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…

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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.”

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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.”

    Read more »


  • From the desk of Noam Chomsky

    From the desk of Noam Chomsky

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • Democratic Platform on Health Care

    “Currently inequity is hard-wired into our health care system. We continue to see wide disparities based on gender, race, age, where you live, and what you can afford. Luckily, nurses have the cure — Improved Medicare for All. It provides a single standard of quality care, freedom to choose any doctor — while saving trillions…

  • WaPo on Hillary’s Attempted “Sister Souljah Moment” on Charter Schools

    “Educators are skeptical. Journalists and bloggers have spotlighted Clinton’s close ties with Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and others of the wealthiest drivers of modern-day educational policy and practice who have reframed the conversation from schooling as a public good to schooling as a business or commodity. Among her closest advisors are those who previously advocated…

  • Clinton, Trump and the “War on Terror” Hub

    “Few Americans are aware of what’s actually going on at Ramstein, but its mix of vast military activity is based on the assumption that large-scale U.S. war-making has no end in sight,” the writer of the article, Norman Solomon, said today. “Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have given clear indications of wanting to double…

  • Chilcot Report Avoids Smoking Gun

    Shortly before the invasion, as the UN was considering a second resolution authorizing war, Katharine Gun, who worked at the Government Communications Headquarters — the British equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency — exposed a damning NSA memo. The memo talked of “mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council” to get…

  • Corbyn Coup Attempts and the Chilcot Iraq War Report

    “Rather than taking the fight to a weak and divided Conservative Party, 172 MPs and 600+ councillors in the Labour Party have joined forces with right-wing and liberal media to take pot-shots at Corbyn. They claim that Corbyn is ‘unelectable,’ despite winning the biggest mandate of any party leader in British history. Even leaders proven…

  • Administration Accused of Whitewashing Drone Killings

    “The most glaring absence from this announcement are the names and faces of those civilians that have been killed. Today’s announcement tells us nothing about 14-year-old Faheem Qureshi, who was severely injured in Obama’s first drone strike. Reports suggest Obama knew he had killed civilians that day. Is Faheem’s family in those numbers? They make…

  • GMO Labeling: Congress to Undo New Vermont Law

    The Senate will vote next week on a federal bill that would nullify Vermont’s law, and other state labeling efforts percolating, thanks to the heavy hand the ag-biotech industry wields over our congressional representatives. “With a vote for this so-called ‘compromise’ bill, Congress would effectively be pulling transparent GMO labels from grocery stores. This legislation…

  • ‘Transgender Troops’ Should Be an Oxymoron

    “In the U.S., trans people are routinely kicked out of their families of origin, harassed in school and at work, persecuted by religious leaders and politicians, and attacked on the street simply for daring to exist. Trans people are often denied access to basic services like housing and health care, fired from jobs or never…

  • What Economic Realities Mean for the 2016 Election

    Ferguson argues that what we see now was foreshadowed in 2014. It was after that election that Ferguson co-authored an article “Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties” that noted: “The drop off in voting turnout from the presidential election of 2012 to 2014 is the second largest of all time: -24 percentage points.…

  • How NAFTA Created Poverty and Desperate Mexican Migration

    “During NAFTA, Mexico’s poverty has increased, and the country has to import 45 percent of its food (back in 1994, it imported only 15 percent). There is a plethora of data to demonstrate the ill effects of NAFTA in Mexico but, in sum, as we declared when this agreement became 20 years old, ‘it has…

Mastodon