All posts tagged RFE/RL

Voice of America will celebrate 70th anniversary of broadcasting to China with a reception on Capitol Hill

By BBGWatcher | December 5, 2011 | Uncategorized | Comments Off

Voice of America (VOA) employees and their supporters will celebrate 70 years of VOA broadcasting to China with a Capitol Hill reception hosted by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher on Tuesday, December 6th at the Rayburn House Office Building. The reception is also a tribute to many supporters of the Voice of America who fought to save VOA programs to China from being silenced. They include members of the recently formed Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – www.cusib.org) a nonprofit NGO.

If it were not for Congressman Rohrabacher and other members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, VOA would not be able to celebrate this anniversary. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency which manages VOA, wanted to terminate all VOA radio and television broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese as of October 1, 2011, which happened to be the anniversary of the founding of communist China. On this year’s Valentine’s Day, BBG managers informed 45 VOA China Branch journalists and broadcasters, most of whom specialize in human rights reporting, that their programs and their jobs would be eliminated. This announcement caused an outrage among human rights activists, free media advocates, and members of Congress. An amendment to save VOA broadcasts to China, introduced by Congressman Rohrabacher, received broad bipartisan support and blocked BBG from implementing its plan. Both Democrats and Republicans criticized the bipartisan members of the BBG for lacking transparency and poor judgement.

BBG members, who are both new and inexperienced and work only part time, followed the advice of their executive staff and were surprised by the strength of the opposition to their plan. Some BBG members are now beginning to question the wisdom of another plan, also developed by the BBG executive staff, that proposes to merge Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa into a large corporate entity. BBG officials also proposed to de-federalize and privatize Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti. Under the chairmanship of Walter Isaacson, a former CNN executive and author of the best selling biography of Steve Jobs, several top BBG positions have already been filled by former CNN employees, one of who bragged in an email to a BBG member about displacing “old white guys,” sources say.

These plans are likely to encounter strong opposition in Congress. Critics claim that the proposal would destroy the traditional dual arrangement of the Voice of America and the surrogate broadcasters having different roles and missions. This arrangement, supported by Congress and numerous U.S. administrations, has been very successful due to the independence and specialization of the surrogate broadcasters and the semi-official status of the Voice of America. Centralization and privatization being proposed by the BBG executive staff would undermine both elements on which the effectiveness of U.S. international broadcasting depends and would create a huge, costly, and unaccountable corporate bureaucracy, critics charge.

Members of the BBG were invited to the Tuesday reception on Capitol Hill despite their earlier vote to end VOA radio and TV programs to China.

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Who is the leader of the Free World? – Reagan, Bush, Obama – lessons in public diplomacy in response to anti-democracy crackdown in Belarus

By tedlipien | January 3, 2011 | International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy | Comments Off
George_W_Bush_with_Laura_Bush

En ce moment, il n’y a plus de pilote dans l’avion. [At the moment, there is no longer a pilot on the plane.] — A European comment on President Obama as a leader of the Free World.

TedLipien.com TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, USA, January 03, 2011 — Who is the leader of the Free World when democracy is under threat? Read more…

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Czech Court Rules RFE/RL Cannot Discriminate Against Its Own Foreign Journalists

By tedlipien | December 5, 2010 | International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy | Comments Off

FreeMediaOnline.org Logo. FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, December 02, 2010 — A court in the Czech Republic has ruled that a former Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Armenian broadcaster Anna Karapetian should not have been fired using RFE/RL’s personnel procedures which deprive non-American and non-Czech employees of some of the protections of Czech labor laws. Czech senator Jaromir Stetina, deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, called discrimination of RFE/RL foreign employees “patently indecent, unfair, cynical and hypocritical.” RFE/RL is a semi-private entity funded and managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. government agency.

Read more…

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Armenian journalist appeals to Obama to protect rights of foreign journalists at U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

By FreeMediaOnline | October 1, 2010 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Armenian journalist Anna Karapetian (photo) has written a letter to President Obama asking him to protect the rights of foreign journalists employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which is managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and funded by U.S. Congress.

IT’S THE MORALITY, STUPID

a commentary by Lev Roitman

Evidently, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) bureaucrats (President Jeffrey Gedmin) are in dire need for public celebrations together with the new Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Never mind the calendar. Otherwise, one is hard put to understand why on September 28th they collectively marked in the Washington Newseum the 60th Anniversary of the first RFE broadcast that happen to take place from New York on the 4th of July. And, as it seems, the joint celebration will be set forth.

In October, new BBG (in place since June 30th ) is for the first time coming to RFE/RL in Prague. BBG Chairman, Mr. Walter Isaacson, at the festive event in Washington, quote: “And thanks to Jeff (Gedmin), we’ve arranged to have a meeting with Havel”. No doubt, for BBG, it will be a memorable event. But, quite possibly, also an embarrassing one. For the former Czech President Vaclav Havel who came to personify morality, honesty and human decency, is well aware of the scandalous events that systematically ruin moral reputation of the American RFE/RL hosted since the time of his presidency by the Czech Republic.

In addition, BBG will meet in Prague the Nobel Prize winner, Shirin Ebady, Iranian human-rights lawyer. However, one may wonder, why RFE/RL President did not arrange for the BBG also a meeting with staunchly pro-American Czech senator Jaromir Stetina who actively strives to protect and improve RFE/RL moral standing. Probably, the answer may be found in the following letter addressed to President Obama by former RFE/RL employee Anna Karapetian. With her expressed permission, the letter is reproduced below.

“September 19, 2010

Re: Broadcasting Board of Governors and Radio Free Europe – Your Intervention

Dear Mr. President:

I am an Armenian journalist with over twenty years of professional experience, mother of three minors, whose employment with American Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Prague was terminated after 12 years of impeccable service – without any reason given to me, without any prior warning or corrective measures, without even severance pay for the years of work — because I refused to sign a consent with such a termination, accept the “shut up” severance money and give up my right of appeal to the court of law.

As it happened, the very same day, 6/30/2010, the American Senate in Washington approved your presidential nominees to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), I received in Prague the decision of the Czech Supreme Court. The Court overruled all previous, negative for me, decisions of the lower courts in my human rights labor dispute with RFE/RL and returned the case for a new consideration. This very welcome victory could, however, mean additional years of legal battles in Czech courts – should RFE/RL be permitted to further insist on the assumed right to discriminate its foreign employees in the Czech Republic.

RFE/RL personnel policies were instituted by the former BBG. Under new BBG, they remain unchanged. Equally unchanged remains negative multilingual echo accompanying peculiar brand of “public diplomacy” practiced by RFE/RL bureaucrats. Quite a number of devastating articles (“From RFE/RL: Immorality as Matter of Policy”, Czech Supreme Court Rules Against Radio Free Europe. Karapetian’s Case Returned for New Consideration”, “Radio Free Europe – Task for Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg”, to mention but a few) had appeared after new BBG was publicly inaugurated.

This is why, Mr. President, I dare to ask for your personal attention and intervention. The problem created by American RFE/RL is not a legal one to be solved by foreign courts. It is purely political, moral and ethical issue.

Signing a standardized RFE/RL Employment Agreement “governed by the applicable laws of the United States, the laws of the District of Columbia or the Policies of the Company”, all non-American journalists trustfully and proudly placed themselves under the protective hand of RFE/RL, a beacon of human rights (on air). Only after landing jobless on the streets of Prague, I discovered that I and several hundred of my non-American colleagues, mostly from the target countries in RFE/RL broadcast area, being foreigners working for American employer outside the United States, are exempt from legal protections provided to Americans by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Civil Rights Act of 1964, District of Columbia Human Rights Act of 1977, or by any other American labor law. RFE/RL Czech employees are protected by Czech labor legislation. However, RFE/RL foreign employees are intentionally placed in legal vacuum.

How could RFE/RL offer such deceptive contracts to its foreign employees, knowing that they, for any practical purpose, cannot appeal to American courts? How could it defend its actions in Czech courts – until the Supreme Court did not cancel the decisions of lower courts in my case? The answer is dishonorable – to RFE/RL that historically unmasked Communist lies.

Formally, Czech Republic still has some regulations dating back to the Communist era, which allowed foreign companies to use foreign labor laws if they did not contradict the fundamentals of the “Czechoslovak Socialist Republic”. Absurd as it may sound, but in Czech courts RFE/RL refers to the Communist law of 1963 written to allow Soviet enterprises to use Soviet labor regulations in subjugated Czechoslovakia. What a hypocrisy!

Scandalous result of those legal tricks and gimmicks is that another former RFE/RL employee, Croatian citizen Snjezana Pelivan, brought the case against Czech Republic, RFE/RL host country, in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg — the first such case in the long history of RFE/RL. She considers also a formal application to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva where, as you know, a great number of its members (Libya, China, Russia, etc) is regularly criticized by the United States for human rights violations, and Cuba holds the chair of Vice President.

Countless reports, articles, commentaries, radio and TV broadcasts highly critical of RFE/RL discriminative personnel policies have appeared by now in American, Czech, Armenian, Croatian, Russian, Slovak print and electronic media, including statements from Czech politicians. Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, prominent human rights activist, in front of the running TV-cameras promised to personally monitor the court cases of arbitrarily fired RFE/RL employees. Czech Parliament already twice considered official inquiries (interpellations) concerning RFE/RL personnel policies. Czech Senator Jaromir Stetina who protested personally against human rights violations in Cuba and Belarus, deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Defense and Security, member of the Senate Commission on International Support for Democracy, wrote an indignant open letter to American senators describing the RFE/RL actions as “patiently indecent, unfair, cynical and hypocritical”.

Recently, Senator Stetina, Vice-chairman of the Senate caucus of TOP 09 party headed by Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, has asked the Minister to request the U.S. Secretary of State, BBG member ex officio, to stop ASAP the ongoing human rights violations by RFE/RL at the territory of Czech Republic. Beginning of October, Karel Schwarzenberg shall meet Mrs. Hillary Clinton in Washington. Copies of Senator’s letter were received also by the Speaker and Vice-speakers of the Czech Parliament representing the parties of the governmental coalition. BBG is aware of that letter, either.

Published in several languages, influential Armenian newspaper AZG (People) in extensive article, “Cases of Karapetian and Pelivan as Morality Check for Obama Administration. Radio Free Europe to Face European Court of Human Rights”, wrote:
The most devious anti-American mind would not be able to design an international media campaign so devastating to RFE/RL and, by natural extension, to American image and trustworthiness abroad, as the American RFE/RL managed to cause on its own.

In fact, RFE/RL, a highly visible overseas institution of American public diplomacy intended to be a powerful tool of American “soft power”, damages America’s reputation abroad. Undoubtedly, your authoritative and timely advice will change the unfortunate situation.

I don’t think, it is that complicated. First, nominated by you present BBG should seek a quiet peaceful resolution of the ongoing legal battles. Simply, the battlefield of RFE/RL-BBG public diplomacy should be not in foreign courts but in foreign public opinion. Second, RFE/RL shameful policies of “no-rights-to-foreigners” must be changed. People whose voices carry to their still undemocratic or less democratic countries the noble American messages of universal respect for human rights, national equality, rule of law and legal safeguards against arbitrariness, should not be just the rightless mercenaries in a professionally organized show. Instead, do “show the world the best face of America” — for the sake of dignity, moral influence and political reputation of American RFE/RL.
And I hope that change will come soon.

Thank you very much in advance, Mr. President.
Yours, with highest respect,
Anna Karapetian”

Mr. Isaacson and the rest of BBG, including Hillary Clinton, an ex officio member of both BBG and RFE/RL Board of Directors, have received copies of Karapetian’s letter to President Obama. On September 28th, at the RFE/RL belated celebration in Washington, Mr. Isaacson rolled out his impressive vision of technical possibilities to enhance the impact of American international message via Internet. Moral reputation of the messengers, the international broadcasters subordinate to BBG, was not mentioned. The topic did not fit the occasion? Will it be addressed in Prague?

Lev Roitman
Former RFE/RL senior commentator
(Ret. 2005)

Disclosure: Lev Roitman is married to Snjezana Pelivan, another former RFE/RL media specialist dismissed under similar circumstances as Anna Karapetian. Ms. Pelivan’s case is now pending before the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.

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Obama nominee to promote free flow of information abroad suspected of shoving a reporter

By tedlipien | January 14, 2010 | International Broadcasting | Comments Off

FreeMediaOnline.org Logo. FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, January 13, 2010, San Francisco — Link to Video

The Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack believes that the man who pushed him on the street in Washington, D.C. Tuesday night to prevent him from asking questions of Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley may have been Michael P. Meehan who works for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Michael Meehan is also one of President Obama’s nominees to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG. The bipartisan Board is responsible for promoting free flow of news and information abroad through U.S. government-funded broadcasts such as the Voice of America, VOA, Alhurra Television, and Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, RFE/RL.

“If Michael P. Meehan is positively identified as the person who had attacked The Weekly Standard reporter while the journalist tried to ask questions of a candidate for a political office, President Obama should immediately withdraw Mr. Meehan’s nomination to the Broadcasting Board of Governors,” said Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based NGO which promotes media freedom worldwide. Michael Meehan’s nomination has not yet been confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

“The BBG needs leaders who are fully committed to the concept of journalistic freedom,” Lipien said.

According to the White House press release, “Michael P. Meehan currently serves as President of Blue Line Strategic Communications, Inc. and as Senior Vice President at Virilion, a digital media company. For over two decades, Meehan served in senior roles for U.S. Senators John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, two presidential campaigns, two U.S. House offices and congressional campaigns in 25 states. Mr. Meehan earned a B.A. in political science from Bates College.”

Former U.S. presidents have also nominated political operatives to serve on the BBG, a practice which Free Media Online blames for making the Broadcasting Board of Governors one of the worst managed U.S. federal agencies.

In November 2009, President Obama had announced his intention to nominate former CNN chairman and CEO Walter Isaacson, a Democrat, to chair the BBG. The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency in charge of all U.S. civilian international news broadcasting. President Obama had also nominated seven other new members of the bipartisan board, including Dana Perino, the former White House Press Secretary to President George W. Bush, and former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor H. Ashe. They would be among four new Republican members of the BBG.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the eight new appointees would replace the current BBG leadership with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who serves as an ex officio member.

The BBG manages the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. All are funded exclusively by U.S. taxpayers.

The agency with the estimated $717.4 million budget in FY 2009 and nearly 3,800 employees has been consistently rated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, OPM, in employee surveys as one of the worst managed within the federal government. Some of the current BBG members and their executive staff have tried to withhold from the U.S. Congress and journalists independent taxpayer-funded studies revealing cases of serious mismanagement at the BBG and its privatized broadcasting entities, especially Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. One of the studies described substandard journalistic practices at Alhurra, including broadcasting stattements from Holocaust deniers, and its failure to attract a meaningful audience in the Middle East.

To pay private media contractors favored by the Bush Administration, the BBG eliminated all Voice of America Arabic news programs and cut broadcasts to many other countries without free media. VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts were terminiated in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia.

Both Republicans and Democrats appointed to the BBG by President Bush approved these controversial decisions. The effort to create contractor-managed broadcasting to the Muslim world, as opposed to broadcasting by the Voice of America, which operates under a Congressional charter as a U.S. government entity with guarantees of journalistic independence, was led by former Democratic BBG members: Norman Pattiz and Edward E. Kaufman. Mr. Kaufman, a close friend of Vice President Joe Biden, is now a U.S. senator from Delaware.

The alliance of Democratic BBG members with neoconservatives in the Bush administration was essential for carrying out plans to privatize much of U.S. international broadcasting. Only one current Board member, conservative radio host Blanquita Walsh Cullum who is also the only working journalist on the BBG, was reported to have opposed some of the questionable management practices at the BBG, particularly the push to eliminate Voice of America broadcasts to countries without independent media.

According to Ted Lipien, the BBG needs leaders who are willing to end mismanagement and politicization of U.S. international broadcasting. FreeMediaOnline.org has been advocating for selecting future members of the BBG who have journalistic experience and have demonstrated their commitment to press freedom and human rights.

SourcedFrom Sourced from: Free Media Online

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How Self-Censorship Works – Putin, GQ, and US Taxpayer-Supported Radio Liberty

By tedlipien | September 14, 2009 | International Broadcasting, Russia | 2 Comments
censored

President Bush and President Putin, July 15, 2006
TedLipien.comCensorship and self-censorship have become a permanent feature of the media scene in Russia under Mr. Putin’s rule. Many Americans, however, were surprised last week that this kind of censorship with origins in Moscow has now reached corporate boardrooms in their own country and even put limits on news generated by US taxpayer supported Radio Liberty, which broadcasts to Russia.

 

There is clear evidence that censorship at Conde Nast was aimed not only at readers in Russia but also at consumers of news media in the United States and throughout the world. The publishers of the GQ magazine not only prevented the printing in Russia of Scott Anderson’s article about Prime Minister Putin but also banned it from the Internet. It cannot be read even on the GQ’s American website.

 

Obviously, Conde Nast executives were afraid that they could be prevented by the Russian authorities from selling their magazines and generating future advertising revenues in Russia. Perhaps they were also concerned about their Russian employees losing their jobs, or worse, being sued for libel or physically attacked. These things have happened to other publishers and journalists in Russia, but by now most have learned their lesson. If corporate executives in New York can be so easily intimidated, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of Russian media outlets also hold on to their publishing profits and protect jobs by practicing similar self-censorship.

 

Americans with some knowledge of these things may have thought that at least Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, which are funded by the US Congress, are not guided by commercial concerns and are still broadcasting uncensored news to Russia quickly and extensively. If they assumed that to be true in recent years, they would be sadly mistaken.

 

The Russian websites of both stations completely ignored the GQ censorship story for a number of days after it broke in the mainstream US media with an NPR report on Friday, September 4. VOA and the RFE/RL Russian website waited several days to report on the story and did it only after FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, exposed their silence and pointed out that independent bloggers in the US had already translated the banned article into Russian and posted it online.

 

One should ask why would Radio Liberty Russian Service ignore such a story on its news website for several days and would not offer a full translation or at least extensive excerpts from the banned article?

 

The answer to this question lies with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan board which manages Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. The BBG made a decision several years ago to operate in Russia the same way as Conde Nast and other Western commercial media. It opened a large news bureau for Radio Liberty in Moscow, hired hundreds of local reporters, and declared that the US radios’ success in Russia will be measured by the size of their audience. There was no plan B — and there still isn’t any — to protect Radio Liberty journalists and their news operations in Russia from intimidation by the FSB and from self-censorship.

 

I was not surprised at all to see that no one among those responsible for editing Radio Liberty’s Russian language website wanted to be the first one to write about the GQ story involving Prime Minister Putin and the FSB. There are many stories that Radio Liberty reporters can safely write about, and they do — some of them critical of the Kremlin and the human rights situation — but many of us in the NGO community have noticed during the last few years a remarkable reluctance among some BBG members and Radio Liberty managers to publicly criticize Mr. Putin and the Russian government, even when faced with most serious violations of media freedom. The only explanation can be that they do not want to threaten their continued presence in Russia.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org reported for example that shortly after the brutal assassination of anti-Kremlin investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006, Radio Liberty’s Russian Service managers have expressed hope that the Kremlin will allow them to report and broadcast. These comments, which seemed clearly motivated by fear of the Russian authorities, were made despite overwhelming evidence of President Putin’s’ growing crackdown on independent media.

 

RFE/RL Moscow bureau chief said at the time that this optimism was based on her belief in the common sense of the current Russian leadership. Radio Liberty Russian Service director at the RFE/RL home office in Prague also expressed confidence that Radio Liberty’s future in Russia looks good. The Moscow-based manager said that the work of local Radio Liberty journalists cannot cause Russia any harm since they are Russian citizens who respect and love their country.

 

Members of the human rights and media freedom community in Russia and in the US were appalled by these self-serving and apologetic comments coming so close after the murder of a prominent opposition journalist. This happened after veteran journalists who had opposed BBG-imposed programming changes at Radio Liberty were either fired or forced out. BBG-hired consultants advised less emphasis on human rights, culture, and intellectual discussions and more on programs that would please an average Russian listener who is highly nationalistic and pro-Putin. Not surprisingly, after these programming changes were put into place, Russian human rights activists criticized Radio Liberty for giving extensive airtime to a Russian nationalist politician known for his racist views and warned that such programs promote violence against Africans and other foreigners. Read about a similar development at the BBG-managed Alhurra Television for the Middle East.

 

None of this could not have been predicted. If US taxpayer-supported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a large number of reporters who are Russian citizens and live in Russia without any protection from their employer; if the radio station maintains extensive news gathering facilities in Russia; and if its governing body declares that the station can only be successful if it can reach a wide audience in Russia and must have a large presence there and use local media channels — the Broadcasting Board of Governors should have anticipated that under such arrangements and the corporate culture they helped to create, many Radio Liberty employees would chose their safety, their families, their jobs, their pay and benefits, and continued employment in Russia over the need to fight censorship by exposing crimes of high-level FSB and other government officials, especially if these officials have the legal power to order them to cooperate or to arrest them.

 

The BBG has not only failed to protect their reporters who are Russian citizens, it deprives them of some of the same protections and benefits which it grants to RFE/RL’s American and Czech employees, thus making them more likely victims of the FSB. Third-country journalists working for RFE/RL in the Czech Republic can be dismissed at any time. It’s hardly surprising that faced with a radioactive news story about Mr. Putin, they did not want to take risks that both the BBG and the Russian authorities might find for different reasons unwelcome.

 

The question is why the Broadcasting Board of Governors did not see this and why American taxpayers should continue to give it hundreds of millions of dollars if the NGO media freedom community and independent bloggers have to do the job that BBG-managed broadcasters have been paid to do but are afraid to do it.

 

As one of my contacts with links to Radio Liberty pointed out in response to my question: “Why the Russian Web Desk at Radio Liberty ignored GQ?” — “Do you really think that the present RFE/RL is more adventurous than Conde Nast, having a bureau in Moscow that can be closed at the whim of, say, pozharnika?” The last word refers to Russian fire safety inspectors whom the FSB uses to put out of business radio and TV stations that run afoul of the Kremlin.

 

Even though they were left far behind on this story by independent American and Russian bloggers, America still needs uncensored and effective Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. NGOs have no resources to match local languages radio and TV broadcasting by RFE/RL and VOA, nor can they speak as an authoritative voice of the US government and the American people, which VOA is by law required to do. It is unfortunate that when censorship is growing in Russia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America are not doing what American taxpayers hired them to do.

 

Another ironic twist to this story is that the BBG has been cutting budgets for radio and TV broadcasting in favor of Internet journalism and ignoring the fact that the FSB has a major operation designed to block offending websites in case of a political or military emergency, which they demonstrated during the Russian-Georgian war.

 

Of course, not everybody at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has been affected to the same degree by the FSB and the BBG broadcasting strategy. The RFE/RL English-language website, which exists largely to generate support for the station on Capital Hill, did report quickly on the GQ-Putin-FSB story. Unfortunately, this is not the website most Russians turn to for uncensored news and information.

 

The Voice of America’s role in this journalistic fiasco is somewhat different. VOA is based in Washington, DC and its reporters cannot be easily intimidated by the FSB. But they also cannot be fully protected from the BBG’s misguided models, which were taken from commercial broadcasting but which cannot be used to fight censorship. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has the power to do what it wants. In August 2008, it terminated all VOA Russian radio broadcasts just 12 days before the Russian military launched an military attack on Georgia. After going through BBG-ordered program and staff reductions, VOA is no longer able to sustain a 24/7 news operation and was not able to respond to the GQ censorship story in a timely and effective manner.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org has learned that no experienced editor was available for duty at the VOA Russian Service over the Labor Day weekend to write an in-depth report for the web on this or any other sensitive news story. After being criticized by FreeMediaOnline.org, the Russian Service managed to place on its website a short news item about Scott Anderson’s article one day earlier than Radio Liberty, but in-depth coverage had to wait until Monday and Tuesday, more than three days after the NPR story and the posting of the full article in Russian translation by independent bloggers in the US.

 

It is also interesting to examine what happened after criticism from Free Media Online. Russian services at both VOA and RFE/RL went overboard in reporting on the story — posting interviews with Scott Anderson (both RFE/RL and VOA) and with his main source, a former FSB officer turned critic (VOA) — but in the rush to rectify their earlier sins of omission, they were not as sophisticated as they should have been in pointing out which charges against Mr. Putin are real, which are unproven, and which may simply be advanced without any proof by Mr. Berezovsky and others among Mr. Putin’s political rivals whom he had imprisoned or forced to leave Russia.

 

VOA’s and RFE/RL’s subsequent reporting also lacked a measure of sophistication in explaining how the FSB could have manipulated the terrorist bombings to Mr. Putin’s advantage without any direct orders from the Kremlin. Again, independent bloggers in the US and in Russia have done a much better job than either of the Congressionally-funded US broadcasters. And again, American taxpayers should not be surprised. The US Government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been consistently rating the Broadcasting Board of Governors as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies.

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Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Faces Ethnic Discrimination Charges at the European Court of Human Rights – Free Media Online Blog (FreeMediaOnline.org)

By tedlipien | September 10, 2009 | International Broadcasting, Russia | Comments Off

Snjezana Pelivan

FreeMediaOnline.org Logo. FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, September 9, 2009, San Francisco — A former employee of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has asked the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to look into charges that the US taxpayer-funded radio station broadcasting to countries without free media discriminates against foreign-born journalists and other workers by denying them the same legal protections available to American and Czech employees. Snjezana Pelivan, a Croatian citizen, had challenged her dismissal by RFE/RL and filed an unlawful discrimination suit in a court in the Czech Republic, where the American radio station has its headquarters and where she was employed by RFE/RL as a marketing specialist to help place its programs on local radio stations throughout Eurasia.

 

The Czech court sided with RFE/RL, ruling that the station’s non-Czech and non-American employees, including many journalists who fled persecution by authoritarian regimes in their native countries, can be treated differently under the Czech law than their Czech and American colleagues. Americans and Czechs working for RFE/RL are entitled to much greater legal protections and employment benefits than citizens of other countries. Ms. Pelivan and others at RFE/RL view this as a discriminatory measure used against journalists who come mostly from poorer nations, are not familiar with American legal system, and have few other options of working as journalists in their native languages.

 

The picture is far different for American citizens at RFE/RL. Under an arrangement worked out with the Czech government, they enjoy some of the same privileges as US diplomats although they are not Federal workers. One of the benefits reserved for American employees at the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague is being exempt from paying Czech income taxes. RFE/RL employees who are Czech citizens are protected by liberal Czech labor laws.

 

The US taxpayer-supported radio station is technically a private journalistic institution, incorporated in Delaware, and receives US government grants. Ms. Pelivan had asked the Czech court to request the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to appear as a witness in her case to explain how the US government can “allow journalists from countries without democracy and free media to be treated as ‘second class’ citizens when working abroad for an American radio station funded by the US Congress with a mission to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Secretary Clinton is a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a US Federal agency, which provides grants to RFE/RL and is responsible for programming and management policies at the radio station. The Czech court did not respond to her request to submit questions to Secretary Clinton.

 

In her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, Ms. Pelivan wrote that the Czech court ruling empowers American management of RFE/RL to practice in the Czech Republic arbitrary terminations of its foreign employees without a need to justify such actions in any court of law. She expects that the European Court of Human Rights will ask the government of Croatia, her native country, to support her suit against the Czech Republic and RFE/RL. Croatia is entitled to present to the court in Strasbourg written comments and participate in hearings concerning the rights of its citizens.

 

Anna Karapetian

A similar unlawful discrimination case filed by a former RFE/RL journalist Anna Karapetian, an Armenian citizen, is still pending before Czech courts. Both Snjezana Pelivan and Anna Karapetian have petitioned U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder to open a criminal civil rights investigation into RFE/RL employment practices in the Czech Republic. Their petition notes that “actions of RFE/RL, financed by U.S. taxpayers money as a tool of American public diplomacy, make a mockery of its Mission Statement… ‘to promote democratic values and institutions… strengthen[ing] civil societies by projecting democratic values… [and]provid[ing] a model for local media…”

 

Both women have received excellent performance evaluations prior to their dismissals. Both claim that the RFE/RL management has not provided them with a clear explanation for their firings and tried to get them to agree not to discuss publicly their treatment at the radio station in Prague. They were not charged with violations of any work rules and were considered model employees.

 

The employment policies promoted by the BBG at Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty in the Czech Republic are believed to be part of a larger effort to privatize US international broadcasting and to limit the role of the Washington, DC-based Voice of America (VOA), which is a Federal government international radio also managed by the BBG. Federal workers at the Voice of America told FreeMediaOnline.org that during the last two years they have noticed an alarming number of veteran VOA journalists, employed in areas which the BBG wants to downsize, being dismissed for minor disciplinary violations. They suspect that these personnel practices have been adopted by the BBG executive staff from employment policies at RFE/RL and at some of the other BBG-managed private broadcasting entities. VOA journalists also report continued attempts by the BBG to replace Federal VOA employees, who do have some job security protections, with private contractors who can be dismissed at any time without any explanation. These practices are common at most of the BBG’s privately-run broadcasting stations. The current BBG Executive Director Jeff Trimble came from RFE/RL, where his jobs included Acting President, Counselor to the President for Programs and Policy, Director of Policy and Strategic Planning, and Director of Broadcasting.

 

In a government-wide survey of employees conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the BBG has been consistently rated as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies. In addition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the bipartisan board currently has four other members: Joaquin F.Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, and Steven J. Simmons. Despite its bipartisan membership, most of the Democrats serving on the board, including former members Norman Pattiz and now US Senator from Delaware Ted (Edward E.) Kaufman, strongly supported privatization of US international broadcasting and downsizing of the Voice of America.

 

Norman Pattiz, chairman and founder of radio industry giant Westwood One, and Ted Kaufman, who took over Vice President Biden’s Senate seat and was at one time his chief of staff, were the primary authors of the Bush Administration’s plans for Alhurra Television privatized broadcasting to the Middle East and were responsible for the elimination of the Voice of America’s highly-regarded Arabic Service. A study conducted by The University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School determined that Alhurra TV has been a journalistic failure and is unable to attract a wider audience. The BBG tried to keep the Center on Public Diplomacy report secret but was eventually forced by Congressional and media criticism to make it available on its website.(http://www.bbg.gov/reports/others/uscreport.pdf)

 

Kaufman and a former BBG Republican Chairman, James Glassman, who was President Bush’s last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, were primarily responsible for terminating Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian army attacked Georgia in August 2008. Only one board member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, the only working journalist among the current BBG members, was reported to be opposed to programming cuts at VOA and was said to have criticized some of the controversial BBG decisions at closed board meetings. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, she was outvoted by other Republicans and all Democrats. There have been unconfirmed rumors that the Obama Administration wants to replace most of the current BBG members. Republican leaders in Congress would have to be consulted which Republican BBG members should stay or be replaced.

 

Link to unedited English translation of the ICCEE (Information Center Caucasus-Eastern Europe) Press Release, Prague, the Czech Republic September 9, 2009. ICCEE is a nonprofit organization which publishes in Europe Europe Orer (“Europe Days”), an Armenian news magazine.

 

ICCEE Press Release in Russian: Американское «Радио Свобода» и его страна пребывания Чехия обвиняются в Европейском суде по правам человека в национальной дискриминации

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The Murder of Georgi Markov: The Mystery Remains – Are Radio Liberty Journalists Now Safe?

By tedlipien | September 8, 2009 | Cold War, International Broadcasting, Russia | 1 Comment

Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H. CummingsTedLipien.comThirty-one years ago this week, on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré journalist who wrote for Radio Free Europe, BBC and Deutsche Welle, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge. Markov’s murder happened during the Cold War, but in more recent years the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and of numerous other journalists in Russia, as well as the assassination in London of former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who became a vocal critic of Mr. Putin, have brought into focus the question of how safe it is in the post-Cold War world to criticize Russian leaders, especially for journalists living in Russia, but also for anybody living in the West who has ties to Russia.

 

As the Markov’s case illustrates, Russian spy and security services have a long history of recruting, intimidating and sometimes murdering journalists and others who have run afoul of the Kremlin. This concern was largely forgotten during the Yeltsin years when the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a mismanaged Federal US agency in charge of US government-funded international civilian broadcasting, placed Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty – RFE/RL) Russian language facilities and staff at a large news bureau in Moscow right under the nose of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

 

Some of us who had worked in Russia at the time observed a marked increase in the intimidation and infiltration of the Russian media by the FSB right about the time Mr. Putin, a former KGB spy, consolidated his power. Seeing how FSB officers forced owners of private radio statios to stop using news programs from the Voice of America and Radio Liberty, we wondered what kind of threats they were making in confidential conversations with Radio Liberty reporters and other employees who are Russian citizens living in Russia. It was difficult to get more information about the extent of FSB media manipulation because Russian law prevented Russian citizens approached by the state security services from disclosing these contacts. Still, some of our Russian friends told us in confidence about being visited and threatened by the secret police.

 

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based in Munich, West Germany, and RFE/RL journalists were not allowed to travel to the Soviet Union as a measure of protection against arrest, intimidation and possible recruitment by the KGB. As the Cold War ended, the BBG moved RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, the Czech Republic, and decided it was safe to have a larger number of employees and news gathering operations based in Russia.

 

Whether this is still a safe option has been brought into question by a number of recent events in Russia, including murders of prominent anti-Kremlin journalists. Obviously a news organization like Radio Liberty can no longer operate without some presence in Russia if it wants to be an effective news source, but many of us have argued that the BBG should have taken strong measures to protect its Russian employees from intimidation by the FSB and to make sure that Radio Liberty programs are not subject to self-censorship.

 

That self-censorship brought on by intimidation and justifiable fear of the FSB has affected Radio Liberty’s Russian radio and web content seems obvious to many of us who are monitoring these programs and reports for the web originating by RFE/RL staff in Moscow and in Prague. The most recent example was Radio Liberty’s failure for a number of days to post on its Russian-language website any in-depth reports about the banning in Russia of Scott Anderson’s “GQ” magazine article, which was highly critical of Mr. Putin and accused the FSB of instigating terrorist attacks to help his rise to power.

 

Russian officials strongly deny the charges that FSB agents have been involved in any terrorist attacks, but the topic remain a taboo for journalists in Russia who want to keep their jobs and stay out of trouble with the authorities. This might explain why Conde Nast, the publisher of “GQ” kept Scott Anderson’s article out of the Russian edition and why it took days for Radio Liberty’s Russian editors to notice the story.

 

Anyone curious about the workings of the Soviet and now Russian secret police the impact of fear on journalists should read a very well-documented book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings who for 15 years was the Director of Security for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL in Munich, Germany, and later was a security and safety consultant for RFE/RL in Prague until 1998. He has also published online an article about the murder of Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov in London in 1978.

 

The Murder of Georgi Markov: The Mystery Remains

 

Thirty-one years ago this week, on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré, who lived and worked in London, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge.

 

Georgi Markov had been a prolific and successful literary figure in Bulgaria before defecting to the West in 1969. He settled in England and became a broadcast journalist for Radio Free Europe, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), and the German international broadcast service Deutsche Welle.

 

Markov had a large listening audience in Bulgaria, who listened to his prime-time Sunday-night broadcasts over Radio Free Europe. He dared to tell his audience that Bulgarian President and Communist Party chief Todor Zhivkov wore no clothes.

 

In June 1977, Communist Party Chairman Zhivkov chaired a Politburo meeting, and stated he wanted the activities of Markov stopped. The Interior Minister reacted and requested KGB assistance in the killing of Markov. Though he wanted Markov killed, he wanted no trace to Bulgaria. The Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, agreed to the assassination, as long as there would be no trace back to the Soviets. Thus, the Bulgarians and Soviets were operating under a double case of “plausible denial. “

 

A former KGB general has publicly admitted his role and the role of the KGB in supplying the Bulgarian intelligence service with both the weapon and the poison. Purportedly, the highly secret KGB laboratory known as the “Chamber” developed both the weapon, concealed in a US-manufactured umbrella, and biotoxin ricin impregnated in a wax-coated pellet the size of a pinhead.

 

Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings

 

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast uncensored news and commentary to people living in communist nations. As critical elements of the CIA’s early covert activities against communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Munich-based stations drew a large audience despite efforts to jam the broadcasts and ban citizens from listening to them. This history of the stations in the Cold War era reveals the perils their staff faced from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania and other communist states. It recounts in detail the murder of writer Georgi Markov, the 1981 bombing of the stations by “Carlos the Jackal,” infiltration by KGB agent Oleg Tumanov and other events. Appendices include security reports, letters between Carlos the Jackal and German terrorist Johannes Weinrich and other documents, many of which have never been published.

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US Public Diplomacy Failure to Reach Out to the Russians After Terrorist Attack in Ingushetia – FreeMediaOnline.org (Free Media Online Blog)

By tedlipien | August 20, 2009 | International Broadcasting, Russia | Comments Off

unitedstatesinformationagencyseal200

FreeMediaOnline.org Logo. FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, August 18, 2009, San Francisco — Ever since the United States Information Agency (USIA) was dismantled in a foolish post-Cold War cost-cutting move, the U.S. State Department and American diplomats abroad have not been able to present a coherent message to foreign audiences quickly and effectively. The latest example is the lame U.S. public response to the terrorist attack in Ingushetia — no phone call from President Obama to President Medvedev, just a short written statement which was not easily available. There was no statement from Secretary Clinton.

 

Even though the lack of a proper U.S. response was not deliberate and can be blamed on the distraction with the health care reform and just plain bureaucratic incompetence, the Russian leaders and the Russian public have a reason to wonder how badly the Obama Administration wants Russia’s support in combating terrorism and restraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Americans, on the other hand, should be concerned how professional and how effective is America’s public diplomacy, which aims to inform and influence public opinion abroad to make it more sympathetic to U.S. interests. The ultimate aim is to make America safer by strengthening and promoting security and democracy worldwide. Yet, few within the government bureaucracy in Washington seem to grasp that ineffective public diplomacy threatens America’s safety. FreeMediaOnline.org (Free Media Online Blog)>>

 

ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us Выбор ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us. Вы можете скопировать и использовать эту статью. You can copy and use this report. Подписка на рассылку ГоворитАмерика.us по электронной почте. Подписка на рассылку ГоворитАмерика.us.

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A New Book About Pope John Paul II and Feminism Also Deals with Cold War Spying at the Vatican and Attempts to Influence Reporting by RFE/RL and VOA

By tedlipien | August 25, 2008 | Religion | Comments Off

Wojtylas_Women_PB
I included here more information about “Wojtyla’s Women,” my book on Pope John Paul II and feminism. In the book, I discuss at some length the attempts of the Polish communist secret police and the KGB to recruit agents among Pope John Paul II’s friends, as well as their attempts to influence the reporting of journalists working at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. Some of these efforts were successful. Considering what has happened to the independent media under Mr. Putin’s leadership, there is little doubt that his secret police, the FSB, is just as busy now as they were when they were still Mr. Putin’s old employer, the KGB. (Mr. Putin is an ex-KGB operative.)

 

Some of the brave radio station owners in Russia told me in confidence that they had visits from the FSB officers who forced them to stop rebroadcasting VOA and RFE/RL programs. They were courageous to tell me about these visist because they could be prosecuted for revealing state secrets. Still, the Broadcasting Board of Governors cavalierly shuts down Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia originating from Washington and thinks it is safe to do radio broadcasting from Moscow. RFE/RL journalists, many of whom are Russian citizens living in Russia with their families, are vulnerable to intimidation from the FSB.

 

Certainly, RFE/RL has many courageous journalists. During the Cold War, surrogate broadcasting was done from the West. But many journalists working within the Soviet Bloc became agents of the secret police and the majority were forced to write stories in support of the local regimes. The communist intelligence services even managed to recruit some agents who later worked for U.S. international broadcasters, although their number was very small. Any journalists and U.S. broadcasting resources placed within easy reach of Mr. Putin’s secret police are far more vulnerable than U.S.-based broadcasting and Voice of America journalists working in the U.S.

 

The BBG staff, some of whom know Russia quite well, should have advised the BBG members about these threats before shutting down VOA radio to Russia. It is also amazing that neither the BBG staff nor the Senate staff of Senator Biden did not see the implications of ending VOA Russian radio broadcast in terms of political symbolism and U.S. ability to communicate quickly with the Russian people in any future crisis. It is also amazing that they did not see that such a crisis would come sooner rather than later. It did 12 days after they shut down VOA Russian radio.

 

My guess is that they did know about these risks, while some BBG members may have not, but their desire to take resources from VOA in order to boost RFE/RL was just too great for them to resist.

 

I believe RFE/RL is a great institution and should be supported. RFE/RL broadcasting to Russia has some advantages over VOA broadcasting, just as VOA broadcasting to Russia has some advantages over RFE/RL broadcasting. At this time, however, due to the BBG decisions from the era of Mr. Pattiz and his consultants, RFE/RL has been put in a very dangerous position in Russia. My understanding, based on conversation with various sources, is that the current RFE/RL president, Jeff Gedmin, is trying to repair some of this damage, but he has not yet developed a new concept of safe surrogate broadcasting to countries like Russia, where the secret police is basically in charge of the media.

Wojtyla's Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church“Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church,” a book about Pope John Paul II and feminism by international journalist Ted Lipien who had interviewed Karol Wojtyla, offers a unique perspective on the late Pope’s views on women and American society.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, June 24, 2008 — John Paul II warned about the dangers of secular feminism but accepted of some of its ideas. A new book — “Wojtyla’s Women“ — explores the role of remarkable women who shaped the life of Pope John Paul II, supported his concept of “New Feminism,” and changed the Catholic Church.

 

Ted Lipien’s new book, “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church,” published by the UK publisher O-Books and available on Amazon, reveals for the first time the role of remarkable women in the life of Karol Wojtyla and their impact on his papacy and the Catholic Church. The book also explores John Paul II’s views on feminism, gender roles, love, sex, abortion, and contraception in the context of unprecedented threats against human dignity during his lifetime, from pre-World War II anti-Semitism to the Holocaust, Nazi medical experiments on women prisoners, and communist dictatorship.

 

The book shows how John Paul II, the most charismatic and influential Pope in centuries, reshaped many facets of Catholic thought. Yet, as Ted Lipien demonstrates, Church policy on women during John Paul II’s papacy remained deeply resistant to popular modern ideas on gender roles. Wojtyla’s Women explores John Paul II’s views on women, marriage, family and sexual ethics from both feminist and conservative Christian perspectives. Previously untapped sources reveal the influence of his upbringing in Poland at the outset of the Twentieth Century, a time when deeply rooted traditions collided with rapid social change and new ideas, against a backdrop of war, genocide, and political oppression.

 

As the book reveals, Polish women were a remarkable and unexpected influence on John Paul’s understanding of gender issues and the Catholic Church’s theology. They were also the main force behind his advancement of New Feminism and Theology of the Body as alternatives to the Sexual Revolution and to radical and Marxist feminism in the West and in the communist world.

 

The future Pope John Paul II told Polish Catholics before becoming pope that “the affairs of the Kingdom of God” cannot be left only to women and that “social advancement of women has in it a little bit of truth but also a great deal of error.” John Paul II was strongly opposed to ordaining women priests.

 

But while he could not reach an understanding with liberal Western women because of vast differences in how he and they were shaped by culture and history, Karol Wojtyla nevertheless supported many ideas embraced by secular feminists and broke with many misogynist Christian traditions.

 

“Wojtyla’s Women” also analyzes the considerable impact of John Paul II’s views and papacy on the abortion debate in the United States and his conflict with the Clinton Administration over U.S. policies on birth control programs and abortion in the Third World. Lipien writes in his book that John Paul II was successful in raising awareness of the moral aspects of abortion through his campaign of “the culture of life versus the culture of death.” The book demonstrates, however, that Wojtyla’s campaign to promote natural birth control methods for women has not succeeded in any country, including his native Poland.

 

The author points out that John Paul II would have been appalled that the majority of U.S. presidential contenders in 2008 have been pro-choice, including the majority of those who are Roman Catholic: Joe Biden (D), Christopher Dodd (D), Rudolph Giuliani (R), Dennis Kucinich (D), Bill Richardson (D); only Senator Sam Brownback (R) and Alan Keyes (R), among former candidates who are Catholic, are pro-life.

 

Barak Obama (D), Hillary Clinton (D), and Senator McCain (R) belong to Protestant Christian Churches. Both Obama and Clinton are strongly pro-choice, while McCain is pro-life.

 

Ted Lipien reports in his book that Senator Joe Biden, who is a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, had said that he is prepared to accept the Catholic Church teaching that life begins at conception. Ted Lipien points out that John Paul II would have been gravely disappointed that abortion has not emerged in the U.S. as a major presidential campaign issue in 2008.

 

Ted Lipien’s book also reveals Pope John Paul II’s deep mistrust of Western liberalism and his condemnation of the United States as “a continent marked by competition and aggressiveness, unbridled consumerism and corruption.” In addition to abortion, he was particularly troubled by the growing support among Americans for ordination of women priests and social and legal acceptance of gay marriages.

 

John Paul II doubted that the emergence of the United States at the end of the Cold War as the only superpower was good for the rest of the world and he strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

 

Ted Lipien also reveals in his book how the KGB and the Polish communist security service recruited spies among John Paul II closest friends and their attempts to manipulate media coverage of his papacy. This part of Lipien’s book was cited in a recent news story about Senator Biden’s staff and the shutting down of the Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, shortly before the Russian attack on Georgia in early August. To see the news story, please visit www.TedLipien.com, Pope John Paul II and Women Blog, http://tedlipien.com/WojtylaWomen/, www.FreeMediaOnline.org, and Free Media Online Blog, http://freemediaonline.org/freemediaonlineblog/.

 

Ted Lipien is a former director of the Polish Service of the Voice of America and a journalist with more than 30 years of reporting and writing about politics, society, women’s issues, and the Catholic Church in Poland. He interviewed Karol Wojtyla shortly before the Polish cardinal became pope. Ted Lipien is also president and founder of FreeMediaOnline.org, a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization supporting media freedom worldwide. He lives in San Francisco.

 

For more information, please visit his website: www.TedLipien.com.

 

Wojtyla’s Women is available for purchase on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Wojtylas-Women-Shaped-Changed-Catholic/dp/1846941105/

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