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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  • Before Orlando Massacre, FBI Tried To “Lure” Mateen in Terror Plot

    “It looks like it’s pretty much standard operating procedure for preliminary inquiries to interview the subject or pitch the person to become an informant and/or plant an undercover or informant close by to see if the person bites on the suggestion. … In the case of Mateen, since he already worked for a security contractor…

  • Obama Meets with Saudis, U.S. Armed and Attacking Yemen

    The New York Times recently published his piece “Obama Shouldn’t Trade Cluster Bombs for Saudi Arabia’s Friendship,” which states: “He should avoid doing what he did at Camp David last May, the last time he met with [the Gulf Cooperation Council]: promise more arms sales. Since Mr. Obama hosted that meeting, the United States has…

  • Is Clinton’s Campaign Controlling Haitian Policy?

    “The U.S. State Department opposed the verification process and sought to finish Haiti’s elections before the U.S. general election campaign begins in earnest this summer. The department’s overriding — though unofficial — concern has been that undue attention to Haiti might negatively affect Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. It desperately wants to keep the results of…

  • Attacks, Foreign Policy and Homophobia

    “What’s interesting about this particular killer is that not only, of course, was he deeply disturbed in many ways, including … [being] a man with great homophobia. Not only do we know all this, but his views regarding, let’s say, what the Clinton and Trump campaigns call ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ seems rather incoherent. At some…

  • LGBT Activists Against Militarization and Surveillance

    “More surveillance would not have stopped this horrific attack on our LGBTQ community. That’s because mass government surveillance is not intended to keep us safe, it’s intended to keep us in line. The population of queer people of color, predominantly latinxs, who were targeted by this attack, are already disproportionately endangered by corporate and government…

  • Orlando, Trump, Clinton, FBI & Connecting Dots to “War on Terror”

    “The shooting in Orlando is tied to the ‘war on terror,’ but not in the way Trump has been arguing. Most Americans still do not connect the dots that the increasing violence occurring domestically: mass shootings, ‘active shooters,’ hate crimes and acts of terror (which frankly all blur together) are not only blowback from but…

  • Orlando Shooting, Queer Thoughts

    “The Orlando mass shooting is a tragic atrocity that is, at the very least, partially attributable to the multiple fundamentalisms spawned by the political maneuverings of Washington and its ‘moderate’ fundamentalist allies in the Muslim world, particularly Saudi Arabia. While it is still too soon to determine the veracity of the narratives around the shooter’s…

  • “Let It Bern. Continue to the Convention”

    “It remains significant that neither candidate will win the 2,383 pledged delegates necessary to secure the nomination, and — contrary to the misleading media reports — neither candidate can do so until the superdelegates vote at the convention in Philadelphia. You have said, and we have cheered as you’ve said it, that you will carry…

  • Sanders at White House: Statehood and Democracy

    “Two states — Vermont and Wyoming — have smaller populations. About ten more have populations that are comparable. The fact that we’ve not been able to determine our own policies has done real damage to the people of the city. There’s some attention paid to Congress running roughshod over the public’s attempts to have gun…

  • FBI is “Cooking up” Cases Against Muslims

    “A report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the International Human Rights Clinic in 2012 also studied the use of sting operations and asserted that ‘the government’s use of intrusive surveillance, untrained paid informants, and manufactured terrorism plots raises serious human rights concerns that must immediately be addressed.’ “While outrage has…

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