CITIZENFOUR

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Fri Oct 24 12:32:52 PDT 2014


Thanks for the comments.

Screenshots most welcome. cryptome[at]earthlink.net or pointers.

Greenwald's mercenary greed is why only 97% of Snowden docs
have been released. His and cohorts criminal behavior puts citizens
in harms way to protect the natsec apparatus including natsec media.


At 02:58 PM 10/24/2014, you wrote:
>Saw this last night - an obvious must-watch for 
>all CPunks. I think it was probably the most 
>important documentary film of all time. As Roger 
>Ebert said, "it’s as if Daniel Ellsberg had a 
>friend with a movie camera who filmed his 
>disclosure of the Pentagon Papers every step of 
>the way. Or if the Watergate burglars had taken 
>along a filmmaker who shot their crimes and the 
>cover-up that followed. Except that the issues 
>“Citizenfour” deals with are, arguably, a 
>thousand times more potent than Vietnam or 
>Watergate." Truly, this is the Snowden story we 
>have been waiting for since 2013.
>
>The main revelation of the film, however, is 
>what an incredible boob Glenn Greenwald is. I 
>had some idea of this after seeing him give an 
>extremely disappointing talk earlier this year, 
>but I don't think I quite understood how useless 
>this guy really is. He's constantly asking the 
>wrong questions, displays a technical ineptness 
>(to the point of deliberate ignorance) that 
>obviously hampers the journalism, and at very 
>step shows a very clear desire to keep the 
>document cache to himself for careerist 
>purposes. At one point Ewen MacAskill brings up 
>the idea of there being a Wikileaks-esque 
>document explorer, and Ed says that this would 
>be the best outcome for the documents, and 
>Greenwald quickly dismisses the idea to talk 
>about his publishing schedule. I still have 
>immense respect for him, but I found it very 
>frustrating and quite cringey to watch him treat 
>the whole event in news-cycle terms, while 
>everybody around him is obviously thinking in 
>historical context. For instance, there is a 
>moment when they are prepping for Ed's first 
>on-camera interview and he asks the reporters 
>how much background he should give about 
>himself, and they give different answers. 
>Poitras asks for as much detail as possible, and 
>Greenwald basically says that isn't important, 
>just be short so we get a good soundbite.
>
>More importantly, I think the film also misses 
>an opportunity to talk about power. This is 
>something Edward himself has addressed, but it 
>isn't really covered in Greenwald's reporting or 
>books, and the only time it's mentioned in the 
>film is when Jacob Appelbaum, while speaking 
>before a European council of some sort, quite 
>astutely comments that surveillance and control 
>are one and the same. I think the film should 
>probably have spent another hour or so 
>investigating, naming and confronting those who 
>profit from that control. Other than a few 
>choice C-SPAN snippets, the enemy is completely 
>faceless, which plays well for the pervading 
>sense paranoia which envelops the film, but also 
>leaves many questions unasked. Perhaps that's 
>left as an exercise for the viewer, but I think 
>the general take-away message from both the 
>reporting and to a slightly lesser extent the 
>film is that any "solution" will be token reform 
>of policy and not dismantlement of power structures.
>
>Also, very nice of the Russian government to let 
>Ed have his girlfriend back. I didn't know that 
>had happened, and it gives a rather unexpected 
>happy ending to a film which otherwise made me want to cry desperately.
>
>Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what you 
>lot thought of it. (JY, you should throw a 
>torrent up ASAP! I'm sure people will be 
>screenshotting and analyzing all of the new document shots the film contains.)
>
>R
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