"The
problem, of course, lies with the realities concealed from us. This
has always been the case. While the American public has slowly grappled
with ongoing injustices visible within our own borders, it has long
failed to discover and correct our government's abuses abroad. In the
end, however, this is our government, and torture is being utilized in
our names and supported by our tax dollars. We are responsible.": Jennifer Harbury: Writer, Lawyer, Human Rights Activist
"The
role of the U.S. in the new world corporate order is going to be to
export security. That means endless wars and weapons in space. The
Pentagon will send our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition
to corporate globalization. How will we ever end America's addiction
to war and violence as long as our communities are dependent on
military spending for jobs? We must work to convert the military
industrial complex to sustainable technologies like windpower, solar,
and mass transit." Bruce Gagnon
"When
a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over
generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a
raving lunatic." Dresden James.
"Should
I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving
offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my
country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven,
which I revere above all earthly kings..." Patrick Henry
Media Advisory
The Accelerating Assault on Journalism
Some media figures applaud the criminalization of investigative reporting
August 27, 2013
U.S. soldier
Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's 35-year sentence represents the
harshest punishment issued to date for providing media with evidence of
government wrongdoing (Forbes, 8/21/13).
She is the first whistleblower to be convicted under the Espionage
Act, ratifying the new reality that those who give the press
information that the government wants to keep secret will henceforth be
treated as spies.
Manning's
sentence is only the latest example of the criminalization of
investigative journalism that has greatly intensified in the Obama era (Extra!, 9/11).
While whistleblowers have been the chief targets of the harsh
crackdown on media challenges to official secrecy, journalists
themselves are increasingly in the government's sights.
Fox News'
James Rosen, for example, was declared a "co-conspirator" under the
Espionage Act in the case of State Department contractor Stephen
Jin-Woo Kim, accused of leaking information about North Korea; this
allowed the Justice Department to read Rosen's emails, an intrusion on
freedom of the press that is forbidden under the Privacy Protection Act
unless a journalist is considered to have committed a crime (WashingtonPost.com, 6/20/13).The Justice Department subpoenaed records for more than 30 phone and fax lines used by scores of Associated Press journalists in an attempt to find the source of a story about a thwarted attack by militants in Yemen (NBCNews.com, 5/20/13). AP president Gary Pruitt (Face the Nation, 5/19/13) said the secret subpoenas were carried out "so sweeping[ly], so secretively, so abusively and harassingly and overbroad, that...it is an unconstitutional act."
Barrett Brown, a freelance journalist who has written for Vanity Fair and the Guardian,
is in jail facing charges--stemming from his association with the
hacker activist group Anonymous--that carry a potential sentence of more
than a century in jail. The allegations mainly revolve around Brown
posting a link to data hacked from private intelligence agencies, some
of which turned out to be encrypted credit card information. But as
Peter Ludlow argued in the Nation (6/18/13),
what attracted the government's attention to Brown in the first place
was his journalism, which used information derived from hacking to
expose private intelligence operations--likea plan to neutralize Glenn Greenwald's defense of WikiLeaks by undermining them both.... The plan called for "disinformation," exploiting strife within the organization and fomenting external rivalries--"creating messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization," as well as a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error.Journalists who find out too much about U.S. intelligence operations risk becoming targeted by allied security forces--as can their loved ones, as David Miranda, partner of Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, found out on August 18 when he was detained and interrogated at London's Heathrow Airport for nine hours under Schedule 7 of Britain's Terrorism Act of 2000. Greenwald (8/18/13) wrote:
The stated purpose of this law, as the name suggests, is to question people about terrorism. The detention power, claims the UK government, is used "to determine whether that person is or has been involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism."
But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well [as] the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists," and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger (8/19/13) revealed that the GCHQ, the British counterpart of the NSA, destroyed computers at the newspaper's office in a futile attempt to impede Greenwald's NSA reporting:
The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the center of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: Hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."...As Rusbridger pointed out, the destruction of the Guardian's property won't stop the newspaper from reporting on the documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, copies of which are cached all over the world. The vandalism did succeed, however, in sending a message: If journalists dare to report information that the U.S. government wants to keep secret, they will be treated as criminals, spies and terrorists.
And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred--with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents.
A troubling number of prominent U.S. journalists seem to have no problem with this. Time senior national correspondent Michael Grunwald wrote on Twitter (8/17/13): "I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange," referring to the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief. Grunwald later deleted the tweet, citing the argument that "it gives Assange supporters a nice safe persecution complex to hide in" (NewYorker.com, 8/19/13).
The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin (8/20/13)
compared the release of classified information about government spying
to the assassination of political leaders like Martin Luther King:
Just as it would be "lunatic" to be grateful for the deaths of King and
Robert Kennedy because they led to gun control legislation, Snowden's
supporters are crazy to argue that he "may have violated the law, but
the outcome has been so worthwhile."
Toobin went on to defend Miranda's detention on CNN (Anderson Cooper 360, 8/20/13), saying, "Our prisons are full of drug mules" and "He wasn't sent to the gulag."
That would be
more reassuring if the notion of the U.S. government sending
journalists to prison--or even killing them by long-distance--were a
preposterous hypothetical that would never happen in real life (FAIR Blog, 6/30/13):
The U.S. military has repeatedly targeted and killed journalists, claiming that reporters are legitimate targets. Washington imprisoned Al-Jazeera camera operator Sami al-Hajj for six years without a trial at Guantanamo; documents released through WikiLeaks later revealed that a primary reason for holding al-Hajj was to try to extract information from him about Al-Jazeera's newsgathering operations. When Yemen was about to release Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a journalist who had reported on the U.S.'s secret drone war in that country, Barack Obama personally intervened to make sure Shaye stayed in prison.
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Marty Kaplan, AlterNet
Three recent stories that drive home the sorry state of the media. READ MORE»
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This is the good news episode. In it I cover Mr. Rogers, rainbows, puppets, and people standing up against the pillaging of the world.
1) Farmers protest in Columbia - http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/26/headlines#8267
2) Moral Mondays in NC - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/moral-monday-north-carolina_n_3786358.html
3) Arrests during Wisconsin sing-along - http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/19/editor_of_the_progressive_arrested_covering
4) Become a member and help MOC continue at www.LeeCamp.net
5) Outro music is "Slave Song" by Michael Anderson
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A4chan.ogg
The right’s bigoted crusade against Al Jazeera America
Jingoists aren't so angry about other foreign-owned media like Fox News and its Saudi co-owner. Here's the reason
(Credit: Reuters/Jason Reed)Before getting to some juicier hypocrisy, let’s first ponder an obvious question: Are these Islamophobes living in the 21st century? Because I get the sense they’re still stuck somewhere in the early 1980s, not just because they seem to see the world as a cartoonish mashup of “Delta Force” and “Red Dawn,” but also because they apparently haven’t yet heard of that little thing called the Internet.
Had they known of that complex and now-ubiquitous network of computers, they might know that most Americans can already expose themselves to news from foreign Muslim-owned media organizations 24-7. Indeed, because the Internet is inherently boundary-less, that includes everything from the esteemed Al Jazeera English, which is widely recognized as a responsible news outlet, to Al Manar, the media organization the U.S. Treasury Department has called an “arm of the Hizballah terrorist network” — and everything in between. <read more>
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"My own body has now become a tool of torture against me." – Herman Wallace, 'Angola 3' prisoner, who is dying from liver cancer
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Dear L.J.,
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal needs to hear from you today - before Herman dies. Please sign this petition urging Gov. Jindal to release ‘Angola 3' prisoner Herman Wallace on humanitarian grounds. Herman has suffered nearly 41 years of solitary confinement after a highly questionable conviction and no physical evidence linking him to the murder he's accused of committing. Herman's conviction continues to be challenged before the courts today. But his time is running out. The 71-year old man has terminal liver cancer. His doctors say he may only have weeks to live, if that. Herman has lost 34 pounds in the past two months. He's finally receiving treatment, but the cancer has accelerated. And I recently learned that prison authorities withheld Herman's chemotherapy treatment for 6 weeks, leaving him to suffer in a lonely cell. "My own body has now become a tool of torture against me," says Herman. Tell Gov. Jindal to grant Herman Wallace a compassionate release. Louisiana authorities have suggested that Herman's activism played a major role in his prolonged solitary confinement. If that is true, Herman has paid a wrenching, torturous price for speaking out against injustice. No one can give Herman the years he lost in solitary back but your one simple action today - signing this petition - can help Herman find freedom in his final moments. There's not much time. Please raise your voice now. In solidarity, Jasmine Heiss Campaigner, Individuals and Communities at Risk Program Amnesty International USA | |||||
Gov. Gary Johnson will host an online Google Hangout tonight, Tuesday, August 27, 2013, at 7 p.m. PDT/ 10 p.m. EDT.
The 60-minute online event will give participants a chance to ask the former New Mexico Governor and Honorary Chairman of the Our America Initiative questions via a video chat on Google Plus.
Gov. Gary Johnson looks forward to hearing from you!
L.,
Did you see Rachel Maddow’s great coverage of our campaign to hold climate change deniers accountable?
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It’s clear we’ve struck a nerve.
Since
launching our campaign two weeks ago to hold climate change deniers
accountable, we’ve heard some outrageous responses from anti-science
politicians -- and it has generated tons of coverage in print and TV
news across the country.
Reporters are finally asking why climate change deniers aren’t held accountable for their rejection of science, and the mainstream media is recognizing that our grassroots efforts are working.
On
Friday, Rachel Maddow devoted an entire segment of her show to talking
about our ad against climate change denier Rep. Mike Coffman, calling it
“perfectly done.” She noted that the savviness of our messaging in
targeting climate change deniers “indicates that the people who are
pushing on this issue are starting to get better at the way that they
push. And they are also starting to get some results.”
It
has been a fantastic couple of weeks. We kicked off this campaign with a
day of action where more than 250 LCV members joined with thousands of
other environmental activists to confront climate change deniers at
their district offices in Texas, Colorado, Alabama, Wisconsin, North
Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, California and Pennsylvania.
Then,
after Senator Ron Johnson called our campaign “an environmental jihad,”
more than 50,000 LCV members signed a petition demanding that he
apologize for his inflammatory rhetoric and stop denying climate change.
This prompted the Washington Post
to publish an article saying, “You really should be paying close
attention to the ongoing battle between the League of Conservation
Voters and Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin... there’s a
great deal at stake here -- whether it’s possible to hold public
officials accountable for climate science denialism.”
And
today, LCV members in Milwaukee and Oshkosh will join with the
Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters to deliver our petition to
Senator Johnson and tell him it’s time to change his anti-science tune.
But in order to make it truly toxic for any politician to deny climate science, we need your help to keep this campaign going.
If we can raise $20,000 by the end of the month, we can send additional
support to our grassroots team, bolster our TV advertising budget and
expand our outreach to reporters across the country.
Thank you so much for your passion, activism, and support. Let’s keep it up!
Best,
Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters
Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters
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