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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  • Trump Ignoring Peace Deal on Yemen, “Planning Libya-Style” War

    In “Top Houthi Official Tells Drop Site Yemen Will Cease Attacks on U.S. Ships if Trump Halts Bombing” Drop Site News reports: “A senior leader of Ansar Allah, commonly known as the Houthis, told Drop Site News that if the U.S. ends its campaign of air strikes against Yemen, Houthi forces will commit to halting…

  • DOGE Kills Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

    The Department of Government Efficiency is eliminating the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which has been in operation since 1996. One expert says MEPS is “probably the central source of data on healthcare use and spending in the U.S.” 

  • Lawsuits Against NIH for “Beyond Unprecedented” Grant Terminations

    Two new lawsuits were filed against the National Institutes of Health, the NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Department of Health and Human Services, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the cancellation of NIH research grants in the past month. More than 900 grants have been terminated so far. The newest lawsuit is…

  • Netanyahu Meets with Trump as Israel Slaughters Children

    AFP reports: “A Palestinian official told AFP that Israeli forces shot dead a teenager holding US citizenship in the occupied West Bank Sunday, while the Israeli military said it had killed a ‘terrorist’ who threw rocks at cars.”

  • As Trump Brags About Bombing Yemen: “The Implications of This Can’t be Underestimated”

        Jumaan highlighted an Arabic-language thread on X about the tribal gathering with over one million views which stressed the communal nature of such gatherings, which could be a wedding or community or religious gathering. 

  • Israel Shooting Children in the Head, Protests Being Held

    Protests are planned in the coming days focusing on Gaza around the U.S., including a March on Washington, on Saturday, April 5 at 1 p.m. ET on Pennsylvania Ave. (Other anti-Trump protests are also scheduled for this weekend.) 

  • Netanyahu: “Final Stage” of Gaza Genocide Will Lead to Implementation of “Trump’s Plan”

    The Guardian reports: “Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave eight days ago in southern Gaza, the UN has said.”

  • Trump and Yemen: War is Peace?

    x “The World Food Program says ‘a child in Yemen dies once every ten minutes from preventable causes, including extreme hunger.’ …

  • “How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left”

    A new book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, examines how new wealth has drawn into its orbit some formerly progressive journalists. Owned looks at the cases of Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald––once idealistic-sounding, left-leaning voices who have shifted right. 

  • Trump Revises Some Plans for Social Security

    This week, officials from the Social Security Administration partially walked back plans from the Trump administration that would have required beneficiaries to prove their identity in-person. Officials said Wednesday that they plan to exempt people who apply for Medicare and disability benefits from in-person verification.

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