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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asserts Pierre Omidyar decided to create The Intercept to not only take ownership of the Snowden leaks but also to continue his blockade against WikiLeaks and create a honey trap for whistleblowers. WikiLeaks, the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now, the fight to silence Wikileaks is not only being waged by powerful government figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers. As this three-part series seeks to show, these outlets and organizations are being stealthily guided by the hands of special interests, not the public interest they claim to serve. Part I focuses on the Freedom of the Press Foundation, The Intercept, and the oligarch who has strongly influenced both organizations in his long-standing fight to silence WikiLeaks. Mid-November, 2017 The Daily Beast ran an exclusive report detailing how the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was set to break ties with WikiLeaks amidst concerns among the foundations board, which includes such well-known figures as Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, John Cusack and Glenn Greenwald, among others. The news was confirmed less than a month later when the nonprofits board officially voted to stop accepting U.S. donations for WikiLeaks, which had been blacklisted for years by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal after publishing leaked U.S. government documents provided by Chelsea Manning. Even though the FPF had been founded to allow WikiLeaks to circumvent the banking blockade which, according to WikiLeaks, sapped nearly 95% of the transparency organizations funds the boards decision to end its founding mission was unanimous. Last Monday, the FPF made it official, severing its ties with WikiLeaks, leaving it to rely on cryptocurrencies and other esoteric means of funding in order to get around the banking blockade. Journalist Trevor Timm, the FPFs director, told WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange in an email that the foundations reason for ending the partnership was that the financial blockade by the major payment processors is no longer in effect, and as such, we will soon cease processing donations on behalf of WikiLeaks readers. The financial censorship of WikiLeaks is ongoing in various ways, as is our litigation in response, Assange told Timm in response, adding that: The FPF faces criticism for receiving donations on our behalf, but that is its function. If it bows to political pressure it becomes part of the problem it was designed to solve and yet another spurious free-speech organization of which there are plenty. Assange had made the exchange public by publishing it on his personal Twitter, but it has since been deleted. Indeed, the pressure against WikiLeaks has reached fever pitch, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling Assanges arrest a priority and CIA Director Mike Pompeo labeling it a non-state hostile intelligence service. Last Thursday, former CIA analyst and whistleblower John Kiriakou stated his belief that the Americans want Assanges head on a platter. All of this has followed Wikileaks publication of the Podesta emails and DNC leaks in 2016 prior to that years U.S. presidential election, as well as its more recent publication of CIA hacking secrets in the Vault 7 and Vault 8 releases. Voting WikiLeaks off the investigative island Though Timms explanation seemed benign enough, WikiLeaks took to Twitter to suggest that something more nefarious was behind the boards decision to cut ties. Once the news became public, WikiLeaks and its associated accounts linked the FPFs decision to the fact that many of its members now work for organizations financed by eBay billionaire and PayPal owner Pierre Omidyar. In addition, the FPF itself has received large sums of money from Omidyar and his various businesses and foundations. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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