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World Press Freedom Day
World Press Freedom Day
by Stephen Lendman
America's First Amendment affirms it. So does Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It states "(e)veryone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
In December 1993, the UN General Assembly declared May 3 World Press Freedom Day. Following the recommendation of UNESCO's General Conference, it did so to:
- "celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom;
- assess the state of press freedom throughout the world;
- defend the media from attacks on their independence; (and)
- pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty."
From April 30 to May 3, 1991, UNESCO's "Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press" seminar issued a Declaration of Windhoek. It called for "protecting fundamental free expression principles."
They're fragile and threatened, even in so-called democratic societies. Journalist AJ Liebling (1904 - 1963) once said "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Conditions are much worse today than decades earlier.
At issue is repressive police state legislation. HR 3523: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) provides the latest example. It's more about destroying personal freedom than cybersecurity.
It reveals the hypocrisy of a May 3 State Department statement, saying in part:
"On World Press Freedom Day—and every day—the United States honors and supports media freedom at home and abroad. Press freedom is a key element of the freedom of expression, which is a foundation for other universal human rights."
"We call on all governments to protect the universal human right to freedom of expression."
Calling on its own would be a good place to start.
In recent years, journalists exposing sensitive truths and whistleblowers have been targeted. Obama's Justice Department used the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute a record six whistleblowers for revealing what everyone needs to know. Doing so exceeded all previous administrations combined.
The Espionage Act was enacted during WW I. It was about interfering with military operations, supporting enemies, promoting insubordination in the ranks, or challenging military recruitment.
In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court ruled that free speech of those convicted under its provisions weren't violated. Thereafter, the law's constitutionality was repeatedly challenged.
In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court ruled government can't punish inflammatory speech unless directed to incite lawless action.
In Texas v. Johnson (a 1989 flag burning case), Justice William Brennan wrote the majority opinion, saying:
"(I)f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable."
Other challenges won and lost. Winning today is harder than ever. Free expression in America's on the chopping block for elimination. Without it all other rights are jeopardized.
Whistleblowers like Bradley Manning exposed war crimes. Soldiers and witnesses are obligated to do so. Others revealed CIA torture, NSA warrantless wiretapping, and other constitutional violations. Doing so is heroic, not criminal.
Justice Hugo Black once said: "Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." America fails the test.
A US grand jury reportedly continues investigating alleged WikiLeaks Espionage Act violations. Revealing vital truths is constitutionally protected speech. Investigative journalists do the same thing.
Former State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said investigating WikiLeaks undermines Washington's credibility to pressure other countries to address press freedom.
In recent years, anyone publicly supporting WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, or other whistleblowers risks harassment when traveling. Police state tactics confront them. They include strip searches, confiscation of laptops, cellphones and cameras, and arrests.
Dual US/French citizen Pascal Abidor was targeted. In 2011, traveling from Montreal to New York on Amtrak, he was confronted at the border, questioned, handcuffed, taken off the train, and kept behind bars for hours before being released. His laptop was also seized, kept 11 days and searched before being returned. Many others face similar treatment.
At the same time the State Department piously "advocates for freedom of expression," it's egregiously violated at home and abroad.
On March 16, ABC News reported that Obama officials pressured the Yemeni government to keep journalist Abd al-Ilah Al-Shai'i behind bars "for alleged terrorist ties."
At issue is heroic investigative journalism. Al-Shai'i revealed civilian deaths and injuries from US drone attacks. Washington wants them suppressed.
Dozens of journalists covering Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have been harassed, assaulted and arrested from New York to San Francisco. Societies committing these offenses aren't free. One abuse follows another. Freedom's eventually lost. America is racing toward it. Bipartisan complicity backs it.
America a Total Surveillance Society
Post-9/11, spying on ordinary Americans became policy. Telecommunication companies cooperate. Phone calls, emails, and other communications are monitored.
In 2005, it was learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) lawlessly intercepts phone calls and Internet communications. AT&T actively cooperates without informing customers. Privacy rights are violated.
In October 2001, George Bush issued a secret presidential order. It's in force today. It authorized warrantless NSA surveillance without statutory or court authorization.
Doing so violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It covers prescribed surveillance procedures relating to "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers."
It restricts surveillance of US citizens and residents to those engaged in espionage in America and territory under US control. No longer. AT&T and other telecommunication companies work cooperatively with Washington.
Millions of customers are monitored. Sophisticated data-mining follows. Everyone potentially is vulnerable. Few know what's going on. Many fewer protest against it.
On May 2, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) headlined, "Time to Make Warrantless Home Video Surveillance Extinct," saying:
Post-9/11, warrantless spying became policy. Even secret videotaping monitor people at home. On May Day, EFF submitted an amicus curiae brief in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It relates to United States of America v. Ricky S. Wahchumwah.
EFF challenged lawless warrantless home video surveillance. It violates Fourth Amendment rights. It states:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Wahchumwah's Fourth Amendment rights were violated. An undercover US Fish and Wildlife Service agent secretly recorded information inside his home on a concealed video camera in his clothes.
Wahchumwah was charged with violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and Lacey Act for allegedly selling bald and gold eagle feathers. He moved to disallow lawlessly obtained video information. His motion was denied. He appealed. EFF supports him.
In United States v. Jones (January 2012), the Supreme Court ruled the Fourth Amendment prohibits using warrantless GPS surveillance to monitor a person's car on public roads for 28 days.
The decision applies to video surveillance at home. Wahchumwah let the agent enter his home. He didn't agree to videotaping, especially doing it secretly.
EFF said "intensive video surveillance" previously "was reserved for serious, violent crimes." Now it's possible for any reason targeting anyone, including secretly at home.
A Final Comment
A 2008 ACLU report titled "American Surveillance Society" said:
Post-9/11, mass surveillance became policy. Ordinary Americans are watched intrusively. Their "telephone calls and e-mails, web browsing records, financial records, credit reports, and library records" are monitored.
"(P)eaceful political and religious activities" are watched. Everyone is swept up in national dragnet to monitor virtually everything about everyone secretly "with little or no oversight by the courts, Congress, or the public."
Big brother arrived with electronic ease. Constitutional rights are violated. Freedom is slipping away fast. A 2003 ACLU report said "Big Brother is No Longer a Fiction." America is a "total surveillance society."
Today everyone is unprotected. Washington takes full advantage. Surveillance grows like a "monster." Unknowingly, ordinary people are lawlessly targeted.
Unchecked government power threatens freedom. In America, it's perilously close to life support.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled "How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War"
http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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We always knew it would come to this, if we allowed the dark forces of totalitarian outcomes to gain the upper hand. We now have cumulative global totalitarian issues which threaten not only the extinction of Humanity, but life itself for the whole world. How did it come to this where Humanity has always had two choices, social freedom, social control of civil society, in symmetry and balance with the Laws of Nature, instead, Humanity has been plagued with totalitarian class hierarchies, parasitic ruling classes, that has reproduced repeating, yet cumulative degenerating cycles of class history, each one more totalitarian than the one before, now threatening Humanity, life itself for the whole world.
Social theorists throughout class history have always understood the generic outlines, antidote to parasitic, totalitarian, class principles, by defining correctly what constitutes social control, a social principle that can reverse the zero sum game, rigged game against social power, social wealth and human rights. Central to this historical road, social outcome was the understanding that social principles, social control of wealth and human rights was that all logic and arguments were based on inclusive, not exclusive, limiting parameters, instead infinite open ended, automatic, social options, always based on symmetrical, balanced social centers, not shifting ideological, corrupted (class) centers, degenerating through the historical class cycles into cumulative totalitarian outcomes.
The reason for this early understanding what constiutes the generic outlines of social power, social control through social principles was that there was a social, historical mechanism that existed before it was deformed, inverted, subtracted, into a Patriarchal class mechanism, which operates on the classic Orwellian, inverted totalitarian class principle, namely through class hierarchies, as parasitical, despotic enablers, for ruling classes. Humanity before class history, before the rise of Patriarchy and its deformed, historical class mechanism, was not a deformed Human nature, a class myth produced by all three Patriarchal religions, which argued that Human Nature is inherently flawed, a class myth that is still used by both secular and religious groups, which only hides and strengthens totalitarianism, along with other accumulated class myths, like free markets, that combines secular class myths with religious class myths, to hide the INVERSION, CORRUPTION, SUBSTITUTION of social power for class power and totalitarian/fascist outcomes.
This of course requires a long history of class deformed language, co opting, corrupting social values, through the mislabeling of self ceated enemies, along with class myths of the Patriarchal period, in religious clothes, to hide the enslavement of women, the downfall of women into male, property, class relations, and finally all of humanity itself. Social power, social control has always been linked to social wealh and egalitarian human relations, precisely because democracy and social power, social control were at the heart of Freedom. In fact social wealth was always linked to the concept of SOCIAL LABOR, the source of wealth itself, not despotic, fascist corporations. Adam Smith's theory of Wealth was anchored against class history, against Feudal class power and its top down monopoly, alliance with trading colonial corporations and Feudal class state. He opposed class power, class deformed markets, monopoly relations that existed still in the Feudal period, and called it MERCANTILISM. His notion of Free markets was based on social control of market wealth where social theorists in the Enlightenment had advanced social theory, to a new level.
Social control cannot exist within class history, class hierarchies, hence all social reforms can be corrupted, dismantled, over time because social forces are not FREE, INDEPENDENT, INDIVISIBLE, from the corrupting class functions of class hierarchies tied to the generic class mechanism, Patriarchy, from its Bible origins, to Late Capitalism, today's totalitarian form, Global Fascism, Western Fascism. Only the removal of all class parties, with their corrupting class hierarchies tied to Late, fascist Capitalism can save the world from a PERFECT STORM OF TOTALITARIAN OUTCOMES , GLOBAL FASCIST OUTCOMES that threatens humanity's survival and the world, climate, life itself. We must reclaim the social historical mechnism, social control, social power, social wealth and human rights that once existed before class history, where HUMANITY WAS NOT DEFORMED, ENSLAVED, NEGATED, IGNORED into these life threatening global outcomes:
1) A FASCIST NATO THAT ENCIRCLES RUSSIA, CHINA , IRAN, AND OTHER NATIONS, THAT NOW HAS PRODUCED A PROMISE OF RETALITATION, BY RUSSIA ITSELF.
2) A FASCIST U.S. EMPIRE, under the black face of Obama, linking his totalitarian, fascism, with Nato fascists, and fascist Israeli thugs, who still are trying to blackmail Iran into their totalitaran economic strangulation, global slavery.
3) Then there is the Corporate Fascism linked to the Class states of Western Fascism imposing fascist austerity, fascist Capitalism, ENSLAVING WHOLE NATIONS INTO FASCIST SUBMISSION, TO PROTECT THE ILL GOTTEN WEALTH OF GLOBAL RULING CLASSES.
4) Corporate Fascism, Class state Fascism, Western Fascism ignore the popular will of all of its nations, social classes, of course not helped by the FALSE , SELF ENSLAVEMENT, SUPPORT FOR CLASS PARTIES WHICH ENSLAVE the social classes. Corporations like the Nuclear industry now have produced A GLOBAL DEATH THREAT, with the nuclear release and collapse of Japan's 4th nuclear reactory that could end life on Earth.....ONCE AGAIN CORPORATIONS, CLASS STATES in totalitarian collusion to ignore the demands of its people to end NUCLEAR ENERGY, TOO DANGEROUS to allow. Obama still allows nuclear plant buiding in the south, where TOTALITARIANS, FASCISTS, RACIST, IDIOT FREE MARKET PROPAGANDISTS threaten the whole world.
5) Western fascism is collectively setting up dictatorships, Fascism throughout the world, by corrupting civil law into Fascism itself, ending all rule of laws, ending international laws.
SUCH CUMULATIVE CLASS/TOTALITARIAN WORLD ISSUES NOW FORCE THE WORLD TO CONFRONT ITS HISTORICAL FAILURE, NAMELY CLASS HISTORY ITSELF, FROM PATRIARCHY TO FASCISM, LATE CAPITALISM, WITH ITS FAILED CLASS STATES THAT HAVE NEGATED SOCIAL CONTROL COMPLETELY INTO SLAVERY, DICTAORSHIP ITSELF:
UN Ambassador: “No Exaggeration – Fate Of The World Depends On Fukushima Reactor 4”
http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=149876
More federal judge abdication
The branch designed to be insulated from political pressures has been the most craven of all in the post-9/11 era
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/more_federal_judge_abdication/singleton/
EXCERPT:
"The abdication of U.S. federal judges in the post-9/11 era, and their craven subservience to Executive Branch security claims, has been a topic I’ve written about several times over the past couples of weeks. Yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the argument of the Obama DOJ that John Yoo is — needless to say — fully immune from any and all liability for having authorized the torture of Jose Padilla, on the ground that the illegality of Yoo’s conduct was not “beyond debate” at the time he engaged in it. Everything I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the identical shielding of Donald Rumsfeld by federal courts and the Obama DOJ from similar claims applies to yesterday’s ruling, and The New York Times has a good editorial today condemning this ruling as “misguided and dangerous.”
In sum, this yet again underscores that of all the American institutions that have so profoundly failed in the wake of 9/11 to protect the most basic liberties — Congress, both political parties, the establishment media, the Executive Branch, the DOJ specifically — none has been quite as disgraceful as the federal judiciary, whose life tenure is supposed to insulate them from base political pressures that produce cowardly and corrupted choices...
That is how history will record the behavior of American federal judges in the face of the post-9/11 onslaught of anti-Muslim persecution and relentless erosions of core rights.