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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  • NYPD: Targeting Muslims, More Revelations of Wrongdoing

    This afternoon the AP revealed: “The New York Police Department recommended increasing surveillance of thousands of Shiite Muslims and their mosques, based solely on their religion, as a way to sweep the Northeast for signs of Iranian terrorists, according to interviews and a newly obtained secret police document. … “The secret document stands in contrast…

  • Afghanistan: Drawdown Is Not Withdrawal

    The New York Times wrote in its report on Panetta’s statement: “In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are…

  • Nobel Peace Prize Jury Under Investigation

    AP is reporting this afternoon in ” Nobel Peace Prize Jury Under Investigation ” Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace,’ Heffermehl told The Associated Press on Wednesday. ‘And it’s indisputable that he had in mind the peace movement, the movement which is actively pursuing a new global order … where nations…

  • Syria: Internal Repression, External Manipulation

    “The Syrian regime is brutal and was known to be brutal before the current uprising. But the Free Syrian Army endorsed by the Syrian National Council along with other opposition forces are also violent. The Syrian National Council is a group formed by overseas Syrians and supported by external forces. It is calling for international…

  • Congressional Insider Trading Ban Exempts Lobbyists

    Public Citizen said in a statement today: “The ‘Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act’ (STOCK Act), would make members of Congress and their staffs subject to the same laws against insider trading that apply to the rest of America. The STOCK Act also creates an important system of real-time transparency of stock trading activity by…

  • Honduras: Murder Capital of World, “Made in the USA”

    “It’s time to acknowledge the foreign policy disaster that American support for the Porfirio Lobo administration in Honduras has become. Ever since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed Honduras’s democratically elected president, José Manuel Zelaya, the country has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss. That abyss is in good part…

  • Panetta’s Pentagon: “Austerity”?

    CARL CONETTA, cconetta at comw.org “The new budget plan — represented by the green trend line — stands in stark contrast to the reductions mandated by the Budget Control Act under the provisions for sequestration (represented by the red trend line). Sequestration would roll Pentagon base-budget spending back to the level of 2004, which would…

  • Corporate Accountability: Is There an App for That?

    The New York Times has a piece today titled “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.” “We basically have a system of self-monitoring by corporations. There used to be an agency at the UN that did monitoring — The United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations — but that was basically ended in the…

  • Somali Piracy: Beyond the Caricatures

    “The disruption of the Indian Ocean includes the overfishing in its waters, the devastation by dumping of toxic waste, the problem of its militarization. When Vasco Da Gama came into the waters in 1498, he entered a world of demilitarized trade that linked China to Africa. The Portuguese ships inaugurated an era of violence that…

  • SOTU Analysis: * Empire * Energy * Economy

    Hauter said today: “The president’s energy vision is troubling for our water resources. His speech touted the development of so-called ‘clean energy,’ but it may as well have been written by the oil and gas industry. His plan to open up more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources and to…

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