The Intercept was created for the purpose of publishing the Snowden archive. After a few articles, they decided they weren't going to do it any more, for reasons which are never entirely clear (Greenwald gave different justifications each time). And Greenwald was very aware of this:
> On 12 March Poitras was told on a telephone call with Greenwald and Wilson that Greenwald and Reed had decided to shut the archive, because it was no longer of value to The Intercept. On the same call, according to her account, Greenwald said the decision should not be made public because it would look bad for him and for The Intercept. Two days earlier the problem had been money, but now it was "value".
Speculation: the Intercept was a move by the NSA to shut down the last copy that hadn't already complied. Get a friendly billionaire acting as a concerned citizen, shower the key individuals with money, and once they're hooked make it clear that if the publication continue the money stops.
> In October 2013, tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar founded First Look Media (FLM), a New York nonprofit, as a collaboration with Greenwald, Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, with a promised $250 million in funding. FLM's first publication, The Intercept, launched on 10 February 2014 with purpose to report the Snowden documents.
( ... )
> The Intercept paid its senior journalists well. FLM reported $1.6 million to Glenn Greenwald's company between 2014 and 2017; $349,826 in total compensation to Jeremy Scahill in 2015; $368,249 to Betsy Reed in 2017. Charles R. Davis, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, noted that such figures "are large for digital media and noteworthy in the world of progressive, nonprofit journalism."
negligence and incompetence can act as very good cover for malice. The same reporter that leaked Reality Winner's identity, Matthew Cole, has also been suspected by multiple other whistleblowers of exposing them as well.
On a tangential note, watching the documentary on her was the first time I viscerally understood that people with very different ideas about how to live can agree on some fundamental political principles, and don't have to stuff themselves into right/left boxes for easy manipulation. They went after her hard because a culturally-conservative, intelligent, hard-nosed soldier type who sticks to virtues that are not completely in-line with our warhawk doctrine is their worst nightmare.
I think we have to distinguish between people who outright post Russian propaganda like Scott Ritter and people like Greenwald and Mearsheimer who say the Ukraine war is a US proxy war and was provoked.
The latter applied to many US (and historically British empire wars, from where the US learned).
Greenwald had a Rumble contract for daily videos during the Biden years, so I think it would be fair to say he was a Trump influencer.
He also has many enemies in Brazil (e.g.. Supreme Judge Moraes), so that video could have come from anywhere.
But yes, he could also have been threatened over the Snowden files earlier.
> I think we have to distinguish between people who outright post Russian propaganda like Scott Ritter and people like Greenwald and Mearsheimer who say the Ukraine war is a US proxy war and was provoked.
The Russian government literally finances Mearsheimer's books. It's written on the title page. Doesn't get any closer to government propaganda than that.
Valdai financing in 2023 does look bad. But his 2015 talk "Why Ukraine is the West's fault" does not appear to have any financing and says the same already.
In 1993 he advocated for Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons:
I found the debate with Sikorski very illuminating. Sikorski is the foreign minister of Poland, with a long and distinguished career in the US (scholar) and EU (MEP) in addition to Poland. He's been in the dirt too, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as an on-location reporter in the 1980s. During the debate, Mearsheimer tried to lecture him about things that went on at diplomatic gatherings where Sikorski was present (and led a delegation) and Mearsheimer was not.
He's a total hack and his brand of "realism" has nothing to do with reality. Dude can't even read Russian, yet thinks he's an expert on Russia. The only reason we're discussing him here right now is because Russian troll army has been promoting him hard; like most charlatans, he has the appearance of someone who knows what they're talking about.
Mearsheimer says that there's no evidence Putin had imperial ambitions before 24 Feb 2022; that the war has forced him into this. Some of the closest people to Putin say that he told them fucking 20 years ago what he was going to do with Ukraine.
Mearsheimer is weird. His book "Israel lobby and US foreign policy" is outstanding. But when he speaks about many other things it feels like he's improvising all the time.
Suppose that I grant you that the Ukraine war was "provoked by the US" - which I most certainly don't. But suppose.
It might still be the case that something is true AND propaganda. Good propaganda has a grain of truth. The key for identifying propaganda isn't "is a statement false?" but "is one of the sides pushing the statement, because it's benefitial for them". In this sense, "the Ukraine war was provoked by the US" would be propaganda even if it were true - which it's not.
That said, I think you have to be proficient at mental gymnastics to believe that the aggressor is actually the victim.
> That said, I think you have to be proficient at mental gymnastics to believe that the aggressor is actually the victim.
That is a fine example of propaganda: All people, including historians who evaluate different possibilities, surely want to paint Russia as the victim!
I've known people involved in the creation of the Intercept. It wasn't funded with the purpose to report the Snowden documents, but rather that came along as an opportunity that they thought would create a big splash for the launch of a new news platform that would shake up the industry. The billionaire involved didn't anticipate the fury from the authorities (i.e. receiving personal, serious phone calls from various govt. figures and agencies) and they quickly came to regret everything and adjusted course. I know this is a "trust me bro" comment but it's worth sharing.
Makes sense. OP is leaning I to conspiracional adhoc reasoning. I’m sure Pierre would rather keep his Hawaiian island than to field questions from the agencies
> On 12 March Poitras was told on a telephone call with Greenwald and Wilson that Greenwald and Reed had decided to shut the archive, because it was no longer of value to The Intercept. On the same call, according to her account, Greenwald said the decision should not be made public because it would look bad for him and for The Intercept. Two days earlier the problem had been money, but now it was "value".
Speculation: the Intercept was a move by the NSA to shut down the last copy that hadn't already complied. Get a friendly billionaire acting as a concerned citizen, shower the key individuals with money, and once they're hooked make it clear that if the publication continue the money stops.
> In October 2013, tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar founded First Look Media (FLM), a New York nonprofit, as a collaboration with Greenwald, Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, with a promised $250 million in funding. FLM's first publication, The Intercept, launched on 10 February 2014 with purpose to report the Snowden documents.
( ... )
> The Intercept paid its senior journalists well. FLM reported $1.6 million to Glenn Greenwald's company between 2014 and 2017; $349,826 in total compensation to Jeremy Scahill in 2015; $368,249 to Betsy Reed in 2017. Charles R. Davis, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, noted that such figures "are large for digital media and noteworthy in the world of progressive, nonprofit journalism."