Hedges: Jeremy Hammond Exposed State's Plan to Criminalize Democratic Dissent [View all]

[BelgianMadCow]

Christopher Hedges, on the sentencing of Jeremy Hammond (who hacked Stratfor), says there will be no free press without figures like Hammond and Manning

HEDGES: Well, not when they shred the Constitution and violate our most basic right to privacy. Not only that, remember that we now know from this information they are actively working to criminalize democratic dissent. That's a crime. It should be a crime. And whatever crime Jeremy Hammond committed is nothing, pales in comparison to the crimes that are being committed by the state. That's the point. The same thing with Chelsea Manning. Whatever crime Chelsea Manning may have committed, it is nothing compared to the war crimes in the fraud and the lies that are being perpetrated by the corporate state.

And I think that's the point, that when you shut down the possibility of a free press, when there is no judicial or legislative oversight--and there isn't anymore--then the abuse of power becomes rife, especially when you build walls of secrecy. And the last best hope are these people who can break down those walls and make public that information which we have a right to know. We have a right to know that the government is criminalizing our forms of protest and attempting to treat us as if we were terrorists.

JAY: And the state then has an absolute right to secrecy, and it has an absolute right to make sure no one else has any secrecy.

HEDGES: If it's totalitarian. And that's what corporate totalitarianism, which is a species of totalitarianism, is about.