The Baltimore Nonviolence Center is joining with CODEPINK on the Fourth of July
Independence from War car caravan. Begin to gather around 10:30 AM on
July 4 on the south side of Wyman Park on 29th Street in Baltimore. At 11
AM the car caravan with vehicles decorated with Independence from War signs
will depart for the National Security Agency which is located at Fort Meade,
Maryland. The cars will have their lights on, and the drivers will be
honking at appropriate times. Once there, we will drive around the
property with special attention being given to the NSA before returning to
Baltimore. RSVP to Max at mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net or 410-323-1607 to
join the caravan.
Note
that James Risen was a target of the U.S. government’s crackdown on journalists
and whistleblowers, started by the Bush administration and later the Obama
administration. As a New York Times reporter, Risen won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize
for National Reporting for his stories about the National Security Agency’s
domestic spying program.
Kagiso,
Max
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Maria
Ressa’s Libel Conviction Is a Blow to Press Freedom
James Risen
June 15, 2020
The Intercept
Journalist Maria Ressa, who has
long resisted efforts by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte to throw her in
jail and shut down her Manila-based news organization, was found guilty on
criminal libel charges in a Filipino court on Monday. The editor who has come
to symbolize the global fight for press freedom now faces the prospect
of up to six years in prison, even as she continues to fend off other legal
assaults from the Duterte regime.
The libel case is part of a broad campaign by
Duterte to manipulate the country’s legal system in order to persecute Ressa
and her online news organization, Rappler.
Ressa and Rappler have so angered Duterte with
their unstinting coverage of his brutal drug war, which has left thousands
dead, that since 2017, Duterte has used one trumped-up legal charge after
another to try to silence them. Ressa’s efforts to fight Duterte’s legal
attacks while continuing to report on his government have earned her
international acclaim. In 2018, she was named a Time magazine person of the
year.
But Monday’s ruling is a major blow to Ressa’s
efforts to fend off Duterte’s legal assaults and marks a significant setback
for press freedom in the Philippines, where last month Duterte effectively shut
down the country’s largest broadcast television network, ABS-CBN.
I’ve followed Ressa’s case closely as
director of the First Look Press Freedom Defense Fund, a unit of First Look
Media, The Intercept’s parent company, which helped fund her legal defense. In
an interview over the weekend, Ressa described the Filipino government’s use of
the criminal libel case against her as “the weaponization of the law.”
Journalists in the Philippines know they are under attack, she told me, “but
this cements it and codifies it.”
To bring its libel case against Ressa, the
Filipino government went to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the country’s
libel law. She and a Rappler colleague, Reynaldo Santos Jr., were charged in
connection with a 2012 article about links between a businessman and a former
Filipino chief justice. The case wasn’t filed until 2017, five years after the
story was published and just as Duterte was launching a broader legal campaign
against Rappler and Ressa. She and Santos were charged under a “cyber libel”
law that was enacted four months after the article appeared, but the Filipino
Justice Department ruled that the law could be used because the online story
was updated after publication when someone at Rappler fixed a typo.
“It is clear to any reasonable observer that
criminal charges for this do not stand up,” Amal Clooney, Ressa’s
lawyer, wrote last week. But “perhaps it should come as no surprise that
the authorities would be so brazen. Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has
himself warned that journalists are spies who are not exempted from
assassination.”
In a press conference following her conviction,
Ressa said that Rappler would continue its work.
“I appeal to you, the journalists in this room,
the Filipinos who are listening, to protect your rights,” she said. “We are
meant to be a cautionary tale. We are meant to make you afraid. So I
appeal again: Don’t be afraid, because if you don’t use your rights, you will
lose them.”
Jim Risen, a best-selling author and former
New York Times reporter, is The Intercept’s Senior National Security
Correspondent, based in Washington, D.C. Risen also serves as director of
First Look Media’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, which is dedicated to supporting
news organizations, journalists, and whistleblowers in legal fights in
which a substantial public interest, freedom of the press, or related human
or civil right is at stake.
Donations
can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame
Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email:
mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought
the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while
the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially
their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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