Tag: journalists

Two charged in assassination plot against RT chief – Investigative Committee

Two members of a neo-Nazi group have been charged with planning to assassinate RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, the Russian Investigative Committee has said.

The investigation into the case has been completed and handed over to prosecutors, the agency said in a statement on Monday.

Simonyan posted on X that she was thankful to those who prevented the planned attack. “My deepest gratitude to our law enforcement officers for their work,” she wrote.

The assassination plot against the RT editor-in-chief was prepared by members of a Moscow-based cell of the banned the National Socialism/White Power group, according to the agency.

The cell, called ‘Pure Blood’, was set up in 2022 by Mikhail Balashov, who recruited at least 11 people with “national-socialist and racist views.”

“Additionally, on the order of unidentified individuals, Balashov and the cell’s other member, Egor Savelyev, agreed to kill journalist Margarita Simonyan for a cash reward of $50,000,” the statement read.

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Italy’s anti-Mafia police investigate after a journalist’s car explodes

A car belonging to one of Italy’s leading investigative journalists exploded outside his home overnight, prompting an investigation by Italy’s anti-Mafia authorities and condemnation Friday from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and others. No one was injured.

The explosion late Thursday targeting Sigfrido Ranucci, lead anchor of state-run RAI3’s Report investigative series, occurred on the eighth anniversary of the car bomb slaying of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The investigative program said the explosion was so powerful that it could have killed anyone passing by. Ranucci had just returned home at the time and his daughter had walked by a half-hour before, Report said in a statement. The blast destroyed the car, damaged another family car next to it, as well as the front gate of Ranucci’s home in Pomezia, south of Rome.

Police, firefighters and forensic crews reported to the scene and magistrates from the Rome district of the anti-Mafia police were investigating, Report said. Video shot by Ranucci, who has been under police protection since 2021 because of his hard-hitting investigations, showed the mangled remains of the cars and gate.

Meloni expressed her solidarity with Ranucci and condemned what she called “the serious act of intimidation he has suffered.”

“Freedom and independence of information are essential values of our democracies, which we will continue to defend,” she said in a statement.

In comments to journalists outside the offices of RAI, Ranucci said the explosion was an “escalation” of what he said were two years of threats that he believed were related to Report’s investigations into the links between the Cosa Nostra, ‘ndrangheta and far-right crime groups and notable past Mafia hits.

Asked if the explosion would have a chilling effect on Report’s work, he said his colleagues were used to working under difficult conditions.

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Slain Journalist Was on Threshold of Exposing Large-Scale CIA-Mafia Drug-Smuggling Operation Using Australian Bank Founded by Special Forces Veteran

n August 10, 1991, Danny Casolaro was found lying dead in a tub of bloody water in a hotel room in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

The cause of death was ruled a suicide, the view presented in a recent Emmy winning Netflix series. However, the crime scene evidence makes clear that Casolaro was murdered.

Prior to his death, Casolaro had been investigating the nefarious activities of a corrupt cabal in the CIA linked to then-President George H.W. Bush and was planning to publish a tell-all book called “The Octopus.”

One of the key chapters was going to focus on a drug and arms-smuggling operation using the Australian-based Nugan Hand Bank, which was founded in 1973 and staffed by people with military backgrounds and who had links at a high level with American intelligence operations.[1]

Nugan Hand made its money by charging high fees for performing illegal and shady services (including moving money overseas, flouting Australia’s and other countries’ laws, and tax avoidance schemes) and from the fraudulent procurement and subsequent misappropriation of investments from the public.[2]

CIA whistleblower Victor Marchetti wrote that Nugan Hand’s favors for the CIA included providing cover for operators, laundering money, and establishing cutouts for clandestine activity the Agency did not want to be publicly identified with—including gun running to apartheid South Africa and Southern Rhodesia in violation of arms embargos.[3]

Casolaro had been planning a trip to Australia to interview key figures associated with the bank, including Bernie Houghton, a top CIA man from Texas who joined Nugan Hand’s staff in 1978 and established its Saudi Arabian branch.[4]

An Air Force cadet in World War II who flew opium out of the Golden Triangle in C-47 cargo planes during the Vietnam War, Houghton had established the Bourbon & Beefsteak, a gathering place for U.S. soldiers on R&R from Vietnam, whose private guests included Sydney mob boss Abe Saffron and John D. Walker, the CIA’s Australian Station Chief from 1973 to 1975.[5]

Besides Houghton, Casolaro hoped to interview members of an Australian parliamentary commission that had investigated the Nugan Hand Bank and helped expose its criminal activities. Casolaro further intended to interview Nugan Hand Bank co-founder Michael Jon Hand, a decorated Green Beret in Vietnam and CIA contract agent who trained hill tribesmen in Vietnam and Laos and fled Australia after the Nugan Hand Bank’s collapse in January 1980.[6]

Already, Casolaro had amassed significant evidence of Nugan Hand’s function as a beachhead for drug and money-laundering operations run by Mafia-connected CIA operatives who were part of President George H.W. Bush’s “secret team.”

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Portland Police Bureau Blames Conservative Journalist for Being Attacked by Antifa, Claims She ‘Instigated’ by Simply Being There

The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has come under fire for defaming a conservative journalist who was viciously assaulted by Antifa militants, claiming that she “instigated” the assault by simply being there.

Katie Daviscourt, a staff reporter for The Post Millennial, was labeled a “counter-protester” in an internal police report that suggested she and others deliberately antagonized protesters, leading to their own assaults.

Earlier this week, Daviscourt was bashed in the face by a female masked Antifa militant with a flag pole and left with a black eye. Police refused to arrest the assailant after she fled into a nearby “safehouse” for the extremist activists.

The report, authored by PPB Sgt. Andrew Braun, described Daviscourt, along with The Post Millennial contributor Chelly Bouferrache and conservative activist Rhein Amacher, as chronic instigators at the ICE protests. All three of them have been the victims of violent assaults by leftist lunatics.

Braun’s statement claimed:

“These 3 counter-protesters continue to be a chronic source of police and medical calls at ICE. Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed. They refuse or are reluctant to walk away from these confrontations, even when police are in the area trying to meet with them. They even engage in the same trespassing behavior on federal and trolley property as the main protesters. Aside from the confrontation between opposing protesters, there was no reported activity around ICE that would have otherwise generated a police response.”

The Post Millennial responded, writing, “Daviscourt has been diligently reporting on the protest and riot activity for months, recording her work both in The Post Millennial and on X for all the world to see while local legacy media stayed away for safety reasons. On Sept. 30, the world saw another report from Daviscourt, but this one ended with a concussion and an eye hemorrhage. She was reporting outside the facility when a woman swung a flagpole at her, bashing her in the face.”

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‘A big freaking mistake’: Feds confirm investigation into arrest of reporter Nick Sortor at Portland ICE protest

Nicholas Sortor, an independent, on-the-street reporter who has become famous for his documentation of anti-government actions across America, has announced that the Department of Justice has assured him of an investigation into his arrest by Portland police late Thursday.

The Washington Examiner said the conservative influencer was arrested late Thursday, then released several hours later, early Friday.

He was accused by local police of “second-degree disorderly conduct” while he was documenting violent protests near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Oregon’s largest city.

Other reports from the scene at the time said Sortor was defending himself from a woman who attacked him.

“Sortor, a 27-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., was arrested alongside two Oregon residents, according to a press release from the city’s police department. All three people were booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on the same misdemeanor charge,” the Examiner reported.

But later Sortor confirmed the review of his “wrongful arrest” will be conducted by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon.

He said Attorney General Pam Bondi called him personally with the news.

“The Trump DOJ WILL NOT allow Portland Police to continue to do the bidding of Antifa,” he wrote on X, telling Portland police to “f*** around and find out.”

The report said he explained he was recording footage of federal agents macing protesters when he was surrounded and assaulted, forced to defend himself.

“Nick says he swung back and missed, then disengaged and walked over to a group of Portland PD. He says he was then shocked to be arrested by them, and he sat in the back of a police cruiser while officers figured out what to charge him with,” a witness reportd.

Protests in Portland were triggered by the deployment of National Guard troops to crack down on rampant crime there.

The Gateway Pundit commented, “The woman who attacked him was not arrested.”

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Portland Police Arrest Conservative Journalist Nick Sortor

Portland Police arrested conservative journalist Nick Sortor on Thursday night.

According to X user, C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom:

“Looked like @nicksortor got jumped. We are on the lower roof at ICE but difficult to tell exactly what happened at this distance. Portland liaison officers stand nearby and watch.”

She added in the following post:

“I cannot believe they arrested this guy for defending himself. The woman that went after him has taken part in a few assaults this last week.”

X user Mark Wilson posted video footage of the arrest, writing:

“Portland PD arrested @nicksortor tonight. Unclear why, as he wasn’t doing anything criminal. This comes after Portland police refused to arrest the lady who assaulted @KatieDaviscourt.”

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Western news agencies demand Israel grant international journalists access to Gaza

The world’s most prominent news agencies released a short film and a joint statement on 25 September calling on Israel to allow international journalists into Gaza to report on the horrors of the ongoing war.

The video, produced on behalf of the BBC, Reuters, AP, and AFP, features iconic photos and clips of news reports from previous wars over the past century alongside the message that “history is told by those who report it.”

“The world ignored Rwanda until reporters revealed thousands a day were being massacred; the report of a child’s body washed up on a beach revealed the stark reality of the Syrian refugee crisis; in Ukraine, journalists from around the world risk their lives every day to report the suffering of the people,” BBC journalist David Dimbleby narrates.

“But when it comes to Gaza, the job of reporting falls solely to Palestinian journalists who are paying a terrible cost, leaving fewer to bear witness,” Dimbleby states as photos of the devastation from Gaza are shown.

“The Israeli government will not allow international reporters into Gaza to do their work and to document freely what they see. International journalists must now be allowed into Gaza to share the work with Palestinian reporters there so we can all bring the facts to the world,” he concludes.

Since Israel began its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, it has blocked access for foreign news correspondents unless they are embedded with the Israeli army. Their reports are then reviewed and approved by Israel’s military censor before publication.

In perhaps the only exception, CNN journalist Clarissa Ward briefly entered Gaza via Rafah in a convoy of UAE medical volunteers in December 2023.

As foreign news agencies relied on local journalists to produce reports on the ground, the Israeli military has mercilessly targeted them for assassination.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), at least 210 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the war began nearly 23 months ago.

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The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists

There are two types of war correspondents. The first type does not attend press conferences. They do not beg generals and politicians for interviews. They take risks to report from combat zones. They send back to their viewers or readers what they see, which is almost always diametrically opposed to official narratives. This first type, in every war, is a tiny minority.

Then there is the second type, the inchoate blob of self-identified war correspondents who play at war. Despite what they tell editors and the public, they have no intention of putting themselves in danger. They are pleased with the Israeli ban on foreign reporters into Gaza. They plead with officials for background briefings and press conferences. They collaborate with their government minders who impose restrictions and rules that keep them out of combat. They slavishly disseminate whatever they are fed by officials, much of which is a lie, and pretend it is news. They join little jaunts arranged by the military — dog and pony shows — where they get to dress up and play soldier and visit outposts where everything is controlled and choreographed.

The mortal enemy of these poseurs are the real war reporters, in this case, Palestinian journalists in Gaza. These reporters expose them as toadies and sycophants, discrediting nearly everything they disseminate. For this reason, the poseurs never pass up a chance to question the veracity and motives of those in the field. I watched these snakes do this repeatedly to my colleague Robert Fisk.

When war reporter Ben Anderson arrived at the hotel where journalists covering the war in Liberia were encamped — in his words getting “drunk” at bars “on expenses,” having affairs and exchanging “information rather than actually going out and getting information” — his image of war reporters took a huge hit.

“I thought, finally, I’m amongst my heroes,” Anderson recalls. “This is where I’ve wanted to be for years. And then me and the cameraman I was with — who knew the rebels very well — he took us out for about three weeks with the rebels. We came back to Monrovia. The guys in the hotel bar said, ‘Where have you been? We thought you’d gone home.’ We said, ‘We went out to cover the war. Isn’t that our job? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’”

“The romantic view I had of foreign correspondents was suddenly destroyed in Liberia,” he went on. “I thought, actually, a lot of these guys are full of shit. They’re not even willing to leave the hotel, let alone leave the safety of the capital and actually do some reporting.”

You can see an interview I did with Anderson here.

This dividing line, which occurred in every war I covered, defines the reporting on the genocide in Gaza. It is not a divide of professionalism or culture. Palestinian reporters expose Israeli atrocities and implode Israeli lies. The rest of the press does not.

Palestinian journalists, targeted and assassinated by Israel, pay — as many great war correspondents do — with their lives, although in far greater numbers. Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another. The goal is to shroud the genocide in darkness. No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since Oct. 7, Israel has killed more journalists “than the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.” Journalists in Palestine leave wills and recorded videos to be read or played at their death.

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The Palestine Chronicle Case: When Truth Becomes the Crime

The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance, and the endurance of a people condemned to silence. In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity – grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.

At the heart of this endeavor stands Ramzy Baroud. His career is the antithesis of clandestine. For decades he has written, taught, and spoken in public, producing books translated into multiple languages, contributing columns to international publications, addressing audiences in universities and public forums across continents. He is not a shadowy figure; he is a man whose work has been consistent, transparent, and intellectually rigorous. His life is not untouched by the tragedy he describes: many members of his family were killed under Israeli bombardments. Yet while mainstream media rushed to amplify unproven allegations against him, they remained deaf to his personal grief. His tragedy was ignored, his integrity overlooked, his voice distorted – because his engagement is unbearable to those who would prefer silence.

A Crime of Conscience, Not of Law

He is an engaged journalist in the noblest sense: independent, lucid, unflinching. His so-called crime is not collusion with violence but fidelity to memory. That is why he is demonized – not for what he has done in law, but for what he represents in conscience. America, unable to silence Palestinian voices through censorship alone, now instrumentalizes its justice system to achieve by indictment what it failed to achieve by argument. Having harassed universities, intimidated students, and punished professors for their solidarity with Gaza, it turns the courtroom into a new battlefield. And Congress, captive to the whims of its Zionist masters, joins the manhunt, targeting a journalist for the sole offense of telling the truth of his people. As for the mainstream press, it chooses cowardice: ignoring his family’s suffering, ignoring the emptiness of the charges, while echoing the accusations of power as if they were evidence.

Law Twisted into Weapon

The complaint filed against Ramzy Baroud and the organization (People Media Project) that runs the Palestine Chronicle rests on the Alien Tort Statute, grotesquely overstretched to criminalize editorial decisions rather than acts of war. It alleges that by publishing articles from Abdallah Aljamal – described by Israel as a Hamas operative killed during a hostage rescue – the Chronicle “aided and abetted” terrorism. But here lies the first fissure: this characterization of Aljamal comes exclusively from Israeli military sources, themselves a belligerent party. It has never been independently verified. The claim that he was both a journalist and a Hamas operative remains an allegation, not an established fact. To treat it as judicial evidence is to replace proof with propaganda.

Even if – hypothetically – Aljamal had, at the demand of a militant group, harbored hostages, such a circumstance would not in itself render him culpable: what ordinary civilian in a war zone can refuse the command of militants under threat of force? And even if it occurred, how could Ramzy Baroud have known of it? Even taken at face value, the allegation collapses upon scrutiny. No evidence demonstrates that the Chronicle or its editor had actual knowledge of Aljamal’s supposed operational role, nor that modest freelance payments – if any at all – bore any causal nexus to hostage-taking. The federal judge, in February 2025, dismissed the original complaint precisely for lack of proof of knowledge or intent. The plaintiffs returned with an amended filing, repackaged in rhetoric and pathos, but still devoid of the material elements required under international law: actus reus (a substantial contribution to the crime) and mens rea (intent or knowledge).

To equate the publication of articles with material support for terrorism is not jurisprudence but a juridical contortion. It is the substitution of law by politics, the criminalization of journalism under the mask of counterterrorism. What is sought is not justice but intimidation – to cast suspicion on every Palestinian voice, to brand their words as weapons, their witness as crime.

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The War on Truth: Why Are Palestinian Journalists Being Systematically Erased?

The killing of seven Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza on August 10 has prompted verbal condemnations, yet has inspired little to no substantive action. This has become the predictable and horrifying trajectory of the international community’s response to the ongoing Israeli genocide.

By eliminating Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh, Israel has made a sinister statement that the genocide will spare no one. According to the monitoring website Shireen.ps, Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists since October 2023.

More journalists are likely to die covering the genocide of their own people in Gaza, especially since Israel has manufactured a convenient and easily deployed narrative that every Gazan journalist is simply a “terrorist”. This is the same cruel logic offered by numerous Israeli officials in the past, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who declared that “an entire nation” in Gaza “is responsible” for not having rebelled against Hamas, effectively stating that there are no innocent people in Gaza.

This Israeli discourse, which dehumanizes entire populations based on a vicious logic, is frequently repeated by officials who fear no accountability. Even Israeli diplomats, whose job in theory is to improve their country’s image internationally, frequently engage in this brutal ritual. In comments made in January 2024, Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, callously argued that “every school, every mosque, every second house has access to tunnels,” implying that all of Gaza is a valid military target.

This cruelty of language would be easily dismissed as mere rhetoric, except that Israel has, in fact, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports, destroyed over 70% of Gaza’s infrastructure.

While extremist language is often used by politicians around the world, it is rare for the extremism of the language to so precisely mirror the extremism of the action itself. This makes Israeli political discourse a uniquely dangerous phenomenon.

There can be no military justification for the wholesale annihilation of an entire region. Yet again, the Israelis are not shying away from providing the political discourse that explains this unprecedented destruction. Former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin chillingly said, last May, that “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy… not a single Gazan child will be left there.”

But for the systematic destruction of a whole nation to succeed, it must include the deliberate targeting of its scientists, doctors, intellectuals, journalists, artists and poets. While children and women remain the largest categories of victims, many of those killed in deliberate assassinations appear to be targeted specifically to disorient Palestinian society, deprive it of societal leadership, and render the process of rebuilding Gaza impossible.

These figures powerfully illustrate this point: according to a report released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, based on the latest satellite damage assessment conducted in July, 97% of Gaza’s educational facilities have been affected, with 91% in need of major repairs or full reconstruction. Additionally, hundreds of teachers and thousands of students have been killed.

But why is Israel so intent on killing those responsible for intellectual production? The answer is twofold: one unique to Gaza, and the other unique to the nature of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism.

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