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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  • Two Years Later, What Happened to Occupy Wall Street?

    “Occupy has been both a surprising success and a disappointing failure. It succeeded in drastically expanding the political imagination of a generation, but doing so set up expectations that could never be reached in such a short time. Now, the remnants of the movement are dispersed and frustrated, though many are continuing on in struggles…

  • “The Threat to Attack Syria Is STILL Illegal”

    “Unless President Obama would like to risk seeing Syria, at some point in the future, renounce its signature on the chemical weapons convention, which it has recently pledged to sign under the threat of attack by the United States, he should rescind the threat of force. This is because Article 52 of the Vienna Convention…

  • * American Exceptionalism * UN Manipulation

    AJAMU BARAKA, ajamubaraka2 at gmail.com Baraka is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies who is based in Colombia. He recently wrote: “The normalization of white supremacist domination and its prerogatives are so completely inculcated in U.S. and Western consciousness that not only is the question as to what right the U.S. and the…

  • NSA Shares Raw Intelligence Including Americans’ Data with Israel

    “The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about U.S. citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals. “Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows…

  • CIA Veterans: Obama Should Show Syria Evidence

    “The Obama administration has been able to mislead most Americans by conflating (1) the undisputed reality of chemical agent exposures near Damascus on August, and (2) the unsubstantiated claim that the U.S. has persuasive evidence that the event was a chemical weapons attack ordered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The ‘mainstream media’ had prepared Obama’s…

  • Syrian Independent Opposition: “Ignored by the World”

    “At this very moment, courageous Syrian women and men are working for a peaceful settlement. They are mostly ignored by the world. Most of them are opposed to the government. Some lean toward the regime. They are doing peacebuilding and reconciliation work. They are establishing local cease-fire zones. While differing in viewpoints, they share a…

  • Diplomacy and the UN: * “Threat” of Force * Samantha Power

    CHASE MADAR, chase.madar at gmail.com, @ChMadar Madar wrote the piece “Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights” and said today: “In her advocacy for missile strikes on Syria, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power is once again doing what she does best: inventing humanitarian reasons for the use of lethal military violence.…

  • Syria HAS Admitted Chemical Weapons; But Israel Hasn’t Admitted Nuclear Weapons

    “Much of the political class in Washington is now claiming, in the words of the Los Angeles Times: ‘Syria has never publicly acknowledged possessing chemical weapons.’ This is false. For example, see the piece: “Syria Admits to Having Chemical Weapons” from 2012 in the American Interest. “What hasn’t been admitted by any U.S. administration is…

  • Propaganda and Interests Behind Syria Bombing

    The heavyweights leading the push for military action in Syria appear to be looking only for information that supports their adventure. This pursuit often leads them to obscure sources of information: informal lobbyists. Last week we caught a glimpse of one: an analyst from the Institute for the Study of War called Dr. Elizabeth O’Bagy…

  • * Key Author of War Powers Act: “Obama has no Authority to Attack Syria” * Impeachment

    “Despite his own recent statements to the contrary, President Barack Obama has no legal authority to assault the government of Syria even as “a warning shot.” Neither the United States Constitution, nor the War Powers Act of 1973 gives him such authority in the absence of an emergency that allows Congress no time to react.…

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