JOURNALISM IS NOT TERRORISM
DEFINITION OF JOURNALISM--link here
1
a : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media
b : the public press
c : an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium
2
a : writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine
b : writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation
c : writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest
JOURNALISM Concise Encyclopedia
Collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials through media such as pamphlets, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, radio, film, television, and books. The term was originally applied to the reportage of current events in printed form, specifically newspapers, but in the late 20th century it came to include electronic media as well. It is sometimes used to refer to writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation. Colleges and universities confer degrees in journalism and sponsor research in related fields such as media studies and journalism ethics.
DEFINITION OF TERRORISM-- link here
the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal
What is the definition of terrorism? link here
There is no single, universally accepted definition of terrorism. There are many reasons for this (not the least of which is the cliche “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”). Even different agencies of the US government have different working definitions. Most definitions usually have common elements, though, oriented around terrorism as the systematic use of physical violence–actual or threatened–against non-combatants but with an audience broader than the immediate victims in mind, to create a general climate of fear in a target population, in order to effect some kind of political and/or social change.
Terrorism by nature is difficult to define. Acts of terrorism conjure emotional responses in the victims (those hurt by the violence and those affected by the fear) as well as in the practioners. Even the U.S. government cannot agree on one single definition. The old adage, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is still alive and well. Listed below are several definitions of terrorism. For the purposes of the Terrorism Research Center, we have adopted the definition used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
FBI Definition
Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
Definitions of Terrorism differ by different US Govt Agencies
Louise Richardson Author of What Terrorists Want
PDF Summary of the Book: Terrorism---Who What and Why
Journalism IS NOT Terrorism
Roll Call link here
When the Justice Department admitted to gathering months of records from more than 20 Associated Press telephone lines, it startled average Americans and the established media alike. It was a dangerous overreach by the DOJ, whose powers are strictly limited under its own guidelines for issuing subpoenas to the news media for testimony and evidence.
Congress responded to this gross executive overreach by seeking to codify legal protections for journalists and their sources, but despite the best of intentions, they’re missing the mark in their attempt to create a tight definition of a “journalist.”
The Founding Fathers explicitly protected the press in the First Amendment because it is such a critical service to a free society, but they were smart enough not to define what “the press” was. Journalism is society’s greatest safeguard against government abuse, and Congress should seek to protect it in all its forms, and not define it to fit their own devices.
Rachel Maddow---Journalism is not terrorism VIDEO here
The Guardian----Is Glenn Greenwald's journalism now viewed as a 'terrorist' occupation?
David Miranda's detention shows that being the partner of the man who interviewed the NSA whistleblower is enough to see you treated like a terrorist. His "offense" under the 2000 Terrorism Act was apparently to be the partner of a journalist, Glenn Greenwald, who had reported for the Guardian on material released by the American whistleblower, Edward Snowden. link here
Freedom of the Press Foundation link here
United Nations link here
4 September 2013 – Two United Nations independent experts today called on the United Kingdom to ensure journalists can perform investigative work without fear of intimidation, and stressed that national security concerns do not justify curtailing press freedom.
“The protection of national security secrets must never be used as an excuse to intimidate the press into silence and backing off from its crucial work in the clarification of human rights violations,” the Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, said. “The press plays a central role in the clarification of human rights abuses.”
Committee to Protect Journalists link here
CPJ research has tracked a significant rise in journalist imprisonments since 2000, a year before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States fueled the expansion of anti-terrorism and national security laws worldwide. The number of journalists jailed worldwide hit 232 in 2012, 132 of whom were held on anti-terror or other national security charges.The Journalist and The Terrorist JM Berger vs Jihadis
Journalist: JM Berger, Terrorist: Omar Hammami
NPR interview with JM Berger
counterterrorism expert J.M. Berger, author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam
NPR interview with JM Berger
counterterrorism expert J.M. Berger, author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam
Article by JM Berger
""I don't know exactly when I began to worry I had become friends with a terrorist. Believe it or not, this kind of thing happens to people relatively often.
JM Berger---""So you want to go hunting for jihadis on Twitter. You see an intriguing account. So you click follow and sit back to watch. Easy right? Think twice.""
http://news.intelwire.com/2013/09/ive-got-little-list.html
The Case of Barrett Brown
Journalist and Activist being prosecuted by US Government
Democracy Now! report from July 11, 2013 link here
Journalist Barrett Brown spent his 300th day behind bars this week on a range of charges filed after he used information obtained by the hacker group Anonymous to report on the operations of private intelligence firms. Brown faces 17 charges ranging from threatening an FBI agent to credit card fraud for posting a link online to a document that contained stolen credit card data.
On The Media interview about Barrett Brown
FAIR blog post
NYT article by David Carr on Barrett Brown Case
VICE interview with Barrett Brown from Prison
What in the Age of Wikileaks is Journalism??
https://www.eff.org/mention/who-wiki-age-journalist
Michael Hastings under investigation by FBI
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/9/fbi-releases-redacteddocumentonmichaelhastings.html
Denny Argall, the FBI'S public liaison officer, wrote that after the agency searched for responsive records it located one "cross reference" file pertaining to a pending criminal investigation. The FBI would not comment further about the nature of the probe.
One of the excerpts in the FBI document is completely redacted and marked "S" (for "secret") and "Per Army," under an exemption aimed at protecting national security. Additional redactions were used to protect techniques and procedures for law-enforcement investigations and prosecutions.
The documents revealed that on June 11, 2012, the FBI's Washington field office opened a file and submitted "unclassified media articles" to it in order "to memorialize controversial reporting by Rolling Stone magazine on June 7, 2012."
Jeff Light, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who filed the FOIA lawsuit, suggested opening such files on reporters was not common. "It's interesting [that] the FBI memorializes controversial reporting," he said.
The FBI documents also stated that in addition to Hastings' report, the agency also submitted one copy of a "blog entry relative to the aforementioned articles" and "one copy of Emails Express Discontent," which is an article about Bergdahl published on June 7, 2012 by the Associated Press that was based on Hastings' Rolling Stone report.
The "blog entry," however, appeared to be lifted from the comments section of the Idaho Statesman newspaper. The comment was apparently written by Gary Farwell, the father of Matthew Farwell, who contributed reporting to the Rolling Stone story and is identified at the bottom of the story as "a former soldier who deployed to Afghanistan."
FBI FOIA DECLARATION
FBI uses informants, invents acts of terrorism arresting wrong people link here
The guy who convinced the plotters to blow up a big bridge, led them to the arms merchant, and drove the team to the bomb site was an FBI informant. The merchant was an FBI agent. The bomb, of course, was a dud.
PAID INFORMANTS are not whistleblowers NYPD and Muslims ACLU
Radio show on informants
Whistleblower
Thomas Drake NSA Whistleblower and American Hero C-SPAN
Peter Jouvenal (photographer, on the right) Peter Bergen (2nd from right) Peter Arnett (1st on left) of CNN interview Al Qaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden in 1997 (video interview here)
Peter Bergen has reported on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and counterterrorism and homeland security for a variety of American newspapers and magazines Wikipedia
No one knows more about Osama bin Laden than Peter Bergen. In 1997, well before the West suddenly became aware of the world’s most sought-after terrorist, Bergen met with him and has followed his activities ever since. link here
Peter Bergen Photo Gallery
Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees have their phones wiretapped for ""talking to terrorists"" link
from the radio program This American Life, episode This Week (June 13, 2013) the week Edward Snowden's NSA leaks came out. Transcript, Act One
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/9/fbi-releases-redacteddocumentonmichaelhastings.html
Denny Argall, the FBI'S public liaison officer, wrote that after the agency searched for responsive records it located one "cross reference" file pertaining to a pending criminal investigation. The FBI would not comment further about the nature of the probe.
One of the excerpts in the FBI document is completely redacted and marked "S" (for "secret") and "Per Army," under an exemption aimed at protecting national security. Additional redactions were used to protect techniques and procedures for law-enforcement investigations and prosecutions.
The documents revealed that on June 11, 2012, the FBI's Washington field office opened a file and submitted "unclassified media articles" to it in order "to memorialize controversial reporting by Rolling Stone magazine on June 7, 2012."
Jeff Light, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who filed the FOIA lawsuit, suggested opening such files on reporters was not common. "It's interesting [that] the FBI memorializes controversial reporting," he said.
The FBI documents also stated that in addition to Hastings' report, the agency also submitted one copy of a "blog entry relative to the aforementioned articles" and "one copy of Emails Express Discontent," which is an article about Bergdahl published on June 7, 2012 by the Associated Press that was based on Hastings' Rolling Stone report.
The "blog entry," however, appeared to be lifted from the comments section of the Idaho Statesman newspaper. The comment was apparently written by Gary Farwell, the father of Matthew Farwell, who contributed reporting to the Rolling Stone story and is identified at the bottom of the story as "a former soldier who deployed to Afghanistan."
FBI FOIA DOCUMENT -----Thanks to Jason Leopold
FULL FBI FOIA RELEASE -----its missing the declaration, Jason Leopold has told me.FBI FOIA DECLARATION
FBI uses informants, invents acts of terrorism arresting wrong people link here
The guy who convinced the plotters to blow up a big bridge, led them to the arms merchant, and drove the team to the bomb site was an FBI informant. The merchant was an FBI agent. The bomb, of course, was a dud.
PAID INFORMANTS are not whistleblowers NYPD and Muslims ACLU
Radio show on informants
Whistleblower
Thomas Drake NSA Whistleblower and American Hero C-SPAN
Peter Jouvenal (photographer, on the right) Peter Bergen (2nd from right) Peter Arnett (1st on left) of CNN interview Al Qaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden in 1997 (video interview here)
Peter Bergen has reported on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and counterterrorism and homeland security for a variety of American newspapers and magazines Wikipedia
No one knows more about Osama bin Laden than Peter Bergen. In 1997, well before the West suddenly became aware of the world’s most sought-after terrorist, Bergen met with him and has followed his activities ever since. link here
Peter Bergen Photo Gallery
from the radio program This American Life, episode This Week (June 13, 2013) the week Edward Snowden's NSA leaks came out. Transcript, Act One
FBI listens to phone calls of Journalist Lawrence Wright
my blog post here
I [Wright] talk about two members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force who came to my office to ask about phone calls that I made to a number in London. It belonged to a solicitor who represented some of the jihadis I had been interviewing. During the course of the conversation, they asked who “Caroline Wright” was. That’s my daughter. She was a university student at the time, not living at home. None of our phones were registered in her name. The only way I could imagine that they got her name was by listening to my phone calls.
Before this episode, I had been told by a source at the Counter-Terrorism Center that my source had seen a summary of a telephone interview I had with Zawahiri’s cousin in Cairo. At the time, I figured that the Egyptians had covered the conversation and supplied it to the CIA. On December 16, 2005, when the New York Times revealed that the NSA was illegally wiretapping Americans, I thought otherwise.
I’m glad the JTTF came to my house to clear this matter up, but it’s an example of the danger of awarding government such extraordinary powers. A simple misunderstanding such as this could easily have led to having Caroline’s name placed on an FBI link chart, only two steps away from Al Qaeda.
One day, Al Qaeda will fade away, but we will still be left with the swollen security state that we’ve created to fight it. That’s another challenge we haven’t begun to face.
2005 Bush Illegal Wiretapping
link here
link here
FIGHTING TO STOP THE 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) and Section 1021
NDAA Court Document link here
FBI Occupy Wall St Documents link here
NDAA 2nd Court Ruling link here
Letter about NDAA by Alexa O'Brien (select portions are copied here, this is most but not all of the letter)
""US Government was threatening to detain me indefinitely without charge for my work as a journalist and citizen.Since January 2011, I have covered the WikiLeaks release of US State Department Cables, JTF memoranda known as the 'GTMO files', and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen, as well as the legal proceedings against Manning and the US investigation into WikiLeaks. I have interviewed a preeminent US foreign policy expert on the Cambodia cables, and published hours of interviews with former GTMO guards, detainees, defense lawyers, and human rights activists, as well as WikiLeaks media partners: Andy Worthington, a GTMO historian and author, and Atanas Tchobanov, the Balkanleaks' spokesman and co-editor of Bivol.bg.
Why do I do this work? Because it moves me deeply. Because I am compelled to learn and to understand. The positive results of some of my work also grants me a sense of common purpose in service to my fellow man/woman.
When the US Government said in Federal Court that they would not guarantee that I would not be indefinitely detained without charge under Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act FY2012 for articles I had written on the 'War on Terror', you set aside partisanship. You realized that what is as stake is more than an election. What was at stake is the safety of your friend, your daughter, a fellow citizen or journalist, as well as this nation and people across the globe. The NDAA, after all, was passed with bi-partisan support, and signed into law by President Obama.
Court: These people have real things they are saying. These are not speculative or hypotheticals. These are people who have actually written articles that we have here. [The Court then held up the articles written by O'Brien and marked as Court Ex. 3.] We are trying to figure out, are these articles going to subject Ms. O'Brien to risk under § 1021? . . . .
Government: Again, I'm not authorized to make specific representations regarding specific people. I'm saying that 'associated forces' cannot extend to groups that are not armed groups at all.
Court: So we don't know about the articles, it depends?
Government: Maybe they are an armed group.
Judge Forrest wrote:
"O'Brien has written a series of articles already--some of which relate to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or "associated forces" no matter how defined. The Government was unwilling to state at the hearing that O'Brien would not be detained under § 1021 for her expressive conduct in regard to those articles. Moreover, O'Brien testified that she has withheld at least two articles from publication because of her concerns regarding the potential for her expressive conduct in those articles to render her a "covered person" under §1021 and thereby subject her to military detention."
Section 1021 of the NDAA FY2012 allows for the indefinite detention without charges or trial of anyone, including American citizens, who are deemed by the US Government to be terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. The institutions of civil society - the press and civic square - are now what our military terms an information environment in a global theater of war. The 'War on Terror', our military says, is fought with intelligence and information. And, the US Government has already detained journalists at Guantanamo Bay under the AUMF seeking to gain intelligence on media organizations. The President has already played a personal role in the imprisonment of a journalistcovering the US 'War on Terror' in Yemen.
Government contractors falsely linked a group, which I helped found - whose only purpose is to support campaign finance reform in the United States - to Al Qaeda.
I was sent messages by a Government contractor saying that I was now associated with Al Qaeda and so called 'cyber-terrorists'
Citizenship is a public office, but who among us can risk engaging in the body politic authentically, when we have families to provide for? Who can risk publishing about the workings of Government, our alliances, and wars when you might end up in my position?
No matter what your party affiliation, Section 1021 of the NDAA FY 2012 violates the First and Fifth Amendments to the US constitution, the principles that safeguard the independence of our republic and any real freedom or lasting security for our citizens and all peoples.
Section 1021 defines a “covered person” – one subject to detention – as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or “associated forces” that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”
The law, however, does not define the terms “substantially supported,” “directly supported” or “associated forces.” As it stands, the law violates the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments of the US Constitution and most of the Bill of Rights.
The Lawsuit against NDAA https://www.stopndaa.org/aboutlawsuit/
The Plaintiffs fighting NDAA https://www.stopndaa.org/aboutus/
We are a group of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds who filed suit because we our First Amendment activities have been impinged under the NDAA. Each plaintiff has engaged in expressive activities in defense of civil liberties and human rights that, despite our clear and abiding commitment to these allegedly guaranteed liberties in the US, fall into a gray area under the vague and new sweeping powers granted by the 2012 NDAA.
Chris Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. Hedges is the bestselling author of nine books and is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times. In 2002, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received in 2002 the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and The University of Toronto.
Alexa O’Brien has designed digital content strategy solutions for international governmental organizations and Fortune 500 companies. She founded usdayofrage.org, which endorsed and helped organize the September 17 action to Occupy Wall Street. She has covered WikiLeaks releases and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen, as well as Bradley Manning. DHS memos sent to law enforcement across the country stated organizers of US Day of Rage were likely high level cyber terrorists. The media followed suit, publishing those allegations and others, including the groups alleged association with Al Qaeda, jeopardizing Ms. O’Brien’s career, her standing in her community, and her liberty under the 2012 NDAA.
Daniel Ellsberg is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers. Mr. Ellsberg is publicly supporting PFC Bradley Manning, and has been subjected to arrest at protests. He is 81 years old. Mr. Ellsberg was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006. He is one of the most highly lauded government whistle-blowers in US history.
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He us currently a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has taught for fifty years. Dr. Chomsky has gained a worldwide following as a political dissident for his analyses of the pernicious influence of economic elites on U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy. He claims double standards in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all while allying itself with non-democratic and repressive organizations. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992.
Stop the NDAA, USA PATRIOT ACT, NSA spying, and any other threat to liberty, democracy and freedom of the press. Treat Journalism as Journalism and Terrorism as Terrorism---They are two very different issues with two very different goals.
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