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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  • Sikh Temple Shooting: “Christian Terror”

    The Southern Poverty Law Center reports: Alleged Sikh temple shooter former member of Skinhead band. MARK JUERGENSMEYER, juergens at global.ucsb.edu, www.global.ucsb.edu/faculty/ juergensmeyer.html, www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-juergensmeyer Juergensmeyer is director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, professor of sociology, and affiliate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books include “Terror…

  • One Reason Behind India’s Blackout: World Bank Policies

    DAPHNE WYSHAM, via Lacy MacAuley, lacy at ips-dc.org, [email protected], www.ips-dc.org Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and is the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. She grew up in India and was last there in December. She just wrote the piece One Reason Behind India’s Blackout: World…

  • Campaign Targets New NBC “War-o-tainment” Show

    RootsAction.org and Just Foreign Policy have launched a campaign targeting NBC’s new program, “Stars Earn Stripes,” a reality show co-hosted by retired U.S. General Wesley Clark and co-starring Todd Palin, which the network is advertising during the Olympics. DAVID SWANSON, david at davidswanson.org StarsEarnStripes.org David Swanson is a campaigner for RootsAction.org. He said today: “NBC…

  • Medicare Anniversary

    This weeks marks the 47th anniversary of Medicare. STEFFIE WOODHANDLER, swoolhandler at challiance.org also, via Mark Almberg, mark at pnhp.org, http://pnhp.org Woolhandler is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. She said today: “We celebrate Medicare which, along with Social Security, has lifted millions of…

  • Romney Lauds Israeli Economy During Wave of Attempted Self-Immolations

    LIA TRACHANSKY, lia at therealnews.com, skype: lia-tarachansky, http://www.liatarachansky.com, http://www.therealnews.com Israel/Palestine correspondent for The Real News Network, Trachansky said today: “In his address to major donors such as Woody Johnson and Sheldon Adelson (one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s largest supporters), U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney misrepresented Israel’s economy and enraged Palestinian leaders by claiming that the fact…

  • Western Fires: “Perfect Storm” or New Norm?

    WILLIAM DEBUYS, wdebuys at earthlink.net Author of A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, deBuys recently wrote a piece titled “The Oxygen Planet Struts Its Stuff: Not a ‘Perfect Storm’ But the New Norm in the American West,” which states: “Dire fire conditions, like the inferno of heat, turbulence, and…

  • $21 Trillion the Wealthy are Hiding: The Shocking Facts — and the Great Opportunity

    ABC News is reporting: “The super-rich are hiding at least $21 trillion in accounts outside their home countries, according to a report by an activist group called the Tax Justice Network. The wealth hidden in these tax shelters is the equivalent of the United States and Japanese economies combined, according to the report, ‘The Price…

  • Iran: A Repeat Ten Years After “Fixing” Intel on Iraq

    RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com, http://raymondmcgovern.com ANNIE MACHON, [email protected], skype: annie.machon, http://www.anniemachon.ch Machon is a former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI), McGovern is a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and CIA analyst. They just wrote a piece titled “Will Downing St. Memo Recur on Iran?” They…

  • Empty Anniversary: Minimum Wage Stuck as Poverty Climbs

    July 24 is the anniversary of the last federal minimum wage increase to $7.25 in 2009. The minimum had been increased on July 24 on 2007, 2008 and 2009 and not since. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Rep. George Miller of California have proposed raising the minimum wage to $9.80 by 2014 in three…

  • Alexander Cockburn, “Our Voltaire”, Dies at 71

    JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, sitka at comcast.net Co-editor of Counterpunch with Cockburn, St. Clair said today: “Alexander Cockburn was the fiercest, funniest and most uncompromising political writer of our era. He excoriated the powerful, punctured the pretentious and championed the oppressed. He was our Voltaire. He taught two generations how to think, how to look at…

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