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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  • New Trump Nominee and the Pentagon Accounting Scandal

    “Shanahan was ‘cleared’ by the Pentagon of charges that he favored his old employer in contract awards by the Pentagon. Shanahan oversaw the first ever complete audit (not!) of the Pentagon last year which ended in a blowout failure on Nov. 15. In announcing the failure, he made light of it, saying ‘We expected to…

  • Racism of the Venezuelan Opposition

    “From 2007, several or more Afro-descendants have been burned alive by the violent sectors of the opposition. There were regular depictions in elements of the opposition of Chavez as a monkey — they highlight his curly hair and big lips as part of the racialized nature of their outlook. Skin color is a substantial indicator…

  • Trump State Department in “Wholesale Violation” of Law at Venezuelan Embassy

    “The Trump State Department, working with and through the Secret Service and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, is engaged in wholesale violation of civil rights, constitutional rights, and international law. The State Department has authorized violations of core provisions of the Vienna Convention — an unprecedented step that will have global repercussions. Even in times…

  • Scrutinizing the Bolton/Pompeo/Trump Threats to Iran

    “Donald Trump’s key advisers are looking for an excuse for an air attack on Iran, and they have now taken a big step closer to their publicly announced objective. Pompeo and Bolton both threatened war with Iran last September over a few mortar shells landng in the vicinity of … the U.S. Embassy and a…

  • Environmental Disasters and Their Beneficiaries

    “‘Denial’ is what they broadcast to the public. To the captains of industry, Pompeo is confirming that climate change is indeed taking place and is something to rejoice in! However, the very ice-melting that makes him salivate will lead, at the same time, to the submersion of coastal regions — including major population centers –…

  • Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

    “The way sentences are constructed and the word choices made (‘militant,’ ‘retaliation,’ etc.) frame the story in such a way that the story is told before it even really begins, because the words have done their work. (Once you hear that a state is ‘retaliating’ for ‘militant’ rocket fire, what more do you really need…

  • At Venezuelan Embassy: U.S. Government Ignoring Vienna Convention, “Facilitating Right-Wing Mob’s Illegal Acts”

    She said today that the peace activists at the Venezuelan embassy “remain lawfully present until divested of that right, which has not happened. If they were not lawfully present law enforcement would be able to take lawful steps to have them leave, but instead it is trying to force them to leave by allowing and…

  • Issues with Mueller: Was There a Russian “Attack”? Why Didn’t He Question Assange?

    “Mueller begins, on Page 1, with this assertion: ‘The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.’ Maybe so, but Mueller, who is not averse to editorializing and contextualizing elsewhere in the report, gives readers no historical background or context for this large generalization. In particular, was the interference –…

  • Time to Pursue an International Cyber Treaty?

    “Harvard University political scientist Joseph Nye cites the precedent set by the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement that sought to limit behavior on the high seas that might lead to escalation and war. Says Nye, ‘Skeptics object that such an arrangement is impossible, owing to the differences between American and Russian values. But even greater…

  • Venezuela: U.S Sanctions Killing Tens of Thousands

    Wesibrot and Sachs, two noted economists, co-authored a just-released report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimating that U.S. Sanctions on Venezuela are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.

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