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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  • 50 Years After Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam”

    “On April 4, from the altar of Riverside Church in New York, King condemned the war. He did so against the wishes of his advisers, and even though he knew it could erode his already-fading public support, financially cripple his organization, and end his relationship with a president who’d done more for civil rights than…

  • Tillerson Praises Increasingly Authoritarian Turkey

  • Gorsuch: Using “Originalism” for a Right-wing Agenda

  • Dangers with Russia

    “The intensity of Washington’s fury over Russia’s misdeeds is matched only by its confusion over what those misdeeds are, and its exaggeration of Moscow’s supposed threats to divide Europe, to dominate the Middle East, and to undermine the United States. Threat inflation has reached levels not seen since the early Cold War, cutting off rational…

  • Amb. Haley: Moms for Nukes

    “The central contention of Amb. Haley’s remarks that nuclear weapons make us safe is a fundamentally flawed view. These weapons are the greatest threat to all people, including the citizens of the nuclear weapons states. Her statement betrayed a total disregard for the catastrophic humanitarian consequence of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons states maintain their stockpiles…

  • Will Sanders Introduce Medicare for All, or Just for Some?

    “‘Introducing a public option will divide and confuse supporters of Medicare for all,’ said Margaret Flowers, MD a pediatrician who co-directs Health Over Profit for Everyone, www.HealthOverProfit.org. Flowers is also a member of PNHP. ‘Senators who should co-sponsor Medicare for all will be divided. Sanders seems to be urging a public option to please the…

  • London Attack

    “They want us to turn on each other. They want Muslims and non-Muslims to hate each other, fear each other, and fight each other. That’s the apocalyptic ‘clash of civilisations’ they yearn for. … ”

  • Leading Expert: Congress Can Release Trump’s Tax Returns

    “Congress added the authority to the law in 1924. … Several matters, including two involving possible conflicts of interest, helped bring the separation-of-powers imbalance to Congress’s attention. During that period, Congress was investigating the Teapot Dome scandal — the alleged bribery of government officials in exchange for the leasing of public oil fields to private…

  • Left and Right Unite Against Escalating Syria War

    In a statement, the office of Congresswoman Barbara Lee [D-Calif.] states that she, “members of the CPC [Congressional Progressive Caucus] Peace and Security Taskforce, and Congressman Walter Jones [R-NC] will hold a press conference on Tuesday, March 21st at 1 p.m. [at the House Triangle] opposing the escalating U.S. involvement in the Syrian Civil War.…

  • Intel Committee “Political Theater” as Trump Escalates Wars

    “FBI Director James Comey appeared before the House Select Intelligence Committee this morning to tell the committee that he would be unable to discuss the details of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation because it is an ongoing one. And in so doing, in the space of a single sentence, Comey unmasked the meaningless nature of the…

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