Blog

  • NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Statement on Surveillance Legislation

    At this late hour (with all the fear mongering by national security authorities pushing to reauthorize and expand an unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program), unless the Amash-Lofgren Amendment is passed, Congress may end up passing a bill (S. 139) that actually gives criminal suspects more Fourth Amendment protections than innocent people.

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  • News Conference at Department of Justice on Threats to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange by Attorney General Jeff Sessions

    CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently called WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently stated that Julian Assange’s arrest is a “priority” of the Trump administration. This has caused numerous individuals — with differing perspectives on WikiLeaks — to warn of a growing threat to press freedom. The following will address U.S. government…

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  • Trump Education Policy

    Rhee and Moskowitz would certainly be zealous proponents of school choice. Selecting either of them would be a thumb in the eyes of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, who campaigned mightily for Clinton. Both have tangled with the unions and made clear their distaste for public schools and for teachers’…

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  • Costas Panayotakis on the Brexit

    “The Brexit vote may have partly been an expression of right-wing xenophobia but it is also an expression of disgust across the continent with the neoliberal monstrosity that the EU has become. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the result will be honored. In the past, European political and economic elites have often…

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  • Breaking Down the Brexit Decision

    The political center has lost its commanding appeal and the public is drawn to vague slogans like “freedom” and “independence.” Right-wing projects are implausible as solutions to the problems faced by ordinary citizens but the electorate acts in desperation. The process has been under way for many years. Reagan and Thatcher were early signs. The…

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  • From “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”

    All the laws and customs of civilized warfare may not be applicable to an armed conflict with the Indian tribes upon our western frontier; but the circumstances attending the assassination of Canby [Army general] and Thomas [U.S. peace commissioner] are such as to make their murder as much a violation of the laws of savage…

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  • Bradley on His Visit to the Philippines

    Princess Alice sipped punch under a hot tropical sun as “Big Bill” Taft deliver a florid speech extolling the benefits of the American way. A century later I ventured to Zamboanga and learned that the local Muslims hadn’t taken Taft’s message to heart: Zamboanga officials feared for my safety because I was an American and…

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  • Video of Sterling News Conference

    On February 17th, 2016, Holly Sterling, Jesselyn Radack, John Kiriakou, Tim Karr, Delphine Halgand, and Cornel West spoke at a news conference at the National Press Club, then delivered a petition containing over 150.000 signatures to the White House calling for the pardon of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling.

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  • Media Advisory — Cornel West, John Kiriakou among speakers to urge Obama pardon for CIA whistleblower

    News Conference: Release of Petition Urging Obama to Pardon Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower; Speakers to Include Cornel West, John Kiriakou, Jesselyn Radack, Holly Sterling When: Wednesday, February 17 at 9:30 a.m. Where: National Press Club (Bloomberg Room), 13th Floor, National Press Building, Washington

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  • Noam Chomsky & Abby Martin: Electing The President Of An Empire (Full Transcript)

    At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Abby Martin interviews world-renowned philosopher and linguist Professor Noam Chomsky. Full transcript included.

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  • Edward Snowden a “Profile in Courage” Says Church Committee Whistleblower

    “Unfortunately, these efforts at oversight have largely failed. Judge Vinson’s order to Verizon proves beyond cavil that the secret FISA court is a rubber stamp for the indiscriminate seizure of all sorts of personal records. … “Seventy percent of the federal government’s intelligence budget now goes to private contractors. Far from overseeing the agencies, members…

  • Samantha Power’s “Weaponization of Human Rights”

    “Samantha Power has shown a limitless faith in the therapeutic power of military violence, as long as there are a few human rights lawyers straggling along as camp followers. Her career-making first book, subtitled America and the Age of Genocide, fails to mention any of the postwar genocides that Washington armed and abetted, a highly…

  • Millions of Domestic Phone Records Collected by Government

    “Been hollering into the deep dark shadows of the surveillance state since October 2001 and then via the press starting in 2006 about this Orwellian threat. “Now we have an order for ALL call records from millions upon millions of Verizon subscribers without probable cause just because the government wants them. “Talk about profiling. “FISA…

  • ENDA: Why Is Employment Discrimination Against Gays Legal?

    Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post wrote today that Michelle Obama “was speaking … at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Washington last night when [Ellen] Sturtz heckled her about her husband’s lack of action on ending discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) federal employees.” … “There is currently no federal law that explicitly…

  • Bradley Manning in Court: “Show Trial” or Last Chance for Justice?

    “Defense lawyer David Coombs recounted a poignant turning point during Bradley’s time in Iraq. On Christmas Eve, 2009, an Army vehicle narrowly avoided injury after an explosive detonated. But in evading the explosive, the U.S. vehicle drove into a civilian car, carrying five Iraqis, including three children. His fellow soldiers celebrated into the night, cheering…

  • Turkish Uprising?

    “The Taksim excursion park protests cut across the clichéd secularist-Islamist divide that dominates the western image of Turkish politics. They give voice to widespread frustrations with the prime minister’s arrogant and dismissive treatment of all forms of dissent. From his pro-business urban development projects to his Syria foreign policy to his daily pronouncements on public…

  • Social Security Has “A Large and Growing Surplus”

    “Today’s report from the Social Security Trustees shows that our Social Security system has a large and growing surplus. Unlike the banks, which nearly brought the economy to ruin, Social Security didn’t need a bailout. Its surplus has grown year after year, even during the Great Recession. The result of decades of foresight and planning,…

  • Administration Claims to be Reassessing Leak Policy as Manning Trial Begins Monday

    “The Manning trial is occurring in the context of perhaps the most repressive atmosphere for free press in recent memory. It was bad enough that the Obama administration prosecuted twice the number of whistleblowers than all prior administrations combined. Then it went after logs and records of journalists and publishers: AP; Fox reporter James Rosen;…

  • New FBI Director Set to Preserve “‘War on Terror’ Mentality”

    If Congress chooses for once to exercise proper oversight, Comey should be asked all the hard questions as to why he ultimately signed off on the Bush administration’s warrantless monitoring; its torture program and its indefinite detention policies. Because Obama has just given a speech, interpreted by many as saying it’s time to turn away…

  • Push for Freedom for Cuban “Anti-Terrorists”

    “Rene Gonzalez, one of the Cuban 5, was released in October 2011 but had to remain in the U.S. for three more years under supervised probation. Just recently, in a two-week authorized visit, due to the death of his father, Gonzalez was allowed to stay in Cuba after renouncing his U.S. citizenship. Incarcerated since 1998,…

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