The following head appeared in the Toronto Star’s home page:

Ex-U.S. spy arrives in Moscow, seeks Ecuador asylum

A click through to the article does add the word whistleblower, but that aspect of Snowden’s actions seems easy to lose in the flurry of accusations about spying. It’s just the latest attempt to criminalize everything that doesn’t lie down and accept that the powers in Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing and, of course, Ottawa, get to do whatever they want in their quest to suppress their current bugaboo, terrorism, no matter how many times, how far and how fast they move the goalposts, and no matter that their actions might be creating the terrorists they seek to eliminate. It’s a great gig, like advertising the latest innovation in toothpaste to sell a ton more of the stuff, or creating a new restless leg syndrome to open up a new marketing niche. The adman parallel is appropriate because our politicians have, in effect, become shills for the same mercantile caste that has helped us build a society of overconsumption, waste, pollution, penury, austerity, faux democracy and illusion. So we have the Patriot Act and the Clear Skies Act, Families First, The Government of Canada Action Plan and a long and dreary trail of other misnomers for actions aimed at gutting the real economy and ensuring that power continues to reside with the puppet masters pulling with Wall Street, Bay Street and City strings. Snowden hasn’t referred to himself as a spy, and neither has he been convicted of such an offense, so perhaps it would be prudent to stick an “alleged” in there somewhere. Prudence in the press? only when it comes to turning over the real rocks to see what lies beneath.