with Chris Hedges
Writer, Dandelion Salad
June 25, 2013
Russia Today
June 25, 2013
Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr
The US government pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound, and capture those who reveal classified data. This plus constant control and surveillance makes it impossible to keep anything private or secret, Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges told RT.
RT: The US is focused on chasing Snowden, which seems to have distracted from his revelations – is anyone in the States asking whether the surveillance system prism was constitutional?
Chris Hedges: Some people are, but not many, which is quite distressing. You have Glenn Greenwald, the journalist from The Guardian who broke the story. You have lawyers Michael Ratner from the Center of the Constitutional Rights asking those kinds of questions, but I think that for those of us who care about freedom of information, about protecting sources, about stopping wholesale government surveillance, I think it’s been a very lonely time. And I think one of the things that’s been so distressing is that the serious questions that should be asked are not being asked.
RT: Does that play into the hands of the government and what Washington would like to keep secret?
CH: Well they can’t keep it a secret anymore, it’s exposed. But I think what they have done is divert attention to that kind of a mini-soap opera that is now taking place, as Snowden leaps from Hong Kong to Moscow, to ostensibly Cuba, Ecuador. They knew we saw the same thing happening to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to Bradley Manning, who exposed war crimes and is now on trial in military court in Maryland. It’s a very similar and oppressing kind of scenario, where the state propaganda machine has quite effectively diverted attention away from where it should be, which is the effect that there is no more privacy anymore left in the United States, and focused attention on character, on activities of Snowden. Through their lens, it’s not a dispassionate view of either Snowden or what he’s done.
[…]
via rt.com/op-edge/snowden-privacy-control-surveillance-210/
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Updated: June 26, 2013 added video interview
Chris Hedges: U.S. wants to plug leaks and divert attention
RTQuestionMore on Jun 25, 2013
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, believes the U.S. government is busy hunting down whistleblowers when it should be concentrating on the embarrassing revelations.
Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.
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Michael Ratner: Conspiracy to Commit Journalism
breakingtheset on Jun 25, 2013
On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks to Michael Ratner, president emeritus at the Center for Constitutional Rights and Wikileaks attorney, about Edward Snowden’s great escape, and the media rhetoric that paints government whistleblowers and journalists as traitors.
(begins at 1:35 minutes into the video.)
see
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Here Jim Corbett is reporting in the fashion that Mr Hedges advises, bringing some important issues and perspective to the table:
[Edited]
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So sorry, I edited your suggested link because the program, Eye Opener is behind a paywall.
Very similar info on this post with the same writer(s):
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/sibel-edmonds-blows-the-whistle-on-government-blackmailing-russ-tice-reveals-the-truth-about-nsa-spying/
Oh…that is fine with me, but I have never had to pay for viewing these or listening to any of the podcasts on that site.
I am surprised, and now wonder at my free access..??
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You can watch the preview for free but the entire program is subscription only, unfortunately.
The Eye Opener Report by Boiling Frogs is the program one must pay for to hear, not the other Corbett Reports shows.
Yes Hedges hits the nail on the head.
The wild goose chase for Snowden is the Public Relations Regime distraction technique: Wild Geese – Red Herrings – the magicians hands working overtime.
But even the alternative media is fallen into the ‘Hyper Analysis’ trap of “is he or isn’t he” a natural born whistleblower, doing the same disservice of distracting from the main issue; that of the system being an evil despotic panoptic maximum security state.
That is drown out in all the hoopla of speculation on Snowden’s sincerity or lack of. This is the shame of living in a pathological society.
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