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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  • U.S.’s Unreported War in Afghanistan

    “The Pentagon relied on its language of ‘collateral damage,’ trying once again to distance itself from any responsibility for this most recent atrocity in Afghanistan. But there is no distance. This is the direct and inevitable result of an air war waged by U.S. pilots flying U.S. planes dropping U.S. bombs on an impoverished and…

  • Department of Education: From Disaster to Disaster?

    “Hopefully, Arne Duncan’s resignation will mean a shift in direction for the U.S. Dept. of Education. Duncan led the DOE in promoting school closings and privatization through Race to the Top and devastated public schools in urban communities of color from Detroit to Philadelphia to Chicago. His return to Chicago, the laboratory for his national…

  • Saudi Beheading, Bombing Yemen — and on Human Rights Panel

    “Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen is abhorrent. Over 2,000 people have been killed, and many more wounded, displaced, and traumatized. That the United States is supporting this organized campaign of mass-murder highlights Washington’s hypocrisy when it comes to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.”

  • * Trade Deal “Death Sentence Clause” * Killer Coal Mine CEO Trial

    “Heckscher, in a T-shirt reading ‘I HAVE CANCER. I CAN’T WAIT 8 YEARS,’ and holding an IV pole that read ‘TPP: Don’ t Cut My IV,’ refused to leave the Westin Hotel, the site of the negotiations between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the other TPP trade ministers. She demanded that they show her…

  • Behind Modi at Facebook

    “This service requires its users to route all their traffic to ‘free websites’ through his servers, where the users’ identities are logged so that their traffic can be paid for by Facebook, rather than by them. So the first actual charge is that the poor will be comprehensively surveilled by Facebook, losing any shred of…

  • Obama vs. Putin: Syria and Ukraine

    “The silence in the chamber came because everything Obama ascribed to others perfectly describes U.S. behavior from the end of the Second World War until today. … Yet Obama on Monday was blaming Russia and China for the mess Washington has created, saying, ‘We see some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international…

  • Climate Victories: From Shell Arctic Drilling to China Policy

    “We have 70-80 percent unemployment in our communities and the only way people can feed themselves is subsistence hunting; our main meat supply comes from the ocean, so drilling in the Arctic is a death sentence for our people. The lease sale area Shell was exploring is right smack in the middle of the North…

  • Is the UN Working for Peace?

    “The UN needs to scale up and deploy all effective methods to protect civilians. By only focusing on military peacekeeping the summit does not consider effective unarmed methods like unarmed civilian protection (UCP). Over a dozen nongovernmental organizations are directly protecting civilians and deterring violence through nonviolent methods in some of the most violent places…

  • * China * Pope on Nukes

    “The stirring condemnation of nuclear weapons by Pope Francis today at the United Nations and his call for their prohibition and complete elimination in compliance with promises made in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed by the U.S. in 1970, should give new momentum to the current campaign to start negotiations on a ban treaty.”

  • The Pope and Dorothy Day

    “Pope Francis, you have condemned ISIS for genocide against Christians, but given the fact that the U.S. military is for the most part Christian with one-third of the force Catholic, it is Christians who have participated in the genocidal killing in predominantly Muslim countries during the last 24 years.”

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