This article is exactly how I feel about the entire thing. This is a serious issue, one that ordinarily I would take side with Greenwald, but I can't, nor can I take Snowden's side, for all the reasons that Ames writes.

Mark Ames if people don't know is is the founder of eXiled online.

This entire column is a great read, but this here is, well, yes:

The problem is that from the very start, someone — presumably the journalists managing Snowden’s story — decided that they had to preemptively convince the public that Snowden is a “hero” and that the journalists, Greenwald in particular, are themselves “heroes” deserving the crowd-sourced decentralized spontaneous hagiography arranged in the Guardian.

On June 10, in the Guardian article that disclosed Edward Snowden’s identity, the newspaper reported as journalism fact,

Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning.

Really, Nostradamus?

That wasn’t meant to be an editorial or opinion piece, that was meant to be taken as stated fact, backed by the Guardian’s editorial credibility, stamped with three bylines— Glenn Greenwald, Ewan MacAskill, and Laura Poitrus. Maybe he will be; but that is bad journalism, and atrocious editing; and it set an impossibly high bar for Snowden, all but ensuring the inevitable downfall.

It also made sure that unlike the leaks in the 1970s that I wrote about, this story would be about Snowden, because now both sides were loaded in, and in our degraded discourse, this has meant only two options: either you have to worship Snowden uncritically, like he’s the Rev. Fucking Moon of intelligence leakers, or you denounced Snowden as an enemy, like you’re one of those body-snatched Moonies in those prayer vigils they held for President Nixon back in the days of the Pentagon Papers and Hersh exposés. You had to take your place in one of the Stupid Camps and censor every brain cell in your skull: either you’re an Obamabot, or an Emoprog. Bad times, bad times.

Ahh,  well you have to read the entire column. It says it all. And if it needs to be unlocked again, let me know I'll unlock it.

It sounds like the issue is with the Guardian, not Greenwald or Snowden.

But again, who's calling Snowden a hero? Or less likely, Greenwald? Did Greenwald make some mistakes in previous stories? Quite possibly. He also changed his politics quite a bit from 2003 to today.

However, very bizarre for Ames & Levine to focus on & get defensive about their article that The Nation's editor vanden Heuvel had to apologize at length for, and for which they remain angry at Greenwald for focusing on their inaccurate blasting of Tyner in 6 of the first 7 paragraphs while not acknowledging their genius in all their other accusations.  Shame these guys weren't around for Ford earlier - "the Edsel may have been recalled as an awful car, but it's telling these critics don't write about its wonderful cigarette lighter and radio". And their breaking story about Greenwald being funded by the Cato Institute/Koch Brothers for which he notes he was paid a whopping $2500-3000 for a speech. And these 2 jokers can't resist mention the bullshit part about Greenwald porn sponsorship. Greenwald's certainly not God, but does he deserve the Keystone Kops as his major critics?

As for relying on Putin, everyone knows he's an asshole who's funneled off a billion dollars while in office and is just an extremely hard-nosed intelligence guy behind a huge amount of corruption. Somehow I don't see a visit from Snowden changing anything. But yes, Snowden's in trouble, and plan A of retiring in Hong Kong seemed to have hit a snag, so there he is with cooking up a less palatable plan B. Best laid plans o' mice & men and all...

Anyway, can't we get back to the issue of Obama's administration spying on Americans? There's a lot more detail that's come out in the last week while we've been following Escape from Devil's Island Part IV

I cited an article by Ames last year. He wasn't a fan of PussyRiot, and asserted that the average Russian was too trained to avoid trouble to care much about people that sought it out by having sex in public. At a chilly Age of Limits conference last month, Dmitry Orlov drew the ire of some feminists in attendance by not being a fan either.

I found the first part of the article interesting, but the back and forth with Greenwald put me in mind of the People's Front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front sort of thing. I did perk up when he called Greenwald a Libertarian, because Amy Goodman has Greenwald on Dem Now all the time without ever mentioning that.