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  • 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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  • No “Permanent” Bases — Just “Enduring” Bases

    AP is reporting this morning: “Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad … said a long-term agreement the U.S. is now negotiating with Iraq will give a needed legal framework for the continued presence of U.S. troops. Many in Congress have raised alarm about the agreement, and Democrats have accused the White House of trying…

  • Petraeus to Target Iran?

    GARETH PORTER Porter, author of Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, just wrote the piece “Petraeus Testimony to Defend False ‘Proxy War’ Line,” which states: “Based on preliminary indications of his spin on the surprisingly effective armed resistance to the joint U.S.-Iraqi ‘Operation Knights Assault’ in Basra, Petraeus…

  • Clinton and Obama Supporting Scaled-Down Occupation in Iraq

    JOSHUA HOLLAND Holland just wrote the piece “Obama and Hillary Spin a ‘Big Lie’ About Iraq,” which states: “On the campaign trail, the two candidates often speak of bringing the troops home and ending the war, and Democratic primary voters, 80 percent of whom want U.S. troops out of Iraq within 12 months, reward them…

  • Since MLK: 40 Years in the Wilderness?

    Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis 40 years ago, on April 4, 1968. After his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, King accelerated and broadened his activism, emphasizing economics and militarism as well as racism. The following analysts can speak to the many aspects of King’s work and legacy in today’s context:…

  • Newly Disclosed Torture Memo

    The Washington Post reports today in its lead story, about a 2003 Justice Department memo: “Sent to the Pentagon’s general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of…

  • Bush and NATO

    AP reports that “President Bush on Wednesday [in Bucharest, Romania] renewed urgent calls for NATO to start the admission process for Ukraine and Georgia despite a split among alliance members and fierce Russian objections.” Bush was just in Ukraine and is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir Putin in Russia on April 6. Sen. TINY…

  • New Study: Majority of Doctors Want National Health Insurance

    The largest survey ever conducted among doctors on the issue of healthcare financing reform just found that 59 percent of doctors “support government legislation to establish national health insurance,” while 32 percent oppose it and 9 percent are neutral. Such plans typically involve a single, federally administered social insurance fund that guarantees healthcare coverage for…

  • The Fed’s Dealings: For Public or Private Interest?

    THOMAS FERGUSON ROBERT A. JOHNSON Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author or coauthor of many books and articles, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (University of Chicago Press). Johnson was previously a managing director at…

  • Escalating Warfare in Iraq

    The New York Times website reports this afternoon: “Fighting in two of Iraq’s largest cities threatens to destabilize a long-term truce that had helped reduce the level of violence in the five-year-old war.” Raed Jarrar, currently in Washington, D.C., is available for interviews. RAED JARRAR Jarrar, who was born and raised in Iraq, is Iraq…

  • Iraq War: The Real Cost

    In the recently released book The Three Trillion Dollar War, Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz conclude that the Bush administration drastically underestimated the economic consequences of the Iraq war: “By the administration’s own reckoning … the cost of the Iraq war, counting only the money officially appropriated, will soon be some $600 billion. … But…

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