Whitney Webb — Omidyar’s Intercept Teams Up with War-Propaganda Firm Bellingcat

The Intercept, along with its parent company First Look Media, recently hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using “open source” tools — with Bellingcat’s past, controversial investigations for use as case studies. The details of the workshop have not been made public and Bellingcat founder Elliott Higgins declined to elaborate on the workshop when pressed on social media.

 The decision on the part of The Intercept is particularly troubling given that the publication has long been associated with the track records of its founding members, such as Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald, who have long been promoted as important “progressive” and “anti-war” voices in the U.S. media landscape.

Bellingcat, which is essentially Elliott Higgins, is an MI6 front organization. I will no longer be linking to The Intercept, since it has now shown that its not trustworthy.

Greenwald publicly distanced himself from the decision to host the workshop, stating on Twitter that he was not involved in making that decision and that — if he had been — it was not one “that I would have made.” However, he stopped short of condemning the decision.

If Greenwald is wise, he will resign from The Intercept immediately, as should others who do not support the decision. Silence not only of word but also of action is consent, and they become suspect of being CIA assets. It is hypocritical to say one thing and do another. If you don't agree, get out while you can still save your reputation as an honest broker of information.

This is actually no surprise to those that raised their eyebrows when Pierre Omidyar founded The Intercept and assurances were given that nothing like this would happen.

Mint Press News
Omidyar’s Intercept Teams Up with War-Propaganda Firm Bellingcat

Whitney Webb

Moon of Alabama — Sundry - Shutdown, Ukraine, Omidyar And Syria

News synopsis. Short.

Moon of Alabama
Sundry - Shutdown, Ukraine, Omidyar And Syria

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Mark Ames — Meet Pierre Omidyar! A handy primer for new First Look hires

Mark Ames investigates Pierre Omidyar and the investigative reporters he hired. Ouch. Serious smackdown.

Pando Daily

Meet Pierre Omidyar! A handy primer for new First Look hires
Mark Ames

Mark Ames — Documents show how eBay’s Meg Whitman and Pierre Omidyar conspired to steal Craigslist’s secrets

For months, Pando has been reporting on signs of trouble at First Look Media, the quarter billion dollar journalism outfit founded by Omidyar in 2013. Then, in October, after months of denials by First Look staffers, all hell finally broke lose at the startup with high profile resignations, layoffs and confirmation of widespread mismanagement and newsroom interference by Omidyar and his lieutenants. 

But while everyone was focussed on First Look’s October implosion, Omidyar was facing a far more serious threat to his image as technology’s most “civic minded” billionaire. That same month, attorneys for classified site Craigslist filed their latest complaint in a years-long legal fight in which Craigslist claims Omidyar and other eBay executives plotted to steal trade secrets in order to launch their own rival classifieds sites. 

The ongoing civil suit outlines fourteen separate allegations against the company including accusing eBay, Omidyar and senior eBay executive Josh Silverman of committing fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, and a host of other violations.…

Pando Daily

Documents show how eBay’s Meg Whitman and Pierre Omidyar conspired to steal Craigslist’s secrets
Mark Ames

Aditya Velivelli — The deadly land policies planned by Modi’s advisers and the links to Ukraine and Honduras

I don't know where to begin to summarize this it has so much intrigue where the stake runs into the multi-billions. And Pierre Omidyar is right in the middle of it. This land scheme is right out of the playbook of ultra-neoliberal economist Hernando De Soto who contends that land titling is the magic wand to lift poor nations out of poverty through legal systems establishing (private) property rights. It's another iteration of enclosure.

Kafila
The deadly land policies planned by Modi’s advisers and the links to Ukraine and Honduras
Aditya Velivelli

Mark Ames — Pierre Omidyar’s man in India is named to Modi’s cabinet

A longtime senior executive in eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s global impact fund, Jayant Sinha, has been appointed to Indian ultranationalist leader Narendra Modi’s council of ministers. 

In 2009, Sinha established Omidyar Network India Advisors and served as partner and managing director in the First Look Media publisher’s impact fund. Sinha also served on Omidyar Network’s five-member global Executive Committee, and steered well over $100 million of Omidyar Network funds into India, making it the most active single-country investment for the $700 million impact fund, the world’s largest impact fund. Earlier this year, Sinha stepped down as partner and managing director at Omidyar Network to run for his father’s seat in India’s parliament on the far-right BJP Party ticket.…

Now, with Omidyar’s former right-hand man in Omidyar Network taking power in Modi’s cabinet of ministers, it’s becoming clear why Obama’s UN Representative Samantha Power praised The Intercept’s publisher for his role as a leading private arm of the US government’s global power.

Pando Daily
Pierre Omidyar’s man in India is named to Modi’s cabinet
Mark Ames

Mark Ames — Ebay Billionaire Pierre Omidyar Helped Finance the Coup in Kiev

• Svitlana Zalishchuk is a Ukrainian political activist who organized a string of pro-Western NGOs
• These enjoyed lavish funding from USAID and the French-American billionaire Pierre Omidyar
• Zalishcuk has since entered the new Rada as part of Poroshenko's coalition and is emerging as his leading spokesperson
• She has been taking charge on a new, highly controversial "lustration" law to purge political enemies
• Omidyar opposes the US National Security State at home, but often acts to help advance Washington's interests abroad and is a frequent guest at the White House

Ukraine just held its first post-revolution parliamentary elections, and amid all of the oligarchs, EU enthusiasts, neo-Nazis, nepotism babies, and death squad commanders, there is one newly-elected parliamentarian’s name that stands out for her connection to Silicon Valley: Svitlana Zalishchuk, from the billionaire president’s Poroshenko Bloc party. 

Zalishchuk was given a choice spot on the president’s party list, at number 18, ensuring her a seat in the new Rada. And she owes her rise to power to another oligarch besides Ukraine’s president — Pierre Omidyar, whose funding with USAID helped topple the previous government. Zalishchuk’s pro-Maidan revolution outfits were directly funded by Omidyar. 

Earlier this year, Pando exposed how eBay billionaire and Intercept publisher Pierre Omidyar co-funded with USAID Zalishchuk’s web of nongovernmental organizations — New Citizen, Chesno,Center UA. According to the Financial Times, New Citizen, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Omidyar, “played a big role in getting the [Maidan] protest up and running” in November 2013. Omidyar Network’s website features Zalishchuk’s photograph on its page describing its investment in New Citizen. Zalishchuk was brought into the NGOs by her longtime mentor, Oleh Rybachuk, a former deputy prime minster who led the last failed effort to integrate Ukraine into the EU and NATO.…

Pando Daily
Ebay Billionaire Helped Finance the Coup in Kiev. His Protege Now Works Closely with Neo-Nazis
Mark Ames

RT comments on this Pando article.

This is high quality investigative reporting from an American journalist at Pando Daily who knows Russia very well.

He was the founder and editor, along with Matt Taibbi, of the iconic satirical Moscow-based English-language weekly, The Exile, which published in Moscow from the late 1990s to the late 2000s. Its archives arestill available online.
Taibbi, who later went on to be an acclaimed columnist at Rolling Stone, recently left a major internet publishing venture funded by Pierre Omidyar, the subject of this article.

In February, Ames published an important article revealing how Omidyar, in cooperation with the US government, has been heavily involved in financing pro-US activists who were instrumental in organizing the February coup in Kiev which started the Ukraine crisis.

I wonder whether this had anything to do with Matt Taibbi leaving Omidyar's employ. He must have known about it from his former colleague Mark Ames.

Wait, the plot thickens:

Meanwhile, in just the past year Omidyar Network has co-funded Ukraine revolution groups in Ukraine with the US government, and directly financed far-right, pro-business political actors in both Ukraine and in India, where a former top figure in Omidyar Network, Jayant Sinha now serves in the ultranationalist BJP Party and as close advisor to its controversial far-right leader, Narendra Modi. Previously, Sinha had served in a powerful BJP Party think-tank, the India Foundation to elect Modi, while simultaneously working as head of Omidyar Network India Advisors, and serving on the five-member global Executive Committee of Omidyar Network.

Ames wonders:

There is truly nothing like Omidyar’s contradictory roles — fighting the empire, leaking the empire’s secrets, while also working hand-in-glove with the empire’s agencies to make the world more pliable to US government and corporate interests. 

Perhaps it reflects the multibillionaire’s bizarre Howard Hughes-like schizophrenia; perhaps it’s deliberate, a co-optation of the dissident activist wing. Perhaps there’s no rhyme or reason, only the effects — an eerie silence from nearly the entire activist community when it comes to holding Omidyar or his many endeavors accountable.

Maybe the Libertarian plan is to take over the empire for anracho-capitalism instead of crony capitalism. 

Mark Ames — eBay Shrugged: Pierre Omidyar believes there should be no philanthropy without profit

Omidyar’s central role in the US national security state’s global agenda may still come as a shock to outsiders and fans of First Look media’s roster of once-independent journalists. But to White House foreign policy hawks, Pierre Omidyar represents the new face of an old imperial tradition.

Pando Daily
eBay Shrugged: Pierre Omidyar believes there should be no philanthropy without profit
Mark Ames

Neoconservatism and neoliberalism go hand in hand

Neoconservatism and neoliberalism go hand in hand. Neoconservatism is about promoting "democratic" regimes throughout the world, with the proviso that democratically elected governments that do not meet its standard are not actually legitimate. This standard is neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is the doctrine that economic liberalism is identical with political liberalism, so that no country, even a democratically elected government, is truly "free" unless it's regime conforms to the neoliberal model of the market state versus the "welfare state," with the term welfare, which originally signified well-being, having been successfully tarred with a negative connotation implying unfairness.

The fact is that the welfare state, I would now prefer to call it the well-being state, is based on distributive justice aka fairness, whereas the market state demonstrably leads to growing inequality and social dysfunction that must be controlled by the establishment of a surveillance state and a police state — the antithesis of democracy and freedom — usually in the name of national security, preventing domestic terrorism, and "preserving law and order." Naomi Klein has called it "disaster capitalism." While its poster child was Chile under Pinochet (and Friedman and Hayek), it has come home to roost in the US, UK, and EZ now that the ruling elite no longer feels it necessary to co-opt the masses.

This is a recipe for fascism and very often it has been involved in sponsoring fascistic regimes.

Counterpunch

How International Financial Elites Change Governments to Implement Austerity

Ismael Hossein-zadeh | Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa

Counterpunch
Washington Seeks Regime Change in Venezuela
Garry Leech | Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Cape Breton University in Canada

Counterpunch
Ukraine, Omidyar and the Neo-Liberal Agenda
Chris Floyd, columnist for CounterPunch Magazine

Thus Omidyar seems very much a part of the “neo-liberal order” which, as Patrick Smith noted above, the United States has been pushing “on a global scale, admitting of no exceptions.” So it is not surprising to see him playing a role in trying to spread this order to Ukraine, in tandem with the overt efforts and backroom machinations of the U.S. government. Omidyar is, openly, a firm adherent of the neo-liberal order — privitazing public assets for individual profit, converting charity and state aid to profitable enterprises for select investors, and working to elect or install governments that support these policies.

John Byrne — Matt Taibbi quits Rolling Stone, joins Glenn Greenwald

First Look, the news company created by former PayPal employee Pierre Omidyar, announced Wednesday that they had added irreverent journalist Matt Taibbi to their stable of prominent reporters.

Taibbi will lead a second newsmagazine for First Look. The First, Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept, launched earlier this month....

First Look’s release adds:

"While at Rolling Stone, Taibbi won a National Magazine Award for his reporting on the 2008 presidential election, and was a finalist for his coverage of Occupy Wall Street. The author of two New York Times bestsellers, he earlier worked as reporter for the Moscow Times, an English-language expatriate newspaper, and co-founded The eXile, a bi-weekly newspaper based in Moscow. The paper became infamous for its satirical wit, as well as for hard-nosed reporting of corruption in both the Russian government and the American aid community. The paper was the only publication to correctly predict the 1998 Russian financial crisis…

"Taibbi will be based in New York City. The name and launch date of his digital magazine will be announced in the coming months. First Look Media’s first online publication, The Intercept, led by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill, launched on February 10."

The Raw Story
Matt Taibbi quits Rolling Stone, joins Glenn Greenwald
John Byrne

It's on. Hunter Thompson must be pleased, wherever he is. Paul Krassner too.

Is Greg Palast next?

Michael Wolff — Ezra Klein, Glenn Greenwald and the odd rise of personal brand journalism

There is a new vision of journalism – call it the auteur school – in which the business shifts from being organized by institutions to being organized around individual journalists with discrete followings.

The latest development is the announcement by Ezra Klein that he will leave the Washington Post and is looking for investors to back him – with a reported eight figure investment (ie more than $10m!) – in an independent enterprise. Last week Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, who ran the Wall Street Journal tech conference AllThingsD, announced that, following the WSJ ending its relationship with them, they were setting up in business backed by NBC and other investors.

 Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA-Edward Snowden story for the Guardian, is the headliner in a new left-oriented journalism venture backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

The former New York Times data wiz-kid, Nate Silver, has left the Times to set up a new site and vertical business under the auspice of ABC and its subsidiary ESPN. Andrew Sullivan, a blogger first at the Atlantic and then at the Daily Beast, may be the grandfather of the auteur school, leaving the Daily Beast a year ago to set up his own subscription site.
In fact, one might as well include here Tina Brown, who used the seemingly attractive economics of the web, along with her personal brand and the backing of Barry Diller, to claim journalistic independence with the Daily Beast – and in the process lost, I am reliably told, an astounding $100m.

And that leads to my cautionary question: is this all journalistic vanity and hubris, ending in certain tears, or is there plausible economic logic to individual journalistic fiefdoms?

The Raw Story
Ezra Klein, Glenn Greenwald and the odd rise of personal brand journalism
Michael Wolff, The Guardian

Dominic Rushe — Pierre Omidyar: Behind the billionaire bankrolling Glenn Greenwald’s new journalism project

The founder of the online giant [eBay] is setting up a hugely ambitious news organization. Will the combination of his tech savvy and commitment to investigative journalism offer a new media model?

By the time Pierre Omidyar was 31, he was, in his own words, not just regular rich but “ridiculous rich”. With enough money to make an impact in pretty much any sphere he chooses, the eBay billionaire last week made a splash in an area that is increasingly attracting the attention of tech titans: news.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald announced that he was leaving the Guardian, where he has broken a series of stories on the National Security Agency, based on documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden. His new, as yet unnamed, venture will be a general news service backed by Omidyar. It will be the most hotly awaited news startup in years.

Omidyar’s move comes just three months afterJeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, bought theWashington Post. Omidyar, too, had looked at the paper, he wrote in a blog post. “That process got me thinking about what kind of social impact could be created if a similar investment was made in something entirely new, built from the ground up. Something that I would be personally involved in outside of my other efforts as a philanthropist,” he wrote.

The Raw Story
Pierre Omidyar: Behind the billionaire bankrolling Glenn Greenwald’s new journalism project
Dominic Rushe, The Guardian

Is the future of the media going to be dueling billionaires? Looks like Rupert Murdoch started something.

And, oh my, I can just hear the right:  Omidyar is of Iranian descent and born in France.