The facts behind the "war on the press" here in the Philippines

The usual suspects are hyperventilating about a war on the press here when the FilAm reporter Maria Ressa behind the webnews site "Rappler" was accused of tax evasion.

 Tax evasion? if they really started going after all those politicians living high on the hog and checked if they paid taxes on their bribes/kickbacks, a lot of famous politicians would be in trouble

The back story of this is that Rappler and the liberal press and the NWO types are trying to get rid of Duterte, who like Trumpie boy managed to win an election over their choice, the "american girl".

 The full court press by the MSM/NWO leaders against Duterte is being ignored by the ordinary folks here, who still support him in polls, because they know the reality of "rule of law" here means that the corrupt just have to either bribe the judges, delay the case, or have the witnesses disappear, and voila, no problem.

( By the way, the NWO types includes the Pope, of course, who worries more about cops killing the drug gangs preying on the poor than on his bishops and priests preying on teenage boys or spending money given by ordinary Catholics for the poor or church expenses to cruise at gay bars and on drugs, but never mind).

So what is behind the prosecution of this lovely lady?

The Manila Times has the backstory, and it's not pretty: She made a lot of enemies out there, and that newspaper names the names of the people who aren't making a fuss about her "persecution",

and they note some of the backstory about how in effect she is a political operative for the previous president, including the suspected Hasienda Luscita shenanigans over that previous president's family's land and behind the removal of a Supreme court justice. (but of course, it didn't affect her coverage of Duterte did it, /s).

but the real story behind the accusation of tax evasion is about something I discussed before: A big shot, a foreigner, who in effect funded Rappler.

Here, the Philippines is very careful about who owns land/business, including the press. So if you want to start a business, the way to get around it is to marry a nice Filipina and SHE owns the business, which then, of course, can be inherited by your children.

so anyway, this law also forbids newspapers being owned by foreigners. And that is Ressa's problem. The courts found out that Rappler was partly funded by outsiders, and told her to dissolve her web newspsper since this broke the law. Uh oh.

But of course, there are ways to get around the law here.

so she claimed it was a gift to their managers, and when they said they didn't want to be involved,

From the Manila Times:

The Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that, indeed, Rappler was in violation of the Constitution and must be dissolved.

Ressa panicked and claimed first, that the foreign money was donated to its managers. When that proved impossible (the managers told her they couldn’t pay for the taxes for such gifts), she claimed that the investments were in the form of securities, the kind PLDT and ABS-CBN use to go around the constitutional ban on foreign money in media.

Oops! The Bureau of Internal Revenue read about her explanation, studied it for months, and ruled that Rappler’s issuance of securities generated capital gains, which, therefore, must be taxed.

Rappler evaded such payment of P133 million in taxes, the BIR concluded. The Justice department had to agree with the BIR and filed a tax evasion case against Ressa and her executives.

can you say "Gotcha", children?

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the Manila Times 2017 article points out that the foreign funding of the media here resembles the way outsiders organized regime change elsewhere, including the Ukraine. The article is about NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is believe to be a CIA front, but it does note the Omidyar network.

(Another US outfit that has funded NGOs in Ukraine that helped topple Yanukovych is Omidyar Network, owned by tycoon Pierre Omdiyar. It is one of the two foreign financiers of another anti-Duterte media outfit, Rappler.)

So who are the puppetmasters behind the scandal? That is harder for me to figure out, since I am not familiar with the movers and shakers who run the world.

the "Foreigners" behind this gift were the US based the Omidyar Network and North Base Media.

Wikipedia on the Omidyar network doesn't give any backstory on that group, but left wing sites  have lots of finger pointing about their involvement that suggest a CIA/NWO connection, at least with all that money they gifted to the Ukraine.

and the other backer of Rappler, North Based Media, is a Soros funded organization, according to this Rappler article.

Their webpage is here.

This Soros media group that funds "independent" media has Sasa Vicinic, founder of NBM, listed as a previous board member.

According to Bloomberg, Sasa Vucinic is the Managing Partner/Co-Founder, North Base Media Ltd,... does he also have a CIA connection? Who knows.

I am not, per se, opposed the the CIA using their goons to push America's agenda in other countries, especially since everyone else does it for their own country. However, the Philippines is especially sensitive to becoming an American puppet, and exposing two suspected CIA or Soros connected funding groups who have funded Rappler will not help Ressa... (if the story is true, of course: things get murky out there and of course, China and Russia are not above pushing fake news).

Except, according to the Manila Times, guess who is paying Ressa's legal fees? Omidyar of course.

Place conspiracy theory here.