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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  • U.S. Senate: Prosecute Russia War Crimes, not Ours

    MARJORIE COHN, [email protected], @marjoriecohn Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She just wrote the piece “After Undermining International Criminal Court, U.S. Now Wants It to Charge Russians,” which states: “Although the United States has tried mightily to undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it…

  • NATO, Russia and Nuclear Threats

    Amid warnings from Russia that they will increase force in the Baltic Sea if Finland and Sweden join NATO, Greg Mello, executive director of the nuclear disarmament and environmental protection advocate Los Alamos Study Group, said: “Let us hope that mature voices in Sweden and Finland can dial back these impulsive responses we are seeing…

  • Key Covid Coverage Ends as Federal Funds Run Dry

    Last month, uninsured people lost access to free Covid-19 tests and treatments after the end of the Health and Resources Administration’s Covid-19 Uninsured Program. Dr. Adam Gaffney says that “the uninsured will now be deterred from obtaining Covid-19 care or treatment––which could contribute to viral spread, or worsen outcomes by delaying care for these vulnerable…

  • Indoor Air Quality and Covid: A Federal Response Finally Gains Momentum

    The White House’s recent emphasis on improving indoor air quality to reduce virus transmission has been praised by scientists, including Linsey Marr and Jose-Luis Jimenez. They argue that at the beginning of the pandemic, major public health agencies like the CDC and WHO failed to communicate that the spread of the virus is significantly driven…

  • Networks Covered the War in Ukraine More than the U.S. Invasion of Iraq

    “’Astonishingly, the two peak months of coverage of the [2003] Iraq war each saw less saturated coverage than last month in Ukraine (414 minutes in March of 2003 and 455 minutes in April)…'”

  • Protests Rock Pakistan Following Imran Khan Charging U.S. Behind His Ouster 

    While the world’s attention is understandably focused on the crisis in Ukraine, equally grave developments are taking place elsewhere. Perhaps the most consequential — and underreported — is a regime-change operation underway in Pakistan…”

  • War Is Not an Excuse to Ignore Climate Change

    “The government should place caps on the numbers of barrels of oil, cubic feet of gas, and tons of coal allowed out of the ground and into the economy annually. Those caps would be ratcheted down quickly, year by year, until extraction rates and therefore greenhouse-gas emissions were driven close to zero.”

  • Ukraine and International Law: Precedents of Permissibility

    Alfred de Zayas, Professor of Law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and former UN Independent Expert on International Order, said today, “Undoubtedly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violated article 2(4) of the UN Charter, but there were ‘precedents of permissibility’ established by NATO countries through their aggressive wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria…

  • The Folly of Lifting Mask Requirements for Airlines

    Major American airlines want a premature end to the federal transportation mask mandate and the international pre-departure Covid-19 testing requirement. Some public health advocates are promoting a “mask only” section. Abdullah Shihipar weighs in.

  • “Historic” Union Victory for Amazon Workers

    MIKE ELK, [email protected], @MikeElk Elk is senior labor reporter at Payday Report. His most recent piece is “Amazon Union Demands Union Reps in Discipline — Want Bargaining to Begin in May — Strike Threat on the Table.” He said today: “The NLRB announced that the independent Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island has won an election to…

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