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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  • A Dearth of Covid Storytelling

    Theater historian Debra Caplan argues that we “urgently need to tell the story of what happened––and what’s still happening––in this pandemic. We need to publicly grieve the [one] million Americans we lost, and make plans to try to prevent any more casualties. We need to tell the stories of Long Haulers and survivors.”

  • Fed’s Fix is Wrong: Inflation Caused by “Skyrocketing” Corporate Profits More Than Wages

    Senior Economist at “Institute for New Economic Thinking” Pia Malaney says, “Work by Servaas Storm for the Institute for New Economic Thinking and other analysts suggest that very little of the rise in inflation can be traced to wages. As most Americans know from their own experience, wages are running well behind inflation and have…

  • Insurers Collected Full Premiums But Paid Less for Care During the Pandemic

    A recent opinion article published by MedPage Today points out that in 2020, private insurer profits––largely from Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care––jumped 20-30%. At the time, private insurers were collecting full premiums even as claims from health care providers fell due to decreases in elective care. Meanwhile, the government was bailing out providers by…

  • Protesters Block Major Weapons Bazaar

  • Assessing Threat of Inflation and Slowing Wage Growth

    With the monthly Employment Situation scheduled for release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, June 3, Dean Baker, senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, writes: “In its latest report on the budget and the economy, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sided clearly with those arguing the case for inflation being…

  • Racist Origins of Policing and the Second Amendment

    A chapter in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s book “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” titled “Slave Patrols” explains the racist foundations of policing and gun laws in the United States. An excerpt published by Truthout on the chapter says, “Dunbar-Ortiz provides the historical context for how militias that killed and oppressed slaves and Indigenous persons…

  • Apologist for Tucker Carlson’s Racism: Glenn Greenwald

    Journalist Eoin Higgins writes, “There’s no plausible way to dispute that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is spreading racist conspiracy theories, but Glenn Greenwald has been trying anyway.”

  • Power of the NRA: Mass Organization, JROTC

    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment,” said today that the NRA is a powerful, independent organization able to nullify any election candidate in the country who advocates for gun control

  • Assessing Vaccine Authorization for Children Under 5

    The Food and Drug Administration has set a June date to review emergency use authorization requests for Covid-19 vaccines for children under 5. Researchers caution that although many parents have eagerly awaited vaccines for this age group, vaccination rates may be quite low.

  • The Davos Problem: “It is time to #TaxTheRich”

    Jenny Ricks, the global convenor for Fight Inequality Alliance wrote, “Policy choices made by governments and international institutions throughout the pandemic have fallen woefully short of protecting people from the impact of multiple crises. Spiralling inflation, sky-rocketing energy bills and fuel prices, as well as high and still rising food prices, spelled disaster for so…

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