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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  • Afghanistan as “Longest War” Highlights Invisibility of Indigenous and Iraq Wars

    “The conventional narrative of U.S. history routinely segregates the ‘Indian Wars’ as a sub-specialization within the dubious category ‘the West.’ But, the architecture of U.S. world dominance was designed and tested by the period of continental U.S. militarism, 1790-1890, the Indian Wars. The opening of the twenty-first century saw a new, even more brazen form…

  • Brazil: Why It’s a Coup

    “If the same criteria used against her were used against state governors, 16 of them would be impeached. They all used the same mechanism to cover a budget shortfall. You can’t impeach a president because you don’t like him or her. That’s why we call this a coup.”

  • What’s a Conservative Today?

    “Many are lecturing about what being a ‘conservative’ means. Certainly there are tensions between people who identify as intellectual conservatives and a Donald Trump, who is appealing to public anger and populist tendencies.”

  • Paul Ryan “Wildly out of Step”

    “One unfortunate consequence of the rise of Donald Trump is that many media outlets are portraying other Republicans, chiefly House Speaker Paul Ryan, as less extreme in comparison. In fact, Ryan’s plans to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are wildly out of step with the American people.”

  • “Orwellian” Visit to Hiroshima as Obama Modernizes U.S. Nuclear Weapons

    “There have been more than 30 times since the Nagasaki A-bombing that the U.S. government has prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war during wars and international crises, most recently with the simulated nuclear attacks against North Korea and the nuclear-capable bomber flights in response to China’s building new military bases in contested waters of…

  • Brazil Impeachment Agenda: Stop Corruption Investigations

    “President Dilma Rousseff is accused of using a common financial mechanism to cover social program expenses in the federal budget by borrowing funds from public banks, which previous administrations also used, as well as local administrations. On the other hand, most Congress members in favor of the impeachment face serious investigations of corruption.”

  • Urban Institute Attack on Sanders’ Medicare-for-All Plan is “Ridiculous”

    “To put it bluntly, the estimates (which were prepared by John Holahan and colleagues) are ridiculous. They project outlandish increases in the utilization of medical care, ignore vast savings under single-payer reform, and ignore the extensive and well-documented experience with single-payer systems in other nations — which all spend far less per person on health…

  • Panama Papers, How Global Rich Siphon Wealth and Obama’s “Window Dressing”

    “Switzerland has traditionally played this role. But the U.S. is now a huge player and it’s telling that the ‘reforms’ President Obama is now proposing don’t have requirements for a registry of who owns what in U.S. states that act as havens, especially Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada, North Dakota and Alaska. All these states have financial…

  • Ballot Choices Beyond Clinton and Trump

    “The mainstream media seem especially oblivious to the fact that there are 17 states with right-leaning one-state parties. For example, there’s the Independence Party in New York — an offshoot of the Reform Party Ross Perot founded in the 90s. These could be strung together to form an independent run.”

  • “Hillary Clinton Killed Berta!”

    “Before her murder on March 3, Berta Cáceres, a Honduran indigenous rights and environmental activist, named Hillary Clinton, holding her responsible for legitimating the 2009 coup. ‘We warned that this would be very dangerous,’ she said, referring to Clinton’s effort to impose elections that would consolidate the power of murderers.”

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