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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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  • Clinton and Kerry

    Stephen Zunes said today in assessing Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy: “It is not unusual for a president to want to be his own secretary of state, but rarely has a secretary so badly wanted to be her own president. Unlike most administrations — in which the State Department would sometimes challenge the hawks in the…

  • Hagel Hearings Lessons: Iraq “Surge”; Israel’s Primacy

    “But the most revealing part of the spectacle was watching Hagel stand up to John McCain when McCain said he had been wrong to oppose the Iraq surge in 2007 and the Afghanistan surge in 2009 — and then watching Hagel fold pathetically when Lindsey Graham asked him to condemn Israeli settlements.”

  • Hagel Nomination and Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

    “The best thing about the Hagel controversy, is that nuclear abolition is finally being discussed. Numerous Commissions and studies have found that the longer we hang on to our nuclear bombs, in violation of our treaty obligations in the Non-Proliferation Treaty to get rid of them, the more countries will acquire them, creating ever greater…

  • Immigration Policy Beyond the Hype

    “There is so much hype about what comprehensive immigration reform could be that the rhetoric about what may happen is really an industry on it’s own. …Some are anxious for a real sign that President Obama is serious about reform. His tenure in office has brought increased funding for enforcement and record deportation numbers.”

  • CIA Whistleblower Sentenced to 30 Months

    “‘There is a legal definition of whistleblower and I meet that legal definition,’ Kiriakou declared. ‘I was the first person to acknowledge that the CIA was using waterboarding against al Qaeda prisoners. I said in 2007 that I regarded waterboarding as torture and I also said that it was not the result of rogue CIA…

  • As Military Lifts Ban on Women in Combat, 52 Women a Day Sexually Assaulted

    “President of Veterans for Peace, Leah Bolger said today: “It’s kind of a civil rights issue, certainly anyone who is capable of doing any job should be able to do it. However, I don’t see this as cause for a big celebration. We should be trying to abolish war. The U.S. shouldn’t be sending ANY…

  • The Case Against Kerry

    “John Kerry’s attacks on the International Court of Justice, his defense of Israeli occupation policies and human rights violations, and his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq raise serious questions about his commitment to international law and treaty obligations.”

  • Obama: Radical or Rhetoric? * Rule of Law * Climate Change

    If observers want to criticize the president, they should instead challenge his derogation in practice of the same values he professes in his lofty speeches. The President’s first term unfortunately witnessed a continued extension of the Bush-Cheney legacy, and he seems no more inclined than his neo-con predecessors to heed longstanding constitutional limits on executive…

  • Obama: I Have a Drone vs MLK: I have a Dream

    While many are drawing parallels between Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama, some activists and analysts state that many of Obama’s policies run totally counter to King’s activism.

  • Aaron Swartz: Scientific Legacy “Locked up by a Handful of For-Profit Corporations”

    Glenn Greenwald recently wrote: “A petition on the White House’s website to fire U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz quickly exceeded the 25,000 signatures needed to compel a reply.” Yesterday, Ortiz finally addressed the case

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