News Items

  • Affidavit by Daniel Ellsberg for Plowshare Activists Being Allowed a Defense of Necessity

    In 1971 I gave the U.S. Senate, the New York Times and the Washington Post copies of what have come to be known as The Pentagon Papers. I was arrested on twelve felony counts. My trial was dismissed because of government misconduct which figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon…These considerations bear on two other elements of the necessity defense, the “lack of legal alternatives” and the “imminence” of the harms to be averted. Again, I speak from my own experience, but not only mine, in saying that it is the perceived insufficiency of other means, by themselves not…

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  • A Long List of Democratic Candidates Requires a Large Catalog of Their Funders

    By Sam Haut: As the first debates for the Democratic primary begin, and the list of candidates has grown to 24, it can be difficult to contextualize where each candidate has received funding from over the course of their time in office. What follows is a list of the Democratic candidates and the top sources for how much money they’ve made and where those top sources come from.

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  • NATO and US Foreign Policy: Dangers Ahead

    RootsAction.org held a news conference Thursday on “NATO and U.S. Foreign Policy: Dangers Ahead” hosted by the Institute for Public Accuracy. Speakers include former State Department officials Matthew Hoh, Ann Wright, as well as Martin Fleck. The event was moderated by Norman Solomon.

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  • Media Advisory: “NATO and U.S. Foreign Policy: Dangers Ahead”

    At 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at the National Press Club: On the same day that President Trump is scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House, this news conference will focus on the U.S.-NATO relationship. Speakers include former State Department officials Matthew Hoh and Ann Wright.

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  • Statement by Floyd Abrams in response to Attorney General nominee William Barr’s remarks on the First Amendment

    “It’s one thing to say that there could be circumstances in which a journalist’s need to protect her sources could lead to a potential finding of contempt of court if she refused to obey a court order requiring such disclosure. But the notion that a journalist could properly be jailed for publishing material that the government thinks could ‘hurt the country’ is something else entirely and would be deeply threatening to First Amendment norms in general and journalistic freedom in particular.”

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  • Statement on NAFTA’s “Kafkaesque” Turn

    The supposedly concluded renegotiation of NAFTA has reached a Kafkaesque stage. As the United States Trade Representative has stated: “The United States and Mexico have reached a preliminary agreement in principle, subject to finalization and implementation.” Not only the negotiations have not been finalized, and without Canada, but the texts remain hidden from the public.

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  • What’s the Cost of Medicare for All?

    Even a Koch-backed think tank finds Medicare for all would cut health care spending. In a report released by the Mercatus Center, a single-payer health care system would offset costs with even greater savings. The Intercept and other media reporting on this are citing the work of Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler. They are distinguished professors of health policy at the City University of New York at Hunter College and lecturers in medicine at Harvard Medical School. They have written an analysis of the work of the Koch-backed think tank, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which is…

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  • Trump Team Hired Israeli Spy Firm Used by Harvey Weinstein to Attack Obama Officials on Iran Deal

    “Aides to Donald Trump, the U.S. president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a ‘dirty ops’ campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal. People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to ‘get dirt’ on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.”

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  • From the desk of Noam Chomsky

    From the desk of Noam Chomsky

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  • 15 Years Later: The Whistleblower Who Almost Blocked the Iraq War

    Media Advisory: Press Conference to Mark 15th Anniversary Of Leak by GCHQ Translator Katharine Gun Revealing US “Dirty Tricks” at UN for Iraq War When:  Thursday, 1 March 2018 at 11:00 a.m. Where:  Head office, National Union of Journalists Headland House, 72 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NB Who:  Katharine Gun, Thomas Drake, Matthew Hoh, Jesselyn Radack This press conference will take place the day before the 15th anniversary of the Observer’s publication of the explosive March 2, 2003 story “US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war” — based on a leak by GCHQ translator Katharine Gun — revealing the US National Security Agency’s UN surveillance memo that aimed to grease the way for the…

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  • Supreme Court Inaction on New York Vaccine Mandate “Way Too Early to Celebrate”

    The U.S. Supreme Court has left in place New York’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, which had received a challenge over its lack of a religious exemption. Health law experts say it is too early to celebrate the move.

  • Is Monkeypox a Major Threat?

    Last week, the World Health Organization declined to declare monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Infectious disease expert Gregg Gonsalves warns that inaction may result in monkeypox becoming “a new resident infection in the gay community.”

  • AIPAC “Astroturf Groups” Flooding Airwaves Against Progressive Donna Edwards

    Independent journalist and researcher Richard Silverstein criticizes the United Democracy Project, a spinoff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, for spending millions against progressive Democrats such as Donna Edwards

  • Inflation Caused by Supply Constraints and Soaring Corporate Profits Far More than Wages

    Pia Malaney, senior economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking said today, “Tackling inflation effectively demands that the administration focus on the real pressures — supply constraints and soaring corporate profits.”

  • Ahead of Biden Visit, State Department “Investigation” into Killing of U.S.-Palestinian Journalist Gives Israel Another Pass

    Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine, criticizes the State Department for the inadequate investigation regarding the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeili military

  • Report: Trump Era Covid Strategy “Likely Resulted in Many Deaths”

    Last week, the congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released a report on the Trump administration’s embrace of a herd immunity strategy via mass infection in the second half of 2020 and first months of 2021.

  • Migrants Dead in Trailer “Predictable”

    Author Tod Miller recently spoke of the billions the US has invested into making the border as militarized and dangerous as possible. He said, “Between 8,000 and 10,000 people have died crossing the U.S. Mexico border since the mid 1990s.”

  • Maxwell Sentenced to 20 Years for Conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein: Will Powerful Men be Held Accountable?

    While Ghislaine Maxwell has been sentenced for sex trafficking minors and consorting with Jeffrey Epstein, the scores of powerful men involved remain unpunished.

  • Michigan Supreme Court Uses “Star Chamber” to Kill Flint Water Charges Against Officials

    In regards to the Michigan Supreme Court reversing the charges of the officials responsible for the Flint water crisis, Flint Rising, a project aimed to help those harmed says, “This leaves no one criminally responsible for poisoning 100,000 people in one of the largest public health disasters in this nation’s history.”

  • Covid Behind Bars Project Finds Failure of Geriatric Parole Reform

    Since the start of the pandemic, UCLA Law’s Covid Behind Bars Project has tracked, collected and analyzed public information about Covid-19 in prisons, jails, youth facilities and immigration detention centers. Now, the project has released analysis showing Nevada’s emergency medical use mechanisms failed to provide a single geriatric parole hearing during the pandemic. 

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