NSA-Exposé Journalists Swept Up By Billionaire's Broom Like So Much Dust

Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay, helped the U.S. government finance the coup in Ukraine, it turns out. This is the same guy who snookered Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras (both involved in the exposés of NSA crimes by whistleblower Edward Snowden), Jeremy Scahill (a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for his constant coverage of U.S. drone and other atrocities against civilians) and other dissident journalists into going to work for a website he's funding. [1]

A guy working hand in glove with U.S. imperialism to subvert and overthrow a foreign government and replace it with one hand-picked by the U.S. doesn't sound like someone I'd want anywhere near the documents Snowden managed to liberate from the NSA. Yet now he's lured into his embrace those very journalists who now possess the documents- the Guardian newspaper of Britain having been forced to destroy their copies by the British government and secret police. [2]

And Omidyar is no novice at subversion. He also helped fund a program that infiltrated the Indian parliament with paid legislative assistants, a program India shut down. [3]

Perhaps the worst crime Omidyar has committed was funding a Peruvian state terrorist, one Hernando De Soto. Omidyar gave $5 million to De Soto's propaganda and indoctrination center in Peru three years ago. De Soto was a close adviser to and “drug czar” for Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimoro, and closely interfaced with the death squad elements of the Fujimoro regime. Another key figure was secret police chieftain Vladimiro Montesinos, a regular lecturer at the notorious “School of the Americas” (since renamed due to bad PR) at Fort Benning, GA. Montesinos was misleadingly referred to as a “spymaster” in the U.S. media, which was infatuated with the Fujimoro terror regime, especially the New York Times, from which much of the rest of the U.S. corporate propaganda system takes its cues. One of Montesinos' numerous atrocities was the time his “security forces” kidnapped some “leftist” students and professors, cut up their bodies, and strewed the chunks of human meat along a beach, I suppose as a “warning” to others to not think wrong thoughts. All this was presented- omitting the gory details- in the U.$. media as heroically fighting the Maoist “terrorist” Shining Path. [The Omidyar Network website still has a boast on it about giving $5 million to the state terrorist De Soto. Hey, why not? It's all about liberty and empowering people. And the Vietnam War was a noble cause...]

After Fujimoro eventually fell, and after a long interlude was imprisoned, his daughter ran for president partly on a platform of springing her dictator dad from prison. De Soto was heavily involved in her campaign. This was 2011, the same year Omidyar gave him the $5 mil. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. Could it be that Omidyar favored a return to the neo-fascist economics promoted by De Soto and his “think tank”? If not, what other possibility is there?

So on the one hand, the bourgeoisie promote “free market economics,” and on the other, people who have a dissenting view get chopped up and scattered on a beach, to terrorize everyone else who might have a complaint about the system and social reality. This is the essence of totalitarianism. No deviation from approved thought allowed. Without apparent irony, De Soto's propaganda and indoctrination outfit which Omidyar funded is called the “Institute for Liberty and Democracy.” This from a guy who participated in a coup and was a key member of a terrorist regime. [4]

Doesn't lead one to believe that Omidyar's politics or ideology are progressive, pro-civil libertarian or pro-human rights, now does it?

This Omidyar character obviously isn't interested in weakening U.S. power or subverting the American establishment. So why would he hire all the journalists who are precisely those making the most trouble for the U.S. rulers and government? The answers can only be sinister.

Obviously he now has them under his control, as He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune. He can steer their coverage, misdirect them, and manipulate them. With the tech expertise at his disposal, he can help the NSA find out what documents Snowden took, something the NSA desperately wants to find out. He can find out how many copies exist and where they are. Software bombs could be planted in the data to destroy it. There are numerous possibilities for malevolent mischief here. Just getting details on Greenwald's movements and habits will be valuable for U.S. attacks on him, burglary attempts, malign plots, and so on.

By hiring them away, Omidyar has severed these journalists' connections with reputable, more trustworthy organizations. Greenwald had formerly been working with the Guardian of Britain, for example.

One telling giveaway that Omidyar is up to no good, and NOT trying to increase exposure of U.S. malfeasance and criminality, are the hosannas in the corporate media that Omidyar's move was greeted with. No attacks or negativity- very odd, given who he was hiring, people who are treated as enemies by the establishment, and whom he was allegedly going to bankroll handsomely to continue to reveal things the establishment doesn't want revealed.

I was dubious from the very start, when this venture was first announced by a totally-suckered Glenn Greenwald, a person who has done very important work as a journalist and has provided a public voice against U.S. lawlessness and the total police state it is perfecting. It didn't make sense to me that the billionaire founder of eBay, a man with nothing to indicate an interest in social justice, would suddenly come out of nowhere and dangle a quarter of a billion dollars in front of the noses of Greenwald and company and claim he wanted to fund radical (in establishment eyes) journalism. [5] Journalism that was the subject of hysterical denunciations by that establishment, including threats of criminal prosecutions against Greenwald. (Laura Poitras had been subjected to years of heavy harassment by the U.S., including scores of airport searches of her sensitive journalistic material.[6]) I figured there had to be a catch. But since the arrangement was presented as a black box to the public, without any explanation of how this had come about, of what had transpired between the obviously very crafty and manipulative billionaire Omidyar and the targets he lured into his money web, a specific analysis wasn't possible.

But now with the revelations of his participation in the U.S. coup in Ukraine, his obviously close and cooperative ties with U.S. imperialism are revealed- thus making it glaringly obvious that he can't possibly be interested in exposing U.S. government secrets. At a minimum, he will be giving the sinister U.S. police state a heads up on coming articles by Greenwald et al, in order that the U.S. government and commentariat can prepare preemptive responses or strategies for dealing with the stories when they are published. Moreover, with intel about stories in the works, the U.S. could possibly cut off, intimidate- or worse- sources and witnesses for such stories. (The idea that the journalists will refuse to tell Omidyar anything at all about what they're working on is ludicrous, and should be dismissed out of hand. By and by, a manipulator like Omidyar will insinuate his way further into their activities. Plus, having the IP addresses of the computers and other devices they use to communicate with him has enabled the NSA to plant its spyware remotely on those devices already.)

Omidyar, like all billionaires, is insatiably greedy. So greedy that he has to extort money from the world's poorest people by loansharking operations euphemistically called “micro-lending.” [7]

Omidyar's other anti-social crimes include a covert assault on public schools and teachers' unions. He showed his talent for deception and tricking his targets in that case too by luring teachers into his web of intrigue. [8]

Omidyar's company, eBay, the source of his billions, conspired with other tech companies in a massive, illegal scheme to depress the wages of tech employees, in violation of antitrust law. [9]

The initial response to all this, from Greenwald, has been disappointing and inadequate. He labeled the criticism “dumb.” He also said he knew nothing about the activities of the nefarious Omidyar Network, the vehicle through which Omidyar conducts his malign activities. “Ask them,” he said, passing the buck and acting as if it's none of his concern, I'm afraid that doesn't cut it. If a drug lord, say, was funding theintercept.org, the news site sugardaddy Pierre funded for him, Greenwald couldn't brush aside the questions so cavalierly. I certainly want to see Greenwald and the others continue to do their important work, but I fear they have walked right into a trap which they don't understand.

1] “Pierre Omidyar Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show,” PandoDaily, Feb. 28, 2014.

2] We have unimpeachable smoking-gun evidence of the U.S. pulling the strings of its Ukrainian puppets from the notorious phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, the veteran of subversion ops Geoffrey Pyatt. The two are heard plotting, and picking and choosing the new Ukrainian government-to-be once the violent mob attack on the seat of government in Kiev, with fascists at its core and backed by the U.S., succeeded in overthrowing the elected regime. See “U.S.Enlisted UN Stooges in Ukraine Subversion,”

3] See “The Extraordinary The Extraordinary Pierre Omidyar.” Adventures in Journalism, nsfwcorp, Nov. 15, 2013.

4] Ibid.

5] Of course the figure of a quarter billion dollars is ludicrous, and is a dead giveaway that Omidyar is running a con. Unfortunately the journalists who were the marks in Omidyar's con were too bedazzled by the number to smell a rat. Since they are all under heavy psychological and other pressure from the enraged superpower, it must have seen like a lifeline from heaven when Omidyar suddenly appeared as a saviour, descending like an angel from the capitalist clouds above. I wonder which U.S. government psychological warfare specialists Omidyar conspired with to concoct this perfectly manipulative scheme aimed at the precise mental vulnerabilities of their targets- relief from unrelenting pressure, financial support, protection, freedom to pursue stories. A Fairy Godfather story indeed!

6] For some of Poitras' travails at the hands of the vindictive and repressive U.S., see “Long Before Helping Expose NSA Spying, Journalist Laura Poitras Faced Harassment from U.S. Agents,” democracy now!, 6/17/13, and “Detained in the U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times at U.S. Airports,” democracy now!, 4/20/12.

7] Micro-lending sounds like a good idea. But as in all things, the devil is in the details. The details of micro-lending as it actually exists are very ugly. For one thing, hundreds of Indians have been driven to suicide by it- some at the direct instigation of the lenders. Victims of natural disasters have been coerced into handing over their relief aid, as happened in Bangladesh.

The ugliness of Omidyar's “philanthropic” micro-lending operations are detailed at “The Extraordinary Pierre Omidyar.” op cit.

8] Ibid.

9] See “The Techtopus: How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages,” PandoDaily.com, Jan. 23, 2014, and “Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees,” PandoDaily.com, March 22, 2014.

The simpering billionaire Pierre Omidyar. Isn't he groovy? (By the way, the Nature Conservancy is this bourgeois outfit that buys up land so rich people will have nice places to hike in. Who could object to that?)