Reporters Without Borders Unmasked - Dutch journalists Union NVJ is the same...

This small part in the dutch language is of special
interest to all journalists in the Netherlands too:

De Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten [NVJ] vaart al tientallen jaren lang een pro-USA/Israel koers die volledig schaamteloos is in misleiding. De acties van Nederlandse groepen zoals de NVJ, gericht tégen Cuba, en ook bij 'Reporters zonder Grenzen' (RSF) worden gefinancierd door anti Castro groepen in de VS, met vaste betalingen door de CIA/NED. De NVJ top is corrupt en moet weg.

Gebaseerd op tientallen jaren ervaring als correspondent - ook voor veel NL-media - kan ik rustig zeggen dat de NVJ top een verwerpelijk en leugenachtig groepje collaborateurs is, die naar ik hoop z'n gerechte straf en afkeuring niet zal ontlopen. Het zijn 'Informanten' geen journalisten!

In short: based on my lifelong experience as an independent foreign correspondent, the Dutch - so called 'Union of Journalists' - is totally comparable, and as biased misleading as 'Reporters without Borders'.

READ ABOUT HOW THEY SELL THEIR HONOR:

Reporters Without Borders Unmasked

Its Secret Deal with Otto Reich to Wreck Cuba's Economy


By DIANA BARAHONA May 17, 2005

When Robert Menard founded Reporters Without Borders twenty years ago, he gave his group a name which evokes another French organization respected worldwide for its humanitarian work and which maintains a strict neutrality in political conflicts - Doctors Without Borders. But RSF (French acronym) has been anything but nonpartisan and objective in its approach to Latin America and to Cuba in particular.

From the beginning, RSF has made Cuba its No. 1 target. Allegedly founded to advocate freedom of the press around the world and to help journalists under attack, the organization has called Cuba "the world's biggest prison for journalists." It even gives the country a lower ranking on its press freedom index than countries where journalists routinely have been killed, such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico. RSF has waged campaigns aimed at discouraging Europeans from vacationing in Cuba and the European Union from doing business there - its only campaigns worldwide intended to damage a country's economy.

The above is not a matter of chance because it turns out that RSF is on the payroll of the U.S. State Department and has close ties to Helms-Burton-funded Cuban exile groups.

As a majority of members of Congress work toward normalizing trade and travel with Cuba, the extremist anti-Castro groups that have dictated U.S. Cuba policy for 40 years continue working tirelessly to maintain an economic stranglehold on the island. Their support for RSF is part of this overall strategy.

Havana-based journalist Jean-Guy Allard wrote a book about RSF's leader (El expediente Robert Ménard: Por qué Reporteros sin Fronteras se ensaña con Cuba, Quebec: Lanctôt, 2005) which lays out the pieces of the puzzle regarding Menard's activities, associations and sources of funding in an attempt to explain what he calls Menard's "obsession" with Cuba. On April 27 this year the pieces began to come together: Thierry Meyssan, president of the Paris daily, Red Voltaire, published an article in which he claimed Menard had negotiated a contract with Otto Reich and the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) in 2001. Reich was a trustee of the center, which receives the bulk of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The contract, according to Meyssan, was signed in 2002 around the time Reich was appointed Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere for the Secretary of State. The initial payment for RSF's services was approximately 24,970 euros in 2002 ($25,000), which went up to 59,201 euros in 2003 ($50,000).

Lucie Morillon, RSF's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on April 29 that they are indeed receiving payments from the Center for a Free Cuba, and that the contract with Reich requires them to inform Europeans about the repression against journalists in Cuba and to support the families of journalists in prison. Morillon also said they received $50,000 from the CFC in 2004 and that this amount was consistent from year to year. But she denied that the anti-Cuba declarations on radio and television, full-page ads in Parisian dailies, posters, leafletting at airports and an April 2003 occupation of the Cuban tourism office in Paris were aimed at discouraging tourism to the island. [end quote]

Please do read the full text which explains the despicable behavior of so many corrupted - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/8e6dv

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4bm9d
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

Helping people in need is a must: not knowing whom you are
helping with what, is a crime:the Dutch Journalists Union NVJ
in one of it's anti Cuba campaigns - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/8aahr

* Former PM Wim Kok and other Dutch Govt's War
criminals in Court - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/662pp

* TIME magazine: The Netherlands and the massacre in Srebrenica:
8000 murdered - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/apm34

* Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org -
We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments' -
Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 -
any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press
Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. - Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

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Video: Galloway takes on US oil accusers - Best TV we have seen lately...

This is an absolute classic now surfing the Internet web waves: Galloway doing to the US Senate what in all countries our own so called leaders should do.

It's a seldom seen broadcast of all the right explanations by Galloway, while senator Coleman (and his backers) try to frame Galloway and trick him.

Hilarious to see and hear how Galloway nails those liars to their own cross!

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

Video: Galloway takes on US oil accusers 

British MP George Galloway has told US senators who accused him of profiting
from Iraq oil dealings their claims were the "mother of all smokescreens". 

Full testimony 47 Minutes - and it's worth watching every minute of it!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8868.htm

http://snipurl.com/eynx

You may need to update / download Free Real Player to view this video.
Click on this link to download. http://snipurl.com/a75b

TRANSCRIPT of some quotes:

Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false. 

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein. 

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce. 

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do. 

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'. 

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise. 

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today. 

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq. 

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster. 

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places. 

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong. 

"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today. 

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny. 

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is? 

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year. 

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period. 

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries. 

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies. 

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it. 

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime. 

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. 

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies. 

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth. 

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer. 

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. 

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government." [enditem]

Fwd. by us who enjoyed it:

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4bm9d
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

*'The war in Iraq is illegal' says United Nation's Secretary General Kofi
Annan in a BBC interview: txt+video - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

*England's legal advise by the Foreign Office: the Iraq war is
a 'crime of aggression' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/44nhn

* Sued: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Over U.S. Torture Policies:
Url. http://tinyurl.com/3tgo3

* It can and must be done !

* Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org -
We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments' -
Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

HR

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. - Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

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'REPORTERS WITHOUT HONOUR' - RSF

For years I've been complaining about RFS and their political - non-journalistic - approach to past and present dangers. They've never even dared to answer, or maybe it's just bad manners? Personally I think it is their guilty consience: infiltrated and sold, that's what they are! This is my latest letter to 'Reporters without Borders':

Letter to the RSF (Reporters Without Borders) Editors.

Conc.: Your item d.d. 9 May 2005 - "Press freedom fears put to George Bush and President Barroso ahead of Moscow visits - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bbmsw

L.S.

After reading your RIGHTFULL complaint about the Freedom of the Press in Russia, the same ungood feeling crept upon me as usual, when nowadays dealing with the RSF.

Why did RSF ask George Bush to complain to Putin?

Bush himself has succeeded in killing most of the freedom of the press in the United States, and tries to do the same in all countries which are dependent on the US and it's neocon government's despicable mainstream media?

Read what Molly Bingham - a very well known and respected US journalist/photographer writes at present, about how afraid she even has to be for her own government because she has been trying to do 'solid journalism' writing about the illegal war in Iraq! - Article: ''Home from Iraq - Journalist urges Americans to search for truth, freedom' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/b34pt

I have - based on more than forty years of experience as an independent reporter - a very bad feeling about the course RSF has taken the past years, and it is my conviction that RSF - through infiltration and via other sources and means - has become a mouthpiece for certain US/Israeli groups which commit crimes against humanity.

To take just one example: in the whole of the Netherlands not a single independent newspaper is left: they're all in foreign multinational hands.

The so called 'National Dutch News Agency' - ANP - is owned by the multinational 'Fentener van Vlissingen' and forks out information that fits the multinationals.

Since March 14th 2005 ALL 'news' and similar information for the whole public radio and TV information system is in the hands of ONE man: Hans Laroes.

In the Netherlands people know 'Lackey Laroes' as the man who has made the 'Journaal' TV broadcast - which people have become used to - one of the worst government and multinational mouthpieces ever.

Still - according to RSF - Holland is some kind of ''Flagship of Press Freedom''?

I got a chance to - independently - work in Holland for some years now, after living and working abroad as an independent correspondent for more than forty years.

Let me put it like this: whatever some people here in Holland tell you:

NO there is no real freedom of the press.

NO. I do NOT know any critical journalists which have a job, or even a chance to get one.

And yes, I believe that politics and wrong influences - including from propaganda machines and secret services - is wrecking the work you did better before.

If you don't agree with me, pls do give me some
arguments explaining why I'm wrong.

If you remain silent however, I'll send text and a follow up to the 450.00+
members of the International Journalist Federation (IFJ).

Awaiting your reply, I meanwhile remain,

Henk Ruyssenaars

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4bm9d
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl


*'The war in Iraq is illegal' says United Nation's Secretary General Kofi
Annan in a BBC interview: txt+video - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HR: It's a pity, I never got an answer. The fact that they don't answer speaks for itself.

And Yes; the letter was sent to all members of the 'International Journalist Federation' mentioned above.

I wonder what the Reporters without Borders-collaborators will say, when they stand trial in the Hague at the International Crime Court, for 'guilt by assocciation' , supporting and advocating all the present war crimes?

The followers of Nazi propaganda 'Meister' Joseph Goebbels were hanged at Nuremberg for this way of working. Capital punishment by the way is proving that it lowers oneself to the standard of murderer; by murdering other human beings too.

We'll report on those 'Reporters without Honour'!

THE TIDE ALWAYS TURNS!

Today in the UK - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/csk - the following very informative article “Reporters without Borders serves US government intrests'' - is written and translated by Ralf Streck:

“Yes, this is correct, we receive money from NED and this isn't a problem for us”, admitted the boss of “Reporters without borders” Robert Ménard. But the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is not any organisation. It has been founded 1983 under the admistration of Reagan to enforce a politic which specifically aimed to destabilise Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua.

For twenty years, the french organisation “Reporters without borders” (RSF/  http://www.rsf.org ) exists, for twenty years Robert Ménard presides over this organisation, and for twenty years the rumours have never stopped, that there are close relationships to the US secret service CIA and other government authorities of the USA.

Lately the hints and investigations point directly to the RSF being financed by US state departments. The journalist Diana Barahona reported (  http://www.newsguild.org/gr/gr_display.php?storyID=2213 ) in the US journalist association “The Newspaper Guild” (  http://www.newsguild.org ) about the RSF being financed by NED (  http://www.ned.org ) .

Because of the pressure on Ménard, he had to officially acknowledge the financing.

In a forum of the french weekly magazine “Le Nouvel Observateur” Ménard was asked directly by a user about the investigations by Barahona.

He replied then: “Yes, exactly, we receive money by the NED and that is not any problem for us.”

But it should be a problem, if only because this money doesn't appear in the statement of accounts of the organisation. (  http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10589) .

According to own reports in the financial year 2003, the RSF had a household of 3.472.122 Euros. 11% by the french state, 12% of sponsors, 4% donations, 15% by EU, 10 % by “punctual actions”

The biggest contribution: 48% by publications, the organisation claims by selling picture publications. That would be 250.000 sold calendars. Either NED received a big part of these, or there are undeclared deals and fonds.

For a long time the reputation of the organisation sufferes because of the selective cognition of violations against press freedom. [http://tinyurl.com/qpny]

In Europe it can be noticed in the case of the Basque country. In 2004 the Basque underground organisation ETA is listed as a specific threat to press freedom. Though they haven't conducted any deadly attacks for years nor has there been any imitation against press representatives nor press institutions for years. The “preventive” shutdown of the Basque daily newspaper in contrast is justified in the annual report with suspicion of “collaboration with ETA” ( ).

No word about the factual prohibition existing already for more than a year at the time of publication of the report. It exists up to today, and up to now, no evidence has been presented. But the journalists have notified the public believably of having been tortured.

Then and today the criticism is missing on pointing out the missing enquiries of the accusations or the fact, that in Spain no trial nor court case has been conducted up to today in the case of the 1998 “preventive” close down of the newspaper and Radio Egin or the newspaper Ardi Beltza (2000).

In particular the militancy against Cuba under Fidel Castro is striking as well as against Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. Because of its aggressive manner towards Cuba the RSF lost its status as consulting member of the UNO.

The request to exclude the RSF restricted in first instance for a year has been filed by the UN commission for NGOs, because of a by the RSF provoked incident during the opening of the 59th human rights commission on the 17th of march 2003 in Geneva.

But even the most recent annual report is conspicuous, which was presented on “Press Freedom Day” on 3rd of may. (  http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=509).

In which 53 killed journalists are mentioned and Iraq is presented as the “most dangerous place”. But the organisation is more than retentive in regards to journalists, who have been shot by US occupying troops. [http://tinyurl.com/7gnsu] Here the organisation takes over the US language regulations and talks of “accidents”. That is also the coice of words in the case of the Italian Giuliana Sgrena ().

But the death of her protector even lead to a crisis with Italy, because the government Berlusconi does not believe in a “tragic accident”.

But at the end of april the reports by RSF about incidents in Iraq became more critical again. The organisation wrote at the start of may a letter to General Abizaid demanding the release of the cameraman Abdel Amir Hussein, who is working for the CBS News and has been arrested in Mosul start of april and is imprisoned since then without any presentation of any evidence whatsoever in Abu Ghraib.

Even on the 26th of april, several days after the confession to have received funds from NED, the RSF showed worries about the arrest of journalists, who are in Iraq or American prisons partly for several months without any formal charge.

Has this been a reaction to try to evade the suspicion that there is any influence by the US government, or has this been accidental?

It is striking in the report about the Americas, that the RSF starts with “in general press freedom would be respected in this region”. But that would not apply for Cuba, and it is infringed in Colombia and threatened in Venezuela.

Then the organisation talks about “12 killed journalists”, three more than in the year before: Mexico (3), Nicaragua (2), Peru (2) and in other countries the deat of one journalist each is mourned.

It stands out that Cuba is not amongst these countries, where since 1959 no journalist has been murdered.

Totally aside from this, the latinamerican journalist association CIAP-FELAP () talks about 20 murdered journalists for the continent and even 117 world-wide.

Instead of a general press freedom the local organisation talks about a “fatal singularity” and a new “record” for America regarding the numbers of killed journalists.

Diana Baraona pointed in her article also out, that the “total press freedom” which the Parisian organisation generally certifies the USA, is not that reaching that far.

She refers to the cases of Judith Miller and Mattew Cooper.

The journalist of the New York Times and the journalist of Time magazine (  http://www.time.com), who were sentenced to 18 months, because of their refusal to name their information sources. They had uncovered a CIA agent. (http://nzz.ch/2005/05/06/em/articleCOMQM.html)

Neither to these cases nor to the case of the black journalist Mumia Abu Jamal the RSF has ever mentioned a word. Only a massive grassroots campaign has prevented the deat penalty to be carried out and changed into a lifelong prison sentence. (  http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/11/11387/1.html)

Altough he is a honoury citizen of Paris, the Parisian RSF has never taken up te case.

Thereby there were many inconsistencies in the proceedings against the uncomfortable journalist, who has already been imprisoned for nearly 25 years.

Besides Cuba, which is allegedly the only country in America, which would imprison journalists, the organisation is also criticising sharply Venezuela.

Here, again, a conformity with the US foreign policy is established.

Barahona is not only pointing out that the NED is financing not only the RSF, but also supports groups and mediawic have been involved in the 2002 coup against the Chavez government.
(  http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/18/18702/1.html)

Although these media outlets haven't lost their license, the RSF is talking about an “autoritarian system” and is openly taking sides for the coup. Now, a dubious media law is used by both, which though has never been applied so far. (  http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/19/19910/1.html )

These conformities with the US policy and the specifics amongst the evaluation of press freedom are not a coincidence given the relevation that “Reporters without borders” are also financed by the NED.

Whoever is financed secretly by the NED, which is subordinate to the US state department, can hardly be called independent anymore.

The former CIA agent Philip Agee describes the NED like following:

It was founded under the Reagan administration and several foundations belonged to it.

The congress made several million dollars available in 1984 and distributed the money to the four “nuclear foundations”, which distributed it to the foreign beneficiaries.

“The first recipient from the NED was the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which was the reservoir of the extremist Castro opponents, from individuals to organisations, in the USA. But the first real test for this new system came in Nicaragua.”

There the Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) hunted away the bloody dictator Somoza in 1979. The logistics, the organisation and the support of the Contras was carried out from Honduras. This CIA intervention was also financed by selling weapons to the iranian "Mullahs" (religious clerics?).
(  http://www.lateinboard.de/lexikon/Iran-Contra-Aff%E4re,bedeutung.htm).

In the country itself the NED and its four foundations have been active to create collectively with the CIA an anti-sandinista political front.

It speaks for itself, that the international court in The Hague sentenced the USA for their actions against Nicaragua. [end item] - © Ralf Streck den 08.05.2005

Ralf Streck - translation - Url.: http://de.indymedia.org/2005/05/116668.shtml

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FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this blog is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, and even to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. [http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html].