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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  • Pakistan

    “President Donald Trump’s first tweet of the year concerned none of the other ‘usual suspects’ of international ‘rogue’ nations routinely targeted for the president’s wrath: North Korea, Iran, or a China, or a Venezuela. No, this tweet concerned one of the older scapegoats for America’s travails in the ‘Af-Pak’ theatre in the ‘war on terrorism’,…

  • Korea and Olympics: Opening for Dialogue?

    “If Bush had kept the Agreed Framework, if hardliners had not sabotaged the Six Party Talks, and if Obama had clarified the terms of the Leap Day deal, North Korea might not be the nuclear nightmare that grips the United States and its allies today.”

  • UN Vote on Jerusalem: U.S. as “Capo dei Capi”

    “Coverage of the UN Security Council does not disclose what is really going on in this secretive and despotic institution. Washington causes a stir when it casts a public veto such as the one on Jerusalem, but in fact it uses its veto power daily in private sessions and it regularly dictates Council action (or…

  • Evidence of Honduran Election Being Stolen

    “International media attention has glossed over the popular resistance in the streets of Honduras and the ensuing violent crackdowns and human rights violations committed by [government] forces. The voices of people and grassroots groups involved in the road blocks, protests, and resistance all over the country are being ignored.”

  • Tax Bill: Senators’ Special Tax Breaks, Duping Public

    “Senator Collins, in all of your years in politics, all your years of being an educated, intelligent woman, have you honestly still not figured out how to tell when you are being lied to? The idea that Mitch McConnell and your colleagues in the Senate are going to address your concerns with the tax bill…

  • Is the National Security Strategy Military Dominance?

    “There are two ways to look at Trump’s remarks on national security, noting, of course, that his language is both more Orwellian, and less polished than we have seen before from the White House. “The first is that getting past his words, Trumps’ actions on people overseas have not been much different than any of…

  • Sexual Harassment and Low-Wage Women

    “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says the restaurant industry is the largest source of sexual harassment claims. In a national survey of 4,300 restaurant workers by the worker center Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, more than one in 10 workers reported that they or a co-worker had experienced sexual harassment. ROC says even this creepy figure…

  • Documents Show U.S. Violated Assurances to Moscow About Limiting NATO

    “The National Security Archive materials reinforce the point that Soviet — and subsequent Russian — leaders had major reasons to believe NATO expansion was not going to occur in the post-Cold War era. The bargaining surrounding German reunification involved not just diplomatic reassurances, on the American side, but a series of seemingly-significant steps to make…

  • Killing Net Neutrality: “Regulatory Capture by Commercial Interests”

    “Pai has displayed an utter disregard toward all voices other than those he values most: the very industries the FCC purportedly regulates. This isn’t deregulation; it is reregulation by giving internet service monopolies the power to censor online content and limit our access to the internet. History will not look kindly on this FCC.”

  • Nobel Peace Prize: Threats to Nuclear Ban Treaty

    “It is the first true multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty ever successfully negotiated. All prior multilateral nuclear treaties aim at preventing proliferation, leaving current arsenals untouched.”

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