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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  • Obama and Romney Quietly Backing Jobs-Killing Secret Pacific Trade Deal

    Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Lori Wallach said today: “While President Obama and Mitt Romney attack each other on China trade, both quietly support a massive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement that would greatly expand U.S. jobs offshoring, give Chinese firms a waiver to Buy American procurement policies and further erode the U.S.…

  • Fallout from the Chicago Strike: * Rally in D.C. * Testing

    Helen Moore is a parent from Detroit participating in a caravan and march to the Department of Education Thursday. Youth and parents from 18 cities have organized a “Journey for Justice” demanding a moratorium on school closings. The group states: “Federal ‘school improvement’ policies require districts to utilize one of four intervention models in low-performing…

  • Romney’s Class: “Dependent on Government Subsidies, Handouts and Protection”

    Available for a limited number of interviews, James S. Henry is lead researcher for the recently released report “The Price of Offshore Revisited” and former chief economist at the international consultancy firm McKinsey & Co. He said today: “The real story here ought to be the outrageous growth of inequality in America — and the…

  • Beyond the “Muslim Rage” Hype

    Kathy Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and travels regularly to Afghanistan. She said today: “On September 16th, 2012, at about 2:00 a.m., U.S./NATO forces called in an airstrike which killed eight Afghan women who were on a mountainside collecting wood for fuel. Villagers in the Alingar district of the Laghman province said…

  • After One Year: Future of “Occupy”

    Laura Gottesdiener is an organizer with Occupy Wall Street and author the forthcoming book A Dream Foreclosed: The Great Eviction and the Fight to Live in America. She said today: “After one year, Occupy has become a movement that exists both as a protest in the symbolic centers of neoliberal capitalism, and as a direct…

  • Chicago Strike and the Corporate Attack on Education

    Author of Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? Susan Ohanian said today: “The current corporate-driven assault on public education rises from the late 1980s when Arkansas governor Bill Clinton held hands with IBM CEO Lou Gerstner to forge America 2000 for President Bush the Elder. That policy, which came directly from a Business…

  • Getting Past Protest Disinformation

    Available for a limited number of interviews, Emad Mekay appeared on Al Jazeera English last night. A lecturer at Stanford University and an investigative journalism fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, Mekay returned from Egypt a week ago after three months. While virtually all media were alleging that an Israeli American Jew was behind…

  • Court Rules Against Detention; Congress Doubles Down on Government Spying

    Charlie Savage of the New York Times reports today: “A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the government from enforcing a controversial statute about the indefinite detention without trial of terrorism suspects. Congress enacted the measure last year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. “The ruling came as the House voted to extend for…

  • Behind the Libyan “Success”

    Author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, Vijay Prashad is chair of South Asian history and director of international studies at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. He just wrote a piece on the attacks in Libya: “This is not the first such protest in Benghazi, the eastern city of Libya. Over the course of this year,…

  • Roots of Record Poverty

    Author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor in Twentieth Century U.S. History, Alice O’Connor said today: “It was not too long ago in our history that news of 40-million plus in poverty spurred a call to concerted political action, and to a War on Poverty built on full employment, living wages,…

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