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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  • Drop Egypt’s Debt: IMF Loan May be “Odious”

    Reuters is reporting: “The International Monetary Fund said on Friday Egypt’s government and political partners have made good progress in agreeing on the content of an IMF funding program for the country. … Egypt and the IMF are in discussions on a $3.2 billion loan program. The IMF is insisting that any agreement on financing…

  • “George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin, and Me”

  • Sen. Conrad Proposal “Would Dismantle Social Security”

  • BP Disaster Two Years Later

    This Friday, April 20, is the two-year anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers and poured 200 million gallons of oil into Gulf waters. Sunday, April 22, is Earth Day. CHRIS KROMM, chris at southernstudies.org Kromm is executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, which…

  • Equal Pay Day Today

    Tuesday, April 17 is Equal Pay Day, a day to mark the fact that women still only earn 77 percent of each dollar earned annually by men and 82 percent of each dollar earned weekly. Equal Pay Day represents the date in the current year through which women must work to match what men earned…

  • Tax Day: “Buffett Rule” and Military Spending

    Yesterday, Senate Democrats mustered only 51 of the 60 votes needed to advance President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” to impose a minimum tax of 30 percent on individuals earning over $1 million. Today is the second annual Global Day of Action on Military Spending, coinciding with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s release of global military…

  • Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rebuffs U.S. State Department on Upcoming Summit

    Mairead Maguire, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on Ireland and was scheduled to attend the Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates this month in Chicago, has canceled her appearance citing a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the State Department is an “active partner” in the event. Maguire…

  • * Iran Talks * Bahrain Repression * Summit of Americas

    American and Iranian negotiators are scheduled to meet this weekend in Istanbul regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Porter is an investigative journalist and historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He just wrote the piece “U.S.-Israel Deal to Demand Qom Closure Threatens Nuclear Talks.” Today, AP is reporting “Formula One’s governing body says the Bahrain Grand…

  • Gaza “More Dire Than Ever”

    During the Israeli “Operation Cast Lead” in Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009, Dr. Gilbert was one of only two outside doctors in Gaza. Last week the International Criminal Court, to the protests of Amnesty International and other groups, stated it would not issue prosecutions for the Israeli Operation. Recently Gilbert, co-author of “Eyes in Gaza,”…

  • Where Did Your Taxes Go?

    National Priorities Project recently released Tax Day 2012 with the numbers on how federal income taxes were spent in fiscal 2011 — down to the penny, giving people a “Tax Receipt” for how their money is spent. The group found “Federal income tax revenues totaled around $1.13 trillion in fiscal 2011. … Twenty-seven cents of…

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