By Katherine Hine

“t is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands actions, engagement, and remembering.” Herman, Judith, Trauma and Recovery: New York: Basic Books, p. 7 (1997).

Maybe this kind of thinking is behind the victim bashing we see coming from individuals and organizations claiming to be much more than mere bystanders. “Human rights” organizations receive tax-free millions or even billions to “help” those victimized by their own governments, including refugees. But do they? And why should we care?

Thanks to the alternative press, we the people have been able to shed some of the divide and conquer messages coming from corporate media, re-think old “truths”, and evaluate concealed threats. One journalist helping us navigate this paradigm shift is Janet Phelan, a U.S.- born investigative journalist, human rights defender, prolific writer, and a refugee from the United States.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE IF JANET PHELAN LIVES OR DIES

For years, Phelan’s journalism has dealt with issues of public corruption in the United States. In 2011 she traveled to Geneva on behalf of the organization ITHACA to be the first and only reporter to expose the enactment of Section 817 of the USA Patriot Act in which the U.S. gives itself immunity for violations of its own bioweapons legislation. In so doing, the US also violated the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention [aka BTWC], a treaty the U.S. ratified. She is also the first reporter to publish photographs documenting what appears to be a domestic delivery system for a bio/chem attack within the United States. She was one of the first reporters to publicize the ongoing abuses being committed by U.S. probate courts that authorize the plundering of the assets of the elderly and disabled whose lives are then cut short through court authorized drugging and isolation, a multi-billion dollar scandal now recognized even by corporate media. Her exposure of these and other issues appears to point to underground policies in the US promoting genocide.

Phelan has reported on a number of court cases in which individuals in the United States have been targeted for denouncing corruption. In a number of these cases, the publicity resulted in the individual being freed from false incarceration.

She has been a staunch advocate for the rights of journalists and has written on the increasingly alarming attacks on the First Amendment in the United States.