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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  • Whistleblowers on Assange, Manning, “Absurd” Secrecy, Leaking and Assassinations

    The Guardian reports on “A letter signed by leading U.S. figures in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s application for political asylum in Ecuador has been delivered to the country’s London embassy.” Among those who signed the letter were Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky and Danny Glover. The letter, organized by Just Foreign Policy,…

  • Rwanda Denies Sponsoring War Criminals in Congo; U.S. Charged with Covering Up at U.N.

    Today, BBC reports: “Rwanda’s foreign minister has angrily denied reports that her country is backing an army mutiny in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.” Last week, Reuters reported: “U.N. experts have evidence Rwanda’s defense minister and two top military officials have been backing an army mutiny in the east of neighboring Congo…” Also last week…

  • “Show Me Your Papers”-Based Immigration Policy

    MARGARET HU, mhu at law.duke.edu Hu is an assistant professor at Duke Law School. She just wrote a piece titled “Arizona v. U.S. & SB 1070: Baking Discrimination Into Immigration Policy” on the American Constitution Society blog, which states: “In Arizona v. U.S., the Supreme Court only upheld Section 2(B) of the highly controversial Arizona…

  • Supreme Court: Money in Politics Doesn’t Matter; Montanans Disagree

    In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively struck down Montana’s 100-year-old law that banned direct corporate political campaign spending in state and local elections. The court reversed a Montana Supreme Court ruling. See: Supreme Court Upholds Citizens United; Tightens Corporate Stranglehold on Campaign Finance. JEFF MILCHEN, jeff.milchen at gmail.com Milchen is the…

  • “Tragic Week in Paraguay”

    AP is reporting: “Ousted Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo fought back Sunday against the politicians who engineered his dismissal, setting up an alternative government and pledging to upstage Paraguay’s new leaders at an upcoming regional summit.” KREGG HETHERINGTON, krether at gmail.com Professor at Dalhousie University in Canada and author of Guerrilla Auditors: Transparency, Democracy and Rural…

  • 40th Anniversary of Title IX: Not Just Sports

    Title IX was signed on June 23, 1972 by President Richard Nixon and became law on July 1, 1972. JOANNE SMITH, jsmith at ggenyc.org Smith, founder and executive director of Girls for Gender Equity, Smith said today: “I benefited from Title IX’s opening up college athletics as many women and girls did, but that’s a…

  • Earth Summit: Questioning the “Green Economy”

    The Miami Herald reports: “More than 50,000 people and representatives of more than 120 countries gather in Rio de Janeiro for the opening of the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development. Topics include the destruction of the rain forest, vanishing coral reefs, land grabs, the need for food security, clean water, the role of women in…

  • Assange’s Asylum

    Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers (top-secret government documents that showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War) today signed a petition calling on Ecuador to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ellsberg stated: “Political asylum was made for cases like this. Freedom for Julian in Ecuador would serve the…

  • Rise of the Egyptian Junta

    PHILIP RIZK, rizkphilip at googlemail.com, @tabulagaza Rizk is an independent blogger and filmmaker based in Cairo. He has been warning of the actions of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces since the uprising last year. See Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “From Cairo: Egypt’s Military Leading the Counter-Revolution?” Also, see: “Egypt One Year…

  • Pakistani Court Dismisses Prime Minister

    Al Jazeera reports: “The decision comes two months after Gilani, the nation’s longest-running prime minister, was convicted of contempt for refusing to ask Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. … The allegations against Zardari date back to the 1990s, when he and his late wife, former president Benazir Bhutto, are…

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