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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  • Why Are We Vulnerable to Food Shortages?

    Amanda Starbuck, Research Director with Food and Water Watch, said today: “Our corporate-controlled, just-in-time food system does little to buffer us from supply shocks created by events like Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, it helped create the problem… Agribusinesses stoked fears of food shortages during the pandemic to fatten their bottom lines. We must not…

  • Biden’s Dangerous Call for Regime Change in Russia

    “Outrage is the appropriate response. And a special onus is on Democrats in Congress, who should be willing to put humanity above party and condemn Biden’s extreme irresponsibility. But prospects for such condemnation look bleak. …

  • Biden Adding to Military Budget as Instability Grows and Contractors Profit

    A new statement from the National Priorities Project says that “more spending on militarism can’t address the nation’s or the world’s problems. At $813 billion, the President’s request for the Pentagon exceeds even the $782 billion budget that Congress just passed by $31 billion. The increase alone is twice the amount that Congress refused for…

  • Covid Funding Collapse Delays Millions of Doses of Pfizer’s Antiviral Pill

    After a $15.6 billion funding bill collapsed in Congress this month, the purchase and delivery of millions of antiviral pills has been delayed. The pills are a key aspect of the White House’s new Test to Treat initiative. Here, practicing pharmacists and physicians weigh in on the delay and on the potential problems with the…

  • Levels of Covid-19 in Wastewater Rise Across the US

    ” Experts suggest that surveillance of US wastewater sites shows a rise in Covid-19 cases in cities across the country. The decline in reliable case counting from reported tests has made community wastewater surveillance increasingly necessary. Dr. Julia Raifman says: “People can shed the virus in their digestive tracts before they become symptomatic. Wastewater tracking…

  • Bush, Rumsfeld: War Criminals

    Author Laurie Calhoun: “How much destruction and how many lives will be sacrificed on behalf of power elites unwilling to undertake meaningful negotiations because they themselves stand to lose nothing, while military industry stands to profit handsomely from the conflict? The ghastly war in Yemen and resultant humanitarian crisis continues to be supported by the…

  • The Impact of Ukraine on Yemen

    Experts comment on the lack of funding for Yemen, whose economy is fundamentally affected by the war between Ukraine and Russia. “Since the onset of the Ukraine conflict, we have seen the prices of food skyrocket by more than 150 percent,” said Basheer Al Selwi, a spokesperson for the International Commission of the Red Cross…

  • Ukraine War: How We Got Here, How to Get Out

    Nicolai N. Petro, political science professor and scholar of Ukraine, stresses the importance of Ukrainian identity and international influence in the current war: “This conflict over who gets to define Ukrainian national identity and its future has been going on for at least 150 years and has erupted in serious military hostilities inside Ukraine three…

  • Judge Jackson’s Record

    Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, wrote about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the eve of her Supreme Court nomination hearings: “Having served as a public defender, Jackson would be the only Supreme Court justice to have represented criminal defendants since Thurgood Marshall.…

  • U.S. Activists Help Expose Occupation Akin to Ukraine

    “Is the public and media ignoring the invasion and ongoing war in Western Sahara because it is in Africa? The courageous and dramatic actions by U.S. human rights activists highlight the brutal repression of the independence activist Sultana Khaya specifically and the indigenous Sahrawi people generally.”

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