EDITORIALS—
The ever-disgusting state of the “free press” —
“Guilty! Guilty! Guilty”— proclaim a thousand voices from their high perches.

bona fides totalitarian system of mass communications.

By Patrice Greanville

Glorified news reader Scott Pelley. It’ll be a cold day in hell when he and his confreres dare criticize the system.

Not content with ganging up on NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden using its overpaid pundits, anchormen, and five-star “journalists” the corporate media can’t resist trotting out any available voice it can grab to add credibility to their character assassination. Students of CIA dirt recognize that media smears are dangerous, straight from its time-tested amoral propaganda manual, and that, by blackening the name or creating a lynching atmosphere toward certain political figures (or entire nations) such propaganda can easily pave the way for real attacks and physical elimination.  The shameless dishonesty of the corporate media comes through in brilliant technicolor when we observe its highly selective stigmatizations.

hmadinejad and Syria’s Assad, have all been mocked and demonized, heavyweight criminals that the Washington mafia endorses are given a pass or even open support. This selectivity, of course, extends to entire nations and ideologies. And while plenty of articulate dissenters can be located in America and “the West” without much trouble, none are ever allowed inside the sacrosanct perimeter of the national debate, nor offered sufficient time to explain their positions.

[pullquote] As a leading member of the lynching mob, NBC has now trotted out even lightweight programs like “The Professionals,” supposedly the voice of the (educated) “man in the street”, to justify its one-sided condemnation of Ed Snowden. In that NBC is marching in lockstep with the rest of the “free press”, which will not tolerate injuries to the propaganda system protecting the global empire. [/pullquote]

Such consideration should give a responsible journalist pause, but the corporate media are not staffed with real journalists or people of sturdy decency but with thinly veiled propagandists for the corporate status quo, blatant fools or cynical opportunists. For the ultimate triumph of capitalist propaganda, US-style, has been to infect so many minds that just about anyone hired or allowed on television will already carry the loyalist virus, or some sort of disabling character deficiency in abundance, making any vetting for ideological purity somewhat superfluous.

The examples below come from television, the pre-eminent medium of mass disinformation and indoctrination in the United States, since print media —in sharp decline for decades—occasionally offer more nuanced and even closer-to-the-truth accounts of contemporary reality. (Warning: Half-truths may be more insidious than straight lies or omissions, but that’s another story.)  Since in the United States, in particular, the “free press” enforces a sort of diffused McCarthyism in support of the imperial establishment’s goals and methods, it’s not surprising to find even the periphery of the great media constellation occupied with witnesses shouting their condemnation of Ed Snowden’s daring act. 

Let’s examine a couple of these modern autos-da-fé.

Loyalist Genuflecters #1: NBC’s The Professionals

The role of this bunch is to represent “educated, reasonable opinion” supposedly mirroring the public’s attitudes toward specific issues. Unfortunately, from the start the very composition of the panel cast doubt as to its ability to reach even such modest goals.  Let’s take a look at the current members:

DONNY DEUSTCH

Hyperegotist Donald “Donny” Deutsch (born November 22, 1957)^[1] is an American advertising executive and television personality. Deutsch is the chairman of Deutsch Inc., an advertising agency founded by his father, which he sold to the Interpublic Group of Companies in 2000 for US$ 265 million.^[2] 

This guy’s specialty—apart from frequently being a strident, obnoxious jerk— is to be a crony to many of tv industry’s top honchos, and corporate media in general. Being part of the advertising industry, this is of course a natural fit, and that’s how he’s wormed his way into limelight. An intellectual mediocrity of the first order (perhaps his only true distinction), Deutsch, with more than a quarter billion dollars in net worth, is an unapologetically opinionated imperialist establishmentarian, with all the toxicity that that implies. It’s a fair bet that in a truly meritocratic media system this idiot would be invisible. Donny’s opinion? “Snowden’s a traitor with capital “T’!”

^{STAR JONES}
According to her suspiciously inflated Wiki profile, Star Jones (previously Star Jones Reynolds; married to an investment banker), born March 24, 1962, “is an American lawyer, journalist, writer, and television personality. She is known for her former role as a co-host of the ABC weekday morning talk show The View from 1997 to 2006. She was one of sixteen contestants of the fourth installment of Celebrity Apprentice, coming in fifth place.[1]”  

And there’s more. Impeccably and ostentatiously insensitive to the plight of animals, Jones was named to PETA‘s “worst dressed” list four years in a row.^[12] An anti-fur ad from PETA featured drag queen Flotilla DeBarge dressed as Jones in a spoof. Jones threatened to sue PETA and DeBarge as a result of the ad.^[13]  As a bourgeois feminist avatar, Jones, on account of her fides as a dyed-in-the-wool careerist, was named the national spokesperson for the National Association of Professional Women in January 2012.^[14] Jones has since participated in chapter meetings in Florida, California and New York, where she recorded interviews that were aired nationally.  Jones’ opinion of Snowden? “He’s criminal!”

DR. NANCY SNYDERMAN
Possessing true quality as a person, Dr. Snyderman is the odd man out on the panel. She’s normally the voice of reason on many issues that require some thinking. A woman of undeniable beauty (her movie star telegenicity didn’t hurt when it came to getting gigs on tv), Nancy L. Snyderman, MD (born 1952)^[1] is an American physician and broadcast journalist. Since 2006, she has been the chief medical editor for NBC News, and frequently appears on NBC‘s Today and MSNBC to discuss medicine-related issues. Snyderman is also on the staff of the otolaryngology-head and neck surgery department at the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology in head and neck surgery, and specializes in head and neck cancer.  Snyder’s take on Snowden? Actually her real opinion is not clear since she directed attention elsewhere. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrice Greanville is The Greanville Post’s founding editor. 

_______________________________________

Loyalist Genuflecters #2: Joy Behar, on Current TV
A Panel of 3 with 3 attackers
Joy Behar’s show is deceptively named “Joy Behar’s ‘SAY ANYTHING!’.  As this panel proves, it’s anything but. Readers should recall that Current TV (recently acquired by Aljazeera) was home to quasi-alternative views, embracing hosts like Keith Olbermann, Bill Price, etc. So much for corporate-owned “anti-establishment” media.
http://youtu.be/A6ACwXTeXdk

OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT

On the heels of House Speaker John Boehner decrying Snowden as a “traitor,” Joy Behar, Robert Zimmerman and Boris Epshteyn discuss NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s decision to flee to Hong Kong and the possible implications of his choice. Behar, Zimmerman and Epshteyn share the same view that Snowden should not have released confidential NSA files and speculate on his motives.

“Why escape?” questions Behar, while Zimmerman expresses concern that Snowden has jeopardized “important intelligence gathering of information and does create a climate that puts millions in jeopardy.”

Epshteyn thinks anti-Snowden sentiment is bipartisan sentiment: “What is great to see is the agreement that’s coming out right now, there is a consensus between Republicans and Democrats,” he says.

While others have shown support for Snowden’s decision to expose the NSA’s electronic surveillance of people worldwide, Zimmerman wants Snowden held accountable: “I don’t see any way that he CAN’T be convicted of serious crimes,” he says.

Epshteyn wonders if financial compensation fueled Snowden’s choice: “I wouldn’t put it out of the question that he’s getting paid by somebody,” says Epshteyn.
SOURCE: http://current.com/shows/joy-behar/videos/robert-zimmerman-on-nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-at-the-end-of-the-day-hes-a-coward/

<https://www.greanvillepost.com/videos/behar-snowden.flv>

by Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and King Downing
Black Agenda Report

By Barry Grey and David North, wsws.org

Obama: Key mouthpiece in the offensive to drown out critics of the national security state.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party call on all workers, students and youth within the United States and internationally to come to the defense of Edward Snowden. 

Snowden is the target of a massive government witch-hunt organized in response to his courageous exposure of secret and illegal surveillance programs targeting millions of people in the US and around the world. His defense is a matter of the greatest urgency.

The Obama administration has already said it plans to indict the 29-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor. Congressmen, senators and media commentators have denounced him for treason and demanded that he be jailed for life or executed.

[pullquote] What is extraordinary is that the full rage and anger of Congress and the media are directed not against those responsible for carrying out massive violations of the US Constitution, but against the man who has exposed them. [/pullquote]

The charge of treason is a vicious libel. Snowden is not the one betraying the democratic principles embodied in the Bill of Rights. By exposing the conspiracy against these rights and coming forward at the cost of his career and possibly his life, he is defending them.

Snowden was not in the least exaggerating when he said his life was in danger. No doubt his decision to go public was taken in part because he realized his defense depended on an informed public, and that otherwise he could be targeted to become the next victim of the Obama administration’s assassination program.

What is extraordinary is that the full rage and anger of Congress and the media are directed not against those responsible for carrying out massive violations of the US Constitution, but against the man who has exposed them. Only a few weeks ago, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, perjured himself before a Senate committee when he was asked whether any government programs collected data on millions of Americans. Yet no official or newspaper is calling for his prosecution.

Nor are there any calls for impeachment proceedings against Obama. Forty years ago, Richard Nixon faced impeachment for actions that did not come close in their gravity to the violations of the Constitution carried out by the current president.

The hysterical and vicious reaction of the establishment to Snowden’s exposures has laid bare the degree to which anti-democratic, authoritarian and even fascistic conceptions are embedded in the outlook of the American state and media. Within these layers there is an increasingly rabid hostility to the Bill of Rights and, behind that, the American people.

Those accusing Snowden of treason and persecuting Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are themselves traitors to the democratic rights of the American people. They are complicit in a conspiracy to impose dictatorship.

Lining up behind the Obama administration, the NSA, CIA, FBI and Pentagon, the massive propaganda apparatus of the American media is being mobilized in a desperate attempt to poison public opinion against Snowden. A prime example is the New York Times and its columnist David Brooks.

Brooks is one of many commentators who have focused on Snowden’s age, writing that Snowden is representative of “a growing share of young men in their 20s.” The political establishment and the media are frightened. They rightly see in Snowden not simply an individual, but the representative of an entire generation that has become thoroughly alienated from the official institutions and lost any confidence in them as upholders of democratic rights.

[pullquote] The attacks on Snowden and Greenwald illustrate the determination of the US ruling elite to strangle any opposition that emerge outside of its state controlled media apparatus, which works in close coordination with the State Department and the CIA. [/pullquote]

In a column published Tuesday, entitled “The Solitary Leaker,” Brooks denounces Snowden and the millions of other young people who share his distrust of the political system, employing the same types of arguments that were used in the 1930s to defend the fascist dictatorships of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler.

He champions the virtues of “authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world.” He preaches “respect for institutions” and “deference to common procedures,” and inveighs against Snowden’s “strong belief that hierarchies and organizations are suspect” and his “fervent devotion to transparency.”

In making the absurd accusation that Snowden has “betrayed the Constitution,” Brooks displays not only hostility, but complete ignorance of the democratic foundations of the American republic. He writes: “The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed.”

The founders, including many in their late 20s and early 30s, defended the right of the people to “make the unilateral decision” to carry out a revolution and overthrow a repressive regime. They explicitly formulated the Constitution from the standpoint that the government was not to be based on trust, but rather on a foundation of “organized distrust,” lest it turn into a new form of despotism. Hence the insistence on a government of law, not of people, and a system of checks and balances between the three branches.

Brooks concludes his piece by accusing Snowden of being “obsessed” with data mining and oblivious to “the damage he has done to social arrangements and the invisible bonds that hold them together.”

Snowden is the product of the experiences of his generation, which have politicized and radicalized millions. Born in 1983, he grew up under conditions of growing social inequality and the collapse of the unions as organizations of social opposition.

Snowden’s formative political experience as he approached adulthood was 9/11 and the so-called “war on terror.” Lacking political experience, his initial response was a naïve combination of idealism and patriotism. He at first believed the American government. The next ten years would shatter his illusions.

He enlisted in the military because, as he has said, he “felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free other people from oppression.” He soon became disillusioned because “Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone.” He, like millions of others, discovered that the Iraq war was based on the lie that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction.

He saw, under George W. Bush, the use by the United States of torture against detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the US prison camp in Guantanamo, the destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah and countless other war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a barrage of police state measures such as indefinite detention without trial, rendition and domestic surveillance on a mass scale. He was affected by Barack Obama’s campaign promises and stated opposition to the Iraq war and Bush’s attacks on democratic rights, but became further alienated from the political system by what he has called “the slow realization that presidents could openly lie to secure the office and then break public promises without consequence.”

Snowden eloquently summed up his motives in leaking information on the NSA programs and coming forward to assume responsibility, telling the South China Morning Post Tuesday night, “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

Snowden’s evolution terrifies the ruling elite. They are losing credibility and the trust of broad masses of the population. Since they cannot win back their allegiance by persuasion, they resort to terror and threats. They want to make an example of Snowden in order to intimidate others.

Democracy is collapsing in America under the weight of imperialist militarism and the concentration of wealth and power in the richest one percent of the population.

Working people and youth, both in the United States and around the world, must take up the defense of Edward Snowden, as well as Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. Support must be built up in work places, at colleges and schools, and in working class neighborhoods. Their defense must become the spearhead for the development of a mass movement in defense of democratic rights.

The fight for democratic rights is inseparable from the development of a political movement of the American and international working class against the capitalist system, the source of war, social inequality and the drive toward dictatorship.

No time can be lost. Contact the Socialist Equality Party and become involved in the fight to defend Edward Snowden.

Barry Grey and David North are senior writers with the Socialist Equality  Party, which publishes wsws.org.

Click here to contact the SEP.
___________________
BONUS FEATURE

US congressman calls for prosecution of journalist over NSA leak

By Thomas Gaist, wsws.org

King: a badly-concealed fascist persona, but entirely typical of the current political class.

Representative Peter King of New York said late Tuesday that he supports prosecution of journalist Glenn Greenwald who published material leaked last week by Edward Snowden. The leaks exposed two secret and unconstitutional programs run by the Pentagon-based National Security Agency that collect the electronic communications of tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions more around the world.

King, a Republican, said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “If they [journalists publishing leaked material] willingly knew that this was classified information, I think actions should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude.”

Asked directly whether he would support punishment of journalists, King replied, “The answer is yes, to your question.”

On Wednesday, King was asked whether he thought Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, who has also been in contact with Snowden and has written on the leaks, should be prosecuted.

“I’m talking about Greenwald,” King told Fox News, claiming without any foundation that the journalist was threatening to release the names of CIA agents. “The last time that was done in this country, we saw a CIA station chief murdered in Greece.” King added that the leaks released so far are “putting American lives at risk and this is clearly done to hurt Americans.”

By the perverse logic of the state, attempts to reveal to the American people the unconstitutional actions of the government amount to efforts to “hurt Americans.”

While King’s remarks bear the fascistic sentiment that has become his hallmark, they are in fact entirely in line with the assault on press freedom that is being spearheaded by the Obama administration.

King’s demands for prosecution of Greenwald come as the administration is preparing criminal charges against Snowden, with a Justice Department investigation already underway.

Top Democratic leaders, including Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, have declared Snowden guilty of treason, a capital offense.

King’s remarks signal the intensification of the witch-hunt against whistleblower Snowden to a broader attack on press freedom and democratic rights.

They also come only a month after revelations that the Justice Department alleged that Fox News journalist James Rosen had engaged in criminal activity as part of newsgathering activities in obtaining classified documents from a government source. These allegations were used to secure an order from a judge to seize Rosen’s emails.

The Obama administration has also carried out a vindictive campaign against WikiLeaks head Julian Assange and Private Bradley Manning for leaking evidence of crimes carried out by the US military.

Manning is currently facing a life sentence or possible capital punishment, while the US government is attempting to secure Assange’s extradition to face charges under the Espionage Act—for actions essentially the same as those of Glenn Greenwald.

The attacks on Snowden and Greenwald illustrate the determination of the US ruling elite to strangle any opposition that emerge outside of its state controlled media apparatus, which works in close coordination with the State Department and the CIA.

Effectively, the ruling class is seeking to criminalize journalistic activity. Since the revelations first emerged, leading representatives from both capitalist parties have centered their efforts on downplaying the surveillance program’s scale and scope and concocting arguments to justify a massive and illegal spying operation directed at the American people.

‘Limited But Persuasive’ Evidence – Syria, Sarin, Libya, Lies

By David Edwards, Media Lens
ComRes poll supported by Media Lens interviewed 2,021 British adults, asking: 

Iraqi dead child. Just put it on Mr. Bush’s tab, a major war criminal the American media and the Democrats are busily rehabilitating.

This Alert is Archived here:
‘Limited But Persuasive’ Evidence – Syria, Sarin, Libya, Lies

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The second Media Lens book, ‘NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century’ by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press. John Pilger writes of the book:

“Not since Orwell and Chomsky has perceived reality been so skilfully revealed in the cause of truth.” Find it in the Media Lens Bookshop

In September 2012, Zero Books published ‘Why Are We The Good Guys?’ by David Cromwell. Mark Curtis, author of ‘Web of Deceit’ and ‘Unpeople’, says:

‘This book is truly essential reading, focusing on one of the key issues, if not THE issue, of our age: how to recognise the deep, everyday brainwashing to which we are subjected, and how to escape from it. This book brilliantly exposes the extent of media disinformation, and does so in a compelling and engaging way.’