News Items

  • Media Advisory: Whistleblowers to Speak About Surveillance and Cyber Issues

    “President Barack Obama is set to sign an executive order on Friday aimed at encouraging companies to share more information about cybersecurity threats with the government and each other, a response to attacks like that on Sony Entertainment. … Obama will sign the order at a day-long conference on cybersecurity at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley.”

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  • Delegation of U.S. and UK Whistleblowers in London: News Conference on “Special Surveillance Relationship” — News Advisory

    Whistleblowers from four American and British “national security” agencies will hold a news conference in London on November 21 in a direct challenge to surveillance policies of the U.S. and UK governments. The whistleblowers — from the NSA, FBI, State Department and GCHQ — will speak about the effects of their governments’ policies on freedom of the press and democracy. They are traveling as a delegation co-sponsored by the U.S.-based organizations RootsAction.org and ExposeFacts, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The news conference is being hosted by the Foreign Press Association.

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  • In Response to the Government’s Lynching of James Risen

    It has been a sharp learning curve for Jim Risen, but by having numerous grand juries and two administrations relentlessly hounding him, he has learned how deeply the government’s malevolence descends. But there was always one steadfast assertion he wound not compromise, Jim Risen assured his sources, from the very start of their first encounter, that he would never divulge their identities nor what information they provided him with.

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  • Militarization of U.S. Police: Ferguson, Mo.

    Community policing reforms came about as a corrective to the 1950-60s professional police model which created a large gulf between police and citizens. Few noticed that underlying all the CP rhetoric was a little noticed yet foretelling trend of para-militarism as found in SWAT teams. What we’re witnessing today, though, with the influence of the Dept. of Homeland Security since 9/11 — along with growing emphasis on military hardware and tactics — is the expansion of police militarization throughout entire police departments — and indeed, the entire police institution.

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  • Unconstitutional acts of war in Iraq

    President Obama ignored the wise direction of President George Washington when he casually told the nation — and Congress — that U.S. military forces will engage in acts of war in Iraq for an extended period of weeks and maybe months. Bombing, he said in a brief statement last week, is needed here and there, but he promised there will be no U.S. boots on the ground. … The announcement seemed almost an afterthought as the president headed for vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. He neglected to seek approval of Congress before authorizing bombardment of the military forces of ISIS, the…

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  • News Conference: Edward Snowden’s Passport, Political Asylum and Related Issues

    Ray McGovern, Coleen Rowley and Norman Solomon spoke at this news conference, sponsored by RootsAction.org and hosted by the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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  • NSA Veterans and Whistleblowers Respond to Obama Speech

    Minutes after President Obama’s major address on NSA surveillance on Friday, Jan. 17, the Institute for Public Accuracy held a news conference with noted NSA veterans and whistleblowers.

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  • The War on Poverty at Fifty

    Fifty years after Lyndon B. Johnson made it the centerpiece of his first State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, the War on Poverty remains one of the most embattled—and least understood—of Great Society initiatives.

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  • Edward Snowden: Profile in Courage

    Edward Snowden may go down in history as one of this nation’s most important whistleblowers. He is certainly one of the bravest.

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  • Obama’s Economic Race Legacy

    From the start, President Barack Obama has shown little interest or loyalty in the issues that affect the poor, working class and people of color in the United States. For almost his entire first term he didn’t utter the words poor or poverty. Early on he reminded African Americans: ‘I’m not the president of black America. I’m the president of the United States of America…’

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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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