Glen Greenwold

[version]

Speaking of Blumenthal, there's something going on between him and Paul Mason at the moment with The Grayzone reporting on what they allege are leaked emails of Mason's showing him colluding with British intelligence.

Leaked emails expose Paul Mason’s collusion with senior British intelligence agent - The Grayzone

In leaked emails, celebrity journalist Paul Mason plots extensively with Andy Pryce of the UK Foreign Office Counter Disinformation and Media Development unit. Pryce's Counter Disinformation unit has been cloaked behind a veil of near-total secrecy since its inception. Mason and Pryce sketched a...

thegrayzone.com

Private Eye have now published something attacking Blumenthal and The Grayzone in response.

 

[Mr. Tea]

He's since seen a niche open up for an anti-liberal, anti 'woke' establishment commentator from the left, started getting clicks and cash when he added a right wing tinge and he's just gone with it. He's essentially a right wing libertarian propagandist now and unfortunately any semblance of journalistic standards have gone out the window.

Chuck him in the bin.

I just spent a couple of minutes scrolling through his Twitter feed, and in amongst the predictable Putin apologetics/off-the-peg anti-NATO stuff, I spotted several Carlson clips from Fox News, some "Leave Elon alone!" type comments, a dig at AOC, and a rant about "left-wing victimhood culture."

 

[version]

He's right about how much of a bubble a lot of American journalists exist in and how hypocritical and dishonest they can be, but he clearly has a massive chip on his shoulder and he only ever seems to attack liberals, particularly liberal women.

 

[droid]

The fundamental issue is that he cannot be trusted. Ive seen him push stuff that he knows is not true. I can read people on the right and the left, and even if they are wrong and/or I disagree them I will continue to give them credence but as soon as someone starts consistently arguing in bad faith they can get fucked.

 

[droid]

That said, Mason is a piece of shit and the accusations against him are highly credible from what Ive seen of them, and of his behaviour in recent years.

 

[version]

Greenwald strikes me as one of those people addicted to being angry who actively seek out things which will wind them up and allow them to go on rants at their preferred targets.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Greenwald strikes me as one of those people addicted to being angry who actively seek out things which will wind them up and allow them to go on rants at their preferred targets.

Ludicrous, self-defeating behaviour which nobody here would ever indulge in, I'm sure.

 

[version]

He's been on Red Scare in the past, so there's some overlap with the 'Brooklyn Culture Mafia' too.

 

[version]

That said, Mason is a piece of shit and the accusations against him are highly credible from what Ive seen of them, and of his behaviour in recent years.

Bellingcat been dragged into it too as they're mentioned in the emails as getting "a steady stream of intel from Western agencies" and being "intel service input by proxy".

 

[droid]

Yeah, thats more or less true. I dont think it was ever particularly well hidden.

 

[wg-]

I think its quite obvious by now that the Grayzone (sic) is surreptitiously funded and morally dubious but that doesnt necessarily mean that Mason isnt on the intelligence graft or that Bellingcat are a surrogate for MI5 etc

The strange thing is that all of it is so viscerally open now. Got to assume that everything is fake in one way or another.

 

[droid]

Its self evident. They've been laundering western intelligence since their conception.

Bellingcat Can Say What U.S. Intelligence Can’t

Open-source investigations enable officials and lawmakers to discuss Russian skullduggery without exposing sources and methods of U.S. intelligence

foreignpolicy.com

 

[version]

“I don’t want to be too dramatic, but we love this,” said Marc Polymeropolous, the CIA’s former deputy chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia.

😂

 

[version]

The strange thing is that all of it is so viscerally open now. Got to assume that everything is fake in one way or another.

The claims of Surkov backing competing groups in Russia then letting it be known that that's what he was doing come to mind.

 

[wg-]

It is the world now, just need to embrace it really. I find it a bit tragic when you see people who fully embrace one half of the propaganda tbh

For the record i have no idea who this Greenwald lad is

 

[Mr. Tea]

Bellingcat did a very thorough investigation of the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, concluding (as if it wasn't obvious already, but it's good for thorough people to cast an analytical eye over it) that she was killed by an IDF sniper, and not "Palestinians firing wildly."

Unravelling the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh - bellingcat

Here's what audio analysis, video footage and sight lines can tell us about the shooting of the Al Jazeera journalist in Jenin

www.bellingcat.com

 

[version]

Bellingcat did a very thorough investigation of the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, concluding (as if it wasn't obvious already, but it's good for thorough people to cast an analytical eye over it) that she was killed by an IDF sniper, and not "Palestinians firing wildly."

Unravelling the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh - bellingcat

Here's what audio analysis, video footage and sight lines can tell us about the shooting of the Al Jazeera journalist in Jenin

www.bellingcat.com

NYT were really tiptoeing around this story and got flamed for it. They were doing things like saying she'd 'died' rather than been killed and claiming nobody really knew who was responsible for her death.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Since 2016 he's slid into a bizarre right wing populist mode, has been pushing Covid lab leak and anti vaccine stuff, and has appeared on Tucker Carlsen 40 times with 14 appearances on Laura Ingraham. It looks like combination of factors have caused this, alienation from his colleagues after the election when he was involved in pushing DNC hack stuff on the intercept, the slide towards the where the money is - most typified by Hitchen's embrace of vicious neo liberal war - and good old fashioned audience capture.

Hitchens at least - I think - believed more or less what he said, i.e. had an experienced a genuine ideological shift to some degree, tho I'm sure he wasn't averse to the $ etc. which I don't say to defend him, but to compare him to Greenwald, who I don't think has experienced any ideological shift. the other day in another thread I mentioned Matthew Hale, the head of a white supremacist group called the World Church of the Creator (one of its members went on a racist shooting spree in the Chicago area when I was a kid) - Greenwald defended him, and other Nazis, pro bono in free speech cases when he was an attorney. He was embraced by the American liberal left, Maddow et al - as a leftist but he's always come from a libertarian angle - all the privacy, surveillance, domestic intelligence stuff lines up. tbf he's always been pretty clear about that, I think.

I kinda doubt he has any true convictions beyond whatever's good for Glenn Greenwald

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

and Bellingcat is definitely an unofficial mouthpiece for Western intelligence agencies - aren't there multiple govt officials on record saying essentially as much?

doesn't mean they don't also do good work, or that they're in lockstep w/their intelligence sources

but one should be aware, take with a grain of salt, etc

 

[droid]

Hitchens at least - I think - believed more or less what he said, i.e. had an experienced a genuine ideological shift to some degree, tho I'm sure he wasn't averse to the $ etc. which I don't say to defend him, but to compare him to Greenwald, who I don't think has experienced any ideological shift. the other day in another thread I mentioned Matthew Hale, the head of a white supremacist group called the World Church of the Creator (one of its members went on a racist shooting spree in the Chicago area when I was a kid) - Greenwald defended him, and other Nazis, pro bono in free speech cases when he was an attorney. He was embraced by the American liberal left, Maddow et al - as a leftist but he's always come from a libertarian angle - all the privacy, surveillance, domestic intelligence stuff lines up. tbf he's always been pretty clear about that, I think.

I kinda doubt he has any true convictions beyond whatever's good for Glenn Greenwald

Id be a bit more cynical about Hitchens, especially considering where he was in 2001. Washed up, alcoholic, probably pretty broke and facing into a retirement with no pension, with the only prospect of scraping cash together coming from occasional speeches, articles and introductions.

I think, like many, he saw an opportunity after 9/11 and went straight for the golden ring. I can see no other credible explanation as to how someone who wrote so insightfully on Kissinger and the sewer morality of America's imperial phase could cosy up to greasy mass murdering charlatans like Wolfowitz, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. He would simply have to unknow too much.