Snowed

June 25, 2013

where-ed-snowdenRaining again this Tuesday morning on California’s north coast and the world keeps right-on skipping to a drumming noise on the roof, or is that the news media?

As we speak (or write), Ed Snowden’s whereabouts remains a mystery — the huge, military apparatus of the US hasn’t been able to find the kid, mainly because certain segments of the planet are hiding him. Other segments are rooting him on.
And our journalists suck.

(Illustration is found here).

Aljazeera English opens the media door:

Snowden has been described as a “weasel”, a “narcissist” and a “punk” — not by US politicians or officials but by the journalists and newscasters leading the debate over his actions.
And the discussion in the mainstream media seems more focused on Snowden’s pole-dancing girlfriend and high school record than on one of the most comprehensive telephone and online surveillance programmes in human history.
It raises the question: Why focus on the character of the leaker and not the content of the leak?
Is the media once again, shooting the messenger?

Right now, though, where’s that messenger? This morning no one but one guy knows, but of course, he ain’t spilling the beans: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would only say Monday that the former NSA contractor is “in a safe place and his spirits are high.” The anti-secrecy group says it’s helping Snowden find asylum.
Secrets and anti-secrets?

Yet, it only gets worse — the US is apparently hitting back at China for letting young Eddie flee:

International financial ratings agency Moody’s is not known for being a political enforcement arm of Washington DC… until now that is.
In a move which sets a dangerous precedent of politicizing the world’s markets, Moody’s just made an aggressive move towards global financial warfare between Washington and China, and perhaps the rest of the world as well — by downgrading nine major Hong Kong banks today.

So Hong Kong authorities would not to honor U.S. requests to arrest the fugitive Snowden, and then this happens.
Just a coincidence?
Hardly.
Ratings agents appear to have gotten the call from upstairs.
This, it seems, is Washington’s last desperate effort to flush out its latest public relations nemesis — the 29 year old NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden.

And Amnesty International has chimed in:

The US authorities must not prosecute anyone for disclosing information about the government’s human rights violations, Amnesty International said after Edward Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act.
The organization also believes that the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower could be at risk of ill-treatment if extradited to the USA.
“No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government.
Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression,” said Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.
“It appears he is being charged by the US government primarily for revealing its and other governments’ unlawful actions that violate human rights.”

And now disclosures the NSA might might have been after e-mails belonging to  members of the European Parliament — but that doesn’t surprise. Actually, nothing really surprises right about now.
A lot of news people are beating the drum to paint Snowden a criminal — they aren’t real news people in the sense they actually work for their sources, not for the public.
Big-time MSM journalism is shit nowadays.

Erik Wemple at the Washington Post examines the NBCMeet the Press‘ bullshit from Sunday where total-non-journalist and over-grown asshole David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald, the guy who broke the Snowden story, whether or not Glenn should go to jail.
The point, of course, is way off the mark:

David Gregory’s logic has a cursory appeal.
Why wouldn’t Greenwald have the courage to take on the issues swirling around his reporting?
Shouldn’t a Sunday talk show host have the latitude to pose tough questions to another journalist?
Of course.
Too bad, however, Gregory didn’t do that.
Rather, he seeded his question with a veiled accusation of federal criminal wrongdoing, very much in the tradition of “how long have you been beating your wife.”
To repeat the question: “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
Bolded text added to highlight a clause loaded with assumption, accusation, baselessness and recklessness.
A simple substitution exercise reveals the tautological idiocy of the query: “To the extent that you have murdered your neighbor, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”

Read some good background on Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press‘ journalism fiasco at HuffPost.

And as dawn breaks over the eastern skyboard here on the West Coast, take stock in knowledge more Snow-bird stories will leap out at us the rest of the day.

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