Dear Friends,

Thanks for joining this chat. Life has been a whirlwind, and I hope that in this group, I can share not just my travels but random thoughts and ideas that tie them all together.

Please feel free to AMA :)

Best,

Maria

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Smear campaigns. Goons for hire have found their way to the Internet, trolls paid to spread black propaganda. They won't be able to live here.

https://www.youtube.com/live/fyLgYIcB6f0?si=Rvp_UGggs3UmyS9e&t=8000 (if you'd like to watch

Happy World Press Freedom Day … even though there really isn’t anything to be happy about … except that we’re here, we’re alive, we’re free … (I still have to ask for permission to travel, all the way to my Supreme Court) … and we’re still working!

In the last two weeks, from New York to Latin America, we have stood in silence. We did this last night and if you look at the faces of the journalists who have been killed, you cry to remember them, just doing their jobs … our jobs.

I have to say again, congratulations to the Palestinian journalists reporting from Gaza [applause] You’ve got to give them a hand. And to UNESCO and to Chile, because as we heard last night – we clap also for them – we recognize the sacrifice and we give a sense, this sense that I got, when I was given the Nobel Peace Prize, that there is a sense of justice in the world.

We are living through extremely dark times. It demands sacrifice from every journalist. It demands sacrifice from every citizen in the world, from every one of us.

In the Nobel lecture in 2021, I said that we are standing on the rubble of the world that was. That became literal in 2022 and in 2023 and even worse in 2024. In an Oscar-winning film – and we do need the attention of the public – in this Oscar-winning film by Mystslav Chernov, there was a woman who caught my eye and she sticks in my mind because it was the first time she went back to her home and she was wailing in front of her home because there was nothing left. And she said, “Can’t anybody do anything? They’re killing us here.”

That was in Ukraine, but it could just as easily have been in Sudan or Gaza, where more than 34,500 people are dead.

The challenge today is whether our international rules based order still works. The challenge is justice; it is core to our humanity. Too many, too many are getting away with impunity - from countries to companies, and it is dividing us