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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  • Syria War Resolution Contradicts Constitution, International Law

    “Perhaps the worst single clause in it was a reaffirmation of the illegal power Obama claims he has to bomb Syria without congressional approval: ‘the President has authority under the Constitution to use force in order to defend the national security interests of the United States.’ No such authority exists — except in self-defense –…

  • Religious Leaders Opposing War in Syria

    National Catholic Reporter states in “Francis chides world leaders on Syria, calls military intervention ‘futile'”: “Francis has declared Saturday a day of ‘fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East and throughout the world.'” There have been a litany of statements from various Mideastern-based churches against U.S. military intervention in the strongest of…

  • “‘Credibility’ to be Chief Bully”

    “The merits or demerits of a U.S.-led war on Syria should be debated independently of the CW [chemical weapons] attack. It may well be that the armed opposition, not the Syrian regime, was responsible for the CW attack. And we are fully justified in taking assertions by American officials that claim the opposite with a…

  • Ruses for War

    JOHN QUIGLEY, Quigley.2 at osu.edu Professor emeritus of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley recently wrote a piece scrutinizing the legal justifications for an attack on Syria: “John Quigley on Intervention.” He is author of the book The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II. In addition to the false claims being…

  • Syria Facts: * Rebels Refusing to Talk * 43 Percent of 100,000 Dead are Pro-Government Combatants

    RANIA MASRI, rania.z.masri at gmail.com, @rania_masri Masri is assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Balamand in Lebanon and is currently visiting the U.S. She said today: “There are a host of falsehoods being made about Syria. The issue is falsely being framed as either bomb or ‘do nothing,’ ignoring…

  • U.S. and Chemical Weapons: “No Leg to Stand On”

    “International law provides no exception for the ad hoc use of force by states in cases involving the actual or possible use of prohibited weapons, such as chemical weapons, by states with which they are not at war. Standing alone, the allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government do not provide a legal…

  • How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria

    GARETH PORTER, porter.gareth50 at gmail.com, @GarethPorter Porter is an investigative journalist and historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He just wrote the piece “How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria” for TruthOut, which states: “Secretary of State John Kerry assured the public that the Obama administration’s summary of the intelligence on…

  • Tragedy in Syria, Farce in Washington

    NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive at gmail.com Solomon just wrote the piece “Obama Will Launch a Huge Propaganda Blitz — and May Attack Syria Even If He Loses the Vote in Congress.” He said today: “The Obama White House has come up with a stunning new innovation in what Senator J. William Fulbright called ‘the arrogance of…

  • Syria: Is the U.S. Government Trying to Prolong the Civil War?

    VIJAY PRASHAD, vp01 at aub.edu.lb Edward Said chair at American University in Beirut, Prashad is co-editor of Dispatches from the Arab Spring and author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. See his new interview with The Real News in which he argues that a possible missile strike against Syria has…

  • A “Dodgy Dossier” Instead of a Congressional Debate?

    FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. He said today: “The test the Dossier [PDF] uses is ‘high confidence’ — but the appropriate standard by the International Court of Justice (in the Corfu Channel case) is ‘beyond a…

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