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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  • Trump Impeachment Momentum

    “For months we’ve had more than enough of partisan sniping from House members unwilling to actually commit to introducing an impeachment resolution. We’re now seeing a shift toward focusing on President Trump’s clear violations of the supreme law of the land — and the constitutional remedy called impeachment.”

  • Trump-DeVos: A Budget that Will “Decimate Public Education”

    “Although Title I wouldn’t be cut, the increased flexibility in how those funds can be used could mean that less funds are following the neediest students. Higher education is also effected, including massive cuts to work-study programs, Perkins loans, loan forgiveness for public service, child care for students who are parents, and adult literacy programs.…

  • 9/11 Advocates on Manchester Attacks and Saudi Weapons Deal

    “The $110 billion weapons deal [with Saudi Arabia] will only foment more hatred, increase further violence, and contribute immeasurably to loss of innocent life at the diabolical hands of terrorists.”

  • Roots of Terror: Is Trump Enabling ISIS?

    “In doing so, like Presidents Bush and Obama before him, Trump drew the world of terrorism in easy to understand, bi-polar, and as he said, ‘battle between good and evil,’ imagery. The problem is, as poignantly demonstrated in Manchester, this imagery, while politically useful, has no relationship to reality. Approaching the Muslim world as a…

  • Trump Pretends Horrific Saudi Attack on Yemen Helps Security

    “U.S. supplies bombs that terrorize Yemen, helps with targeting, refuels Saudi planes. With $110 billion [in] sales, we are more complicit in this than ever.” -“Alexandre Faite, the head of the International Committee Of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen.

  • Trump’s Syria Bombing Impeachable

    “The U.S. strike clearly violates the War Powers Resolution, the War Powers Clause of the United States Constitution and the United Nations Charter. It’s impeachable.”

  • 9/11 Whistleblower Rowley on Mueller’s History of “Cover-up”

    “The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in. I actually had a chance to meet Director Mueller personally the night before I testified to the…

  • The Israeli-ISIS Accommodation and Other Inconvenient Realities

    “It’s obviously very much to Israel’s advantage to be portrayed as working to expose alleged plots by the so-called Islamic State just as Trump is going to Israel. In reality, it seems there’s some sort of accommodation between Israel and ISIS — and the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, that has been studiously ignored in…

  • * Russia * Saudi * Turkey * Bases

    It’s remarkable that President Trump’s first trip abroad is to a repressive regime engaged in a catastrophic war in neighboring Yemen and known for exporting the very extremism, intolerance and violence that Trump purports to eradicate.

  • Whistleblower Manning Appeals as Trump Escalates Threats to Journalism

    President Barack Obama’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence rather than grant her a pardon leaves the precedent of her 2013 Espionage Act conviction for whistleblowing fully intact. The ramifications of Chelsea’s 35-year sentence take on new significance under a U.S. administration that has made unprecedented threats against media freedom.

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