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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  • Questions for Mueller

    Following are the questions; the article contains explanations about them: 1. “Why did you suggest that juvenile clickbait from a Russian troll farm was part of a “sweeping and systematic” Russian government interference effort? 2. “Are you still convinced that the GRU [Russian military intelligence] stole Democratic Party e-mails and transferred them to Wikileaks?

  • Rowley on Ruling Against Mueller’s Anti-Russian Charges

    “While Mueller has made clear his intention to not extrapolate beyond his report, Democrats hope pointed questions during testimony will offer new context that could deal a blow to Trump. Mueller was explicit that he cannot go beyond the exact words in the Report, but he actually can probably no longer do that.”

  • “Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims”

    “But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report’s evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved:

  • Progressive Groups “Urgently” Ask for a Meeting with Pelosi

    “At a time when flagrant institutionalized cruelty, racism, xenophobia, misogyny and other forms of bigotry have reached new depths from Republican leaders, we can ill afford the slightest wavering from unequivocal opposition to such extremism.”

  • “Official Secrets” Highlights Lies of Iraq War

    She tried to stop the impending invasion of Iraq in early 2003 by exposing George W. Bush and Tony Blair governmental deceit in their claims about Iraq.

  • Venezuela: “Humanitarian Intervention” That Isn’t

    “As a recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, co-authored by economist Jeffrey Sachs, concluded, U.S. sanctions since August of 2017 have killed over 40,000 Venezuelans and will kill even more this year.”

  • Epstein: Protected Because He Is a Spy? — A Backgrounder

    ‘I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,’ he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta.”

  • Military Spending: * Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Scandal * Backing Saudi Aggression in Yemen

    “Congress has another opportunity to show that it will not stand idly by as the Trump administration acts with impunity — and disregards the war-making authority that the founders vested in the legislative branch — as he facilitates the slaughter of tens of thousands of people,”

  • NoMoreCamps.org

    “We can blockade the concentration camps with occupations and die-ins. We can set up our own ‘freedom camps’ on their doorstep. We can support workers who walk out and strike. We can make life impossible for the tech companies profiting from this misery, for the big banks that fund it, and for the politicians that…

  • Kamala Harris’ Claims About Her Record on Big Banks “Doesn’t Withstand a Moment’s Scrutiny”

    “Harris initiated a ‘mortgage strike force’ to prosecute individuals, but it only brought a handful of cases, and the ones her campaign touts as triumphs were against penny-ante ‘foreclosure rescue’ scams, not the bankers who maneuvered homeowners into foreclosure in the first place.”

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