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Tag Archives: Jeremy Scahill (b. 1974)

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald Resigns Over Censorship Issues

31 Sat Oct 2020

Posted by ztnh in First Amendment (U.S. Constitution), Freedom of the Press

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"Pierre" Parviz Morad Omidyar (b. 1967), Dr. Glenn Greenwald (b. 1967), Elizabeth "Betsy" Reed, Jeremy Scahill (b. 1974), Laura Poitras (b. 1964), The Intercept

The Intercept logo.svg

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—When The Intercept first hit the scene it was pretty exciting for many of us, who try to stay informed but are unsatisfied with corporate media.  The Intercept was co-founded by Glen Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras in 2013.  Omidyar founded First Look Media in 2014.  The Intercept became its first subsidiary.  And, today, it’s looking like its first casualty as well.

“In war, truth is the first casualty,” wrote Aeschylus.  In this drama surrounding The Intercept, the war seems to be against investigative journalism in order to defend an indefensible Democrat Party, and by extension, the two-party system, or two-party dictatorship.

Glenn Greenwald, Twitter, 29 OCT 2020. Read the full resignation letter on Twitter or Greenwald.Substack.com.

greenwald.substack.com

You’re either with us or against us is the subtext of Intercept boss, Betsy Reed‘s, article about Greenwald’s resignation. In her article, Reed accused Glenn Greenwald of “attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign – the Trump campaign – and launder them as journalism.”  Reed gave no evidence; she simply dispensed ad hominem attacks, referring to Greenwald as “a grown person throwing a tantrum” and presenting a narrative “teeming with distortions and inaccuracies.”  Reed just couldn’t recall a single one.  “It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time.”  (See article below.)

That’s convenient, right?  No proof, just smear tactics. Reed is lashing out against Greenwald because, as she wrote, “he accuses us of political bias.” Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal concisely pointed out Reed’s contempt for independent journalism in a tweet.

Max Blumenthal, tweet

On the other hand, observers like The New York Times, an establishment institution, can always be counted on to support the right-leaning angle of any news narrative. Media reporter for The New York Times, Katie Robertson, strained herself to apologize for The Intercept, for Intercept boss Betsy Reed, and to paint Greenwald as fringe and unhinged. The whole article is sophistry and bullshit.

Meanwhile, in a different variety of sophistry and bullshit, Tucker Carlson interviewed Glenn Greenwald with fake empathy and furrowed-brow concern over the mistreatment of Glenn Greenwald by that rotten, liberal outfit, The Intercept. Tucker Carlson feigned concern, as if he doesn’t also use Greenwald to fit his own narrative, strictly managing what questions will or will not be aired on Fox. Of course, Greenwald admitted on The Hill TV, he is aware Fox News is using him when he agrees to interviews. But, then, he, points out, that’s true of every media outlet. Every media outlet uses you. And, anyway, the journalist, like the citizen, is best off talking to as diverse a variety of people across the ideological spectrum as possible. As long as the journalist is factual and clear, the channel upon which the journalist is reporting shouldn’t matter. Everybody already knows what partisan leanings each channel represents.

Pretty much every media outlet tries to fit Greenwald’s analysis to fit their narratives. Fox does it, when Greenwald has exposed Democrats. And Maddow and company, et al, do it when Greenwald has exposed the Republican Party. But few, if any, are willing to step out of their partisan bubbles and question the larger antidemocratic nature of the two-party system, or two-party dictatorship. This false left-right paradigm, which divides the working classes, also perpetuates the stagnant and regressive two-party system.

When The Intercept first hit the scene, some of us thought:  Well, Omidyar’s not a right-winger; so journalistic integrity might just be possible with The Intercept, despite the apparent liberal/centrist profile of its billionaire benefactor. Most of us were impressed by the fact that First Look Media was “a collaboration with Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras with a promised $250 million in funding from Omidyar.” Personally, Greenwald and Scahill were two of my favorite journalists at the time; and Poitras seemed promising as well with her work around Edward Snowden and Citizenfour, for example. Then, we saw Poitras’ Risk. And we thought to ourselves: WTF? Poitras, Academy Award in hand, seemed increasingly irrelevant to many of us after that. As of Halloween 2020, her name is still attached to The Intercept, although it’s unclear what her role is at this point. Maybe she just provides extra “star power” because her contact email is not even an Intercept email address.

Many of us hoped we would finally have an adversarial and anti-imperialist media company with a big budget to compete against the big corporate media companies. But big money always seems to come with strings attached. And it seems Glenn Greenwald has pulled on some of those strings when he refused to allow his work to be censored. And he seems to be unravelling the entire Intercept edifice with that slight tug of the string.

If The Intercept does unravel, Greenwald certainly doesn’t want it to, as he expresses “genuine sadness, not fury” in his resignation letter. By definition, it is a letter of resignation, not a declaration of war. More, it’s a journalistic declaration of independence, one which is backed up by his “journalist accomplishments”, his legal accomplishments, his legal analysis credibility, and all of the other accolades Glen Greenwald has justly earned. He stands as a model of courage and a trailblazer for citizen journalism, journalistic freedom, civic engagement, and fearless political engagement.

The last shred of credibility we see at The Intercept is the fact that Jeremy Scahill is still there. He is still clearly listed as Co-founding Editor and Senior Investigative Reporter on the main “About & Contacts” page, unlike Poitras.

Even though Greenwald had nothing but nice things to say about his friends, who stayed on at The Intercept, the next important question some of us will focus on is:

Where does Jeremy Scahill stand in all of this?

Does Scahill corroborate Greenwald’s allegations of censorship against The Intercept?

Does Scahill corroborate Reed’s allegations of bad journalism against Glenn Greenwald?

Does Scahill plead no comment?

N.B.: This article will be updated and expanded as time and resources allow. In the meantime, como dijo Albert Einstein, the important thing is to not stop questioning.

As much as your author would like to dedicate his entire waking life to investigative journalism, that work has not paid the bills.  Labor is scarcely rewarded. And we don’t have “reclusive billionaires” keeping us on the payroll. So, working class blokes like your author must get back to that business of providing for family.  We must leave any unanswered questions to intrepid readers to investigate, to analyze, to report, to testify.

Messina

***

THE INTERCEPT— [29 OCT 2020] GLENN GREENWALD’S DECISION to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship. Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus, the preposterous charge that The Intercept’s editors and reporters, with the lone, noble exception of Glenn Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in fearless investigative journalism because we have been seduced by the lure of a Joe Biden presidency. A brief glance at the stories The Intercept has published on Biden will suffice to refute those claims.

The narrative Glenn presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear as a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum. It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time. For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign — and launder them as journalism.

Read more at THE INTERCEPT.

***

THE HILL—[29 OCT 2020] Journalist Glenn Greenwald has resigned from The Intercept, seven years after co-founding the online publication, citing censorship by his own editors over an article concerning former Vice President Joe Biden.

The 53-year-old shared his resignation letter in a tweet to his more than 1.5 million followers on Thursday afternoon, in which he accused editors of refusing to publish an article he wrote unless he removed “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”

Learn more at THE HILL.

***

ALJAZEERA—[30 OCT 2020] Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald said on Thursday he had resigned from The Intercept after the US investigative media outlet purportedly refused to publish his article critical of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Greenwald, one of the first journalists to report on the Edward Snowden documents on 2013 US mass surveillance scandal, said he was leaving the website he started in 2014 with two other journalists.

“The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,” Greenwald said in a Substack blog post.

Learn more at AL JAZEERA.

***

THE HILL—[30 OCT 2020] Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of the news site The Intercept, said Friday that he resigned from the publication in order to maintain his “editorial freedom,” adding that editors were wary of publishing articles of his that were critical of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

“I would never accept somebody telling me that I can’t publish my views or perspectives without having other people first agree with what it is that I’m saying,” Greenwald told Hill.TV’s “Rising.”

“I never wanted to enter media outlets, and when they began trying to invite me to go and join those media outlets, my condition was always I need to keep this same exact editorial freedom where I post directly to the internet without editorial intervention except in rare cases,” he added.

Learn more at THE HILL.

***

Halloween 2020 Update:

I just read the passage below from Glenn Greenwald’s resignation letter article he published on his new Substack blog, Greenwald, after resigning from The Intercept last week over censorship issues.  This very much resonated with me as to the nature and purpose of my own blog, Lumpenproletariat.  Ultimately, we hope to connect with like-minded people to advance democracy at the ballot box, democracy at work, media democracy, and the emancipation of the working classes.  Until then, we testify.

From the time I began writing about politics in 2005, journalistic freedom and editorial independence have been sacrosanct to me. Fifteen years ago, I created a blog on the free Blogspot software when I was still working as a lawyer: not with any hopes or plans of starting a new career as a journalist, but just as a citizen concerned about what I was seeing with the War on Terror and civil liberties, and wanting to express what I believed needed to be heard. It was a labor of love, based in an ethos of cause and conviction, dependent upon a guarantee of complete editorial freedom.

So much of Glenn Greenwald’s love of free speech reflects my own, which is why I love engaging with his work so much. I can always relate to Glenn Greenwald’s reasoning. I imagine many people feel the same, which is probably why he has 1.5 million followers on Twitter. That is a huge audience. 

In his letter of resignation from The Intercept, despite the censorship, he went on to add his continued love for The Intercept, which he co-founded with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras.  His description of the editorial capture of The Intercept by east coast Democrat Party partisans reminds me of my first-hand experiences witnessing the editorial capture by west coast Democrat partisans of the original listener-supported free speech radio outlet and network in the United States, perhaps in the world—KPFA radio, 94.1 FM, Berkeley, California. 

Even as I have watched KPFA, and its parent company Pacifica, betray its original mission, one is left with sadness, rather than fury, and always a lingering sense of hope of restoring the organization to its original mission.  Like The Intercept, KPFA and Pacifica Radio still have some honest journalists.  But, increasingly, Democrat Party apologism and dogma tends to dominate.  We saw the same thing happen with The Nation, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen and Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), and any media outlet or organization, who critiques or otherwise challenges the Democrat Party or, by extension, the two-party dictatorship. 

We have even seen the same thing in academia, as economics departments adhere to orthodoxy and marginalize heterodox economics perspectives.  We could say the same of the majority of social science curriculums across the nation.  Anything left of center is marginalized.  Such is the nature of thought police, censorship, and political dictatorships.

And none of the critiques I have voiced about The Intercept are unique to it. To the contrary: these are the raging battles over free expression and the right of dissent raging within every major cultural, political and journalistic institution. That’s the crisis that journalism, and more broadly values of liberalism, faces. Our discourse is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissenting views, and our culture is demanding more and more submission to prevailing orthodoxies imposed by self-anointed monopolists of Truth and Righteousness, backed up by armies of online enforcement mobs.

And nothing is crippled by that trend more severely than journalism, which, above all else, requires the ability of journalists to offend and anger power centers, question or reject sacred pieties, unearth facts that reflect negatively even on (especially on) the most beloved and powerful figures, and highlight corruption no matter where it is found and regardless of who is benefited or injured by its exposure.

*

Thank you for reading Lumpenproletariat.org. Please share. Support free speech.

***

Thanksgiving 2020 Update:

In case you hadn’t noticed, Glenn Greenwald finally went on The Jimmy Dore Show to discuss his resignation from The Intercept over censorship issues, I’m including this update here.

Sometime around 2018, I began noticing an old high school buddy of mine started sharing political posts on social media from some joker named Jimmy Dore. I kind of agreed with a lot of his snarky and snide commentaries, although I didn’t really care for his uncouth style. But I thought, whatever, maybe liberals need a brash voice out there, too, to counter the brash conservative voices…

But, over time, I’ve come to appreciate The Jimmy Dore Show, as one of the few sizeable media platforms (nearly one million subscribers), which is critical, not only of Republican Party politics, but is also critical of Democrat Party politics, and, at times, even critical of the two-party system and advocating for a multi-party system, ranked-choice voting, and electoral reform.

Just for that, alone, Jimmy Dore is an important voice on politics. Recall Joe Rogan’s a-ha moment, when Dore explained ranked-choice voting to him. Jimmy Dore pulls no punches, though, unlike Joe Rogan. And Jimmy Dore is intellectually sincere, unlike Joe Rogan, because Jimmy Dore is consistent in his ideology, unlike Joe Rogan, who sends mixed signals, which invariably apologizes for, and enables, the two-party system. We notice how progressive ideas, such as ranked-choice voting, become part of the ideological fiber of somebody like Jimmy Dore, but not Joe Rogan. After his a-ha moment, Rogan will probably never bring up ranked-choice voting again in conversation with any of his many influential guests he interviews, who need to be informed and challenged on such topics, yet who have still never heard of ranked-choice voting.

But two men, who don’t pull any punches and tell it like it is are Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore. Of all the channels I wanted to see cover Greenwald’s resignation from The Intercept over censorship, Greenwald finally appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show in late November 2020.

The Jimmy Dore Show, posted 22 NOV 2020 (YouTube, https://youtu.be/K_xmYwr6qt8), accessed 22 NOV 2020

Dig Jimmy Dore’s November 2020 interview with Glenn Greenwald here.

***

“Saint Honesty” by Sara Bareilles

So, we won’t sleep tonight While we brace against the wind Oh, these hearts, they’re weather-makers We’ll go where they take us Until we find ourselves shelter again We won’t settle for the silence We won’t drown in the tears We’ll say every single word, even if we think they’ll hurt Let the rain wash away these tears Rain on us,

Saint Honesty…

—from “Saint Honesty” by Sara Bareilles

***

[31 OCT 2020]

[Last modified on 27 NOV 2020 at 05:28 PST]

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Mint Press News: Intercept Teams Up With War-Propaganda Firm Bellingcat

08 Mon Oct 2018

Posted by ztnh in First Amendment (U.S. Constitution), Freedom of the Press

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Bellingcat, Dr. Glenn Greenwald (b. 1967), Google, Jeremy Scahill (b. 1974), Mint Press News, The Intercept

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—For some of us Project Censored was our first introduction to Mint Press News. Since they first hit our radar, we have counted on Mint Press News to deliver excellent work. They haven’t let readers down yet, unlike The Intercept, which appears to have been caught riding dirty. Are Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill okay with all of this? Let’s read and learn what we can.

Messina

***

Despite promoting itself as an “independent” and open-source investigation site, Bellingcat has received a significant portion of its funding from Google, which is also one of the most powerful U.S. military contractors and whose rise to prominence was directly aided by the CIA.

Mint Press News, 8 OCT 2018

***

MINT PRESS NEWS — [8 OCT 2018] 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 exact details of what occurred during the workshop have not been made public and Bellingcat founder Eliot 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.

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.

—snip—

Learn more at MINT PRESS NEWS.

***

Glenn Greenwald, tweet, 08 JUL 2018

***

[31 OCT 2020]

[Last modified on 31 OCT 2020 at 21:59 PDT]

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Risk (2016) directed by Laura Poitras

02 Mon Oct 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Fascism, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Totalitarianism, Anti-War, Civic Engagement (Activism), Digital Technology, Documentary Film, First Amendment (U.S. Constitution), Free Speech, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, History, Police State, Presidential Election 2016

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Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (b. Bradley Edward Manning 1987), Citizenfour (2014), Dr. Glenn Greenwald (b. 1967), Jeremy Scahill (b. 1974), Julian Assange (b. Julian Paul Hawkins 1971), Laura Poitras (b. 1964)

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—In order to make informed decisions about what positions to take, it is our civic duty as citizens to be informed about what’s going on in our world and its centers of power.  A new documentary film, Risk, directed and produced by award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras is somewhat helpful in that regard.  Poitras is most well-known for directing the 2014 film, Citizenfour, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

In Citizenfour, the whistleblower and protagonist, Edward Snowden was very methodical in his approach to avoiding the trappings, which go along with developing a cult of personality.  Snowden, the whistleblower, made it clear to Poitras, the filmmaker, that he did not want the story she documented to be about him.  Often, important messages are overshadowed by the messenger.  Snowden made it clear to Poitras that the story he was presenting concerned state domestic surveillance and other policies, which harm the interests and Constitutional rights of the American people.  So, not surprisingly, Snowden’s image in the film appeared heroic.  Laura Poitras’ documentary focus was kept on the crimes of state, not any potential moral crimes of the messenger.  His personal character never came under scrutiny.  And Edward Snowden’s heroic portrait was further reinforced by Oliver Stone‘s timely iteration, which featured an ensemble cast starring  Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the title character.

Risk, which is about the WikiLeaks organisation, or rather its founder Julian Assange, on the other hand, is another type of documentary film entirely.  Laura Poitras began filming Risk, initially titled Asylum, before filming Citizenfour.  It seems, perhaps, now that Poitras, having won an Academy Award for Citizenfour and earned a certain level of credibility, or even street cred, with having risked her personal safety and liberty with her involvement with whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations, she returned to her long-running work on her WikiLeaks documentary project with a different attitude.  Here we see Poitras abandon the wide-scope view of social context, which she employed in Citizenfour.  Instead of the wide-scope view to keep the focus on the sociopolitical message not the messenger, Poitras adopted a very narrow focus on Julian Assange, the messenger, rather than the message of the WikiLeaks organisation or its diverse members, or the important function of a publisher such as WikiLeaks.  Perhaps, Assange: A Moral Case Study, might be a more descriptive title for Poitras’ latest documentary film.

In contrast to Citizenfour, Risk tends to put the character of WikiLeaks’ male leaders on trial.  But then, Assange, with his less than charming facets, does seem to invite a form of attention, which Snowden has never done.  And Assange’s associate Jacob Appelbaum didn’t help the image of Assange’s WikiLeaks organisation when he made an inappropriate (or culturally insensitive) analogy between condoms breaking, safe sex, and safe computing at a digital workshop in Tunisia.  And, meanwhile Assange as a public figure and whistleblower is arguably facing much more difficult circumstances than Snowden.  Assange, of course, caught a case of sex crime allegations from two women in Sweden.  So, Assange sought and was granted asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, to avoid extradition to Sweden, which would almost certainly lead to a later extradition to the United States for his work in WikiLeaks.  It’s exceedingly obvious Julian Assange is one of the most wanted people by the USA, the world’s most powerful national government, essentially, for practicing good journalism, for engaging in the only profession protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Poitras was never quite explicit in the film, nor in succeeding interviews and discussions about the film, that Julian Assange is a sex offender.  But at some point in the documentary, Poitras shifts her attention away from WikiLeaks and the broader world of whistleblowers to a microscopic focus on Julian Assange’s personal character.  After a certain point, perhaps after Citizenfour, Poitras began to consistently insinuate and suggest allegations against Julian Assange, which appear to be subtle character assassination.  Or, at the very least, Poitras seems to have taken decisive steps to complete her WikiLeaks project after her success with Citizenfour, in a way, which preserved most of her journalistic integrity whilst distancing herself from Julian Assange, who is still considered an enemy of the U.S. government.  It’s almost as if Poitras simply decided her documentary film would no longer be about WikiLeaks and the broader important sociopolitical issues and, instead, be only about Julian Assange or some alleged culture of male sexual predation within WikiLeaks.  According to WikiLeaks’ attorneys, Poitras’ defied her agreements with Assange and the WikiLeaks organisation by filming people who were not supposed to be filmed and by taking footage out of context.  Also, according to Poitras herself, Poitras engages in gonzo journalism, or cinéma vérité, by becoming a part of the film.  Poitras has to admit in her film’s narration, that she engaged in a romantic affair with WikiLeaks’ Jacob Appelbaum during the filming of Risk.  At this point, the documentary film seems completely compromised by conflicts of interest.  Eventually, Poitras’ Risk is forced to document the fact that the sexual allegations against Julian Assange were dropped for lack of evidence.  Yet, the legal exoneration of Julian Assange doesn’t alter Poitras’ evident condemnation of him as some sort of male chauvinist, homophobic, anti-feminist pig, or from prioritising the gender issues within WikiLeaks over the larger sociopolitical issues of justice, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the First Amendment, and other human rights.

By 2015, it seemed Laura Poitras, Academy Award in hand, no longer needed WikiLeaks or Julian Assange to further her career as a filmmaker and industry luminary.  (Poitras seems very comfortable now producing less-subversive or less-controversial (or less-radical) short-form human interest story documentaries for Field of Vision, a First Look Media project.  First Look Media is the philanthropic journalism project founded in 2013 by billionaire e-Bay founder Pierre Omidyar with the expert legalistic and journalistic input of Dr. Glen Greenwald.  Omidyar’s First Look Media is “a collaboration with [Dr.] Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras with a promised $250 million in funding from Omidyar, also gave birth to The Intercept, a news organisation for “aggressive and independent adversarial journalism”.)  Apparently, Poitras’ decision (perhaps with collaborator Dr. Glen Greenwald) to publish the Snowden leaks through The Guardian (and later through The Intercept) instead of WikiLeaks, when Poitras had already begun working with Julian Assange on a documentary about WikiLeaks, was also a point of contention between Poitras and Assange.

The great public advocate and political leader Ralph Nader has famously argued that one shouldn’t have to be a saint to be a political leader or a political advocate.  And Ralph Nader has also admitted to avoiding being caught up in sexual allegations and scandals by being very careful about avoiding suspicious propositions from women.  This is why Nader never married; he has pointed out the great strain, which intense political activity can put on a spouse.  We know it’s a great sacrifice people like Ralph Nader make when they dedicate their lives to their careers in public service working to make society better because it often means such people must often live solitary lives.  We now know that famous leaders, such as MLK and JFK, were documented in their extramarital sins by their political opponents as means to undermine their political efforts.  So, if we’re going to charge Julian Assange harshly and call him a sexist or male chauvinist, we must be prepared to do the same for all such beloved leaders.  But, as Ralph Nader can attest, if one wishes to be an effective public advocate or political leader, and if one is male, one must be nothing less than a perfect gentleman at all times or risk being brought down by allegations of moral wrongdoing or scandal.  Shills and political sabotage abound.  If one gets caught slipping, right or wrong, it could mean the end of one’s credibility, political influence, or career.

Whether Risk depicts Julian Assange in a heroic light or in an unflattering light, it is undeniable that his contributions as well as those of the entire WikiLeaks organisation, like the contributions of Edward Snowden, working with filmmaker Laura Poitras and lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald, have benefited the world greatly. [1]  Risk premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.  And it is currently being screened on the Showtime cable television network and various online video streaming services.  Check it out at a friend’s place if, like me, you don’t have an expensive cable subscription.

Messina

 

Risk (2016) directed by Laura Poitras

Risk film-screening Q&A at an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, posted on YouTube on May 9, 2017.  Jeremy Scahill moderated Q&A with Laura Poitras.  [Video begins after about eight minutes of long blank silence, c. 8:00.]

***

“Director Laura Poitras’ falling out with Julian Assange” by Associated Press (AP), posted to YouTube on May 10, 2017.  This is a very brief news clip, 90 seconds long.  But it seems designed to discredit Julian Assange.  Poitras is first quoted saying that she disagrees with some of WikiLeaks’ publications not being “newsworthy” or not being redacted properly.  Then, she is forced to admit that WikiLeaks is a legitimate publisher, which has played a very important role in public understanding of domestic surveillance and its impacts upon freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.  Then, the AP editors cut to a clip from Risk, in which Poitras’ narration laments:  “This is not the film I thought I was making.  I thought I could ignore the contradictions.  I thought they were not part of the story.  I was wrong.  They are becoming the story.”  But Poitras is never explicit about what these “contradictions” are.  But, given the sexual allegations against Assange, Poitras’ insinuations are obvious.  Most of the film operates under this premise of mystery and scandal permeating Assanges’s sex life, even as she documents his legal exoneration.  The AP editors, then cut to Poitras admitting that Assange wanted her to “share some of the documents” with WikiLeaks; but she refused.  Presumably, this is a reference to Poitras deciding not to publish Edward Snowden’s historic disclosures through WikiLeaks.  And this caused a “bit of a falling out” between the two during the filming of Risk, initially titled Asylum.  AP doesn’t give us any more information than these cryptic remarks from Poitras strung together to paint Assange as some sort of villain.  But a closer examination of these events reveals that Poitras actually became a competitor with WikiLeaks, as she angled to promote her own news publication, The Intercept, on which she collaborated with journalists Jeremy Scahill and Dr. Glen Greenwald.

***

“Assange objects to new Wikileaks documentary” by RT UK, posted to YouTube on July 25, 2017.  An attorney for Julian Assange, Melinda Taylor, explained legal objections to Laura Poitras’ film Risk.

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[1]  As others have pointed out, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, most readers will likely have already heard about the characters featured by documentarian Laura Poitras:  Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning, Edward Snowden, et al.  But if you haven’t, for background starting points, see here and here and here.

Instead of keeping the focus on the political issues, Poitras focused in on the personal contradictions of the embattled WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange.  It turns out, as with other admired historical figures in history, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy, Assange is likely a womanizer and a male chauvinist.  But, whereas admirers of MLK and JFK preferred to keep personal failings in the closet, today’s documentarians, such as Laura Poitras, feel compelled to make the story about the messenger, rather than the message, when they feel personally slighted or offended.

There are many useful film reviews at the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.  Tom Huddleston of Time Out summed up Laura Poitras’ Risk very well, calling it:  “A jaw-dropping profile of one man’s battle with world governments, common decency and his own out-of-control ego.”

***

[2 OCT 2017]

[Last modified at 12:32 PDT on 9 OCT 2017]

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