Chris Hedges and Jeremy Hammond's Mother Decry Hacker's 10-Year Prison Sentence

[BelgianMadCow]

Chris Hedges is ON FIRE here!

HEDGES: If there are no Jeremy Hammonds, if there are no Barrett Browns, if there are no Edward Snowdens, if there are no Chelsea Mannings, if there are no Julian Assanges, there is no free press. And that's what the final sort of dénouement of this entire sentencing procedure today is, really, the extinguishing of a free press.

As a former reporter for The New York Times, I don't get it. Where is the press? Do they know any history? Don't they see this process? I mean, we look at Weimar, and we look at all the societies that collapsed, and we sit around and wonder: why were people passive? Why didn't people do anything? And that's precisely the problem that we face today. Don't they see that this march is going right towards their door? They are snuffing out any possibility of free expression or public information or the ability we have to control ourselves and our own country. That's what's happening.

From The Real News, where you can find the full transcript.

[truedelphi]

1. What good is a free press in a nation run by the Corporatocracy?

It is only inside nations where democracy is a real, living breathing concept that the free press is respected.

In any event, sorry to hear this young man's life has been taken away from him. Cannot imagine being his age and facing ten yeas in prison.

[BelgianMadCow]

2. His name didn't ring a bell at first, but the hacked Stratfor

and it's from those emails that we learnt how OWS was spied on from the very beginning. I'd say that was rather important.
Also, he wasl already under surveillance yet performed his hack anyway - knowing he was very likely to be caught.

Free traditional press is dying. We will be reliant on either being the media, or supporting reader-supported media like TRNN, or sifting through blogs for truth.

[truedelphi]

3. Late last year, Rolling Stone did a piece on Jeremy Hammond:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-jeremy-hammond-enemy-of-the-state-20121207

Well worth the read, if you haven't read it yet.