Do you have to be a dead journalist nowadays to be considered a real one?

Do you have to be a dead journalist nowadays to be considered a real one?

By Dark Politricks

It seems that 2013 has been the year that the Empire finally threw away any semblance of liberty and free speech and decided to go for broke in its attack on all those who dare speak truth to power. They sure have been cranking the screws on anyone who speaks out against them in the last few months.

Just this week we have had David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, held and robbed by UK authorities all under the guise of anti terrorism laws at Heathrow airport.

Once again this is another abuse of this law by the UK government. However this is to be expected as the UK government doesn't exactly have a good record on it's implentation.

If you can remember the Brown government mis-used the law when he froze Icelandic bank accounts during their banking crisis. Oh and of course there was the Blair governments arrest of the 82-year-old anti Iraq war protestor Walter Wolfgang who was dragged out of the Labour conference for heckling Jack Straw.

Plus our new anti terrorism acts (2000 and 2006) have been used to detain arrestees for up to 28 days without charge, restricted the right to protest and limited free speech in many areas all whilst giving our police new powers to stop and search people they think "could be" terrorists. These groups mainly consist of people who take photographs of policemen or London landmarks, or it seems the partners of journalists breaking stories on illegal surveillance by the state.

It seems the UK's implementation of anti terrorism laws has been used more to chill dissent and increase the polices power to abuse due process rather than to attack true terrorists. How hypocritical it is that we attack whistleblowers and journalists whilst fund and support al-Nusra Front jihadists and al-Qaeda linked LIFG rebels in our game of chess in the Middle East.

It shames me to be a Brit when we suck up to the USA in this way.

It seems we are so desperate for American money to keep the cogs running in our GCHQ super computers that we will bend over backwards anyway possible to help the US attack their own "domestic extremists".

We will do anything from detaining and robbing the partners of reporters who break stories on massive NSA surveillance or manning a 24 siege of the building in which another whistleblower is hiding out.

I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up tomorrow and heard on the news that David Cameron had authorised a drone strike on the Ecuadorian embassy and killed Julian Assange.

It sure would make the COINTELPRO littered US "press" happy to hear of his death. A certain Michael Grunwald would certainly love to write that particular obituary.

Again the Terrorism Act from 2000 was used to detain Glenn Greenwalds partner, a dubious use of the law at the very least and one which Glenn promises revenge on the UK government. I don't doubt he has many more secrets about the cosy affair between GCHQ and the NSA to reveal but he surely must be worried about the climate which now surrounds any journalist willing to go head to head with the beast.

Would the USA stoop to such levels as to actually dispatch with pesky journalists who reveal state secrets from whistleblowers?

Some people already believe this has been the case for years.

Recently we had the mysterious death of Michael Hastings who died in a mysterious car crash after going on the run due to fears he had about a story he was working on.

Apparently top US Army officials told the Rolling Stone journalist that he would be hunted down and killed over his story that lead to General McChrystal’s downfall and he was apparently working on a massive story concerning the CIA. This was all before he warned friends he had to go off the radar due to worries about his safety and then surprisingly his car exploded in an unusual accident.

With recent revelations that DARPA or anyone else with the skills can hack into computers on board cars nowadays it doesn't seem so far-fetched to believe he was taken out by some agency annoyed with his work. With computers controlling everything from dishwashers to cars and with NSA/GCHQ super computers able to pinpoint phones and GPS co-ordinates in real-time it wouldn't take a genius in this day and age with the right software to do some damage with a few keystrokes.

Got a webcam on your PC? Well just hope it's just your friends watching your pretty face from afar and not an NSA nerd or even your local school!

Then there was the case of Gary Webb who was found dead in an apparent suicide in 2000 apparently from "multiple gun shots to the head", an common way to kill yourself it seems for journalists and whistleblowers.

Gary Webb was the reporter who had famously broke the story about the CIA running guns to the Contra's and drugs back to the states. It was the CIA's coke that started the Los Angeles crack wars in the 80's and made a certain CIA owned drug dealer Ricky “Freeway Ricky” Ross very rich. It was his story that led to the black community and the NAACP trying to get congressional hearings held into the allegations.

Bary Seal, one of the CIA's drug running pilots was also famously found pumped full of bullets after threatening to expose the same CIA drug running scam that had the Bush families finger prints all over it. Even after his car had been sweeped "clean" by the personal phone number of a certain then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush was found in his possession!

The Colombian drug dealers convicted of the crime believed they working for a certain Oliver North and the fingerprints that led to the Iran Contra scandal and Mena drug operation that link nearly everyone in the Bush family to Bill Clinton were all over the hit.

So it wouldn't be a total shock after the history of covert assassinations to hear on the news one day that Glenn Greenwald had been found dead along with his partner David. Probably after a heated argument overhead by an anonymous caller to the police. The official story would be that Glenn was found dead, supposedly having committed suicide after first killing his partner. Of course he would have shot himself three or four times in the head just to make sure of course.

Therefore if I was Glenn I would be slightly wary about waging all out war on the US/US axis of war. Of course he is well within his rights to do so and I wish he brings the whole house down if he possibly can, however it is clear he has been marked by the powers that be.

Co-opted and "owned" mainstream personalities have attacked him and even suggested he be arrested for his work with Edward Snowden.  David Gregory from Meet the Press asked why Glenn shouldn't be charged with a crime for aiding his source Snowden in revealing NSA secrets and CNBC host Andrew Ross Rokin also suggested that Greenwald should be arrested.

And those are just a few of the debates Glenn is having online with numerous, and obvious, Government paid spokesmen. All these propagandists for the Empire who read from scripts handed to them by the NSA/CIA are not real journalists and their attacks on Glenn just prove that the US media can no longer be trusted to hold anything to account, let alone the Government.

It seems a sad state of affairs when you cannot be considered a real journalist unless you are running in fear from the Government and their partners across the globe.

Is it really a choice between breaking a really major story such as the CIA drug smuggling, NSA spying, or US war crimes and then ending up dead, looking for asylum or locked up in a military prison for years?

All the while talking heads get paid millions just to parrot official stories and take the Governments word on everything. It must be hard to look in the mirror when you call yourself a journalist but don't dare put your head above the parapet.

"Everything's ok, just keep shopping", they say as the world burns and the constitution continues to be shredded piece by piece.

What a choice it has become. To be paid millions for toeing the line and having no moral fibre at all, or dare speak truth to power and risk two in the head or a life on the run.

View the original article Do you have to be a harassed journalist nowadays to be considered a real one? at darkpolitricks.com