Slovak Protest Following Murder of Journalist, Fiancée

[Shiranu]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/world/europe/slovakia-journalist-killing-protests.html

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia â€" When a former Miss Universe contestant and topless model was given a plum government job as an assistant to Slovakia’s prime minister despite having no discernible qualifications, journalists asked the obvious question. Why?


Among them was Jan Kuciak, an investigative reporter. After months of digging, Mr. Kuciak sent questions to the authorities, looking for a response to what seemed like troubling connections between government officials and people suspected of being part of organized crime.


Days later, he was killed.


Mr. Kuciak’s body was found on Feb. 25 on a stairway in his home. His fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, was killed in the kitchen. The bullet hole in the top of her head indicated that she had been on her knees when she was executed.


The government of Prime Minister Robert Fico is now in danger of falling as public anger swells and the scale of corruption comes into focus.


On Friday, tens of thousands of people gathered in the heart of the capital, Bratislava, in a show of solidarity, despite warnings from Mr. Fico that there could be “possible attacks.” More than 50 similar gatherings took place across the country.


The killings of Mr. Kuciak, who worked for Aktuality.sk, a news website, and his fiancée come less than six months after a car bomb killed another journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, in Malta. She was also investigating government corruption.


The killings have raised concerns across the continent about threats to a free press at a time when journalists are already under almost daily verbal assault from populist leaders.


...


But long before Donald Trump had popularized the phrase “fake news,” Mr. Fico regularly attacked journalists as “hyenas” and “presstitutes.”


After the murders, he has not reflected on his past rhetoric. Instead, Mr. Fico has decided to adopt some of the conspiratorial language of the leaders of neighboring countries.


This week, Mr. Fico found a familiar foe to blame for his problems, telling the public that the globalist George Soros was behind efforts to undermine his government.


The Slovak president, Andrej Kiska, accused Mr. Fico and the ruling party of “an arrogance of power” and said that the only way to regain the public trust was a “radical reconstruction, or early elections.”


In turn, Mr. Fico accused Mr. Kiska and the news media of “dancing on the graves” of the victims.


After saying he would pay a bounty of one million euros to anyone who helps find the killers, Mr. Fico called a news conference where he laid bundles of cash on a table as evidence of his seriousness.


Critics saw the move as a further reflection of a mob mentality where cash can solve any problem.


Michal Vasecka, the director of the Bratislava Policy Institute, said that the prime minister has succeeded only in stoking more outrage.


“We knew this country was dramatically corrupt,” Mr. Vasecka said. “But it is now clear that the whole system is corrupted and is like an octopus overwhelming the entire country.”


...


Corruption has long bedeviled Slovakia, which is a member of both NATO and the European Union. Intrepid local journalists have exposed all manner of malfeasance over the past two years, but there have been virtually no prosecutions of top officials.


The government’s response to accusations â€" “the deed did not happen” â€" has been repeated so often it has become a bad joke. When thousands of protesters took to the streets last year, they carried banners with the words in bold letters.


Indeed, before he was killed, Mr. Kuciak had found that the model turned government adviser, Maria Troskova, was connected to an Italian businessman, Antonino Vadala, fond of racing his Lamborghini along the remote roads where he lived in the Slovak countryside.


The two had lived together, and founded a company together.


Mr. Kuciak also discovered that Mr. Vadala had been named in Italian court documents in connection with the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian organized crime syndicate.


He uncovered links between Mr. Vadala’s business dealings and top government officials and indications of a scheme to embezzle European Union funds meant to bolster agriculture in the country.


...


There are now armed police in the lobby of Aktuality, a new reality in a country that had thought of itself as having moved a long way from its socialist past and the wild early days of democracy.


But Dr. Szomolanyi said there was a ray of hope to be seen in the current mess.


“Despite all the problems,” she said, “the reaction of the ordinary people to these deaths really does show that we belong in the West.”

This is the largest protest in Slovakian history since their 1989 protests to gain independence from the USSR. There are just a few things that I think we in the U.S. (and the West in general) can learn from this...


-The rhetoric against journalists is becoming more and more dangerous, as dictators and corrupt politicians realise they can use this dialog to discredit any dissenting view point. As consumers, we need to start realizing that "journalists" and "pundits" are two completely separate things... and that random people posting a story on the internet are not necessarily telling the truth and that it doesn't hurt to fact check with reputable sources that are universally recognized as leaning neither left nor right (Reuters, AP, The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.). Likewise we need to realise that editorials are not articles written by reputable journalists.


-Likewise these conspiracy theories like George Soros is running the world, the Illuminati/Jews did it, etc. have got to fucking die. Again, it's just a ridiculous claim made to shift attention from actual issues. I refuse to talk any more about that idiocy for fear of giving it a shred of legitimacy.


-This is what the United States wants to become, and likely many European countries as well. We are following a template set by Mexico, by Slovakia, by Italy, etc. of further and further enabling corruption and plutocracy as legitimate forms of government... but if we look at corrupt countries, at countries run by an aristocracy rather than the people... it doesn't end well, left or right. Even if your side "takes the lead" and runs the government, it's only a matter of time before the corrupt will turn against you (or the rest of the country will).

[Baruch]

This is how all societies operate behind the scenes.  Criminality does pay.

[Cavebear]

This is how all societies operate behind the scenes.  Criminality does pay.

Your cynicism is both annoying and inaccurate.  "All" societies do not act this way.  Just the ones you seem to admire.

[Baruch]

Your cynicism is both annoying and inaccurate.  "All" societies do not act this way.  Just the ones you seem to admire.

I don't admire violence, but I don't imagine it away.  The human race is by nature, violent.  Ignore that at your peril.

[Cavebear]

I don't admire violence, but I don't imagine it away.  The human race is by nature, violent.  Ignore that at your peril.

Well, that's your view of humanity.  You want "violent"?  I saw a documentary of a polar bear walking across a hill casually chewing up baby gulls alive, sharks eating baby seals, and read about woodpeckers pounding holes in the skulls of different bird chicks just to lick out their brains. 

That's violence.  We are amateurs.

[Gilgamesh]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/world/europe/slovakia-journalist-killing-protests.html



This is the largest protest in Slovakian history since their 1989 protests to gain independence from the USSR. There are just a few things that I think we in the U.S. (and the West in general) can learn from this...


-The rhetoric against journalists is becoming more and more dangerous, as dictators and corrupt politicians realise they can use this dialog to discredit any dissenting view point. As consumers, we need to start realizing that "journalists" and "pundits" are two completely separate things... and that random people posting a story on the internet are not necessarily telling the truth and that it doesn't hurt to fact check with reputable sources that are universally recognized as leaning neither left nor right (Reuters, AP, The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.). Likewise we need to realise that editorials are not articles written by reputable journalists.

Rhetoric isn't dangerous. Using your words is a good thing. Politicians and heads of states are allowed to call things misinformation, and people misinformers.

Anyone can be a pundit, including journalists.

News outlets don't present 'facts.' Rather, go to the source of every single positive claim a news outlet makes. Always find the source material. Do this and you will find that every single news outlet is propaganda, because you'll come to find that the narrative that the 'news' is spinning cannot be logically inferred from the source material. You'll find this to be the case over and over and over again. It's always a spin.