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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  • When Joe Biden Collaborated With Segregationists

    “Crucially, Biden didn’t just talk the anti-busing talk. He also took a leading role in fighting what he called ‘unnecessary busing’ by pushing bills that would have forced the federal government to consider other ways of equalizing education — ways that would not have required what old-fashioned bigots used to call race mixing. In a…

  • U.S. Suicide Epidemic: It’s Hitting Trump’s Base Hard

    “A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes. What’s more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually — the suicide rate — has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides, even…

  • Despite #MeToo, Hiding Malfeasance Still Legal

    “Neither companies nor individuals have a legitimate interest in keeping their malfeasance secret, whether it’s about dangerously defective products, predatory sexual behavior, or anything else. Hiding malfeasance only paves the way for more wrongdoing to more unsuspecting victims. Just ask Weinstein’s victims.”

  • Persian Gulf of Tonkin?

    “It’s certainly possible that some Iranian faction, like the Revolutionary Guard, which the U.S. government designated as terrorists earlier this year (see accuracy.org news release), could have done this, but Pompeo provided no serious evidence. His basic reasoning, that Iran is likely guilty largely because it had the capacity to conduct such attacks, could just…

  • How Was Barr, Central to Iran-Contra Cover-up, Deemed Honorable?

    Biden told Barr in 1995: “You were one of the best I have ever worked with, and there have been a lot of attorneys general since I have been here, and I mean that sincerely.” CBS News notes: “When Biden made that remark, he was the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

  • Poor People’s Campaign and Voting Rights

    “Three years ago, even before the Trump administration, we went all across this country to more than 30 states, invited by persons who said it’s time for us to have a moral fusion movement, to say that we can challenge these five interlocking injustices: systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, a war economy and the…

  • * Trump’s Mexico “Distraction” * Colombia: “Security Crisis”

    “We need trade agreements, but we need trade agreements that work for the people, and not only large transnational corporations.”…  “As the [Ivan] Duque administration refuses to implement the peace accord in its entirety, social leaders at the forefront of the accord are facing a security crisis.”

  • Biden’s Flip, Flops

  • Postol on Syrian Attacks: OPCW Guilty of “Deception”

    In contrast to the “contradictory” March 1 document given to the Security Council by the OPCW’s political leadership, Postol regarded the until-recently-hidden Feb. 27 engineering report to be a “superb piece of professional work” which informed his assessment of the March 1 document touted by the OPCW’s political leadership.

  • “Fracking Endgame”: Industry Locking Us into “Plastics, Pollution and Climate Chaos”

    “What is revealed in this report is the industry blueprint for ensuring decades more of fossil fuel dominance over our society. If it becomes realized, the endgame would be a scary, dangerous world of omnipresent plastic waste, expanding air and water pollution, unacceptable health impacts and irreversible climate chaos.”

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