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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  • Israel Silently Lapping Field in “Mideast Nuclear Arms Race”

    “The 1987 report’s confirmation of Israel’s advanced nuclear weapons program should have immediately triggered a cutoff in all U.S. aid to Israel under the Symington and Glenn Amendments to the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. …Under two known gag orders — punishable by imprisonment — U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that…

  • Iran Deal: “Manufactured Crisis?”

    “The biggest news in the #IranDeal text is what isn’t there: the content of the new Security Council resolution & its arms embargo language.” Just after the deal was announced Tuesday: “And now comes the avalanche of #IranDealVienna propaganda spin from Israel’s media and think tank legions in the United States.” He also noted: “U.S.…

  • Greek Government “Willfully” Ignores Referendum Vote

    “For six months Tsipras and the recently discarded finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, shuttled between Athens and Brussels, Berlin and the other centres of European money power. Instead of social justice for Greece, they achieved a new indebtedness, a deeper impoverishment that would merely replace a systemic rottenness based on the theft of tax revenue by…

  • Massive Friday “March of the Torches” in Honduras Against “Coup-ism”

    “The current protests are part of a growing response to an admission by the ruling National Party that more than $200 million was stolen from the coffers of the country’s social security fund under their watch. The National Party took power in the wake of the 2009 coup d’état that overthrew progressive president Manuel Zelaya…

  • Beyond Greece: BRICS Enabling a New Economic Path? 

    “The BRICS are having their annual summit in Ufa, Russia this week. Prime ministers of the BRICS bloc have been meeting annually since the 2007-08 financial crisis and issuing statements on global political and economic affairs. This year’s event will see the launch of the BRICS ‘New Development Bank’ (NDB). Heralded as an alternative to…

  • Yemen: Carnage from Saudi Bombing “Not the Worst Part”

    “Best estimates are that about 3,000 people have been killed since the start of the Saudi bombing campaign. About one million displaced. You have more children now fighting than are in school. The bombings are horrible enough, but what’s worse now is that more people are probably dying because of the blockade and food shortages.…

  • Greece: Time for Ending “Austerity” 

    “The landslide victory shows that the political establishment which governed Greece between 1974 and 2015, and campaigned viscerally for the Yes vote has lost its grip on the electorate, despite fear mongering by the media (domestic and international); and of course, outright political interventions by the creditors as well as the shutting off of liquidity…

  • Greek Referendum: Triumph of Democracy over Bankers?

    “This time around not only did Greek citizens get the chance to have a say on their future, but they were also brave enough to resist the campaign of ideological terrorism unleashed on them by the media controlled by Greek oligarchs, as well as by business owners threatening them that they would lose their jobs…

  • “BP Got off Cheap”

    “BP got off cheap. The settlement is not enough to cover BP’s legal obligations, to restore the Gulf, or to stop any other oil company from engaging in this type of grossly negligent behavior. This is particularly dangerous as Shell edges ever closer to the Chukchi Sea to drill in the Arctic. The day after…

  • Freedom or Fear? Are “Terror Warnings” Used to Prop Up War?

    “The ‘FBI, like all agencies of the government, does not operate in a political vacuum. Emphasizing the ‘ISIS threat’ at home necessarily helps prop up the broader war effort the FBI’s boss, the president of the United States, must sell to a war-weary public. The incentive is to therefore highlight the smallest threats. This was…

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