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An Insider’s Story

Because of Japan’s unconscionable open-ended new secrecy law, it is very likely journalism in the nation has turned tail, scared of its own shadow. Nevertheless, glimmers of what has happened, of what is happening, do surface when brave people come forward.

On May 22nd 2015 Hiromichi Ugaya, a photojournalist who is well-informed, insightful, and engaging, was interviewed about what he witnessed in the aftermath of one of the world’s most horrendous disasters.

Hiromichi Ugaya was born in Kyoto City, Japan in 1963. He is an accomplished photojournalist with experience in both Japan and the United States, receiving his bachelor’s degree at Kyoto National University and his master’s degree at Columbia University.

Naïveté of Public

Hiromichi first visited Fukushima within two weeks of the disaster, and he has returned nearly 50 times to photograph scenes. His is a personal mission because the tragedy does not receive adequate media coverage. According to him, very few journalists cover the aftermath; television in Japan has lost interest; the public is blasé and dangerously naïve; Japanese publishers do not entertain stories about Fukushima, and the mainstream media in Japan ignores the impact of the aftermath.

Curiously, it’s as if a news blackout has been covertly instituted, and maybe it has. What people do not see, do not hear becomes invisible, out of sight out of mind, similar to the after-affects of radiation exposure, which are not felt, not smelled, not tasted, not physically recognized by people, until it’s too late, until it’s too late, until it’s too late.

Then again, maybe The Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, Act No. 108 promulgated on December 13, 2013 is quelling public opinion?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

James Risen, Obama, Holder and the NSA

June 24, 2015

James Risen, Obama, Holder and the NSA

“He made my life miserable for a long time.”

Earlier this year I did an hour long interview with James Risen. We discussed his case with the Department of Justice, where he was being threatened with incarceration for refusing to reveal his source who gave him insights about NSA activities. This was before Obama and Eric Holder decided to drop the prosecution against him. I saw him give the keynote speech at the luncheon for the Investigative Reporters and Editors 2015 conference and after his talk, in which he lambasted former Attorney General Eric Holder, I asked him to do a brief interview, based on his comments on Obama, Eric Holder and their legacies.

Rob Kall: My guest is James Risen. He was just the luncheon speaker for the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference (1800 attendees)

***

Rob Kall: I was really hoping you would recap what you said to about 1500 journalists about your experience with the DOJ and Eric Holder and where journalism is today.

James Risen: I think the main point I was trying to make is the legacy of the Obama administration on press freedom issues is a bad one. They had, in my case, sought to eliminate what’s called the reporter’s privilege, which is the ability of reporters to protect their confidential sources in criminal trials and not be forced to testify and identify sources. In my case the judge sided with me and quashed the subpoena from the Justice Department against me. But the Obama administration appealed that to the appeals court and they overturned that decision by the lower court and in their appeal to the appeals court, they said, there is no such thing as a reporters’ privilege in a federal case. And the court sided with them and that had the effect of eliminating the ability, legally, of reporters to protect their sources in federal criminal cases.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Council of Europe Calls on U.S. to Let Snowden Have a Fair Trial

June 24, 2015

Council of Europe Calls on U.S. to Let Snowden Have a Fair Trial

The Council of Europe, the self-proclaimed “democratic conscience of Greater Europe,” urged the United States on Tuesday to allow NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to return home and make the case that his actions had positive effects.

The call for Snowden to be allowed a “public interest defense” — something not available to whistleblowers charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, as Snowden has been — was part of a resolution to improve international protections for whistleblowers passed overwhelmingly by the 47-nation council’s parliamentary assembly at its meeting in Strasbourg, France.

After the vote, Snowden spoke to the assembly by video from Moscow, where he has temporary asylum. “It would be committing a crime by discussing your defense,” Snowden said of his current legal prospects if he returned to the U.S.

“I think it’s incredibly strong,” he said of the council’s resolution. “It’s a major step forward. … If you can’t mount a full and effective defense — make the case that you are revealing information in the public interest — you can’t have a fair trial.”

U.S. government officials have repeatedly said that Snowden should return home to face the consequences of his actions. Snowden should “come back, be sent back, and he should have his day in court,” said National Security Advisor Susan Rice on “60 Minutes” in December 2013.

But as Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and others have pointed out, the administration has previously argued that disclosing details of Espionage Act cases further risks national security, so the defendant can’t explain why he did what he did. Military whistleblower Chelsea Manning faced the same conundrum during the summer of 2013. Her entire defense was ruled inadmissible until sentencing. Manning is serving 35 years in prison.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ukraine- Nazi’s Target American Journalist in Donbass

May 31, 2015

Ukraine- Nazi’s Target American Journalist in Donbass

Preface from Washington’s Blog: We are not pro-Russian. We think Putin can be an asshole, and we are appalled by Russia’s crackdown on human rights. We are Americans who are pro-truth. And we follow the truth wherever it leads.

Journalists are seldom the story and they shouldn’t be. The Ukrainian war is unfortunately changing that. Starting last year in Donbass, the world got a taste of what it’s like when Ukraine’s army actively hunts journalists down. This is what happened to Andrei Stenin among many other Russian journalists.

If American journalists are publishing in America or worldwide markets are they legitimate targets in a war? Can Ukraine arrest American journalists writing in publications outside of Ukraine in the English language?

Can a private US citizen use another country’s military or “spy agency” to target anyone including other Americans?

It’s not hypothetical. It’s happening to me right now.

I have received a lot of communications about what I write concerning the war here. When you consider this one, think about what it means if you live in any country that prides itself on human rights, dignity, and freedoms.

“Hello George Eliason,

Joel Harding (F-off@email.ru) has sent you a message via your contact form (http://russia-insider.com/en/user/1193/contact) at Russia Insider News.
If you don’t want to receive such e-mails, you can change your settings at http://russia-insider.com/en/user/1193/edit.
Message:

It’s been fun following you! I hope you’re having fun in Donbas. So sorry NovoRossiya is being dissolved. http://toinformistoinfluence.com/2014/10/12/novorossiya-fail/
I’ve been looking forward to you publishing some more articles. But I’m curious, two months and nothing? Did you change names?
I know your bandwidth there is limited, this is probably costing you many Russian rubles. Oh yeah, I hear they don’t take Ukrainian Hryvnia. The good news is that Luhansk and Donetsk will both remain with Ukraine, Russia can’t afford it.
By the time you return to the West, I should be in Kyiv, waiting for you. You have a date with the SBU.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Press Freedom on Trial in Turkey

May 27, 2015

Press Freedom on Trial in Turkey

The Prosecution of Baris Ince

On June 2^nd, a trial will begin in Caglayan Istanbul Second Criminal Court. Baris Ince, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish independent daily newspaper, BirGun, is being sued under Article 229 of the Turkish Criminal Code for “defamation of the President”.

The newspaper printed an acrostic to spell out the phrase “Thief Tayyip,” referring to the then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is a slogan chanted on the streets by millions of Turkish protestors. For printing this slogan, the prosecution seeks a five and a half year prison sentence for Baris Ince.

After the 1971 coup d’état in Turkey, veteran journalist, Ilhan Selcuk (1925-2010), used an acrostic to spell out the sentence, “I am under torture”, The penultimate word of each sentence of his article began with the letters to spell out this sentence. İlhan Selçuk inaugurated this tradition of using an acrostic. Baris Ince honored that tradition with the phrase printed in BirGun.

Our Editor-in-Chief demonstrated that there are facts hidden in Turkey by the silence bought through political pressure. His act was a political criticism.

Political criticism should not earn a five and a half year prison sentence for a newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief. BirGun’s work honors the country with its contribution to the media. The prosecutor’s claim is not only unreasonable, but also unjust.

During the campaigns around corruption in Turkey, millions of people chanted the slogan – “Thief Tayyip” – in demonstrations. What BirGundid is not personal defamation. It reported the reaction on the streets to the corruption and bribery charges.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama Is More Hostile Towards The Press Than Any President In History

May 8, 2015

Obama Is More Hostile Towards The Press Than Any President In History

Obama HATES the Press

A brand new Politico poll of White House correspondents finds:

(1) 65% of reporters say that Obama is the least press-friendly president they’ve ever seen

(2) 78% of White House reporters believe “President Obama dislikes the press”

(3) 63% of the reporters have literally never asked Obama a question at any press conference

(4) 58% say they’ve never spoken to anyone at the White House other than a flack on the White House press team

(5) 5 times more reporters believe that Obama is becoming less and less open with the press than believe he’s getting more transparent with time

The Washington Post noted last month:

In the Committee to Protect Journalists report, former Washington Post executive editorLeonard Downie Jr. summarized the administration’s efforts to control information as “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.” Downie was one of the editors involved in The Post’s coverage of Nixon’s Watergate crimes.

Veteran New York Times reporter James Risen said:

[The Obama administration is] the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.

[The administration wants to] narrow the field of national security reporting to create a path for accepted reporting.

[Anyone journalist who exceeds those parameters] will be punished.

New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson agrees:

This is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved incovering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Watching Shadows of Liberty

May 5, 2015

Watching Shadows of Liberty

A powerful new film on what’s wrong with the U.S. media is now being screened around the country. It’s called Shadows of Liberty and you can set up a screening of it as part of an upcoming international week of actions for whistleblowers called Stand Up For Truth. Or you can buy the DVD or catch it on Link TV. (Here in Charlottesville I’ll be speaking at the event, May 19, 7 p.m. at The Bridge.)

Judith Miller is on a rehabilitative book tour; the Washington Post recently reported that a victim of Baltimore police murder broke his own spine; and recently leaked emails from the State Department asked Sony to entertain us into proper war support. The proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner was just blocked, for now, but the existence of those mega-monopolies in their current form is at the root of the problem, according to Shadows of Liberty.

Allowing for-profit companies to decide what we learn about the world and our government, allowing those companies to consolidate into a tiny cartel controlling the formerly public airwaves, allowing them to be owned by much larger companies that rely on the government for weapons contracts, and allowing them to determine politicians’ access to the public and to bribe politicians with “campaign contributions” — this, in the analysis of Shadows of Liberty, this subservience of public space to private profit is what creates news that misinforms, that takes no interest in the poor, that propagandizes for wars, and that shuts out any journalist who steps out of line.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Japan seizes passport of journalist planning Syria trip

February 8, 2015

Japan seizes passport of journalist planning Syria trip

Move follows brutal killing of Japanese by ISIL and comes amid soaring ratings for PM over handling of hostage crisis.

Japan has seized the passport of a journalist planning to travel to Syria following the brutal killing of two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group there, according to local media.

It was the first time Tokyo had taken such a measure on the grounds it was needed to protect the passport-holder’s life, the Asahi Shimbunand other news reports said on Sunday.

They said the foreign ministry on Saturday confiscated the passport of Yuichi Sugimoto, a freelance photographer who had planned to enter Syria on February 27 to cover refugee camps among other places.

But the 58-year-old, who has covered conflict zones in Iraq and Syria over the years, said he had no plans to enter areas controlled by ISIL, Kyodo News reported.

“Tonight, an official with the foreign ministry’s passport division came and took my passport,” Sugimoto told the Asahi.

“What happens to my freedom to travel and freedom of the press?”

The passport confiscation came in the wake of the beheadings of journalist Kenji Goto and self-styled security consultant Haruna Yukawa by ISIL.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Turkey indicts Dutch reporter over ‘terror propaganda’

February 3, 2015

Turkey indicts Dutch reporter over ‘terror propaganda’

Geerdink, who rejects charges, is indicted for making “terrorist propaganda” in social media and her opinion articles.

A Dutch journalist based in southeastern Turkey has been officially indicted by Turkish prosecutors for spreading “terrorist propaganda” on social media.

Frederike Geerdink, who rejected the charges, told Al Jazeera that she received an indictment notice from the prosecutor’s office in Diyarbakir, the city she is based in, adding that the document charges her with crimes committed between September 10 and October 28.

“The document refers to tweets and Facebook posts as well as her weekly column on Diken.com.tr, an independent Turkish news website,” she said.

The Prosecutor’s office charges Geerdink with spreading propaganda for the outlawed armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) group that has been fighting against the Turkish state since mid-1980s. She is facing one to five years in prison.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude

February 3, 2015

My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude

Journalist Barrett Brown looks back in anger at the government’s trumped up charges against him as he starts a 63 month prison sentence.

Not long ago I was a mild-mannered freelance journalist, activist, and satirist, contributing to outlets like the Guardian and Vanity Fair. But last Thursday I was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison in a case that Reporters Without Borders cited as a key factor in its reduction of America’s press freedom rankings from 33 to 46. As inconvenient as this is for me, the upside is that for the first time in the two and a half years since I was arrested, I am at last able to speak freely about what has been happening to me and why—and what it means for the press and the republic as a whole.

A portion of my sentence stems from an attempt I made to conceal from the government the identities of certain contacts of mine: pro-democracy activists living under Middle Eastern dictatorships such as Bahrain, with which the U.S. is known to share intelligence on such things. Another large chunk is due to an admittedly ill-conceived public threat I made—in the midst of opiate withdrawal and what court psychologists say was a manic state brought on by medication issues—to investigate and humiliate an F.B.I. agent, who had himself threatened to indict my mother in an attempt to get me to cooperate against individuals associated with the Anonymous movement (my mother was indeed charged). Though I clearly stated that my intent was not violent, the prosecution claimed that my “victim,” Dallas-based Special Agent Robert Smith, had reason to fear that I might physically harm him and even his children—in which case it is not immediately obvious why the prosecution felt the need to alter the end of the sentence in question when quoting it on the indictment. (My complete statement, (PDF) in which I make a point of noting that I was merely going to proceed along lines spelled out by the FBI-linked contractor C.E.O. Aaron Barr while he was investigating activists on behalf of his corporate clients, and that I was doing so perfunctorily, and merely in order to make a point about the F.B.I.’s traditional reluctance to investigate its allies, has been viewed on YouTube by well over 100,000 people, including the dozens of reporters who have covered the story; none of them seem to agree with the Department of Justice contention that a journalist’s threat to “look into” someone in an explicitly non-violent manner necessarily entails violence.) A separate declaration I made to the effect that I’d defend my family from any illegal armed raids by the government, while silly and bombastic, was not actually illegal under the threats statutes. To judge from similar comments made by Senator Joni Ernst, it would not even have necessarily precluded me from delivering the G.O.P.’s recent response to the State of the Union address.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia In The Cross Hairs

January 27, 2015

Russia In The Cross Hairs

Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.

The New Chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, has declared the Russian news service, RT, which broadcasts in multiple languages, to be a terrorist organization equivalent to Boko Haram and the Islamic State, and Standard and Poor’s just downgraded Russia’s credit rating to junk status.

Today RT International interviewed me about these insane developments.

In prior days when America was still a sane country, Lack’s charge would have led to him being laughed out of office. He would have had to resign and disappear from public life. Today in the make-believe world that Western propaganda has created, Lack’s statement is taken seriously. Yet another terrorist threat has been identified–RT. (Although both Boko Haram and the Islamic State employ terror, strictly speaking they are political organizations seeking to rule, not terror organizations, but this distinction would be over Lack’s head. Yes, I know. There is a good joke that could be made here about what Lack lacks. Appropriately named and all that.)

Nevertheless, whatever Lack might lack, I doubt he believes his nonsensical statement that RT is a terrorist organization. So what is his game?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama Has Sentenced Whistleblowers to 25 Times the Jail Time of All Prior U.S. Presidents COMBINED

January 23, 2015

Obama Has Sentenced Whistleblowers to 25 Times the Jail Time of All Prior U.S. Presidents COMBINED

And Obama Is Arguably More Hostile Towards The Press Than Any President In History

The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.

This administration has also obtained much longer jail sentences against whistleblowers than previous presidents.

ACLU legislative counsel Gabe Rottman noted last October:

The Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution.

(So – as of October – Obama had thrown whistleblowers in jail for 22 times longer than all otherpresidents.)

Today, whistleblower Barrett Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison.

So now we’re up to 589 months for whistleblowers. That’s 25 times more time meted out against whistleblowers by Obama than all other presidents combined.

But even that stunning figure understates the savagery of the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers …

After all, Jeremy Hammond – regarded by many as a whistleblower – was sentenced by Obama to 10 years in prison.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This is How the U.S. Government Convinces a Newspaper to Kill a Story

January 21, 2015

This is How the U.S. Government Convinces a Newspaper to Kill a Story

Under President George W. Bush, the White House urged reporters to withhold accounts about many of the most contentious aspects in the war on terrorism: the existence of a secret prison in Thailand, the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation and detention program, warrantless wiretapping and government monitoring of financial transactions.

The Obama administration has persuaded reporters to delay publishing the existence of a drone base in Saudi Arabia, the name of a country in which a drone strike against an American citizen was being considered, the fact that a diplomat arrested in Pakistan was a C.I.A. officer and that an American businessman was working for the agency when he disappeared in Iran.

– From the New York Times article: Condoleezza Rice Testifies on Urging The Times to Not Run Article

The timidness with which mainstream media in the U.S. approaches news has been well documented. In fact, the inability of traditional media to do a reasonable job of holding powerful interests accountable has been one of the primary drivers behind the ascendency of alternative news. Despite this reality, one thing we know less about is specifically how the power structure goes about suppressing news it doesn’t want reaching the plebs. Until now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Saudi blogger receives first 50 lashes of sentence for ‘insulting Islam’

January 10, 2015

Saudi blogger receives first 50 lashes of sentence for ‘insulting Islam’

A Saudi blogger convicted of insulting Islam was brought after Friday prayers to a public square in the port city of Jeddah and flogged 50 times before hundreds of spectators, a witness to the lashing said.

The witness said Raif Badawi’s feet and hands were shackled during the flogging but his face was visible. He remained silent and did not cry out, said the witness, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity fearing government reprisal.

Badawi was sentenced last May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes. He had criticized Saudi Arabia’s powerful clerics on a liberal blog he founded. The blog has since been shut down. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 1m riyals or about $266,600.

Rights activists say Saudi authorities are using Badawi’s case as a warning to others who think to criticise the kingdom’s powerful religious establishment from which the ruling family partly derives its authority.

London-based Amnesty International said he would receive 50 lashes once a week for 20 weeks. The US, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, has called on authorities to cancel the punishment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Al Jazeera Journalist Mohamed Fahmy Should Be Released Not Retried in Egypt | Amal Clooney

January 4, 2015

Al Jazeera Journalist Mohamed Fahmy Should Be Released Not Retried in Egypt | Amal Clooney.

On 1 January 2015, the Egyptian Court of Cassation issued a ruling upholding the appeal filed by Mohamed Fahmy to overturn his conviction and 7-year sentence. In so doing, Egypt’s highest court has recognized that there were legal errors in the original trial. But instead of releasing Fahmy, the Court ordered a retrial and declined to grant him bail. The Court’s reasoning and the position of the prosecution on the re-trial are due to be published in the coming weeks.

Mr. Fahmy is a journalist who was convicted of reporting false news and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. These allegations are not true and were not backed by any evidence at trial. Mr. Fahmy has never supported the Brotherhood. There was no evidence presented at trial that showed that he ever fabricated a report or knowingly made a false statement. He is serving a draconian sentence for simply reporting the news.

A re-trial process is lengthy and its outcome is uncertain. It is also not clear how a new process would fix any of the deficiencies in the original trial. The charges themselves are a violation of the right to free expression under Egyptian and international law. There are no guarantees that a new panel of judges would respect due process or demand cogent evidence before concluding that a crime was committed. Fahmy cannot therefore count on the retrial process to offer a just or swift solution.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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