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…

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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.”

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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.”

    Read more »


  • From the desk of Noam Chomsky

    From the desk of Noam Chomsky

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • Occupation Wall Street Arrests “Utterly Illegal”

    Seven hundred people participating in the The Occupy Wall Street protests were arrested this weekend. Protests are taking place in several cities, see and with live streaming at. NATHAN SCHNEIDER, nathan at wagingnonviolence.org Schneider is an editor of the website Waging Non-Violence; one of his recent pieces is “Mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge: is…

  • Extrajudicial Killing of U.S. Citizen

    VINCENT WARREN, PARDISS KEBRIAEI, via Emily Whitfield, press at ccrjustice.org, and David Lerner Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which had previously brought a challenge in federal court to the legality of the authorization to target U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, said today: “The assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki by American drone…

  • Wall Street Protests Spread

    The Occupy Wall Street protests are spreading to other cities, see with live streaming at. ARUN GUPTA, ebrowniess at yahoo.com A founding editor of the New York City based Indypendent, Gupta just wrote the piece “The Revolution Begins at Home: An Open Letter to Join the Wall Street Occupation.”

  • Left-Right Alliance Against Government Reading Your Email Without a Warrant

    A broad array of groups from across the political spectrum have joined together to launch the “Not Without a Warrant” campaign against the government reading personal email without a warrant. The campaign states: “The government’s power to read your email, access your private photos stored online and track your daily movements is defined in a…

  • * Saudi Women and Elections * Students Convicted for Protesting Israeli Ambassador in California * Banned from India Because of Kashmir Coverage? * Putin’s Russia

    JAAFAR AL-SHAYEB, jafar at alshayeb.org Available for interviews from noon to 5:00 ET today before he leaves the country, al-Shayeb is chairperson of the municipal council in Qatif, Saudi Arabia. While acknowledging that allowing women to vote in future municipal elections was a significant, if largely symbolic step, he stresses that elections wield very limited…

  • Violence at Continuing Wall Street Protests

    AP is reporting: “About 80 people were arrested Saturday as demonstrators who were camped out near the New York Stock Exchange marched through lower Manhattan, police said. The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest is entering its second week.” See the video ”

  • Nader: Postal Crisis “Manufactured”

    Reuters reported this week that President Obama has endorsed a plan to “rescue” the Postal Service, including by reducing service one day a week. Bloomberg reports: “A measure that may put the U.S. Postal Service under a control board, end to-the-door mail delivery and close post offices using the same process as military-base shutdowns was…

  • Troy Davis Case Highlights Death Penalty Problems

    BARRY SCHECK, PAUL CATES, pcates at innocenceproject.org Scheck is the co-director of the Innocence Project, which “works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.” He said today: “Troy Davis was executed in spite of serious doubt about his guilt. The state clemency system in…

  • Execution of Troy Davis and the “Culture of Killing”

    AP reports: “Georgia executed Troy Davis on Wednesday night for the murder of an off-duty police officer, a crime he denied committing right to the end as supporters around the world mourned and declared that an innocent man was put to death. … He told relatives of Mark MacPhail that his 1989 slaying was not…

  • UN Speech on Palestine: “Yes, Mr. Obama, Peace is Hard…”

    The New York Times reports: “President Obama declared his opposition to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for statehood through the Security Council on Wednesday, throwing the weight of the United States directly in the path of the Arab democracy movement even as he hailed what he called the democratic aspirations that have taken hold throughout the…

Mastodon