Forum Post: Chris Hedges: From WikiLeaks to AP Scandal, U.S. Nears "Totalitarian Security & Surveillance State"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E1gllH4its Published on May 15, 2013 Watch the full interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges on Democracy Now! at http://owl.li/l3xAO. Hedges says that the Obama administration's monitoring of Associated Press phone records continues a pattern of targeting press freedom that began with WikiLeaks. "I find all of these measures to essentially shut down the freedom of information -- including the persecution of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning -- as symptomatic of a reconfiguration of our society into a totalitarian security and surveillance state," Hedges says. "One where anyone who challenges the official narrative, who digs out cases of torture, war crimes -- which is of course what Manning and Assange presented to the American public -- is going to be ruthlessly silenced. And I find the passivity on the part of the mainstream press [who used WikiLeaks'] information and turning their backs on Manning and Assange to be very shortsighted for precisely this reason. If they think is just about Manning and Assange, and no conception of what it is that's happening."