Pierre Omidyar

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This page could use some information related to Saving Agent Snowden From His Handlers Greenwald & Omidyar, Pierre Omidyar: giving until it hurts and elsewhere - see Wikispooks documents related to this page

Pierre Omidyar  link Influencewatch Sourcewatch Twitter (Businessman, Billionaire)
File:Pierre Omidyar 2007.png
Born	Parviz Morad Omidyar June 21, 1967 Paris, France
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	Tufts University
Spouse	Pamela Kerr Omidyar
Entrepreneur and deep state operative who is the founder and chairman of eBay, got control of the Snowden leaks by financing The Intercept

Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-born Iranian American entrepreneur who is the founder and chairman of the eBay auction site. He became a billionaire at the age of 31 with eBay's 1998 stock market flotation. Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004 "in order to expand their efforts beyond non-profits to include for-profits and public policy". Since 2010 Omidyar has been involved in online journalism as head of investigative reporting and public affairs news service Honolulu Civil Beat. And in 2013 he financed a yet to be named journalism venture to include Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill. The new venture, First Look Media, went on to publish The Intercept in 2014.

Background

Omidyar is the grandson of the Imperial Iranian Army General Mahmud Mir-Djalali, who was instrumental in the 1921 rise of the Pahlavi Dynasty, the CIA/MI6 overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, and the building out of Iran's Mechanized Artillery Forces and Defense Industries.

eBay and later career

In 1995, at the age of 28, Omidyar began to write the original computer code for an online venue to enable the listing of a direct person-to-person auction for collectible items. He created a simple prototype on his personal web page, and on Labor Day, Monday, 4 September 1995 he launched an online service called Auction Web which would eventually become the auction site eBay.

It was hosted on a server Omidyar had created for information on the ebola virus. The first item sold on the site was a broken laser pointer. Omidyar was astonished that anyone would pay for the device in its broken state, but the buyer assured him he was deliberately collecting broken laser pointers. Similar surprises followed. The business exploded as correspondents began to register trade goods of an unimaginable variety.

Omidyar incorporated the enterprise; the small fee he collected on each sale financed the expansion of the site. The revenue soon outstripped his salary at General Magic, and nine months later Omidyar decided to dedicate his full attention to his new enterprise.

By 1996, when Omidyar signed a licensing deal to offer airline tickets online, the site had hosted 250,000 auctions. In the first month of 1997, it hosted 2 million. By the middle of that year, eBay was hosting nearly 800,000 auctions a day.

In 1997, Pierre Omidyar changed the company's name to eBay and began to advertise the service aggressively. The word "eBay" was made up on the fly by Omidyar when he was told that his first choice for his web site, "echobay", had already been registered. Not wanting to make a second trip to Sacramento, he came up with "eBay". The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade Pez candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book and confirmed by eBay. The service was free at first, but started charging in order to cover internet service provider costs. eBay still charges 10% of sales as a final sale fee.

Jeffrey Skoll joined the company in 1996. In March 1998, Meg Whitman was brought in as president and CEO, and continued to run the company until January 2008, when she announced her retirement. In September 1998, eBay launched a successful public offering, making both Omidyar and Skoll billionaires. [As of July 2008], Omidyar's 178 million eBay shares were worth around $4.45 billion. Omidyar is also an investor of Montage Resort & Spa in Laguna Beach, California.

In 2010, Omidyar launched online investigative reporting news service Honolulu Civil Beat covering civic affairs in Hawaii. The site has been named Best News Website in Hawaii for three consecutive years. On September 4, 2013, Honolulu Civil Beat started a partnership with The Huffington Post, launching the weblog's latest regional addition, HuffPost Hawaii. In 2013 Omidyar financed a yet to be named journalism venture to include Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, Dan Froomkin, and Jay Rosen

His financial empire also includes a stake in luxury hotel operator Montage Hotels & Resorts and others.

Omidyar Network

Full article: Omidyar Network

Omidyar Network describes itself as a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic, social, and political change.

The Intercept - A Honeytrap?

Full article: The Intercept

In January 2018, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asserted Pierre Omidyar had 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. {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Pierre Omidyar |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Mark Ames|+sep=, |Has text=“There is truly nothing like Omidyar’s contradictory roles — fighting the empire, leaking the empire’s secrets, while also working hand-in-glove with the empire’s agencies to make the world more pliable to US government and corporate interests. Perhaps it reflects the multibillionaire’s bizarre Howard Hughes-like schizophrenia; perhaps it’s deliberate, a co-optation of the dissident activist wing. Perhaps there’s no rhyme or reason, only the effects — an eerie silence from nearly the entire activist community when it comes to holding Omidyar or his many endeavors accountable.” |Is about=Pierre Omidyar,The Intercept|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=30 October 2014 |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=https://web.archive.org/web/20150106171110/http://pando.com/2014/10/30/omidyar-funded-candidate-takes-seat-in-new-ukraine-parliament/

}}

“There is truly nothing like Omidyar’s contradictory roles — fighting the empire, leaking the empire’s secrets, while also working hand-in-glove with the empire’s agencies to make the world more pliable to US government and corporate interests. Perhaps it reflects the multibillionaire’s bizarre Howard Hughes-like schizophrenia; perhaps it’s deliberate, a co-optation of the dissident activist wing. Perhaps there’s no rhyme or reason, only the effects — an eerie silence from nearly the entire activist community when it comes to holding Omidyar or his many endeavors accountable.”
Mark Ames (30 October 2014) 

In 2019, Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal wrote an article entitled Pierre Omidyar: A Billionaire Prone to Reclusiveness and his Trove of State Surveillance Secrets.

Wealth

According to Forbes, Pierre Omidyar has net worth $8.5 billion (US) as of December 2013, making him the 123^rd richest person in the world.

Opinions on Surveillance

File:OmidyarTweet.png

Omidyar has defended NSA surveillance and on July 16, 2009, he tweeted "Anybody who publishes stolen info should help catch the thief".

External links

• The Omidyar Group
• Omidyar Network
• Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show - Pando Daily 28 February 2014

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References