News Releases

Some are noting that Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated 50 years ago Wednesday in Memphis, was there supporting striking sanitation workers. But this was just one manifestation of King’s radical challenge to what he called “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”

In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in New York, given exactly a year before his death, King proclaimed: “There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. …”

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. … True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.” See here for text and audio.

After King was attacked for his remarks at Riverside, including by media such as the New York Times and Time magazine, he spoke out even more passionately. From the pulpit of his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta later that month, on April 30, 1967, he would deliver the sermon “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam,” in which he rebuked the major media outlets: “There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, ‘Be nonviolent toward [segregationist Selma, Ala. sheriff] Jim Clark!’ but will curse and damn you when you say, ‘Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!’ There is something wrong with that press!” See here for video and text. This speech would later win a Grammy.

In a 2010 special, “MLK: A Call to Conscience,” reporter Tavis Smiley noted that by the end of his life, as he was focusing on war and poverty as well as racism “King had almost three-quarters … of the American people turned against him, 55 percent of his own people [African Americans] turned against him.” Noted Smiley: “If you replace the words ‘Iraq’ for ‘Vietnam,’ ‘Afghanistan’ for ‘Vietnam,’ ‘Pakistan’ for ‘Vietnam,’ this speech is so relevant today.”

Rev. GRAYLAN S. HAGLER, gshagler at verizon.net, @graylanhagler
Hagler is senior pastor at the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C. and chairperson of Faith Strategies.

JARED BALL, imixwhatilike at gmail.com, @IMIXWHATILIKE
Ball is professor of communication studies, Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University and author of I MiX What I Like: A MiXtape Manifesto and A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X.

MIKE ELK, mike.elk at gmail.com, @MikeElk
Currently in Oklahoma, Elk is the senior labor reporter at Payday Report and just wrote the piece “Wave of teachers’ wildcat strikes spreads to Oklahoma and Kentucky” for the Guardian.

He writes: “On Friday, teachers in Kentucky went out on illegal wildcat strikes in more than 25 counties against the wishes of union leaders to protest against draconian changes to the state’s … pension plans. …

“While Oklahoma has the country’s lowest tax on oil and natural gas production, teachers’ salaries remain stubbornly low, at 49th in the nation.

“The strikers have been buoyed by a successful strike by their peers in West Virginia, their first statewide work stoppage since 1990, which ended with them winning a 5 percent pay rise and other concessions.”

TAMMY BERLIN, tammy.berlin at jcta.org
Berlin is vice president of the the Jefferson County Teachers Association in Kentucky. She said today: “We thought we killed this ‘reform’ bill twice and then they attached some of it to a sewage bill, appropriately enough. They passed it in record time from committee to both houses. That was done illegally, they didn’t have the required actuarial analysis — so there will be legal changes. Today is the last day of the session and they’re trying to pass a budget. We want them to fund education by closing loopholes. There’s a strong push to give money to charter schools even though they don’t have the funding for that. … We don’t want a regressive tax. Teachers will be meeting in Louisville beginning Wednesday.”

“Just as they did in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion” 15 years ago, media critic Jeff Cohen writes in an article widely published online this week, “MSNBC and CNN now serve up a steady parade of war-hawks, spies and liars, presenting them as credible and almost heroic as long as they criticize the despicable man in the White House.”

The article — “Why Are Progressives Cheering Cable News’ Parade of Hawks and Liars?” — challenges the credibility of news analysts and commentators who are nightly fixtures on cable news.

JEFF COHEN,  jcohen at ithaca.edu
Cohen is available for a limited number of interviews. He is director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and the author of “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” Cohen co-founded the online activism group RootsAction.org in 2011 and founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.

“When it comes to Trump critics,” the article says, “CNN and MSNBC regularly serve up a basket of elite deplorables from the military/intelligence establishment—for example, the appalling ex-CIA Director John Brennan and horrific former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin. The hollowness of their Trump critique on ‘liberal cable news’ was on display last week when both men endorsed Trump’s choice for CIA chief, torture-overseer Gina Haspel.”

Cohen adds: “I’m worried about anti-Trump activists, even some quite progressive, who’ve come to see corporate news channels like CNN and MSNBC as their saviors. It’s a dangerous illusion.”

The piece contends: “Trump is doing enormous damage to our country and the world—but you won’t see most of it on MSNBC or any mainstream outlet that covers the Trump White House as a TV soap opera.”

And Cohen writes: “When you hear nightly on CNN and MSNBC about Putin’s ‘attack on our democracy,’ let’s not forget that—whatever impact Russia had on the 2016 election (evidence so far suggests it was small)—’our democracy’ has been under attack for decades by internal enemies: big money control of both major parties, corporate media dominance, Democratic subservience to Wall Street, Republican suppression of voters of color and youth, an archaic election system protected by both parties, etc.”

ELI CLIFTON, [in NYC] eliclifton at gmail.com, @EliClifton
JIM LOBE, jlobe at starpower.net, @LobeLog
Clifton and Lobe just wrote the piece “Trump’s Choice of Bolton Satisfies His Biggest Donor,” which states: “Last August, shortly after John Kelly replaced Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and Steve Bannon was fired as the president’s chief strategist, John Bolton complained that he could no longer get a meeting with Donald Trump.”Just three months later, however, on the eve of Trump’s belligerent address to the United Nations, Bolton was once again in direct contact with the president. How did this turnabout take place? The reconnection was reportedly arranged by none other than Sheldon Adelson, the Trump campaign’s biggest donor.

“Politico reported that the most threatening line in Trump’s UN speech — that he would cancel Washington’s participation in the Iran nuclear deal if Congress and U.S. allies did not bend to his efforts to effectively renegotiate it — came directly from Bolton and wasn’t in the original … prepared by Trump’s staff. ‘The line was added to Trump’s speech after Bolton, despite Kelly’s recent edict [restricting Bolton’s access to Trump], reached the president by phone on Thursday afternoon from Las Vegas, where Bolton was visiting with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. Bolton urged Trump to include a line in his remarks noting that he reserved the right to scrap the agreement entirely, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.’

“Some analysts have suggested that Bolton, an anti-Iran uber-hawk, has the visit to Washington of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to thank for his imminent elevation. But Adelson, a huge supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, likely played a critical role in Bolton’s ascendancy.”

Lobe served for some 30 years as the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Inter Press Service and is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy and the influence of the neoconservative movement. Clifton reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy. He previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service.

Juan Cole writes: “Let’s Call Bolton What He Is: A War Criminal with Terrorist Ties, Not Just ‘Hawkish.’”

Trump tweeted in 2013: “All former Bush administration officials should have zero standing on Syria. Iraq was a waste of blood & treasure.”

In an Institute for Public Accuracy news release earlier this year — “‘Fire and Fury’ — New Reports Thicken Trump-Israel Plot,” Ali Abunimah noted that author Michael Wolff “recounts an early January 2017 dinner in New York where Bannon and disgraced former Fox News boss Roger Ailes discussed cabinet picks.

“Bannon observed that they did not have a ‘deep bench,’ but both men agreed the extremely pro-Israel neocon John Bolton would be a good pick for national security adviser. ‘He’s a bomb thrower,’ Ailes said of Bolton, ‘and a strange little fucker. But you need him. Who else is good on Israel?’

“‘Day one we’re moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s all in,’ Bannon said, adding that anti-Palestinian casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was on board too.

“‘Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza. Let them deal with it. Or sink trying,’ Bannon proposed. ‘The Saudis are on the brink, Egyptians are on brink, all scared to death of Persia.’

“Asked by Ailes, ‘Does Donald know’ the plan, Bannon reportedly just smiled.

“Bannon’s idea reflected ‘the new Trump thinking’ about the Middle East: ‘There are basically four players,’ writes Wolff, ‘Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The first three can be united against the fourth.’ Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be ‘given what they want’ in respect to Iran, and in return would ‘pressure the Palestinians to make a deal.'”

PHYLLIS BENNIS, pbennis at ips-dc.org
Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She noted that Bolton’s explicit derision for international law goes back decades, saying [in a debate with Bennis] in 1994: “There is no United Nations. … When the United States leads, the United Nations will follow. When it suits our interest to do so, we will do so. When it does not suit our interests we will not.”

See “War criminals must fear punishment. That’s why I went for John Bolton.” by George Monbiot: “The Nuremberg principles, which arose from the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, define as an international crime the ‘planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances.’ Bolton appears to have ‘participated in a common plan’ to prepare for the war (also defined by the principles as a crime) by inserting the false claim that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger into a state department factsheet. He also organised the sacking of José Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, accusing him of bad management. Bustani had tried to broker a peaceful resolution of the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.”

Greg Thielmann, a 25-year veteran of the Foreign Service, serving two tours in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, writes in “Bolton: A Prime Mover Of The Iraq WMD Fiasco,” that: “I was a firsthand witness to the negative consequences of Bolton’s style and substantive approach while serving as director of the office in the State Department’s intelligence bureau (INR/SPM) responsible for monitoring Iraqi WMD issues. As my office delivered to him the heavy volume of sensitive information provided by the intelligence community, he demonstrated a penchant for quickly dismissing inconvenient facts and rejecting any analysis that did not serve his policy preferences.”

Investigative reporter Gareth Porter writes in The American Conservative, in the piece “The Untold Story of John Bolton’s Campaign for War With Iran,” that: “Bolton’s high-profile advocacy of war with Iran is well known. What is not at all well known is that, when he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security, he executed a complex and devious strategy aimed at creating the justification for a U.S. attack on Iran. Bolton sought to convict the Islamic Republic in the court of international public opinion of having a covert nuclear weapons program using a combination of diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and fabricated evidence.”

MITCHELL PLITNICK, plitnickm at gmail.com
Plitnick wrote the piece “John Bolton: The Essential Profile,” which states: “Bolton served as UN ambassador from August 2005 — when President Bush gave him a recess appointment after the Senate blocked his nomination — to January 2007. His resignation, announced in December 2006, came at the end of a controversial tenure marked by severe criticism from U.S. senators and international diplomats. His resignation also came less than three weeks after President Bush resubmitted Bolton’s nomination for Senate confirmation — the second time in six months.

“During his first confirmation hearings, Bolton’s record as undersecretary of state came under intense criticism, particularly regarding his contacts with Israel. According to The Forward and other news sources, Bolton had met with officials of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, without first seeking ‘country clearance’ from the State Department. …

“Speaking before an audience at the Heritage Foundation in May 2002, Bolton argued that Cuba should also be included among the ‘axis of evil’ countries because of its alleged development of bio-warfare capacity. Cuba is world-renowned for its biomedical industry, but Bolton claimed that the industry was concealing a WMD project. Providing no evidence, he insisted that Cuba was involved in the sales of illicit bio-warfare technology to boost its cash-short economy. Other administration officials declined to support Bolton’s accusations. A congressional investigation of Cuba’s alleged WMD program found no evidence supporting Bolton’s assertions. …

“As an assistant attorney general under Edwin Meese, Bolton thwarted the Kerry Commission’s efforts to obtain documentation, including Bolton’s personal notes, about the Iran-Contra affair and alleged Contra drug smuggling. Working with congressional Republicans, Bolton also stonewalled congressional demands to interview Meese’s deputies regarding their role in the affair.” Mitchell Plitnick is former vice president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

YASHA LEVINE, mail at yashalevine.com, @yashalevine
Levine is an investigative journalist and author of the new book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet. He just wrote the piece “The Cambridge Analytica Con” for The Baffler, which states: “This week, Cambridge Analytica, the British election data outfit funded by billionaire Robert Mercer and linked to Steven Bannon and President Donald Trump, blew up the news cycle. …

“Our present-day freakout over Cambridge Analytica needs to be put in the broader historical context of our decades-long complacency over Silicon Valley’s business model. The fact is that companies like Facebook and Google are the real malicious actors here — they are vital public communications systems that run on profiling and manipulation for private profit without any regulation or democratic oversight from the society in which it operates. But, hey, let’s blame Cambridge Analytica. Or better yet, take a cue from the [New York] Times and blame the Russians along with Cambridge Analytica. …

“Commerce in user data permitted Facebook to earn $40 billion last year, while Google raked in $110 billion. …

“What do these companies know about us, their users? Well, just about everything. Silicon Valley of course keeps a tight lid on this information, but you can get a glimpse of the kinds of data our private digital dossiers contain by trawling through their patents. Take, for instance, a series of patents Google filed in the mid-2000s for its Gmail-targeted advertising technology. The language, stripped of opaque tech jargon, revealed that just about everything we enter into Google’s many products and platforms — from email correspondence to Web searches and internet browsing — is analyzed and used to profile users in an extremely invasive and personal way. …

“There’s another, bigger cultural issue with the way we’ve begun to examine and discuss Cambridge Analytica’s battery of internet-based influence ops. People are still dazzled by the idea that the internet, in its pure, untainted form, is some kind of magic machine distributing democracy and egalitarianism across the globe with the touch of a few keystrokes. …

“Cambridge Analytica is a subsidiary of the SCL Group, a military contractor set up by a spooky huckster named Nigel Oakes that sells itself as a high-powered conclave of experts specializing in data-driven counterinsurgency. It’s done work for the Pentagon, NATO and the UK Ministry of Defense in places like Afghanistan and Nepal, where it says it ran a ‘campaign to reduce and ultimately stop the large numbers of Maoist insurgents in Nepal from breaking into houses in remote areas to steal food, harass the homeowners and cause disruption.’

“In the grander scheme of high-tech counterinsurgency boondoggles, which features such storied psy-ops outfits as Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Cold War dinosaurs like Lockheed Martin, the SCL Group appears to be a comparatively minor player. Nevertheless, its ambitious claims to reconfigure the world order with some well-placed algorithms recalls one of the first major players in the field: Simulatics, a 1960s counterinsurgency military contractor that pioneered data-driven election campaigns and whose founder, Ithiel de Sola Pool, helped shape the development of the early internet as a surveillance and counterinsurgency technology.”

CNN reports this morning: “Three people were injured in a shooting at Great Mills High School in Maryland on Tuesday morning, according to Andrew Ponti, an official with the St. Mary’s County public information office.”

PAT ELDER, pelder at studentprivacy.org, @studentprivacy
Elder said today: “I was at Great Mills High School last night, teaching GED.”

He is author of the recently released book Military Recruiting in the United States, Elder is director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, an organization that confronts militarism in the schools and just launched a new campaign to shut down high school marksmanship programs. He was recently on FAIR’s program “CounterSpin” and “Democracy Now”: “Inside the U.S. Military Recruitment Program That Trained Nikolas Cruz to Be ‘A Very Good Shot.'”

Elder said today: “There are hundreds of trailer homes around the school. There’s tattoo shops and liquor stores. Nearby, there’s Lockheed and CACI and other military contractors, making millions.

“My son went to the school and when he was there, I raised concerns about the JROTC program. I was in a counselor’s office at Great Mills recently and they had a poster for the Navy: ‘Sometimes we rush in after the storm. Sometimes we are the storm.’

“There’s a huge military base nearby, Naval Air Station Patuxent River. It’s as big as the Pentagon.

“Regardless of the specifics of this attack, we have to face up to the reality that militarization of our society, especially our schools, fuels the violence that causes so much suffering — whether it takes place through U.S. foreign policy or school shootings.”

The New York Times reports today: “The Trump administration is furiously trying to fend off a bipartisan effort in Congress to halt American military support to the deadly Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen as the kingdom’s influential young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, arrives in Washington this week for talks with President Trump.”

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI, sha980 at mail.harvard.edu, @shireen818
Al-Adeimi is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University. She wrote the piece “Only Americans Can Stop America’s War on Yemen.”

She said today: “This month marks the third anniversary of the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war on Yemen. Despite the dire humanitarian crisis, however, the United States continues to sell arms to the Saudis and provide them with military support including mid-air refueling and various forms of logistical support and training. Citing that U.S. involvement in Yemen is unconstitutional and unauthorized, Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, and Chris Murphy have recently invoked the War Powers Resolution and introduced a bill that aims to extricate the United States from this war. Bill S.J.Res.54 is currently cosponsored by 10 senators, and the vote will likely coincide with Mohamed bin Salman’s U.S. visit this week. The bill has already been met with opposition from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others in the Senate who introduced an opposing bill. For Yemenis, however, S.J.Res.54 represents hope for an end to this brutal war on their country.”

See the new piece from The American Conservative: “‘60 Minutes’’ Embarrassing Interview with Mohammed bin Salman.” See overview from the New York Times last year: “‘It’s a Slow Death’: The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis.”

See World Without War’s list of protests in D.C. and other cities.

The text of the Sanders-Lee-Murphy legislation directs “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.” It makes an exception for forces “engaged in operations directed at al Qaeda or associated forces.”
See IPA news release: “Left and Right Unite Against Continued U.S. Backing of Saudi Attack on Yemen.”

See @accuracy Twitter list on Yemen.

“Democracy Now” reports: “Trump’s New CIA Nominee, Gina Haspel, Faces Possible Arrest Warrant in Germany over Torture.”

ANDREAS SCHÜLLER, via Anabel Bermejo, bermejo@ECCHR.eu, @schueller_a

Schüller is director of the International Crimes and Accountability Program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, which filed a legal intervention with the German Federal Prosecutor for an arrest warrant for Trump’s new CIA director nominee, Gina Haspel.

Schüller said of Haspel: “She should be standing trial, not be promoted. …

“The Federal Prosecutor did add our criminal complaint against Gina Haspel to his preliminary examination of CIA-torture, which exists since the U.S.-Senate Committee published its executive summary about CIA-detainee treatment in December 2014.

“We ask for a joint criminal investigation of the CIA and U.S. Army torture program between 2002 and 2006 by several European states.

“The nomination is the result of the failure to put legal accountability as a priority by former U.S. administrations, but also by European allies.”

See: “Germany: CIA deputy Gina Haspel must face arrest on travelling to Europe.”