čet, 07.11.2013, 21:28

Samo dan po tem, ko je država spet našla način, da je svojim neposlušnim državljanom pokazala mišice in Bohinjčanu Darku Kuzmiču podrla hiško, v kateri je bival dolga leta, je resorni minister preostalim lastnikom črnih gradenj povedal, da bo od danes povsem drugače. Vsi, ki so brez ustreznih dovoljenj zgradili kakšen vikend, brunarico, hiško ali pa stajo za razvajene koze, ki se rade kopajo v bazenu – mimo tega znanega Jakličevega primera pač res ne moremo –, bodo lahko svoje objekte čez kakšno leto legalizirali. Če so le gradili na svoji zemlji ali pa imajo služnost na njej.Čeprav se bodo lastniki črnih gradenj zaradi tega nemara oddahnili, je vprašanje, kaj o tem mislijo državljani. Vključno z Darkom iz Bohinja. Si predstavljate, da dolga leta živite v neki hiški – verjetno ne v napoto sokrajanom, ker vas drugače v stiski ne bi podprli –, potem pa pridejo uradniki in vam v prah, strogo po črki zakona, porušijo streho nad glavo? In to prvi dan, ko je marsikdo iz omare potegnil bundo. In vrh vsega ravno dan pred tem, ko na ministrstvu povedo, da zdaj pa nimajo več denarja za rušitve črnih gradenj. Naj pade še tista v Bohinju, da bo zmanjkalo za ono Türkovo, ki bi jo menda morali zravnati z zemljo konec meseca na obali. Ha! Zdaj je jasno, kako bodo inšpektorji tam »poskrbeli za vzpostavitev zakonitega stanja«, kot so dejali pred kratkim.Minister noče komentirati primerov, ki še niso rešeni, zato ne vemo, kaj si misli o tem, da ta vila in ona kozja staja še vedno stojita. Povedal pa je, da se z rušitvijo Darkove hiške ni nikomur zgodila krivica, ker je bil objekt po vseh pogojih zrel za rušitev. V nasprotju s prej omenjenimi? »V tem primeru se je izkazalo, da smo pravna država, saj elementarni pogoji pravice do gradnje niso bili izpolnjeni. Država je izpolnila svojo obveznost.« Državljanom v poduk in posmeh hkrati.

RIO DE JANEIRO — A young American lawyer comes to Brazil in 2005, falls in love, finds that his gay relationship confers greater legal rights than back home, starts a blog called Unclaimed Territory focusing on illegal warrantless eavesdropping by the U.S. National Security Agency, takes a place in the hills of Rio with a bunch of rescue dogs, denounces the cozy compromises of “establishment journalists,” gets hired to write a column by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, is sought out by the N.S.A. whistleblower Edward J. Snowden, becomes the main chronicler of Snowden’s revelations of global American surveillance, is lionized for work that prompts a far-reaching debate on security and freedom, files repeated thunderbolts from his leafy Brazilian perch, and ends up in just eight years as perhaps the most famous journalist of his generation.

These things happen. At least they happen in the empowering digital age, and they happen to Glenn Greenwald.

With his gray shirt, black backpack, regular features and medium build, he merges into the Rio crowd, the ordinary man. Over a Thai lunch, he tells me he is sleeping five hours a night, running on adrenalin. So what does he do to relax? “Roll around in the mud with my 10 dogs.”

Unwinding is hard. The five months since he met Snowdenin Hong Kong have been relentless; they talk almost every day. He lives in limbo. “I feel like if I went back to the United States there is a more than trivial chance I would be arrested,” he says. “Not one of 20 lawyers I have spoken to has said, ‘Oh, you are being paranoid, of course they would never think of arresting you.”’

Would Greenwald enjoy First Amendment protection after publishing top-secret information? The record of the Obama administration is ominous. He says his lawyers are unable to get clarification. His mother in Florida asks: “What if I am on my deathbed and cannot see you?”

Greenwald lives with a sense of exile but is pesky in his determination not to relent. He has been embraced as a hero by Brazil after revealing U.S. spying on President Dilma Rousseff (who postponed a planned state visit to Washington) but has resisted one request to hand over documents and is determined, here as elsewhere, to keep his distance from power.

He is on a double mission: to push back in the name of freedom against the post-9/11 “surveillance state” with its dragnet data trawling, and to reinvigorate journalism through “an aggressive and adversarial position to political and corporate power,” an undertaking he will pursue through a new online publication backed with $250 million from the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the same amount Jeff Bezos of Amazon paid for The Washington Post (a sobering reflection on the standing of legacy newspapers today.)

On the first of these fronts, he says he is only halfway through the reporting of Snowden’s documents “with a lot of huge revelations to come.” On the second, explored in a recent exchange with my colleague Bill Keller that will be taught in journalism schools, he has already made about 10 hires. (He and Omidyar have never met, which must be some sort of first for such a venture.)

“Our style will be to encourage and empower combative journalism that can be a real force against powerful people,” he says. “We want our journalists to follow their passion.”

He continued: “The reason why journalism is important, why it is protected in the Constitution, is to be one of the institutional checks on abuse of power, and for that you have to keep those in power at arm’s length, hold them accountable.”

For Greenwald, American journalism has been defanged by the “patriotism compulsion” after 9/11 and by the culture of big media corporations. He alludes to David Halberstam’s speech at Columbia University in 2005: “Never, never, never, let them intimidate you. People are always going to try in all kinds of ways. Sheriffs, generals, presidents of universities, presidents of countries, secretaries of defense. Don’t let them.”

Of course, this admonition is sacred to plenty of old-school journalists. Greenwald overstates the conformity of mainstream papers, whose investigative journalism is often vigorous and fearless. But he is right that journalism got engulfed, with grave consequences, in America’s great post-9/11 disorientation. And there is no question journalism will benefit from having the personal, open-with-its-bias reporting Greenwald proposes alongside the impartiality-seeking traditional media. “Biased and balanced” — the Andrew Sullivan blog formula — is an important component of the new media landscape. Each form can spur the other, keep it honest.

American society will also benefit from Greenwald’s ongoing revelations about out-of-control surveillance. He has testified before the Brazilian Senate, and should be allowed to testify before the U.S. Senate. He says, “I am definitely going back, I refuse to be exiled for a lie.”

He deserves assurance that he can return to the United States without facing arrest.

Email service Lavabit abruptly shut down citing government interference

Founder of service reportedly used by Edward Snowden said he would not be complicit in ‘crimes against the American people.

European Parliamentarians call on President Obama to free Bradley Manning

Open Letter from Members of the European Parliament
to President Barack Obama and US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel

As Members of the European Parliament, who were elected to represent our constituents throughout Europe, we are writing to express our concerns about the ongoing persecution of Bradley Manning, the young U.S. soldier who released classified information revealing evidence of human rights abuses and apparent war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army has charged Private First Class Manning with 21 different crimes, including ‘Aiding the Enemy’; a capital charge. To convict a person who leaked information to the media of “Aiding the Enemy” would set a terrible precedent. Although we understand the US government is not seeking the death penalty for Bradley Manning, there would be nothing to stop this from happening in future cases.  As it is, PFC Manning faces the possibility of life in prison without parole, recently rejected as “inhuman and degrading treatment” by the European Court of Human Rights.

On July 2nd , Army prosecutors closed their arguments in the case without having provided any real evidence that Bradley Manning aided the enemy, or that he intended to do so. In his defense against those charges to which he pleaded not guilty, PFC Manning was not permitted to bring any evidence of motivation. And in a statement calling on the court to allow a ‘public interest’ defense, Amnesty International said that this was ‘disturbing…as he has said he reasonably believed he was exposing human rights and humanitarian law violations.  Moreover, the prosecution provided no evidence that PFC Manning caused harm to U.S. national security or to US and NATO troops.

We agree with Amnesty International that the U.S. government should immediately drop the most serious charges against PFC Bradley Manning, and that to charge Bradley Manning with ‘aiding the enemy’ is ‘ludicrous’ – a ‘travesty of justice’ which ‘makes a mockery of the US military court system’.

“We’ve now seen the evidence presented by both sides, and it’s abundantly clear that the charge of ‘aiding the enemy’ has no basis,” said Widney Brown, Senior Director for International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.  “The prosecution should also take a long, hard look at its entire case and move to drop all other charges that aren’t supported by the evidence presented.”

Rather than causing harm, Bradley Manning’s release to WikiLeaks of the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diaries shone much needed light on those occupations, revealing, amongst other abuses, the routine killing of civilians. The bleak picture painted by these war diaries contrasts greatly with the rosy progress reports being provided to the public by military and political leaders. PFC Manning has said he felt that if the American public had access to this information, this could ‘spark a domestic debate’ on American foreign policy ‘as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan’. Far from being a traitor, Bradley Manning had the best interests of his country in mind.

The Iraqi people continue to suffer the consequences of this war, even after the withdrawal of foreign troops, with millions of homeless refugees and the resumption of sectarian violence. Meanwhile, eleven and a half years after the U.S invaded Afghanistan, that nation has yet to form a functioning democracy or to free itself from the Taliban and fundamentalist warlords.

Bradley Manning:  ‘I felt that we were risking so much for people that seemed unwilling to co-operate with us, leading to frustration and anger on both sides. I began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year.’

Bradley Manning was witness to the wrongdoing of the U.S. military.  He says this ‘troubled’ and ‘disturbed’ him. But instead of ‘passing by on the other side’ like so many others, he acted in accordance with international law and with a strong commitment to truth, transparency and democracy. He wrote at the time that he hoped his actions would lead to “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.” 

Bradley Manning also released information about the men who continue to be wrongly held in indefinite detention at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, Cuba.  Over one hundred of these prisoners have been carrying out a long, indefinite hunger strike, and 45 of them are being force-fed by U.S. soldiers.  This intolerable situation continues to undermine U.S. claims to promote freedom and democracy, compromising the standing of the US in the world and diminishing US moral authority.

Bradley Manning’s courageous action, for which he has three times been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was an inspiration to others, including Edward Snowden, who recently revealed massive U.S. government surveillance in the U.S. and also against European governments and citizens.

We are concerned that the U.S. administration’s war on whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning is a deterrent to the process of democracy in both the United States and Europe.

We hereby urge you to end the persecution of Bradley Manning, a young gay man who has been imprisoned for over three years, including ten months in solitary confinement, under conditions that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez deemed “cruel and abusive.”  Bradley Manning has already suffered too much, and he should be freed as soon as humanly possible.

Signed,

Marisa Matias, Member of the European Parliament, Portugal
Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament, Sweden
Ana Maria Gomes, Member of the European Parliament, Portugal

Gabi Zimmer, Member of the European Parliament, Germany
Paul Murphy,  Member of the European Parliament, Ireland

Sabine Wils, Member of the European Parliament, Germany

Jacky Henin, Member of the European Parliament, France
Alda Sousa, Member of the European Parliament, Portugal
Martina Anderson, Member of the European Parliament, Ireland
Nikola Vuljanić, Member of the European Parliament, Kroatia
Sabine Lösing, Member of the European Parliament, Germany
Lothar Bisky, Member of the European Parliament, Germany
Helmut Scholz, Member of the European Parliament, Germany

Willy Meyer, Member of the European Parliament, Spain

Mikael Gustafsson, Member of the European Parliament, Sweden

Marie-Christine Vergiat, Member of the European Parliament, France

Patrick Le Hyaric, Member of the European Parliament, France