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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  • Instructor at Great Mills HS Leads Campaign to Demilitarize Schools

    Elder said today: “I was at Great Mills High School last night, teaching GED. … There are hundreds of trailer homes around the school. There’s tattoo shops and liquor stores. Nearby, there’s Lockheed and CACI and other military contractors, making millions. My son went to the school and when he was there, I raised concerns about the…

  • Vote on U.S. Backing for Saudi War on Yemen as Crown Prince Tours U.S.

    “Citing that U.S. involvement in Yemen is unconstitutional and unauthorized, Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, and Chris Murphy have recently invoked the War Powers Resolution and introduced a bill that aims to extricate the United States from this war. Bill S.J.Res.54 is currently cosponsored by 10 senators, and the vote will likely coincide with Mohamed…

  • Trump CIA Nominee Faces Possible Arrest Warrant in Germany

    Schüller said of Haspel: “She should be standing trial, not be promoted. … “The Federal Prosecutor did add our criminal complaint against Gina Haspel to his preliminary examination of CIA-torture, which exists since the U.S.-Senate Committee published its executive summary about CIA-detainee treatment in December 2014. “We ask for a joint criminal investigation of the…

  • “Space Force”: Trump Accelerating Aerospace Goal Targeting China and Russia

    “Whether a separate ‘Space Force’ is created or not, the U.S. is spending massive amounts of public funds to create a new arms race in space. Since Bill Clinton’s administration, Washington has continually refused to negotiate a treaty to ban weapons in space with China and Russia. Instead the U.S. pulled out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, and…

  • Trump’s Nominees: Pompeo at State, Haspel at CIA: * Targeting Iran * Torture

    “Haspel is not the first government official with involvement in torture, or other types of war crimes. This is a government with no accountability. But her hands are particularly dirty, having both run a secret CIA torture prison, and then covering up its felonies. Her nomination is a moral depravity. …”

  • Now: “Another Big Bank Bailout”

    “Even after the financial sector got bailed out by Main Street, these financial institutions nevertheless continued to break the law. And they did so in some of the most egregious ways, like market manipulation, mortgage abuses and selling toxic securities abuses. In fact, in just 10 years these 26 banks racked up 193 violations. This…

  • Trump, Death Penalty and Drug Addiction: What’s at the Root of the Problem?

    “And the real question then is: what happened in my life or your life, Joe, or everybody else’s lives here, that we incurred pain. And then how do we deal with our pain? Because the addiction itself magnifies the pain, it multiplies it — it increases it exponentially.”

  • DeVos’s Record in Michigan

    “Michigan also leads the nation in the number of for-profit charter schools, another dubious distinction. These schools use public tax dollars to produce profit for privately-controlled charter management companies, hastening the redistribution of funds from public coffers to private pockets.”

  • U.S.-North Korea: Victory for President Moon?

    “It’s a mistake to believe that ‘maximum pressure’ forced North Korea to dialogue; it was Moon’s masterful diplomatic stroke. It’s a dangerous rewriting of what happened, and it is sure to be what causes Trump to fail in talks with Kim.”

  • Saudi Arabia Using Law Firm Tied to Trump to Lobby U.S. for Nuclear Deal

    “The Trump administration’s negotiations around Saudi nuclear power have been controversial. Unlike other countries seeking the use of U.S. nuclear technology, Saudi Arabia refuses to sign any agreement prohibiting uranium enrichment, which could be used to produce nuclear weapons.”

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