News Items

  • Media Advisory: Whistleblowers to Speak About Surveillance and Cyber Issues

    “President Barack Obama is set to sign an executive order on Friday aimed at encouraging companies to share more information about cybersecurity threats with the government and each other, a response to attacks like that on Sony Entertainment. … Obama will sign the order at a day-long conference on cybersecurity at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley.”

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  • Delegation of U.S. and UK Whistleblowers in London: News Conference on “Special Surveillance Relationship” — News Advisory

    Whistleblowers from four American and British “national security” agencies will hold a news conference in London on November 21 in a direct challenge to surveillance policies of the U.S. and UK governments. The whistleblowers — from the NSA, FBI, State Department and GCHQ — will speak about the effects of their governments’ policies on freedom of the press and democracy. They are traveling as a delegation co-sponsored by the U.S.-based organizations RootsAction.org and ExposeFacts, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The news conference is being hosted by the Foreign Press Association.

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  • In Response to the Government’s Lynching of James Risen

    It has been a sharp learning curve for Jim Risen, but by having numerous grand juries and two administrations relentlessly hounding him, he has learned how deeply the government’s malevolence descends. But there was always one steadfast assertion he wound not compromise, Jim Risen assured his sources, from the very start of their first encounter, that he would never divulge their identities nor what information they provided him with.

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  • Militarization of U.S. Police: Ferguson, Mo.

    Community policing reforms came about as a corrective to the 1950-60s professional police model which created a large gulf between police and citizens. Few noticed that underlying all the CP rhetoric was a little noticed yet foretelling trend of para-militarism as found in SWAT teams. What we’re witnessing today, though, with the influence of the Dept. of Homeland Security since 9/11 — along with growing emphasis on military hardware and tactics — is the expansion of police militarization throughout entire police departments — and indeed, the entire police institution.

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  • Unconstitutional acts of war in Iraq

    President Obama ignored the wise direction of President George Washington when he casually told the nation — and Congress — that U.S. military forces will engage in acts of war in Iraq for an extended period of weeks and maybe months. Bombing, he said in a brief statement last week, is needed here and there, but he promised there will be no U.S. boots on the ground. … The announcement seemed almost an afterthought as the president headed for vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. He neglected to seek approval of Congress before authorizing bombardment of the military forces of ISIS, the…

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  • News Conference: Edward Snowden’s Passport, Political Asylum and Related Issues

    Ray McGovern, Coleen Rowley and Norman Solomon spoke at this news conference, sponsored by RootsAction.org and hosted by the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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  • NSA Veterans and Whistleblowers Respond to Obama Speech

    Minutes after President Obama’s major address on NSA surveillance on Friday, Jan. 17, the Institute for Public Accuracy held a news conference with noted NSA veterans and whistleblowers.

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  • The War on Poverty at Fifty

    Fifty years after Lyndon B. Johnson made it the centerpiece of his first State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, the War on Poverty remains one of the most embattled—and least understood—of Great Society initiatives.

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  • Edward Snowden: Profile in Courage

    Edward Snowden may go down in history as one of this nation’s most important whistleblowers. He is certainly one of the bravest.

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  • Obama’s Economic Race Legacy

    From the start, President Barack Obama has shown little interest or loyalty in the issues that affect the poor, working class and people of color in the United States. For almost his entire first term he didn’t utter the words poor or poverty. Early on he reminded African Americans: ‘I’m not the president of black America. I’m the president of the United States of America…’

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  • The “Second-Most Important Vote” On Election Day

    Studies show that campaigns are less negative in cities that use ranked choice voting. Rewarding candidates who seek to earn every voter’s support is a win for the people of Maine and American democracy as a whole. Ranked choice voting is a nonpartisan reform supported by Republicans, Democrats, and independents. We all recognize the need…

  • Gorbachev’s Warning about U.S.-Russia Relations

    “It is not pro-Putin or pro-Trump but rather sober realism to argue that the U.S. needs to partner with Russia to resolve the Syrian crisis, combat terrorism, tackle nuclear proliferation and global warming. Alarmist and still unsubstantiated allegations about cyberattacks are designed to squelch an urgently needed debate about U.S.-Russian relations — before this dangerous…

  • Climate Disinformation: Ken Bone, Clinton, Trump

  • Haiti’s Man-made Disasters

    “New revelations from leaked emails have revealed the faint line between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department in Haiti. In 2010, the United States intervened in Haiti’s elections, pressuring the government to change the results and eventually leading to the election of Michel Martelly.

  • U.S. Strikes on Yemen: Ensuring Proxy Wars and Stalemate?

    “In this context, the longer the current Yemen conflict lasts, the longer the arms race will keep going, and the more dependent both Saudi and Iranian clients will be on support from their patrons. Quietly furious over the lack of significant U.S. support, beyond aircraft refueling and some limited logistical assistance, Riyadh feels betrayed by…

  • Climate: Beyond Trump — and Gore

    “There is a stark divide between the politicians who seem incapable of thinking about the climate crisis outside of the boundaries of old assumptions about political feasibility and the activists who are making real sacrifices to treat climate change like the unprecedented crisis it is. Al Gore is campaigning for Hilary Clinton without questioning her…

  • Clinton, Saudi Arabia and “Shadow Wars”

    He notes that Hillary Clinton wrote to John Podesta, the chairman of her presidential campaign, in emails just released by WikiLeaks, that “Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

  • A Second Snowden?

    “The arrest raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, a contractor for the consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton managed to steal highly damaging secret information while working for the N.S.A. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a Booz Allen contractor, took a vast trove of documents from the…

  • Colombia Peace Deal Referendum

    “The people of Colombia want peace, with justice. One hopes cooler heads will prevail and the ceasefire holds while they return to Havana to decide next steps. And that the far right doesn’t continue to carry out the attacks against supporters of the peace deal that had already started but are being underreported in the…

  • In Defending Saudi Veto, Is Obama Acknowledging U.S. Criminality?

    President Obama’s statement is “at least an acknowledge– ment that the U.S. has engaged in conduct that could plausibly involve U.S. responsibility: drone strikes, bombing from aircraft — even potentially wars of aggression.”President Obama is right that opening U.S. courts to suits against foreign governments may lead courts in other countries to allow suits against…

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