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The crisis created by Polands ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is nearing a boiling point. Having taken control of the Constitutional Tribunal last year, PiS is pushing new legislation through parliament that will place the rest of the judiciary firmly under the political control of the partys majority in parliament. The European Commission is urgently examining whether it should an initiate an Article 7 proceeding against Poland for violations of fundamental rights.

The crisis in Poland is not only an assault on the judiciary; it is an attack on all independent institutions. As Freedom House documented in a report published in June 2017, the media has been a special target for PiS since it won elections in October 2015. Following the playbook, established by Viktor Orban in Hungary, PiS launched an attack against the public broadcaster early on, rushing through laws that shifted personnel management, unconstitutionally, from the National Broadcasting Council to the Treasury Ministry. The top management of the public broadcaster resigned, or was fired, and a PiS party member was appointed to head the influential TVP.

Since then, the public broadcaster has become a mouthpiece for the party. Critics struggle to get airtime, and the main news shows savage the opposition. When the opposition and civic activists held protests in December 2016, over a proposal to limit journalists access to parliament, TVP broadcast a thirty-minute documentary titled Coup, claiming the opposition had intended to take power through force. Now, during the controversies over the judiciary bills, the broadcasters chyron reads, The opposition is trying to organise a coup against the democratically elected government. The private media may be next.

Polands media landscape is relatively diversified, competitive and attractive to international investors, without the oligarchic ownership that made Hungary so vulnerable to state-led capture. As a result, PiS has had limited means to control private media, although it has increasingly redirected state support through advertising and other channels away from its critics and towards supportive outlets.

Gazeta Wyborcza, the countrys most widely read newspaper and a fierce critic of the party, had a 21 per cent decline in revenue, from 2015 to 2016, which was partially attributable to reductions in state and state-owned enterprise advertising. PiS leader Jarosaw Kaczyski (in the photo), de facto the most powerful man in the country although he holds no government post higher than MP, has emphasised the importance of a repolonisation of the media sector to rid it of foreign influences. How PiS can advance repolonisation without running afoul of Polish and EU laws remains unclear, but the goal is there.

Instead, individual prosecutions may be the next frontier for PiS authorities. One of the partys early changes, in 2015, was to fold the general prosecutors office into the Ministry of Justice, decreasing the prosecutors independence and making its case decisions more subject to political influence.

Now, Minister of Defence, Antoni Macierewicz, has sent a criminal complaint against Gazeta Wyborcza journalist, Tomasz Pitek, to the General Prosecutor after Pitek reported, in a book, about Macierewiczs links, through far-right Polish actors, to Russian intelligence. Freedom House, along with nine other media freedom organisations, has called for the complaint to be withdrawn. During the crisis over the judicial laws this week, one PiS MP was caught on tape telling a journalist they would come after them next.

These attacks on independent institutions, whether it is the judiciary or the media, are rooted in PiSs rejection of liberal democracy as a form of government. PiS promotes a world view that democratic institutions are just a mask for power; tools to be used by whoever is able to take control. It believes these institutions have previously been manipulated against PiS and that now the party sees it as their turn to transform the state to their own ends.

The question is whether after their turn, anyone else will ever be able to have one.

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The views expressed in this opinion editorial are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Emerging Europes editorial policy.

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PiS Uses Media Control to Bring Poland to Heel - Emerging Europe (registration)

Facebook could begin testing a paywall for subscription news stories as early as October, according to a top company executive.

Campbell Brown, who heads up the social networks new partnerships business, made the reveal atthe Digital Publishing Innovation Summit on Tuesday, The Street reported. We have independently confirmed that, too.

We are in early talks with several news publishers about how we might better support subscription business models on Facebook. As part of the Facebook Journalism Project, we are taking the time to work closely together with our partners and understand their needs, Brown told TechCrunch in a statement via a spokesperson.

The project is still in its infancy, and it may be subject to change, but TechCrunch understands that the current plan is to work with a handful of publishers to introduce a system that would limit free viewing to 10 articles per month, as Digiday previously reported. After viewing 10 articles from the media company, a user would be promoted to sign up for a subscription to that publication or log into an active one.

That number is rigid at 10, despite the fact that publisher that operate a paywall allow varying numbers of free articles for visitors per month. A source to Facebook said the number would be the same across all partners to ensure consistency for users.

The source stressed that Facebook would allow participating media partners to maintain full control over what stories are locked behind the paywall and which arent, and full control of their subscriber data, too. At this point it is unclear exactly what access to reading data and history, which can help increase engagement, that the media partners would get.

Equally, it isnt clear how payment will be taken for subscribers that sign-up via the Facebook paywall. Digiday reports that the social network is considering bypassing Google Play and Apples App Store to avoid the mandatory 30 percent cut that each operator takes from digital payments. That may require a mobile web payment option which would add friction to the user experience, potentially impacting the effectiveness of the program.

Theres certainly much to be confirmed. For one thing, which media firms will participate.

Facebook remains in talks with prospective partners, some of which have had one-on-one briefings while others were engaged via roundtables staged in New York and Paris last week. All being well, our source said that Facebook will look to broaden the paywall feature to more users next year, but theres some way to go before that happens.

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Facebook may begin testing a paywall for selected media stories as soon as October - TechCrunch

The North Korean regime cementscontrol over its people by carrying out public executions for crimes as trivial as stealing and distributing media from South Korea, a report has found.

Research by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a non-governmental organization based in South Korea, was based on interviews with 375 defectors from North Korea about state killings in the totalitarian state.

Our interviewees stated that public executions take place near river banks, in river beds, near bridges, in public sports stadiums, in the local marketplace, on school grounds in the fringes of the city, or on mountainsides, the report said.

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The major charges for such killings as reported by the interviewees included: stealing, transporting and selling copper components from factory machinery and electric cables; stealing livestock... stealing farm produce murder and manslaughter; human trafficking... distributing South Korean media; organised prostitution; sexual assault; drug smuggling; and gang fighting, it continued.

North Korea rejects all charges of human rights abuses in the country.

Some of thesecrimes were not punished equally, the report said. It cited a U.N. report that found sexual assault by officials and soldiers often went unpunished, and thus laws against such crimes may be applied selectively.

Meanwhile, interviewees said that being from a bad family background might increase the chances of someone being executed for an offense, or for the purposes of government control as a means of establishing a new precedent by creating an atmosphere of fear around certain behaviours the government wishes to emphasise as unacceptable.

In political and correctional prisons, both public and private executions took place, the research said, as a means of inciting fear and intimidation among potential escapees among the inmates about the consequences of trying to flee.

The U.N. holds that, in countries where thedeath penalty is still legal, it should only be carried out for the most serious crimes such as cases of pre-meditated murder.

The TJWG conducts its work because it hopes to form part of an eventual justice process when regime change takes place in North Korea.

Despite the inability to predict when a transition may occur in North Korea, or what form that may take, undertaking a fair and transparent process of transitional justice will be a crucial part of determining the success of peace-building and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, the report says.

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How Kim Jong Un's Government Cements Control Over North Korea With Public Executions - Newsweek

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

AFP/Getty Images

A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

The conservative media erupted in frustration over the latest stumbles of Senate Republicans trying to advance Trumpcare. The Federalists Ben Domenech pointed a finger at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This is a failure of imagination and policy, he wrote, and a reminder that moderation does not equate to intelligence.

At RedState, Joe Cunningham thanked conservative Sen. Mike Lee for opposing the bill. The bottom line is that the bill was atrocious, he wrote. There was nothing about it that was truly good. The people who will claim Lee and the others are making the good the enemy of the perfect are fooling themselves into thinking they were doing a good thing. The bill was anything but that, much like the House bill, and killing it now means work can actually get done.

The Daily Wires Ben Shapiro criticized moderates who shot down a potential clean repeal of Obamacare after voting for repeals under Obama. This is an excellent opportunity for conservatives to find out who was serious about Obamacare repeal, and who wasnt, he wrote. This should be a litmus test for conservative primary challengers. While President Trump is focusing, laserlike, on offing Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) for the crime of not being sufficiently deferential to Trump himself, Republicans should focus on whether they need Senators who vote to keep in place bad Democratic legislation out of a desire to expand government.

At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin argued against blaming moderates:

On Twitter, the Weekly Standards Jay Cost avoided laying blame on particular factions altogether:

Additionally, conservative writers hit President Trump for saying he would not own Obamacares failure and praising Republicans for coming so close to passing a bill.

Foxs Sean Hannity endorsed repealing Obamacare and moving on with the rest of Trumps agenda.

The Resurgents Erick Erickson tallied the administrations lack of achievements thus far:

RedStates Jay Caruso agreed and criticized Trumps failure of leadership in his first six months. President Trumps inability to maintain a cohesive mindset on any one issue for more than a few days at a time is partially why he sits so low in the polls, he wrote. He constantly contradicts his people. Hell do something relatively well only to blow it up within days because of his complete lack of impulse control.

The Daily Wires John Nolte admonished the Republican establishemnt for failing to meet expectations over the course of the past eight years.

Who will ever again trust these con men when they try to raise money off of a cause we now know they have no intention of doing anything about, Nolte asked. Who will ever again put any effort into voting for a political party that not only lies to its constituents about its intentions, but is utterly useless in the only two ways that matter: 1) passing promised legislation and 2) defending our president from the fake news medias conspiracy theories?

Excerpt from:
Today in Conservative Media: Who's to Blame for Trumpcare Failing? Everyone's a Target. - Slate Magazine (blog)

Thousands of anti-government demonstrators gathered in front of the supreme court in Warsaw on Sunday in protest against the governments plans. Photograph: Czarek Sokolowski/AP

The Polish government has brought forward its attempts to assert political control over the countrys judicial system, after thousands of Poles took to the streets in cities across the country.

Demonstrations took place at the weekend to protest against a series of moves by the ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) to assume power over the appointments of judges and members of the countrys supreme court.

On Sunday, protesters held a rally outside the Polish parliament, followed by a candlelight vigil outside the supreme court. Gathered on Krasiski Square, at the same spot where the US president, Donald Trump, gave a controversial speech to pro-government crowds earlier this month, protesters projected This is our court on to the court building as the music of Polish composer Frdric Chopin played in the background.

The government describes the moves as a necessary means to speed up the process of issuing judgments and to break what it describes as the grip of a privileged caste of lawyers and judges.

Parliament is considering legislation that if enacted would instantly terminate the appointments of all 83 judges sitting on the countrys supreme court, except for those kept on by the minister of justice.

It follows the passage of legislation last week that gives parliament control over a hitherto autonomous body charged with the appointment of Polish judges. The legislation also gives the minister of justice the power to dismiss and appoint court presidents, who decide which judges sit on which cases.

The judiciary branch, according to these three laws, would become subjugated to the executive, said Ewa towska, a professor at Polands Institute of Legal Sciences and a former judge who served on the countrys constitutional tribunal and the supreme administrative court.

The government appears to have been emboldened by the visit of President Trump earlier this month, whose speech in Warsaw was considered by many in Poland to have given the United States blessing to the governments brand of so-called illiberal democracy.

Trumps visit proved to the domestic audience that the PiS government isnt alienated abroad, further strengthening its claim to reform the country, said Wawrzyniec Smoczyski, managing director of Polityka Insight.

State media, controlled by the government since the passage of a controversial media law in 2015, has portrayed the ongoing protests against the changes as a violent coup against the democratically elected government by a militant liberal elite that has benefited from the countrys transition from Communism to liberal democracy.

Courts in our opinion are the stronghold of post-communists in Poland, said the Law and Justice leader, Jarosaw Kaczyski, adding that the supreme court was protecting people who had served the old [Communist] regime, and that the countrys judicial system was controlled by lefties and subordinated to foreign forces.

But critics say that bringing the judicial system under political control will do nothing to improve its efficiency, and instead will leave judges dependent on political patronage and subject to political pressure.

The courts are sometimes too slow, some of the fees payable by citizens are too high, the system of legal aid is inadequate and under-financed we can see the problems, said Mikoaj Pietrzak, chair of the Warsaw Bar Association. But this is like going to the doctor with the flu and he treats you by amputating your leg.

Widely regarded as the last remaining check on the governments power, the supreme court is the highest court of appeal for all criminal and civil cases in Poland, and is also charged with ruling on the validity of elections, as well as approving the annual financial reports of political parties and adjudicating upon disciplinary proceedings against judges.

Because the draft legislation presently under consideration was introduced as a private members bill, there is no obligation for public consultation. It had been due to be debated on Wednesday this week, but the debate was moved forward at short notice to Tuesday, with some analysts saying it could be passed as early as this week.

It would obligate supreme court judges to consider Christian values when making rulings. In social life, apart from legal norms there also operates a system of norms and values, undefined in law but equally established, derived from morality and Christian values ... The supreme court should take this duality into account in its rulings.

When Magorzata Gersdorf, the president of the supreme court who earlier this year wrote an open letter to the judicial profession urging them to fight every inch for their independence, addressed parliament on Tuesday morning, she was met with cries of: Get lost! and, Youre lying! from the government benches.

The ruling party has already taken effective control of the countrys constitutional tribunal, which rules on the constitutionality of legislation and the actions of the government and other state bodies, amongst other responsibilities.

After the expiration in December of the term of Andrzej Rzepliski , the former president of the tribunal, three PiS-appointees all called in sick on the day that the courts judges were due to vote on Rzepliskis replacement. Their absence denied the meeting a quorum, and a new president of the tribunal was appointed by the president, Andrzej Duda, instead. The tribunals new president promptly sent Rzepliskis deputy on indefinite leave, giving PiS-appointees a majority.

The supreme court is due to rule on the legality of the government takeover of the constitutional tribunal in mid-September, a deadline that some analysts say may have forced the ruling partys hand to act before the August recess.

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Polish government brings forward plans to assert control over judges - The Guardian