We've spent more than a year on Drill's real free speech threat season, looking at all the ways environmental protest is being criminalized around the world.

We've looked at who's driving that trend, too, from corporate operatives to right-wing think tanks.

There's another network that's been particularly influential where it comes to repressing environmental fights around the globe,

the U.S. military and its national security agencies.

For our coverage of the COP City protests, I examined how the post-9-11 War on Terror incentivized a crackdown on environmental activists,

who have been labeled eco-terrorists and environmental violent extremists.

This is not just true in the U.S.

America's approach to terrorism and the way it's been used to crackdown on peaceful protest

has spread across the globe.

There's one place that really stands out as a clear example.

The Philippines.

The country sits toward the top of lists of dangerous countries for land defenders.

People are killed there every year for trying to protect the environment.

That's because the Filipino government routinely

labels political opponents as communist terrorists, which can lead to assassinations,

disappearances, and abductions. Indigenous organizers and environmental activists are often the targets.

As I started looking into it, a detail caught my eye. In the wake of 9-11, the UN Security

Council essentially required that countries passed counter-terror laws, and the Philippines did just

that. At the same time, the U.S. offered the Philippines military aid to crack down on terror. I began to realize that a

version of what I documented in the U.S. had also happened in the Philippines. Those policies I had

been investigating from thousands of miles away were actually rooted right here at home in the U.S.

To understand what was really going on,

...