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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  • * Pope in Cuba * Silence as Female Palestinian Hunger Striker Goes Beyond 40 Days

    Farber is author of Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment. He said today: “While masses of Cubans turned out to greet the Pope, appearances can be misleading. This visit will serve neither democracy nor popular interests. In exchange for the international legitimacy that the Cuban government is obtaining from the Pope, the…

  • Beyond “Both Sides” — Doctors Against Mandate and for Universal Coverage

    In a recent letter published by the New York Times, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Arnold Relman, notes that their coverage of the debate about a health insurance mandate didn’t “mention an important new argument against the Affordable Care Act’s mandated purchase of private insurance, the key issue before…

  • World Bank: First Qualified President?

    Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He said today: “The Obama administration’s announcement that it will nominate health expert and Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim for World Bank president represents a historic milestone in the institution’s history, with the U.S. nominating, for the first time, a qualified candidate. This…

  • Breaking: Coordinated Protests Against “Outlaw” Fukushima-Style Nuclear Plant Operator, Arrests Expected in Three States

    The AP is reporting now: “Protesters marched in Brattleboro against the continued operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant Thursday, the first day of its operation after its initial 40-year operating license expired. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued the plant a 20-year license extension, but the state of Vermont wants the plant…

  • Summers at World Bank? Record on Poor Countries and Gender Bias

    President of Public Citizen, Weissman just wrote the piece “The (Larry) Summers of Our Discontent,” which states: “‘Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?’ “Do those sound like the words of a man who should be running the world’s…

  • Ryan Budget: Increases Pentagon, “Out of Touch”

    House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled a 2013 budget plan today. Hartung is a senior research fellow in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program and author of the book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, which is just being released in paperback. He said today: “While…

  • Rethinking Afghanistan and Debating the Strategic Partnership Agreement

    Available for a limited number of interviews, Gopal is an independent journalist who has reported extensively from Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal and other publications. He is currently at work on a book on the war in Afghanistan. He was recently interviewed by The Real News: “Afghan Killings Product of…

  • Congressional Push for Sachs as Next World Bank Head

    For the first time in the World Bank’s history, a candidate is openly campaigning for presidency of the institution. Traditionally, the U.S. government has hand-selected the World Bank president, but economist and health expert Jeffrey Sachs has shaken up the process this time by publicly proclaiming his interest in succeeding Robert Zoellick as World Bank…

  • Another journalist killed in Honduras, the “deadliest place in the world to do journalism”

    CNN reported Wednesday that: “Ninety-four members of Congress signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Monday, proposing a cutoff to all military and police aid until the issue of human rights violations in Honduras are addressed.” The latest journalist to be killed was 54-year-old Fausto Elio Hernández Arteaga of Radio Alegre in the…

  • Kony 2012 Video: A Pretext for Military Intervention?

    KAMBALE MUSAVULI, kambale at friendsofthecongo.org Musavuli is the national spokesperson and student coordinator for Friends of the Congo. He said today: “I spoke with the makers of ‘Kony 2012’ years ago and I asked them if they thought the Ugandan government was doing all it could for peace and they had no response. They are…

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