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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  • 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…

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