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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  • CUNY Hunger Strikers: Divest from Israel

    Eight CUNY (City University of New York) students, staff, and faculty, began their “hunger strike on the steps of the CUNY Graduate Center demanding the university divest” from Israel ten days ago. See their most recent news release. The group states: “The hunger strike, which has occupied the main entrance to the CUNY Graduate Center…

  • U.S. Veto Expected Today on Ceasefire and Aid for Gaza

    AP reports: “The U.N. Security Council scheduled a vote Wednesday on a resolution which demands ‘an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza respected by all parties.’ U.N. diplomats said the United States is likely to veto it.” … Mokhiber noted that in the face of the U.S. veto, the U.N. General Assembly “should call…

  • DNC Remains in “a Bubble” Insulated from “Anger and Disgust”

    The DNC leadership “remains largely within a bubble insulated from the anger and disgust – toward the party – that is widespread among countless Democrats and other Americans. They want the Democratic Party to really put up a fight, while its leaders mainly talk about putting up a fight.

  • Can Uniting for Peace Help Save the International Legal Order?

    “The UNGA should call out the genocide by name, strip Israel of its credentials, convene under Uniting for Peace to mandate a protection force, call for a complete military embargo and robust sanctions against the regime, demand a ceasefire, and take action to hold all perpetrators to account — whether political officials, soldiers, settlers, or…

  • “The Witkoff Massacre”; Fasters at UN Demand Aid to Starving Palestinians

    United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said today: “I am appalled by the reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza yesterday.” Last year, Guterres stated: “We have failed the people of Gaza.” The following have been fasting since May 22 outside the U.S. Mission to the UN, just across the street from UN…

  • First DNC Executive Committee Meeting in Five Months; Livestream Available

    Their petition urges the DNC to “convene an emergency meeting of all its members—fully open to the public—as soon as possible.” The petition adds that “the predatory, extreme and dictatorial actions of the Trump administration call for an all-out commensurate response, which so far has been terribly lacking from the Democratic Party.” Among the 7,000 signers are…

  • “Gaza’s Aid System Isn’t Broken. It’s Working Exactly as Designed”

    “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had promised something revolutionary with this initiative. … What it delivered instead was the purest distillation of colonial humanitarianism — aid as an instrument of control, dehumanisation, and humiliation, dispensed by armed contractors under the watchful eye of the occupying military.”

  • Day 600: Palestine … and Poetry

    “And she is too weak to stand, too weak to withstand not being able to make her hill, and she starts crying now for her father who was killed, her three brothers killed, her infant sister who died of hunger, for the sky that used to be clear of warplanes, for the hill she is…

  • Focusing on Children

    As Congress votes on President Trump’s budget bill, experts warn that cuts severely impact children in the U.S. in particular. Trump’s first 100 days in office were also detrimental to children. 

  • “Guns and Bombs Will Not End this Genocide”

    “Why did he do this? He did it because he lost hope. The rightwingers are saying that the protests are fomenting violence. It’s the opposite: Meaningful protests give people hope.”

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