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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  • “Going Down to Cuba”

    “Given decades of U.S. deployment of psy­ops and other subversive activity against the Cuban regime, it is not implausible to believe that Gross was likely a player in (intentional or not) a CIA­-USAID plot to weaken Castro’s rule under cover of a human rights project. At the time, Havana was undergoing a transition to normal…

  • DOJ’s Risen Plot Thickens

    “Thousands of journalists, press advocates and free-speech supporters are urging the U.S. Department of Justice to abandon its prosecution of Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, the former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information about the government’s embarrassingly ill-conceived effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. On Monday, the group RootsAction.org launched a petition calling for Sterling’s release.…

  • Drone Killings and Torture: Peace Activists to be “Rehabilitated” in Jail

    “On the second day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he prohibited most forms of physical torture. On the third, a CIA drone strike he authorized killed up to 11 civilians.”

  • “Big Victory” — Government Ends Threat to Jail James Risen

    “This is a big victory for defying illegitimate authority. The Bush and Obama administrations have tried to coerce and intimidate James Risen with a series of subpoenas beginning in early 2008. Nearly seven years later, a crucial lesson from his refusal to back down is that journalists — and the rest of us — must…

  • “The Complicity of Psychologists in CIA Torture”

    “Two names appear dozens of times in the committee’s summary: Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar. These are the pseudonyms that were given to James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. It has been known for several years that these two contract psychologists played central roles in designing and implementing the CIA’s torture program. Now we also know…

  • Prosecuting Torture

    “Since the inception of the CIA’s program, the Bush administration setting up Guantanamo, its rendition program etc., CCR has made efforts both in the United States and around the world to hold government officials and private contractors accountable. The Senate Intelligence Committee report again, and with great force, tells us why officials must be held…

  • International Activists Demanding Climate Justice

    “The People’s Summit is about developing solutions to climate change that are effective and not exploitative of people and the planet’s precious resources – including water. We are against privatization and extreme extractionism. We don’t accept a world that will be six degrees Celsius warmer – which is what we face if present trends in…

  • Lies About Torture

    “Many presumably well-meaning people say that torture doesn’t work. But that’s not true. Torture does work, just not in the way its defenders claim. It’s great at producing false but useful information — like when the U.S. turned Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi over to the Egyptian dictatorship, which tortured him into saying that Iraq was cooperating…

  • Police Killing: Death, Lies and Videotape

    “The movement to end police murder with impunity is not asking for solutions. It is demanding them, and the president’s body camera proposal does not even begin to answer the call. We will continue to see seemingly spontaneous mass demonstrations all across the country going forward, because the evasion of justice by the murderers of…

  • “Abusive Cop Picked to Head Police Reform Commission”

    “‘If the president’s idea of reforming policing practices includes mass false arrests, brutality, and the eviscerating of civil rights, then Ramsey’s his man. That’s Charles Ramsey’s legacy in D.C.,’ said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard … speaking of the ex-D.C. chief and current Philadelphia Police Commissioner. ‘Obama should immediately rescind his appointment of Commissioner Ramsey, who is a…

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