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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  • “In the U.S., It Happens Again and Again”

    YESHUA MOSER-PUANGSUWAN, yeshua at nonviolenceinternational.net A board member of Small Arms Survey, an international, independent research project. Moser-Puangsuwan was quoted in an Institute for Public Accuracy news release in 2007 following the mass shooting at Virginia Tech: “Other Western countries like Australia and the UK have one mass shooting, then institute policies on guns and…

  • Has the Military Budget Been Slashed? Is It Effective at Creating Jobs?

    The House is having a series of votes on military spending today. The Boston Globe reports today: “Congressional Republicans have begun a drumbeat of opposition to Pentagon cuts they agreed to last summer as part of the debt deal with President Barack Obama, and want to shift the burden of cuts to food stamps, school…

  • FEC Claims Missing Records on Key Funders a “Technical Problem”

    THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and contributing editor at AlterNet. PAUL JORGENSEN, pjorgensen at ethics.harvard.edu Jorgensen is a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He, along with Ferguson, recently wrote the…

  • Syria on Fire, and the U.S. and Russia Have “Turned up with Flamethrowers”

    CHARLES GLASS, charlesmglassmail2003 at yahoo.com A noted journalist, Glass was ABC News Chief Middle East correspondent and recently wrote the pieces “The Country That Is the World: Syria’s Clashing Communities” and “Syria’s Many New Friends are a Self-Interested Bunch,” which states: “The Syrians are now surrounded by more new-found friends than a lottery winner. ……

  • Secret Pentagon Docs Reveal Pre-War Plans to Get Big Oil into Iraq

    Bloomberg reports: “Iraq’s crude production overtook Iran’s last month for the first time in more than two decades… The rising rate of Iraqi production comes as foreign investors such as ExxonMobil Corp. and BP are developing new fields and reworking older deposits.” GREG MUTTITT, dlee at thenewpress.com Currently touring the U.S., Muttitt (based in London)…

  • Laid Off Steelworker in Anti-Romney Ad Doesn’t Want Obama Either

    Donnie Box was featured in a Priorities USA Action ad outside a shutdown plant: “Romney and Bain Capital shut this place down. They shut down entire livelihoods. They promised us a health care package, they promised to maintain our retirement program, and those are the first two things to disappear. This was a booming place,…

  • As Disclose Act Fails in Senate, FEC Quietly Removes Files on Big Ticket Donors

    The Washington Post reports today: “The Senate failed Monday to advance legislation that would require independent groups to disclose the names of contributors who give more than $10,000 to independent groups for use in political campaigns.” The just-published piece “Revealed: Key Files on Big Ticket Political Donations Vanish at the Federal Election Commission” by Thomas…

  • Penn State: “The Larger Scandal”

    HENRY GIROUX, henry.giroux at gmail.com Giroux’s books include Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability? and The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. He said today: “The Freeh Report makes clear that there was a concerted attempt to cover up the acts of a serial predator while wilfully disregarding the welfare of the…

  • Obama and Romney Both Backing Secret Job-Killing Deal?

    As the campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney trade attacks while claiming each is a friend to workers, a secretive trade deal of the type backed by both campaigns is emerging in international talks. Romney claims he is representing “job creators” whose dealings will benefit society as a whole while Obama claims that his…

  • Climate: Record Heat, Policy Adrift

    ANNE PETERMANN, anne at globaljusticeecology.org Petermann is executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project and coordinator of the STOP Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign. She said today: “The first six months of 2012 were the hottest ever recorded. Thousands of weather records were broken — with nearly 4,000 in June alone. “These impacts have long…

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