United Thing during the hoo-hah over the Supreme Court's ruling overturning a century of campaign finance regulation and permitting unlimited expenditures of luscious cash by corporations in furtherance of 'Free Speech' as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Recall, Greenwald was out front passionately defending the ruling, while dozens of legal minds took exception to his revanchist -- and in retrospect rather juvenile -- arguments in support of the Supreme Court majority opinion. He simply dismissed the weaker dissents out of hand and he ignored the more trenchant ones altogether, choosing to focus instead on the least informed  or least strenuously agued commentary against the Citizens United decision.

What is striking to me about it today, however, is not Greenwald's casual and dismissive attitude toward the dissent -- he never actually addressed Justice Stevens' well-argued and trenchant dissenting opinion at all -- it is rather his astonishing and surprisingly pre-figuring (again in retrospect) support for unlimited corporate political speech, no matter what the result, because "Teh Constitution."

No matter how cogently and succinctly it was pointed out to him that such a thing is NOT "teh Constitution," and how the SCOTUS majority twisted themselves into knots, and actually ruled on something that was not before them to get to the Citizens United decision, and no matter how often and well it was pointed out how truly malignant this thing was, akin in its own way to Plessy v Ferguson or even Dredd Scott, Greenwald dismissed or ignored the arguments, pressing ahead relentlessly with his ideological position that the Constitution and Bill of Rights required granting full corporate free speech rights and the elimination of campaign finance laws restricting those rights -- because (this is the truly juvenile part) the language of the First Amendment didn't specifically exclude corporate speech, aka: "money," from coverage under the First Amendment.

In other words, his self-declared absolutist and unwavering position was in support of the corporation no matter what the outcome, no matter what the arguments against it, no matter what the legal precedent had long been, and no matter how weak his arguments turned out to be. None of that mattered. What mattered was that corporations have unlimited and unfettered free speech rights based on their wealth and power, and that whatever resulted from their liberation from previous restrictions and legal restraints on them was... just too damn bad. Suck. It. Up.

Corporate rights are to be maximized and if the peasants don't like it, tough. It's constitutional!

Is it any wonder a billionaire might sit up and take notice?

Of course, I don't know that that's when Omidyar's gaze first landed on Greenwald, but it wouldn't surprise me if quite a few billionaires took an interest. The internal dynamic of Greenwald's posts on the matter of Citizens United is fairly obviously directed toward making a pitch for corporate/billionaire support of him and his endeavors. He cannot be dissuaded from his belief that corporate rights and interests are fully supported by the Constitution and that they cannot be restricted in any significant way by something as silly as "law."

This is obviously not a "lefty" position on these matters, and the fact that Greenwald was at the time considered by many to be a significant spokesman for "the left"  -- though he would routinely deny any such label -- his tireless (indeed, tiresome) advocacy on behalf of the Citizens United decision was a distinct outlier in "lefty" circles. His advocacy was strident, bizarre and it was unwavering. It was therefore sure to be noticed in the chambers and halls of money and power -- because it was so contrary to much professional legal opinion and to essentially the entire "leftist" political opinion. Greenwald was seriously out of step. And that can get one noticed.

I suspect he'd been "noticed" well before his strident and contrarian advocacy on behalf of Citizens United, however.

Those of us who noted his sudden appearance on the "progressive" blog scene and followed his meteoric rise from obscurity to "lefty spokesperson" seemingly out of nowhere were more than a little perplexed. It was obvious to many of us from the outset that he was no "lefty;" he was a highly verbose legal observer, one whose political inclinations, to the extent they could be characterized, were essentially reactionary and libertarian -- though he denied and decried such labels.

But then many of those who have been involved in the lefty blogosphere for any length of time recognized long ago that many of the prime movers and shakers in the field were almost all ex-Republicans with a strong libertarian/entrepreneurial bent who felt unwelcome in Republican political circles and who recast themselves as "progressives" -- they weren't really "leftists" in any case.  In that context, Greenwald not only fit right in, he was an almost instant celebrity -- because in addition to everything else, he was out and gay and living abroad with his Brazilian lover.

Wow! Perfect!

He was immediately adopted into the "lefty" blogosphere's A-List and heavily promoted therein. His use of sockpuppets and his frequent vicious attacks on all and sundry who didn't share his opinions or who questioned his perspectives, his honesty, and/or his sometimes reactionary legal and political statements and strategies were largely ignored by his more and more rabid internet supporters, including his backchannel ones.  Absolute submission and conformity of thought was one of the most striking aspects of Greenwald's more and more cult-like followers, many of whom, like he once did, seemed to utilize sockpuppets to bulk up the appearance of support and they were quite proud of it.

Once having secured his position in the "lefty" blogosphere, it seemed there was no mountain he could not climb. His career path seemed extraordinarily smooth as he generated an enormous amount of verbiage in his columns -- not to mention several best selling books denouncing the Bush administration's legal overreach, torture, a dysfunctional political system, the hypocrisy of others, and the routinely disparate "justice" system favoring the interests of the well-off.

He was picked up first by Salon media, then by the Guardian, where he used his ever louder megaphone to "inject" (his word) his contrarian, not infrequently reactionary, ideas and political points of view into liberal and lefty consciousness, and where he built a rabid following of internet fans, most of whom were of a similar libertarian and contrarian persuasion. Few of them showed any interest in or knowledge of actual leftist or even progressive politics, politics which Greenwald himself often denounced or declared irrelevant or an out and out failure.

He made his career denouncing the mainstream media (unless it provided him or those he favored an outlet, or otherwise conformed with his interests, in which case it was "doing its job" --  regardless of his denunciations), denouncing politicians and their hypocrisy, denouncing anyone who disagreed with him, denouncing.... well, you get the picture. He was instrumental in setting up numerous non-profits and political action committees, none of which actually accomplished much beyond raising lots of money. The financial and operational transparency of these outfits was close to opaque, so much so that he was given to lashing out at critics rather than providing the kind of transparency he demanded of others.

And then, once he had secured possession of the Snowden Trove of NSA documents, he (along with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras and a stellar media staff) plighted his troth with Pierre Omidyar, the founder and chairman of eBay, whose companies are primary beneficiaries and users of NSA and other (inter)national surveillance state data and security.

And, to a not particularly surprising degree, very little -- some would say nothing -- has come from this union of strange bedfellows. So far, it is barren.

Greenwald maintains a presence on Twitter, but for the most part, his infamous Twitter wars with critics and media personalities have pretty much ceased. He has published very little for "The Intercept," though it is substantially more than Laura Poitras has, as she has published absolutely nothing on behalf of the New Media Transformational Enterprise. Jeremy has posted one piece that rehashes old news about cell-phone targeting of militants -- leading to the occasional "oopsie!" by drone pilots and night raiders in America's endless wars.

"The Intercept" itself (often without attribution) maintains an active Twitter and Facebook presence, generally referring to other media stories about "The Intercept" since "The Intercept's" own content is so very sparse. Self regard and congratulations on how awesome it all is, of course, is de rigueur. 

The few others who have posted at "The Intercept" have broken little new ground, but they have managed a good deal of self-regard and congratulation as well. Most of what is there is recycled from other news sources or opinion about what's appeared elsewhere. Gawker or Politico it ain't.

"The Intercept" would be dismissed as nonsense and piffle but for its claim of being "transformational." If that is so, and this is what the transformation of media looks like, then we can only assume we are looking at the extinction of the genre.

If this is the transformational End of media, it's going out with barely a whimper...



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Ohhhhhhh! Katie Bar The Door!  Now Pierre has picked up Taibbi! (h/t Pathman in comments, or I wouldn't a noticed it at all) Taibbi!!!!!!™ My doG in Heaven! (*Heavy breathing, heavy breathing, heavy breathing... huff huff huff huff...*) /s

Speaking of The Archives, there was a time, going on a decade ago or so, when I really did consider Taibbi, Greenwald and Scahill to be just about the only major media players with (ahem) balls, and I really did look forward to their patented eviscerations of the PTB. Sy Hersh was fading -- apparently due to knowing too much when you got right down to it. These New Kids on the Block (so to speak) were taking up the cudgel. I cheered them, and I sincerely wish they were still on paths of righteousness.

But too many questions have been raised and left unanswered. The work product at "The Intercept" is weak, and it's still almost non-existent. Pierre's (companies') activities in collaboration with and on behalf of the (Inter)national Surveillance/Security State are incompatible with notions of free inquiry, free press, and free speech. It simply doesn't scan, any more than any billionaire's personal financing of media enterprise does. No matter what your "contract" says, you're not going to have what you think you have -- not if you're honest with yourself and your audience.

When it's boiled down, it's not so much that Pierre is buying up so many of the principal antagonists to at least some of the factions of Power, it's the dishonesty and opacity of this operation. It's the near-silencing of the voices bought by Omidyar.

Greenwald himself was called out directly by Alexa O'Brien for his lies about her contacts with him in regard to joining First Look and her questions about Omidyar and the PayPal 14. Scahill's "Dirty Wars" may get an Oscar, but it's been criticized for its focus on Scahill rather than the real stories of the Dirty Wars being conducted by the United States and its allies.

Poitras is absent from Pierre's stage, as is Segura and Wheeler. What? The Gurlz have nothing to say? Nothing to show? Isn't that something...

And now Taibbi has left Rolling Stone to set up his own little shop under Pierre's wing. Given what's gone on so far, we can be all but certain that he won't be saying much for attribution and publication for the next few months, and if "The Intercept" is the model for what's to come, he won't have much to say after his own operation (under Pierre's wing) is up and running, either, nor will those he cajoles and brings along with him.

Many observers speculated that the point of Pierre's operation was to consolidate, tame and partially silence as many of the loudest media voices speaking out against Power and Money as possible, and so far, that seems to be the case.

Which leads me to speculate that others, witnessing the spectacle, will arise and take up the cause.

But that remains to be seen...

Ginning Up a Fight With Benjamin Wittes and The Excuses For Lack of Publishing at "The Intercept"

This is just absurd. But it's also typical of the horrendously thin skins of those who are aligned with Greenwald, and their assumption that every parenthetical remark in every piece by one of their "enemies" insinuates something evil and is a smear.

(One thing about Greenwald's claque I noticed long ago was that neither they nor Greenwald actually knows what a real smear is, and so they use the hasbara tactic of claiming that practically everything their opponents or questioners ask, say or write is perforce a "smear," and thus unworthy of serious consideration. It's a neat propaganda trick, and it sometimes works. Ask the Israelis. When the "you're smearing me!" tactic doesn't work, just claim the opponent is "nuts.")

Marcy Wheeler is someone I've had a relatively high regard for, both for her independent blogging at Emptywheel.net and for her many efforts at FDL and elsewhere. She's extraordinarily bright, has a memory like no other, and has done some important and timely analysis of various matters of state in the news. She is generally able to suss out the real meanings of bureaucratic and legal ass covering gibberish, and her lengthy, detailed explorations of the various ways the Overclass subverts the nation are classics of their kind.

Nevertheless, she's taking to carrying the cudgel for Laura Poitras who, she claims, Wittes thinks "shouldn't be paid" for her journalism. This has to do with a current article in the NYT -- which I can't read because I've used up my monthly allotment of free articles and I don't want to become a subscriber. Aw. I find I can read the article so long as I arrive from a link on another site, in this case Emptywheel. So I'll read it anon.

[NOTE: Having now read the article, I mostly agree with Wittes' interpretation. There is no evidence that the NSA is conducting surveillance of privileged communications -- nor, unfortunately, is there evidence that they aren't --  but it appears that the Australians are doing so and they may be sharing that information with the NSA, though there is no direct evidence they are doing so, and if they are, there is no evidence of what they are doing with the information. In addition, this sharing, if it is going on, is not illegal, though it is certainly discomforting to lawyers and their clients. There is no indication in the story of what journalistic contribution Laura Poitras made, but there is no evidence she provided only the NSA documents and did not provide either notes or written copy to assist in the writing of the story. Since we don't know the extent of her contribution, I would not arbitrarily assume she only provided the NSA documents in exchange for a fee. I wouldn't call the story itself a "nothingburger," but it lacks important evidence and with that, the question of who is doing surveillance and what is being done with the data is an open question.]

At any rate, the story is rather amply described in Wittes' post, the post which has given rise to such ire on Wheeler's part.

Wheeler's sole objection (in the linked post), however, is Wittes' supposed insinuation that "journalists shouldn't be paid," together with his implied "smear" of Poitras suggesting that she (Laura Poitras) didn't provide anything to the story in the Times but certain documents she obtained from the Snowden Trove. In other words, she may have acted as a "source" not a "journalist."

For his part, Wittes denies he said or wrote any such thing. He said that instead he was concerned about the continued confusion over sources and reporters in this story.

From my perspective, that's not what he was saying or suggesting in his post either, but we may have to circle around to that topic another time.

He does point out, though, that the NYT story isn't about the NSA or illegality or the NSA spying on privileged communications between lawyers and clients. It's about the Australian equivalent of the NSA doing so, with an occasional consultation between the NSA field office in Canberra and its Australian counterpart. From the rather vague statements apparently in the documents Poitras provided to Risen, who apparently wrote the story with little or no journalistic input from Poitras beyond the provision of documents -- which I believe Wittes does imply, but being the lawyer he is, he doesn't state it directly.

The take away from the Wittes piece is that the Risen/Poitras story in the NYT does not say what many of the NSA's antagonists think it says. It does not say that the NSA is conducting this particular intelligence operation, but it does say that the NSA's Australian counterpart is. It doesn't say that the NSA is collecting privileged communications between lawyer and client (though I wouldn't be surprised if it were) and it doesn't say that any of this is illegal.

Focusing on Wittes' locution regarding Poitras getting paid or not, however, distracts entirely from those points, doesn't it? In fact, this is a typical tactic used by Greenwald and his confederates. If something appears in the media which just might raise some questions about interpretation (say) of an item which Greenwald or one of his cohorts has posted, a furious effort will get under way, led either by Greenwald himself or by one of his acolytes, to distract attention from the issues raised -- whether by smearing the writer or speaker, by calling them "nuts," by focusing on a minor word choice or error, or by bringing up entirely irrelevant points, or by launching relentless ad hominem and tu quoque attacks, or by using them in combination or all of them together, depends largely on the severity of the questions or points being raised by the opponent as well as the opponent's prominence.

This is guaranteed to happen to anyone who might be taken seriously; those who wouldn't be taken seriously anyway or who are not sufficiently prominent are ignored.

This particular incident, however, has the earmarks of being a false controversy, because it's obvious to me that Wittes deliberately inserted language into his post to initiate exactly the kind of hoo-hah eruption as has started. He knew that by suggesting that Poitras is "only a source" for this article, he would raise the ire of the Greenwald troopers. He must have known that this would distract from whatever point he's trying to make. Which leads me to believe he doesn't much care whether his point is made or not. He's just tweaking the troopers for sport.

Fine.

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Meanwhile, in a piece topped by a full face portrait of Pierre Omidyar, "Capital New York", an Albany political and media news outlet headed by Jim VandeHei (also head of Politico and formerly White House correspondent for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal), interviews First Look Media's Executive Editor Eric Bates (formerly of Rolling Stone and former boss of both Matt Taibbi and the late Michael Hastings) regarding the more and more widely noted lack of content at "The Intercept," First Look's flagship magazine.

Bates is full of locutions and excuses, claiming that "The Intercept" postings will not be tied to a "hard timeline," and

"The timing of the reporting will be driven by the reporting itself. When they've got it nailed down and ready to go, they'll put out a story,” First Look’s Eric Bates told Capital on Tuesday. “I think it's by virtue of the nature of being in a philanthropic mode.”

If that isn't one of the more obtuse and opaque statements by anyone in the media since the WaPo's Deborah Howell, I don't know what is.

In one of the most astonishing statements from an Executive Editor I've ever seen -- and I've seen some doozies -- he seems to be saying that there is no new content at "The Intercept" because there is no news "nailed down and ready to go" that his reporters care to report. This of course is a complete contradiction to what Greenwald said to the Financial Times last week.

According to Bates, they are "in a philanthropic mode." Whatever that means. My take? The Movers and Shakers of Omidyar's startup new media node quite likely aren't being paid. They are the ones presently in "philanthropic" mode. Not their owner...

[Note: a couple of things I intended to write concerning the story about "The Intercept" in Capital New York got left out inadvertently.  In addition, when I tried to open the link to the story above, I got a 500 Internal Server Error. It took some doing to actually get back to the article, which could be due to any number of things...]

To continue:

The "philanthropy" that Bates appears to be referring to, however, is Omidyar's financial support of the enterprise, though it is not really clear, and why his financial support should actually be responsible for the minimal output at "The Intercept" is even more puzzling.

There is this surprising, indeed astonishing claim, for example:

 First Look Media debuts The Intercept in an interesting position: The need to release information obtained through Greenwald and fellow editors Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras' reporting, flowing from documents provided by Edward Snowden, is regarded as urgent enough to have required unshackling from the limitations and ensuing time constraints faced by Greenwald's former editors at The Guardian. At the same time, a massive media enterprise is envisioned that will take months and years to coalesce.

My emphasis. Was this the case with Gawker, with which Greenwald compares First Look in his FT interview last week? Was it the case with Politico or any of the numerous other online enterprises of people like VandeHei?  And what is being referenced here? The entirety of the First Look Media venture, or just "The Intercept?" As is the case of so many of the statements and so much of the reporting on the Omidyar effort, it's almost gibberish, and almost impossible to tell what is "really" being said.

Speaking of gibberish, Bates's quotes throughout the article are largely nonsense statements:

“We don't, at least initially, have to try to feed the beast at some frantic pace and that serves the journalism as well,” Bates said.

What is this "beast" of which he speaks, and is it too much to imagine at least one new post a day at "The Intercept?" Is that too "frantic" a pace? DoG knows, we wouldn't want to put anybody associated with it out after all...

"Part of the trick is you got so much material and this type of material doesn't necessarily readily reveal itself," Bates said. "So it really takes a lot of work to understand what is in there, so having this platform available will help answer that question. And getting that out there is really urgent."

Whu??? This statement truly is utter gibberish.  There's so much material, but it "doesn't reveal itself" and it takes a lot of work to understand it, so having a platform available will answer what question exactly? But there's no timeline or urgency to feed the beast, no timeline for publication of anything, so getting "that" out there is somehow "really urgent????" What the fuckity fuck? He's just babbling bullshit.

The rest of his statements are equally opaque and nonsensical.

"The Intercept" and its parent "First Look" will, apparently, not be tied down to any schedule, any timeline, nor any regular production, no matter what Greenwald says from Rio. This is, after all, "transformative media."  The fact that so little has been posted to date, and absolutely no "news"  has been posted that hasn't been extensively reported elsewhere in the past, is -- I guess -- the "transformation" of media that Omidyar and crew always intended. That there is no "there" there is the point. Eh? It is a platform for these enterprising journalists to... have a platform.

And thus, no "news" -- fit to print or otherwise.
----------------------------------------------------
Laura Poitras, as an example, has not, so far, written or posted anything for "The Intercept," but within the last couple of days, she has collaborated with James Risen at the NYT on a story hailed as "revelatory" of the perfidy of the NSA, based in part on Snowden docs no less , which is what "the platform" under Omidyar was/is touted to be for. But she's had nothing to say for it or about it since its existence was "leaked" last October.

If this is how Transformative Media is operated, we have been led down a very deep and dark rabbit hole indeed.

Just a Friendly Reminder on What 'The Intercept' Was Touted To Be

On February 14, 2014, five days after Pierre Omidyar's Flagship Online Magazine, Glenn Greenwald's "The Intercept" went live in the dead of night, the Financial Times published an interview with Greenwald in its "Life & Arts" section entitled "Lunch with FT: Glenn Greenwald" -- which presents an extended description of being in Rio de Janeiro,  the heat, the restaurant, the menu, the food, and the interviewee before actually interviewing him on the topic of the Snowden Leaks and the New Media Venture, First Look.

Part of what made the piece interesting was its emphasis on the locale, the history of this restaurant in the lives of Greenwald and spouse David Miranda, the menu, the food,  the oppressiveness of the heat and humidity, the details of the bill, and so on. While some people might object to such personal, even private, detail in a story about portentous matters of state, in fact, it struck me as one of the first times Greenwald has been featured in a news article which doesn't obsess on those portentous matters -- at least not initially -- and instead presents a human interest story about... having lunch with a celebrity. Gosh! Who'd a thunk it, right?

Of course, Greenwald has become the media celebrity of the moment, far eclipsing what he objectifies as  "the source," ie: Edward Snowden, who is apparently ensconced in a luxury suite of rooms somewhere in the Moscow area. Actually, the public has never known more than a tidbit or two of Snowden and his whereabouts. Apart from rare interviews that have taken place in or near Moscow, there is no independent confirmation that he is even in Moscow -- let alone that he was ever marooned in the Sheremetyevo Airport for weeks.

This lack of evidence and confirmation or even visualization of Snowden, his history, or his whereabouts contrasts starkly with Greenwald's nearly continuous interviews for print, radio and television, interviews conducted by the many, many journalists who have traveled to Rio where they have met and interviewed him (and his dogs) at his home or as in this case, at lunch at a fine restaurant in the Ipanema district, Bar do Beto, where, according to Greenwald, he and Miranda once came regularly for meals and to hang out. As they no longer live in the area, however, they don't often return and have only begun coming back recently. (I was once told where in Rio Greenwald and Miranda -- and the dogs -- now live, but I have since forgotten. All I recall is that it was in a western district bordering a favela on one side and the jungle on the other.)

As reported, the meal included an appetizer of squid rings and prawns for two, (R$93.80), a serving of bread, and some soft drinks, which, together with the cover and service charge, came to a total of R$171.58, or about £43 in real money, or $72 or so American, not an inexpensive lunch to be sure, but probably typical for lunch in Ipanema -- on the FT expense account no doubt.

I go through all these details and side stories because that's basically how the FT writer, Geoff Dyer, approached the story. It is, after all, in the "Life & Arts" section, not the hard news section. So, we can all meander for a while and fan ourselves as we vicariously settle in, enjoy the ambiance and develop our narrative. Why it's almost like a Tennessee Williams play, isn't it?

Greenwald, according to Mr. Dyer, is quite charming in person -- as opposed to his aggressive and combative persona on the teevee and the internet.  His laughter can even become a "giggle," says Dyer, who quotes Greenwald speaking candidly about his often abrasive public persona, “People are sometimes not sure what to expect,” he says. “They think they are going to meet this total asshole and get screamed at.”

Yes, well... actually everyone I know who has met him says pretty much the same thing about him: he's nothing like his reputation for bullying and aggression might suggest. He's actually kind of... erm, sweet. Cough.

Which only goes to show, perhaps, that what the world sees of Greenwald on the television, in print, and on the internet (particularly his infamous Twitter wars with journalists and random critics) probably shouldn't be taken at face value. On the other hand, the extreme dichotomy between his constantly raging public persona -- that "total asshole" of which he speaks -- and his behavior in person as a rather charming gentleman might give one pause and perhaps might make one think there is something a bit off about him. We all understand "playing a role," but in Greenwald's case, is there something more going on? ("I'm just asking questions...")

In fact, during the time I was part of his commentariat at UT and later at Salon, I witnessed his sometimes appallingly abusive, hostile and aggressive behavior toward regular commenters and casual visitors alike, often on no pretext at all. He'd just go off on them, viciously. I came to believe these displays of extreme cruelty and viciousness were fundamentally part of his make up. He could no more prevent himself from attacking others in that way than a Pavlovian conditioned dog can keep from salivating at the sound of a bell or a wife-beater can keep from beating his spouse... as it happened, I came to see this behavior as toxic and poisonous, and I withdrew from his commentariat four or five years ago.  I look at what we see of him on teevee and internet these days as very much the "real Greenwald" -- or rather, as one of the personalities of the "real Greenwald."

As lunch continued, Mr. Dyer asks Greenwald about "The Intercept," and among his responses,  one stood out -- especially given what has been posted at "The Intercept" to date:

Greenwald said that "The Intercept" will be publishing daily news stories (it does not), that he, Greenwald, will write a column every day as well as reporting stories (he does neither), and there will be guest op-ed writers, something that has not occurred, as all material so far posted to "The Intercept" is written by staff or -- in the case of the night-time pictures of NatSec parking lots -- is a guest photo-essay. (I would have quoted from the FT article, but their lawyers say I can't quote more than 30 words, which is bullshit, and I refuse to play these games with the FT legal department.)

Greewald also claims that "The Intercept" will be "like a news outlet." But it isn't. It's very much like an extremely slow-moving group blog, with very widely spaced posts, all of which, so far, consist of rehashes of previously reported news, or in one case, Greenwald's usual and previously aired polemics against James Clapper and President Obama. There has been no "news" in the "breaking" or investigative sense at all. The closest to an investigative report is Jeremy Scahill's lead article (also bylined Greenwald) on the use of NSA signals intelligence to target drones and night raids in Afghanistan and elsewhere, based principally on the testimony of two former drone pilots, but this, too,  is "old news" in the sense that A) it is NSA's job to provide signals intelligence to the military and its other clients -- ahem; and B) the use of cellphone metadata and geolocation information to target strikes against so-called "militants" and others has been well known and widely reported extensively for many, many years. Except for some scraps of testimony and some strangely disembodied and unidentified clips from "documents", there is nothing at all new in the lead article for "The Intercept."

The stark contrast between what Greenwald claims "The Intercept" will be and what it is and has been so far, strikes me as somewhat similar to the contradiction between Greenwald's aggressive and bullying public persona in print and other media and his relatively low-key and charming behavior in person. But there is also the contrast between the phantom-like Edward Snowden and the peripatetically in your face Greenwald, or the contrast between the shy and retiring billionaire Pierre Omidyar and the blustering, ever-furious Greenwald... There are so very many contradictions and contrasts, aren't there?

What "The Intercept" eventually will be is anybody's guess, but what it is is nothing at all like what  has been touted for the last several months, nor is it even remotely like the online publication Greenwald recently described for Geoff Dyer at the Financial Times.

But I'm sure it's serving its purpose... I go to Rio... 

This Just In!

Apparently Pierre's media baby called "The Intercept" hasn't been entirely shut down, as another old story has appeared within the last few minutes penned by Murtaza Hussain  -- who sometimes sat in for Greenwald when he went on vacation from  Salon.

It's about the grotesque ordeal Rahina Ibrahim, a former Stanford University student and citizen of Malaysia, has been put through for the last nine years by an out of control "no fly list" held by some sub-agency of the FAA and maintained by the DoJ to interfere with the travel of tens of thousands of people world wide, often with neither cause nor accountability.

Ibrahim has been fighting to find out why she was placed on the no-fly list for the past eight years, and recently a judge ordered that she be told: it was a clerical error. However, she is apparently still on the no-fly list and denied a visa to return to the US, as those who put her name there, and those who maintain her name there, have consistently refused to correct their error, no doubt fearing that to do so would set a bad precedent -- or something. And of course, the government continues to invoke the state secrets privilege in the matter. After all, fuck ups must remain secret or the Apocalypse will be nigh.

It's nice that Hussain has somehow found the time to cover the story of Rahinah Ibrahim's ordeal for "The Intercept," I suppose, but the second comment under the article points out that "Papers, Please!" has been covering it extensively, for years. Not only have they been covering it, they've actually been posting documents and other ephemera connected with the case.

Observe:

The price of justice: 9 years, $3.9 million, and counting

On January 2, 2005, Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim found out she was on the US government’s no-fly list when she was denied boarding, arrested, handcuffed, and locked in a cell for two hours when she tried to check in for a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii.

Just over nine years later, on January 14, 2014, a Federal judge entered judgment in Dr. Ibrahim’s favor following the trial in her lawsuit challenging her placement on the no-fly list, her mistreatment by Federal and San Francisco government employees and contractors, and the denial of her right to due process of law.

Dr. Ibrahim’s pro bono lawyers have now applied to Judge William Alsup for reimbursement by the government defendants of their costs: $3.6 million for 11,000 billable hours of attorneys’ and paralegals’ time, plus more than $300,000 in out-of-pocket expenses (including fees charged by the defendants to Dr. Ibrahim’s lawyers for obtaining clearances to see evidence alleged by the defendants to contain Sensitive Security Information).

The total price of justice: Just under $4 million dollars — and counting.  The government defendants have until February 13th (30 days after the entry of Judge Alsup’s judgment) to decide whether to appeal that judgment to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where they have already lost two appeals of pre-trial rulings in Dr. Ibrahim’s lawsuit.  If the government appeals the judgment, payment of their fees and expenses (which depends on Dr. Ibrahim having “prevailed” in the litigation) will be further delayed while more costs accrue.

There's much more at the site, and I urge anyone who is interested in the soft police-state of denial to wander over to "Paper, Please!" and have a gander at the lengthy and detailed coverage they've been doing of this and other cases for a long, long time.

The Question is One of Policy

Pretty pictures, taken at night from a rented helicopter by Trevor Paglen, contributor to "The Intercept":



So far, "The Intercept," Pierre Omidyar's first of a myriad of digital "magazines" intended to transform media in the Post-Modren Era, has been very weak tea indeed.

There is -- so far -- very little content, and what there is tends to be recycled, rehashed, and recapitulated  from previous work by the participants in the venture, or -- as in the case of Jeremy Scahill's lead article  (also bylined Greenwald, but there is no indication of his contribution to the piece) about the NSA providing targeting data to drone pilots and others responsible for killing various suspects in foreign lands -- warmed over old news with a dollop of the Snowden NSA Trove mentioned for spice. (Nothing in the Trove is actually clearly identified in Jeremy's piece).

Froomkin offers nothing new in his think piece, nor does Greenwald in his froth-laden but largely substance-free polemic attacking James Clapper and "the media". There has been no word, so far, from the third member of "The Intercept's" editorial triumvirate, Laura Poitras, who has seemed strangely silent about the venture from the moment of its "leak"  to the public last October to its launch early  Monday morning -- and up to last night, the last time I looked in on the site. As for the night-time pictures of NatSec facilities -- mostly their vast parking lots -- shown in the header video above and featured in large format stills taken by Trevor Paglen (a previously unmentioned contributor) ...yes? Pretty. But....? "What does a Surveillance State look like?" Trevor asked portentously.

Is it really buildings and parking lots at night? Ask somebody who's been through the Surveillance/Security State's wringer. There are plenty of them, quite a few of them very easy to contact and who are more than willing to tell their tale; and if there are no videos or photographs of what they have been through, there is always the option of hiring an illustrator or two to help us visualize what they are telling us...

The weakness of "The Intercept" has mostly been excused by apologists as the result of  a "rushed launch" -- they wanted to get something up and running for some reason. Now. Just wait, they say. It may be a somewhat rough and limited start, but things will smooth out and content will increase over time. Give it a chance. Of course, that is their standard response to criticism of this titanic and heroic new media venture funded by press-shy billionaire, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. From the outset they were saying, "It hasn't launched yet; wait till it launches before asking questions or criticizing. Its content will be the proof of its merit. Wait till it launches!"

Then it launched, just after midnight on February 10, with no prior announcement of the actual launch date (only a vague reference to "early next week.") "The launch was rushed," They said. "We wanted to get content up now, rather than wait any longer. You need to wait till there is a body of work before criticizing. This is only the beginning. There is much, much more to come. It's not fair to criticize it now."

When critics pointed out the startling whiteness and maleness of "The Intercept" staff, apologists tried to claim that since First Look's owner is "brown", the ratio b/w ratio is higher than one thinks, and who cares anyway about the gender of writers as long as their product is good? Clue: not all Persians are "brown." Most, in fact, are quite as "white" as any European.

Why they wanted to launch it now, with such soft rather than hard news is a mystery.  But then there are many mysteries associated with First Look Media and its entry into the mainstream media marketplace. "Mainstream" is a term I use advisedly in this case. For what has been put up so far is about as "mainstream" media-friendly as anything on the internet.

From my perspective, the launch of "The Intercept" is a disappointment, and for all intents and purposes, a flop. There is very little -- almost no --  "there" there.

The weakness of "The Intercept" is partly due to its striking lack of content. Given the high-caliber staff and the months of prep time they've had, that crew and its stringers should be able to roll out at least a dozen decent articles a day, a blockbuster or two a week. At the current rate of publication, however, that isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. In fact, the molasses-slow rate of posts at "The Intercept" is remarkable given the nearly constant output Greenwald alone has been noted for since he entered the media market almost a decade ago. Most of the others involved are certainly capable of multiple posts a day on their own.

Given the huge amount of money Omidyar claims to be investing in the venture, the striking lack of content cannot be rationally attributed to any lack of funding.

What's slowing production to absolute crawl might be of some interest -- if some intrepid investigative journalist wanted to look into it -- but from my perspective, it is what it is. A very, very slow and cautious entry into the high-stakes -- higher-level -- digital media market with nothing so far that might offend a certain faction of investors in that market. With nothing so far that would even interest them.

Jeremy's lead article for "The Intercept" is a long and very detailed account focusing on the NSA's provision of telephone location and metadata used for targeting suspected militants and "terrorists" abroad. The upshot is that the drone pilots rely much more on signals intelligence provided by the NSA to the CIA and the military for targeting their quarry in the various theaters of the (Glorious) War on (Some) Terror(ism) than they do on informants and on-the-ground human intelligence, and because of that, drones take out significant numbers of civilians in addition to, or sometimes rather than, the militants and/or terrorists who are allegedly being targeted.

We knew that.

In fact, the use of cell-phone meta data for missile targeting purposes has been known and extensively reported since the 1990s, and its use for the locating, targeting and liquidation of militants and terrorists in the (G)WO(S)T(ism) has been hailed for many years. Jeremy is not telling us anything that has not been reported previously about it, not even that the NSA produces and provides a significant amount of the information used for targeting and extermination purposes. Strangely enough, it's their job.

The issue isn't that the NSA provides this information despite all the hyperventilating over this "revelation."

The issue is the policies that allow and enable the more or less random identification and extermination of "suspects." That's the problem.

But Jeremy never questions those policies in his inaugural post for "The Intercept." This is particularly jarring given his large body of work to date, most of which aggressively questions the policies involved in the targeting and liquidation of "suspects" -- leading to the fiery dismemberment and death of thousands of ordinary villagers going about their daily lives,  together with an abundance of women, children and old people.

This is what a Surveillance State looks like, but let's not show pictures of that. God knows. Not that!

It might harsh somebody's mellow, and we wouldn't want that.

A follow up Think Piece was posted at "The Intercept" by Dan Froomkin some days later that went over the various matters Greenwald, et al, have covered since the Big Reveal of the Snowden Leak in Hong Kong last summer, and Froomkin, like Jeremy, also does not question the policy of "Death From Above" (h/t Starship Troopers) but implying, as Jeremy does, that if only these things were done better, targeting and killing the right suspects only, all would be fine.

It's jarring, extremely jarring, to see this kind of apologetics for criminal policies wherever they appear, but for it to appear in the inaugural posts at "The Intercept" is worse in many ways. Together with Greenwald's jeremiad against Clapper and the Media (writ large), but not against the policies nor the agencies involved in maintaining the Killer State, I think it shows quite clearly that this digital publication is intended to advance a factional -- but pro-kill -- agenda that doesn't question the underlying policies of the more and more generalized (Glorious) War on (Some) Terror(ism) but only questions the tactics employed and the merits of the lead intelligence agency (ie: NSA) providing sometimes inadequate or erroneous information on who should be liquidated this time. 

When I've brought up some of my reservations about Jeremy's piece specifically, I've been told it's "just one small article," and that because Jeremy has written other things questioning these policies and tactics, I shouldn't be concerned that this one doesn't do so. I disagree, strongly. His article continues to be the lead article for "The Intercept" and thus it sets the tone for the publication and its point of view. There is -- so far -- nothing at "The Intercept" that questions the policy of "Death From Above." So long as those policies are not being questioned by the writers at "The Intercept," but only those who are carrying them out and the tactics they are using are held to account, then I'll be of the opinion that this thing is a joke, a bad one, being played on people who convinced themselves that finally there would be a strong, independent, investigative, antagonistic media outlet that they could believe in...  So far, it consists of little more than polemics and propaganda.

The way it's going so far, it might turn out more like the Obama campaign vs the reality of the Obama administration...

Oh dear...

The question then will be "How long will it take readers to catch on?" 

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ADDENDUM: In other fora and communications, I've pointed out that while neither Jeremy nor any of the other writers at "The Intercept" have so far questioned the policies of "Death From Above" -- at least not in their writing for "The Intercept" -- Jeremy did go on Democracy Now! and was very aggressive in raising questions about it, as he usually is in both his writing and in personal appearances. That's part of why I was so perplexed by his failure to question those policies in his inaugural article at "The Intercept."

Earlier today, though, I saw an interview by Jake Tapper with Jeremy on CNN -- and shockingly, to me -- again Jeremy did not question those policies. What is going on? Is he tailoring what he says to what he thinks his audience wants to hear? That, unfortunately, was one of the criticisms I saw of "Dirty Wars," both the book and the movie. Not only was he suspected of tailoring his message, but he was accused of pulling punches so as to achieve "mainstream" acceptance. And this was well before his Academy Award nomination.

"Mainstream acceptance" seems to be very high on the list of Things Desirable by "The Intercept's" team, as they fluff and puff themselves up over every positive (and some negative) mainstream notice they receive, as they strut and preen over awards they may or may not get, as they hob and nob with the modestly high and mighty (and in Greenwald's case, go on every television venue he can find that will book him.)  I have little doubt that all the appearances and interviews they do with the mainstream media they supposedly are skewering and ostensibly loathe must be interfering with their journalism... mustn't it?

And finally, as for the extraordinarily slow and stately pace of publication at "The Intercept," I find that the site has a very active Twitter account (there is was also a pretty hilarious parody account which could be confused with the real one, sadly now suspended... but wait! It's baaaack! "The extra underscore is pronounced "WOOSH!" to illustrate the excitement of it all!" "Pierre" had that one shut down; another arose; it was shut down, too. Now there is this one... how long before "Pierre" has it's plug pulled, too? Billionaire Power, yeah baby! ) and a chock full Facebook page, both of which are being constantly curated and updated, unlike the main site itself. Which just sort of... sits there, belonely and forlorn.

Even the comment sections at the main site -- which rather quickly accumulated thousands of posts as predicted -- have pretty much ground to a slow crawl, after, of course, a not unexpected descent in to brawls and madness. There's a reason Greenwald's commentariat and the comment sections of his various outlets were sometimes referred to as a pit of vipers...

Everything Old Is New Again

Oh well...

I've just been reading this story in Foreign Policy (registration required) (link was posted in comments on Jeremy Scahill's initial story for "The Intercept") that tells almost exactly the story Jeremy tells about SIGINT being used to target and kill cell phone/satellite phone users designated "terrorists" by the Powers That Be...

Only the Foreign Policy story was written in March of 2012 after the death of journalist Marie Colvin in Homs, Syria, apparently targeted and killed by the Assad regime based on -- you got it -- her cell-phone use and coordinates.

The FP article further explains that the tactic was apparently used by Russian intelligence during the Second Chechnya War in the 1990's. An example:

Russia has spent a long time perfecting these techniques. On April 21, 1996, Chechnya's breakaway president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was speaking on a satellite phone with Russian envoy Konstantin Borovoi about setting peace talks with Yeltsin. During the phone call, he was killed by a signal-guided missile fired from a Russian jet fighter. The warplane had received Dudayev's coordinates from a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane that had picked up and locked on to the signal emitted by the satellite phone. It was Russian deception and brutality at its finest.

These methods and tactics were  apparently originated, developed and adapted by American intelligence agencies, such as the NSA and CIA (all reported in this FP article) and by the American military to be used against terrorist enemies -- and others -- world wide.

Tracking phone transmissions to hunt down targets began in earnest with a covert unit of U.S. intelligence officers from the National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, Navy, Air Force, and special operations called "The Activity." This snooping unit was also called the Army of Northern Virginia, Grey Fox, and even Task Force Orange. We see much of this technology used to inform modern drone and U.S. Joint Special Operations Command strikes. My decade covering U.S. spec ops, intelligence gathering, and their contractors highlighted the impressive ability of various countries to monitor, locate, network, and act on what is called SIGINT, or signals intelligence.

So what Jeremy was so breathlessly reporting for The Intercept has long been common knowledge in the field.

Which ultimately makes the story in The Intercept somewhat.... odd, not so much for what it says as for what it leaves out.

Wheels within wheels indeed.

First Look Launches "The Intercept"

Kinda low-key launch, it seems to me, for the Big Reveal of the Greenwald/Poitras/Scahill venture under "Pierre's" wing at First Look Media.

There are two stories and a "welcome" post in this initial effort.

One story consists of nightime pictures of some of the NatSec facilities in the DC area, apparently taken from a rented helicopter by Trevor Paglen. They're kind of pretty, though they primarily show parking lots. Well, yes. That would be right. Even the daytime pictures of NatSec facilities primarily show parking lots. And (believe it or not) you have to have a permit/pass to get into them. The parking lots themselves, which tend to surround the facilities, serve as barriers to access (by those who are unauthorized, dontchaknow). But Paglen doesn't get in to any of that, he just wants to show the pretty pictures, and the pictures are nice, make no mistake. It's good to be able to visualize these places. One place he doesn't show, however, is the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Apparently, CIA refused him permission to photograph the facility from his rented helicopter. Luckily, there is no lack of imagery available on the Google.

The other story is about the NSA's provision of targeting information to JSOC and drone operators in various "war" theaters used for liquidating terrorist suspects. Though bylined Greenwald and Scahill, it's obviously mostly Scahill's writing. A bit of it may be Greenwald's, but I doubt very much of it is.

The story is interesting on its merits, but it's got some problems, a major one in my view being its failure to question JSOC's mission -- and the policies of assassination and murder, only the tactics and the reliance on sometimes erroneous intelligence from the NSA. In addition to failing to question JSOC's mission, the story uses terminology which declares targets "terrorists" without questioning that designation. There are some uses of scare quotes from time to time in this very long and detailed article (something like Jeremy might have written for the Nation when time was and which is certainly reminiscent of "Dirty Wars"), which may present the appearance of questioning the standard, official terminology, but in fact, there is never a question about the terminology, only the expression of regret that "mistakes are sometimes made." OK, then.

Finally, I was initially struck by the near absence of any mention of the CIA in this story. They are referred to, but only in passing, early on in the story, as if the CIA is a branch of the military, when in fact, of course, the NSA is the branch of the military which is charged with supplying military intelligence. 

It's long been my understanding that many of the targeted killing/Death From Above program(s) involve the CIA, and more than a few are run independently by the Company itself, but what I got from the initial paragraphs othat CIA involvement in these things is peripheral, and that's just not right.

I have little doubt Jeremy is aware of that fact. But in "Dirty Wars," he claimed that even after being in Iraq for three years, he'd never heard of JSOC, and didn't learn of it until he got to Afghanistan, even though JSOC was carrying out a vicious campaign of terror and murder in Iraq right in front of his disbelieving eyes while he was there. It seemed to me that he was being deliberately disingenuous or deceptive about what he knew and didn't know, as there was no lack of reportage regarding the Death Squads in Iraq (I think some of that reporting came from Jeremy himself) nor was there any lack of reporting naming JSOC as the Valiant American Lead in establishing and carrying out the campaigns of terror and murder that wracked Iraq for years during the American Occupation.

As I got further into the article, however, suddenly the CIA appears (deus ex machina-like) out of nowhere taking over the hunt for al-Awlaki in the Yemen when JSOC fails to find and liquidate him. OK. Prior to that, it seems that the CIA is merely along for the ride provided by the NSA and JSOC. Interestingly, one of the sources for the story, Brandon Bryant, a former drone operator, criticizes the CIA for its "indiscriminate" targeting for liquidation, and he frets that CIA practices are afflicting the NSA and JSOC operations. Good doG in heaven...

There are also a number of stand-alone graphics in the piece which are for the most part not identified as to source or provenance. They appear to be selected quotes from Snowden-trove documents, but who knows...

In the "welcome" article -- rather obviously written by Greenwald, though bylined Greenwald, Poitras and Scahill -- we are treated to a recapitulation of most of the tropes about "accountability and transparency" we've been hearing from Greenwald for years. The initial focus on the NSA is excused as the "short-term" focus; eventually, "The Intercept" will be getting into other matters. Patience, grasshopper.

The article strongly suggests that "The Intercept" is an independent project of Greenwald, Poitras (the Invisible One) and Scahill that is merely being published by First Look Media. The implication is that "The Intercept" pre-dates First Look/Omidyar involvement, and if so, that's interesting, since apparently First Look Media's incorporation pre-dates Snowden's Booz Allen sojourn. (Which led me to speculate that -- perhaps -- Snowden and Omidyar had some connection in Hawaii -- where Omidyar lives and Snowden used to live before the Big HooHah -- prior to Snowden's contact with Poitras and Greenwald. Oh, what tangled webs, wheels within wheels, etc...)

Interesting too is Greenwald's nearly obsessive focus on the "threats" made against him and "journalism" by so many officials.

 Over the past seven months the journalists who have reported on these documents from the National Security Agency have been repeatedly threatened by a wide range of government officials. Sometimes, the intimidation campaign has gone beyond mere threats. These attempted intimidation tactics have intensified in recent weeks and have become clearly more concerted and coordinated.

This is one of his tropes, and it has always struck me as... well, crap. Though "Show Business" is probably more like it. These constantly hyped "threats" have never had any substance behind them. So Mike Rogers is running his mouth. Big. Fucking. Deal. Unlike HUAC and other governmental operations -- both current and historical -- Rogers and Feinstein and so on have no direct power to harm him or "journalism" as a trade and craft. They run their mouths -- it's part of their job.

Just as Greenwald sees it as his crusade to be the modern embodiment of Old Testament Prophets and thunder against them. It's Show Business.

Greenwald also asserts that the principals of "The Intercept" will engage with readers in the comment section, but among the more than 150 comments to the "welcome" post, Greenwald is the only one who does so, and it is only to acknowledge two "long-time" commenters and readers who have arrived to hail the new venture.

Many of the other commenters are clearly writing English as a second language, which is also interesting.

All in all, "The Intercept" strikes me as a surprisingly modest undertaking which may turn into something substantial over time -- or may fizzle out once the thrill of the NSA revelations is gone.

We shall see.
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UPDATE: 02/12/14
Froomkin now has a post up at "The Intercept" basically rehashing Jeremy's post and pretty much everything else that's been reported about the Snowden Trove to date. In it, Froomkin, like Scahill, does not question the policies only the tactics involved. Clearly the failure to question the policies of the drone wars and so much else in these initial posts at the "Intercept" is a conscious editorial decision, not a temporary lapse -- as some have tried to claim. On the other hand, given that everything "The Intercept" has so far published is "old news" (or in the case of the nighttime pictures of NatSec facilities, somewhat of a distraction) and there are no documents yet posted at all -- though unlabeled excerpts (from somewhere) are included in Jeremy's post -- it's little wonder some people suspect "The Intercept" is a bad joke. I wouldn't go that far, simply because the startup is as slow as it is, and there is much still to sort out (including clashing egos, I have no doubt.) There's still the question, too, of what kind of influence, if any, "Pierre" has on the venture. To say he has none would be, I think, criminally naive. But how much he may have is an open question. Meanwhile, I had my doubts this thing would launch at all, in part due to those inevitable ego-clashes. So I was wrong about that. Nevertheless, the launch is so low-key as to be practically mute. The "news" is old, the documents are not there, and the feel overall is pretty amateur and clunky.

Given all that, it may be strange to see me say, "It would be nice if it worked." But that's how I feel. I'd rather it didn't fail, but unless something happens to goose it up, I suspect it's not going to amount to very much. A digital hang-out, perhaps, and a blog-home for some writers...
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UPDATE: 02/11/14
Now having looked over the story again -- it is awfully long and in places quite dense -- and after having seen Jeremy's performance on Democracy Now! yesterday, I may be seeing a rationale for Jeremy's reluctance to question (in the "Intercept" story) the policies or the terminologies involved. In fact, as he has many times before, in his Democracy Now! appearance, he did question the policies -- and terminology -- and did so quite forcefully, as has previously been his way. It was rather striking to me that he didn't do so in his inaugural effort for "The Intercept,"  though. Why didn't he? Perhaps because of the function of the site? Is it to attack policies? Or is it to attack players on behalf of opposing factions?

Quite a few people are convinced that the Snowden Leak is a two fold matter: 1) a limited hangout to demonstrate to the public that they are "being watched" by some nefarious agency/agents of government, and they better not get out of line or "the man come and take them away"; 2) a hit by the CIA on the NSA for fucking up and fucking them over.  There is nothing at all in Jeremy's story to refute either notion; in fact, it reinforces both. The message is that your cell phone is a tracking and locating device which the surveillance services can use to locate you and -- if  so ordered -- liquidate you by any means necessary, and that the security services (ie: police, CIA, military, death squads, who knows who else?) will cheerfully carry out your liquidation, even if they are wrong.

Have a nice day.




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Also too: the comment count on Jeremy's drone story went from 37 or something this morning to well over 200 in the space of a couple of hours, after Greenwald's commentariat (and their numerous sock-puppets) arrived en masse. In fact, it was pretty easy to spot the bot-comments and the socks because they all said approximately the same thing (essentially nothing except "Congrats!"). Adding: Later, they got into brawls and arguments with one another, as they tended to do at the Guardian and Salon.

Over at the Guardian they could get the comment count up into the thousands in a day's time.

We'll see whether they are able to do that here.

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Further on the comments: the numbers are quickly rising, but the caliber of  commentary has declined precipitously, mostly into the weeds of conspiracy, insults, and complete bullshit. Inevitable, I suppose...