Saturday, February 8, 2020
Australia’s Devastating Fires Make an Urgent Case for Nationalizing Fossil Fuels
Why Australia and the United States should take over and shut down fossil fuels.
BY CARLA SKANDIER
http://inthesetimes.com/article/22285/australia-fire-climate-change-coal-fossil-fuel-public?
At least 33 people dead. More than a billion animals lost. An estimated 3,000 homes and over 16 million acres of land damaged or destroyed.
This is the toll, likely underestimated, of Australia’s ongoing megafires. These numbers, together with the horrifying images of thousands of carcasses of beloved Australian animals like koalas and kangaroos, tourists using masks in a smoggy Sydney Opera House, and NASA satellite images of smoke reaching as far as Chile, paint a clear image of how devastating the climate crisis can be even for privileged nations.
It’s also pushing Australians to face the need to part ways with what they have been told is an essential fuel for their economic growth: coal. The continent’s best—and perhaps only—option for doing so may also be its most radical: Nationalize the coal industry to shut it down.
Australia’s wildfires, already more than six times greater than California’s 2018 fires, have been directly linked to record levels of hotter and drier weather—conditions that are expected to be the new normal as we continue to burn coal in an already carbon-constrained atmosphere. Yet, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been reluctant to recognize the connections between the country’s ravenous coal production and consumption—coal supplies 60 percent of Australia’s electricity and generates 3.5 percent of Australia’s GDP just in exports—and the destruction his nation is facing. Instead, Mr. Morrison keeps putting forward a focus on job security and economic stability that fronts for a pro-coal agenda.
Yet the record-smashing bushfire season is showing that climate inaction is, in fact, the greatest threat to Australia’s decades-long economic boom. The megafire and the drought that preceded it are harming the country’s tourism and agriculture, two major sectors of Australia’s economy. The fires have also started rippling through the insurance industry, with initial claims surpassing a half-billion Australian dollars, a number expected to increase as events continue to unfold. Even Australia’s strong coal industry is, ironically, at risk. BHP, the world’s largest mining company and 19th biggest greenhouse gas contributor, recently reported that smoke and dust from this season’s fires have slowed the coal production of its New South Wales’s power plant and mine by 11 percent.
Financial experts are increasingly worrying that the fires might as well be the event that will push Australia’s economy, which performed relatively strongly during the 2008 financial meltdown, toward the unknown territory of a 21st century economic depression. The mother of all central banks, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), warned in a new report that the climate emergency is putting worldwide economies’ stabilities at risk and might well be the driver of the “next systemic financial crisis.” The report argues that once that happens, central banks might have no other choice than to act as “climate rescuers of last resort.” Just as during the 2008 financial crisis, when central banks used their monetary power to clean the troublesome balance sheets of systemically critical corporations by injecting money and removing bad assets, these banks might need to intervene once again to get financial toxins—this time in the shape of fossil-fuel assets—out of the economic system. That would mean, in Australia’s case, the country’s climate-change-driving coal mines and generation facilities.
The idea of a 2008-like financial intervention as a way to deal with fossil-fuel stranded assets—assets that won’t be exploitable to provide investors the expected returns—is not a foreign concept. Yet, it still fails to tackle the climate crisis head on. More than saving Australia’s financial system from toxic coal assets through a rerun of 2008 U.S. bailouts, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) should make sure that any rescue is married to the actual wind down of companies’ coal production. This is necessary not only to secure the country’s financial stability, but to address a rapidly expanding demand among Australians for the government to lead on climate action—which must include putting to rest any ambition to expand BHP, Adani, and companies alike dirty coal fleet and retire at least one coal unit per day.
What is happening in Australia should be seen as a cautionary tale for the United States. Both countries share more in common than pro-fossil fuel personnel heading their Administrations, while simultaneously being hit by new realities of destructive storms and wildfires. Over the past four decades Americans experienced 258 weather and climate events that surpassed the billion dollars benchmark, costing Americans over $1.75 trillion. Wildfires in California and Alaska in 2019 accounted for $4.5 billion of those losses. The two countries also share the shameful records of being among the world’s top fossil fuel exporters; Australia as the second leading coal exporter, and the United States on track to compete for the top one oil exporter position within the next five years.
This masterful continued expansion of fossil fuels paired with increasing climate damages make these countries stand as front runners for facing the next financial crisis—this time driven by fossil fuel bad assets. In 2013, London-based organization Carbon Tracker issued a report exposing that Australia could face a 44 percent decrease in its coal revenues under a 2° Celsius scenario; a decline that, according to my assessment, must be even sharper in order to achieve the 1.5° Celsius target. In that same year, Carbon Tracker also pointed to the fact that the United States is in a particularly precarious position, with the New York Stock Exchange ranking as the stock market with the highest concentration of fossil fuels in their exchanges. As the climate emergency becomes more pressing, any event can be the tipping point in exposing the real value of fossil fuel assets and start a shockwave throughout the countries’ markets.
The chaos Australia is now facing exposes the need for stronger government interventions to avoid the many threats fossil fuel toxic assets now impose on society—in particular the need for the nationalization of the coal industry to rapidly decline its production. Just like the RBA is heading to a point when it will be “the only game in town,” soon will the Federal Reserve be the one as well. Instead of waiting for a catastrophic event and further destruction to act on climate, the U.S. government should take the lead and look at the events unfolding below the Equator line as lessons to why the nationalization of the nation’s oil, gas, and coal industry should be done now; not after companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron have poured another $260 billion in new oil and gas fields. If not for the well-being of its own people, then for the sake of the American and Australian economies.
Bernie Sanders’ Feat in Iowa Shows Democratic Socialism Can Win
By taking the popular vote lead in Iowa, Sanders has upended the notion that running as a socialist is a liability.
BY MILES KAMPF-LASSIN
http://inthesetimes.com/article/22286/bernie-sanders-iowa-victory-democratic-socialism-2020?
In October 2019, less than three weeks after suffering a heart attack that pundits and opponents seized upon to declare his presidential campaign dead in the water, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) held the largest rally of the 2020 cycle in Queens, New York alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Following his declaration of “I am back,” Sanders channeled Nelson Mandela in enjoining the crowd of 26,000 that everything, “always seems impossible…until it’s done.”
Sanders’ performance in the Iowa caucuses on Monday—where he maintains the popular vote lead with 71% of precincts reporting—affirms this adage. Throughout the primary campaign, commentators, rivals and establishment politicos across the spectrum have written off Sanders’ candidacy, treating it as an afterthought—or, more recently, as an annoyance to swat away. Despite the Iowa Democratic Party’s bungled reporting of caucus results, which show Pete Buttigieg narrowly leading in state delegate equivalents, Sanders is currently on top by over 1,300 votes. By leading with the most votes in the first contest of 2020, Sanders has proven the commentariat wrong.
The outcome reshapes the primary race, where Joe Biden—long assumed the most “electable” candidate among Democrats—is now coming in a measly fourth. Sanders, meanwhile, is on track to take New Hampshire next week, where a win would establish him as the clear frontrunner. But the results also realize an axiom that many on the American Left have long believed, but has now been demonstrated: Democratic socialism can, in fact, win.
Countless hands have been wrung by paid consultants and strategists over the false fear that the mantle of socialism will sink any candidate seeking the highest office in the land. Just last week, New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait warned that nominating Sanders would be “an act of insanity,” in large part because of the senator’s identification as a democratic socialist. Aside from the fact that Chait has been wrong about nearly everything in recent political history, including his archetypal 2016 take “Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination,” this liberal panic is simply unfounded.
By claiming the most votes in Iowa—a rural, Midwestern state—Sanders has shown that fears over a Scarlet S have been largely overblown. In reality, the democratic socialist agenda that undergirds Sanders’ political philosophy—free and universal healthcare, taxing the rich, canceling debt, ending wars, expanding workplace democracy and investing in a livable future for the planet—is incredibly popular.
The pundits are already waving their arms, warning that Sanders is uniquely vulnerable to a Red Scare-style takedown because of his political beliefs. On Monday morning, MSNBC host Chris Matthews compared Sanders’ campaign to George McGovern’s failed 1972 presidential bid, saying the Democratic frontrunner reminds him of “some old guy with some old literature from this socialist party or that,” as if Sanders was more akin to a leafleter for the Revolutionary Communist Party than a U.S. senator first elected to Congress 30 years ago.
Meanwhile, at the Atlantic, neocon David Frum proclaims that “Bernie can’t win,” referring to him as “a Marxist of the old school of dialectical materialism, from the land that time forgot.” And Matt Bennett and Lanae Erickson, hucksters for the Wall Street-funded, Democratic centrist think tank Third Way, write in USA Today that Sanders’ socialist ideas are “toxic,” cautioning that “Democrats must not be fooled by him now.”
Even Biden himself, reeling from a disastrous finish in Iowa, is joining in on the swipes. On Wednesday, Biden said: “If Sen. Sanders is the nominee for the party… every Democrat will have to carry the label Sen. Sanders has chosen for himself. He calls him—and I don’t criticize him—he calls himself a democratic socialist. Well, we're already seeing what Donald Trump is going to do with that.”
Such admonition is understandable coming from a political and media establishment that views Sanders’ redistributive platform with scorn: Their concern over “electability” really just masks their ideological opposition to Bernie Sanders’ political project. But that doesn’t make their claims correct.
Majorities of young people, women and Democrats all now say they prefer socialism over capitalism. And survey results from Data for Progress show that in a general election matchup, Sanders’ identification as a socialist would not be a liability against Trump. Interestingly, the results indicate that Sanders performs better against Trump when he’s identified as a “socialist” and the president as a “billionaire,” versus Democrat and Republican, respectively. As Vox concludes from the study, “tagging Sanders as a socialist did not seem to undermine his campaign.”
University of California political scientist Gabriel Lenz’s research has shown that, in general, voters “adopt their preferred party’s or candidate’s position as their own.” As a result, voters are less likely to be turned off by a candidate identifying as “socialist” if they generally agree with or approve of that candidate.
Sanders is the most popular hopeful in the race and is the most trusted on the issues most important to Democratic voters. And Sanders is reliably beating Trump in polls both nationally and in battleground states across the country.
Rather than serving as a hindrance, Sanders’ political philosophy could actually benefit him in the country’s heartland. Chicago City Council member Carlos-Ramirez-Rosa, himself an outspoken democratic socialist, writes in NBC News that “Far from being allergic to socialism and class struggle… the Midwest has always been a region steeped in it—even leading the way.”
By positioning himself as a candidate of and for the working class, Sanders has won the backing of low-wage workers and young people of color—constituencies that will be key to winning the White House in November. In many ways, Trump’s perfect foil is Bernie Sanders: the son of an immigrant family who grew up poor, has been consistent in his political beliefs his entire life and has made workers the center of his campaign—and billionaires like Trump the enemy.
The threat Sanders poses to Trump has been raised by none other than Trump himself. Leaked audio from a 2018 phone call showed Trump expressing relief that Hillary Clinton chose Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) rather than Sanders for her vice presidential nominee in 2016. “Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would've been tougher. He's the only one I didn't want her to pick,” Trump said. “Because [Sanders'] a big trade guy. You know he basically says we're getting screwed on trade. And he's right.
So, if Sanders does indeed have a real shot at beating Trump, why are so many in the Democratic brass sounding alarms over his rise? It could have something to do with the fact that Sanders has made the corporate wing of the Democratic Party his foe ever since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015. In June 2019, Third Way president Jon Cowan called Sanders an “existential threat to the future of the Democratic Party.” More recently, centrist guru Rahm Emanuel said on ABC’s This Week, “The fact is one of the threats to the party right now is a rupture in the core.”
A rupture in the core of the corporate-centric Democratic Party establishment that Emanuel represents is exactly what a Sanders presidency promises. Which is the reason moderates like John Kerry are opening the door to jumping in the race to stop Sanders if his momentum continues to grow. Such gambits give the lie to the idea that party insiders are interested in representing the democratic will of the people. Instead, they want to protect the neoliberal consensus that’s dominated the party for the past 40 years—and which Sanders’ campaign threatens.
Donald Trump has already laid out his strategy for the coming general election. “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream,” Trump said at a rally in June 2019. And in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Trump proclaimed: “socialism destroys nations, but always remember, freedom unifies the soul.”
Trump is running against socialism, that much is clear. That game plan won’t change whether or not Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee.
But Sanders boasts an asset that no other Democrat running can claim: He knows how to explain—and defend—democratic socialism in a way voters can understand.
At January’s Democratic debate in Des Moines, Iowa, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked Sanders if his description of himself as a democratic socialist would serve as a handicap. Sanders responded: “My democratic socialism says healthcare is a human right. We’re going to raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We’re going to have a Green New Deal. That is what democratic socialism is about, and that will win this election.”
In a widely-touted speech last summer, Sanders explained that in contrast to demagogues like Trump who “meld corporatist economics with xenophobia and authoritarianism,” his democratic socialist vision seeks “a higher path, a path of compassion, justice and love.”
Achieving that higher path means rejecting the kind of market fundamentalism that has dominated U.S. politics for decades, pitting working people against each other to fight over scraps while oligarchs grow their fortunes and fortify their political influence. Sanders’ socialism seeks to redistribute not just the wealth of the billionaire class but also its power, injecting more democracy—and, as a result, freedom—into American society.
As political science professor, Corey Robin explains at the New York Times, “The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.”
Establishing such a system and curtailing the role of unfettered capitalism in governing our lives may seem a Herculean task, even impossible. But after Sanders’ performance in Iowa, it’s possible that this more egalitarian future is firmly within our grasp.
'Blatant Lie': Seema Verma Claims Trump Not Cutting Medicaid as He Pushes Plan Doing Just That
"Make no mistake: the Trump administration has spent the past two years actively dismantling Medicaid by fiat—after failing to gut it legislatively."
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/07/blatant-lie-seema-verma-claims-trump-not-cutting-medicaid-he-pushes-plan-doing-just?
Healthcare advocates are calling out Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma for claiming Thursday that the Trump administration "is not cutting Medicaid" even as it moves forward with a block grant plan that critics warn would slash benefits for millions of vulnerable people across the nation.
"This is a blatant lie," Rebecca Vallas, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, tweeted in response to Verma's Washington Post op-ed accusing healthcare activists—including an emergency room doctor who confronted Vice President Mike Pence over the block grant plan last week—of "fearmongering" about Medicaid cuts.
"No," states the headline of Verma's op-ed, "the Trump administration is not cutting Medicaid."
First of all, Vallas tweeted at Verma, "You authorized and are encouraging states to cut off Medicaid for millions who can't meet rigid work reporting requirements." And second, she added, "you're pushing Medicaid block grants, which could strip 14-21 million people of health insurance if enacted nationwide."
As Common Dreams reported last week, the Trump administration unveiled a proposal allowing states to convert federal Medicaid funding into fixed sums, a longstanding conservative goal that critics warn could constrain states' ability to hike spending on the program in response to an increase in public need.
Edwin Park, research professor at the Georgetown Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University's McCourt School, wrote on Twitter that Verma's op-ed includes "many misleading claims" and warned the administration's proposed Medicaid block grants would not keep up with inflation—effectively resulting in cuts in the future.
The House of Representatives, with zero Republican votes, passed a non-binding resolution on Thursday officially condemning the Trump administration's Medicaid block grant plan as an "illegal" and "cruel attack on a program that provides for the health and well-being for some of our most vulnerable citizens."
"The Trump administration should uphold its responsibility to faithfully execute the law, including the Medicaid Act, and cease any and all efforts that threaten the care of the millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid," the resolution stated.
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, said earlier this week that Democrats should force a vote on the resolution in the Senate to make sure all Republicans in Congress are on the record regarding Trump's attacks on the program:
Block-granting Medicaid has been Republican goal since at least the administration of former President Ronald Reagan. Bruce Bartlett, an architect of Reagan's right-wing economic agenda who has since broken with the GOP, tweeted last month that "block grants are just a Republican trick to slash spending without appearing to do so."
Rob Davidson, executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare and the physician who confronted Pence at a restaurant in Iowa last month, applauded House Democrats for denouncing the Trump administration's block grant proposal and echoed their demand that the White House "reverse this dangerous action."
"President Trump's latest healthcare cuts will endanger the health, security, and lives of millions of American families," Davidson said in a statement. "Instead of cutting healthcare as President Trump continues to do, we should expand it, protect patients with preexisting conditions, and reduce the astronomical costs of prescription drugs."
'Victory for Workers!': House Praised for Passing Landmark PRO Act to Strengthen Unions and Labor Rights
"Trump claimed to be 'pro-worker'... If that was anything other than his usual phony rhetoric, Trump will push the Senate to pass the bill and sign it."
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/07/victory-workers-house-praised-passing-landmark-pro-act-strengthen-unions-and-labor?
Union leaders and labor rights advocates applauded the Democrat-controlled U.S. House for passing landmark legislation Thursday night that supporters have called one of the most notable efforts to expand workers' rights in several decades.
"This is a watershed moment for the labor movement and shows what working people can accomplish when we come together to demand a voice on the job and a seat at the table," said Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME, the nation's largest trade union of public employees.House lawmakers voted mostly along party lines to approve the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act (H.R.2474), which passed 224–194 with 12 members not voting. See the roll call vote here.
"Make no mistake, this is the most significant step Congress has taken to strengthen labor laws in the United States in 85 years and a win for workers everywhere," said AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, declaring the measure "the labor movement's number one legislative priority this year."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a top candidate in 2020 Democratic presidential primary race and longtime advocate for stronger labor rights, echoed the AFL-CIO's celebration, calling the vote "an important step in leveling the playing field for working people."
The PRO Act now faces an uphill battle in the legislative "graveyard" of GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Following the vote, Charles Idelson of National Nurses United (NNU) noted President Donald Trump—who repeatedly claims to be a friend to workers—now has an opportunity to prove it.
NNU, the largest nurses union in the country, celebrated the House's passage of the PRO Act as a "victory for workers" and highlighted how the bill aims to protect those who take steps to form or join a union.
The bill, as the Washington Post reported, "would amend some of the country's decades-old labor laws to give workers more power during disputes at work, add penalties for companies that retaliate against workers who organize, and grant some hundreds of thousands of workers collective-bargaining rights they don't currently have. It would also weaken 'right-to-work' laws in 27 states that allow employees to forgo participating in and paying dues to unions."
The legislation would also empower the National Labor Relations Board to fine companies up to $50,000 per violation, "award workers' compensation for the damages they experience when they are retaliated against, not just back pay and reinstatement, as they are currently entitled to," and "allow more people currently classified as contractors to be given the status of employees for the purposes of union organizing," the Post noted.
Leaders of some of the country's largest progressive groups argued in an op-ed ahead of the House vote that "passing this legislation will restore working people's voice on the job and fulfill the promise of our democracy to benefit all of us, regardless of income, race or gender. And it's what the people want. More than half of non-union workers would vote to join a union if they could."AFL-CIO's Trumka called the PRO Act "long overdue." He explained that "America's labor laws are no longer an effective means for working people to have our voices heard" and "working people are hungry for a bill that will ensure a process for reaching a first contract once a union is recognized, prevent the misclassification of employees, protect the right to strike, and so much else."
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs and labor counsel at the progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI), welcomed the vote Thursday, calling the PRO Act "a critical step in restoring workers' right to organize and bargain collectively." McNicholas added:
This fundamental right has been eroded for decades as employers exploit weaknesses in the current law and influence the government to weaken current protections. Further, employers often interfere with workers' rights to organize, and face no real consequences for doing so. The result has been stagnant wage growth, unsafe workplaces, and rising inequality. The PRO Act will go a long way toward restoring workers' right to join together to bargain for better wages and working conditions by streamlining the process when workers form a union, ensuring that they are successful in negotiating a first agreement, and holding employers accountable when they violate labor law. The PRO Act is an important effort to bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century—giving working people more power to counteract rising corporate power and inequality. The Senate should pass the PRO Act immediately and give working people what they need most: fairness and a voice on the job.
Saunders of AFSCME also urged the Senate "to reject corporate-backed interests pressuring them to kill this bill and stand with workers by defending their right to organize."
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, the bill is backed by over 60 environmental groups, who sent a letter to the House that said in part: "We need strong, common-sense worker protections like those in the PRO Act to ensure that a sustainable economy reverses rather than reinforces rising inequity. There is no way to build a greener, more inclusive economy without strong, thriving labor unions."
Progressives in the lower chamber have taken to the floor and Twitter in recent days in support of the bill.
Ardent supporters of the measure include the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.).
Meanwhile, seven House Democrats voted against the legislation and five Republicans crossed the aisle to help pass the bill.
In a Twitter thread about those who broke with their parties, former GOP operative Liam Donovan noted that Trumka had "unequivocally said anybody who isn't with labor on the PRO Act is dead to them," referencing a tweet from earlier this week.
As the the AFL-CIO leader tweeted Wednesday: "And to those who would oppose, delay, or derail this legislation—do not ask the labor movement for a dollar or a door knock, we won't be coming."
'Not Good Enough': After Judge's Ruling, Greenwald Vows to Take Press Freedom Case to Brazil's Supreme Court
"We want a clear ruling from the Supreme Court that will enduringly protect the right of a free press against further assaults from the Bolsonaro government."
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/07/not-good-enough-after-judges-ruling-greenwald-vows-take-press-freedom-case-brazils?
Award-winning American investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald welcomed a Brazilian judge's decision Thursday to reject cybercrime charges that federal prosecutors brought against him last month but also promised to keep fighting against assaults on press freedom by the right-wing government of Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Intercept co-founder responded to the judge's decision with videos in both English and Portuguese posted to Twitter. "It's obviously good news, but not good enough for us," Greenwald explained. "Our lawyers are now going to go to the Brazilian Supreme Court and seek a much broader ruling."
"We don't just want to win on procedural grounds; we want a clear ruling from the Supreme Court that any attempt to criminalize my journalism or my relationship with my sources is a grave assault on core press freedoms guaranteed by the Brazilian constitution," Greenwald added. "We want a clear ruling from the Supreme Court that will enduringly protect the right of a free press against further assaults from the Bolsonaro government."
Greenwald lives in Rio de Janeiro with his husband, Brazilian Congressman David Miranda, and their two children. Their family has faced mounting threats from Bolsonaro's "vitriolic anti-LGBTQ+" and "authoritarian, dictatorship-supporting movement," culminating in the cybercrime charges. Human rights and press freedom groups called the charges "a straightforward attempt to intimidate and retaliate against Greenwald and The Intercept for their critical reporting" on key government officials.
In the video Thursday, Greenwald, who worked as a constitutional attorney in the U.S. for a decade before entering journalism, also vowed that The Intercept will continue to report on the archive that provoked the criminal charges and thanked everyone from around the world who has expressed support and solidarity with him and his colleagues in Brazil.
Murtaza Hussain reported on the limitations of the judge's decision for The Intercept:
Judge Ricardo Augusto Soares Leite ruled that Greenwald's prosecution would not go forward, but only on account of a previous finding by the Brazilian Supreme Court that The Intercept's reporting on Operation Car Wash had not transgressed any legal boundaries. In the absence of the injunction issued by a Supreme Court minister that prohibited investigations into Greenwald related to this case, Leite said he would have let the charges against Greenwald move forward. The judge also said that, if the Supreme Court injunction were to be overturned, he would be open to charging Greenwald.
"I decline, for now, to receive the complaint against GLENN GREENWALD, due to the controversy over the extent of the injunction granted by Minister Gilmar Mendes in ADPF nº 601, on 08/24/2019," Leite wrote, referring to the ruling by Mendes, a Supreme Court minister.
Betsy Reed, The Intercept's editor-in-chief, welcomed the judge's ruling while noting that it "is narrow and procedural."
"There remains enormous pressure to prosecute Glenn in retaliation for his work on The Intercept's Secret Brazil Archive series," she said. "We will continue to fight for the complete exoneration Glenn deserves, and for the rights of all journalists to exercise the freedoms they are entitled to under the Brazilian constitution."
Responding to the news on Twitter, the Americas Program of the Committee to Protect Journalists also welcomed the judge's ruling and declared that "Brazilian authorities must respect press freedom and stop criminalizing journalists."
Earlier Thursday, human rights experts with the United Nations and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released a joint statement in which they raised alarm about the charges brought against Greenwald, disclosed that they were in contact with Brazilian authorities regarding the case, and demanded that criminal investigations not be used to threaten journalistic work.
"Legal threats like these put all reporting in Brazil at risk," said David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. "Journalists who investigate cases of corruption or improper actions by public authorities should not be subjected to judicial or any other types of harassment in retaliation for their work."
Edison Lanza, special rapporteur for freedom of expression at IACHR, added that "criminal charges of this nature can also have a general chilling effect on press investigations. In the case of any measure that may affect the exercise of freedom of expression, states must ensure that restrictions are provided by law, serve one of the legitimate interests recognized by international law, and are necessary and proportionate to protect that interest."
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