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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  • Saudi Occupies Bahrain

    CHRISTOPHER DAVIDSON A scholar in Middle East politics at Durham University, Davidson said today: “What is happening is an invasion and occupation of Bahrain by Saudi Arabia under the guise of the Gulf Cooperation Council. This is done at the request of the regime in Bahrain to put down the pro-democracy movement there. … “The…

  • Japan Nuclear Disaster

    ARJUN MAKHIJANI Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, which has just released a paper “Post-Tsunami Situation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan: Facts, Analysis, and Some Potential Outcome.” In addition to meltdowns, the paper highlights the problem of the storage pools, which could be even more dire.…

  • Threat of Nuclear Disaster in Japan

    AP is reporting: “Japan ordered thousands of residents near a northeastern nuclear power plant to evacuate today following a massive earthquake that caused a problem in the plant’s cooling system.” KEVIN KAMPS Kamps is a specialist in nuclear waste at Beyond Nuclear. Last year he was in Japan assessing the state of nuclear facilities there.…

  • Wisconsin Struggle: Now Come the Tractors

    The Wisconsin State Journal reports: “‘General Strike!’ Thousands Storm, Reoccupy Wisconsin Capitol in Response to Legislative Votes.” ROBERT KRAIG Kraig is executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. He has been at the Capitol in Madison and is closely following developments. He said today: “[Gov. Scott] Walker has been claiming that this is about the…

  • Democracy and Saudi Arabia

    Increased protests are planned for Friday in Saudi Arabia. For a list of online resources that is being updated, see: accuracy.org/uprisings TOBY C. JONES Jones is an assistant professor of history at Rutgers University and author of the book Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia. He said today: “The U.S. government…

  • Debate on Libya and Intervention

    ALI AHMIDA Available for a limited number of interviews, Ahmida is a leading analyst and historian of Libya. He said today: “Given Libya’s brutal colonial past under Italian fascism, foreign interference could be disastrous. Many Libyans will oppose it and it would revive Qaddafi’s dying dictatorship. Instead, other countries could recognize the new government in…

  • Obama “Institutionalizing” Guantánamo

    KAREN GREENBERG Greenberg is executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University Law School. She just wrote the piece “Guantánamo: No Closure for Obama,” which states: “In the nine years since the opening of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, the country has moved incrementally towards institutionalizing the existence of the…

  • Who is the Government Jailing? * Environmentalists * Whistleblowers * Peace Activists

    In response to the question: “Is it illegitimate for people to say that some of those CEOs on Wall Street should have gone to jail?” White House Chief of Staff William Daley said Sunday: “Well, I — look at, I don’t know if it’s illegitimate or not. People have a right to say what they…

  • Behind U.S.-Backed Bahrain Regime’s “Dialogue”

    Protests in Bahrain today took to the U.S. embassy with signs including “Stop Supporting Dictators.” For updates on the Bahrain uprising, see the #Feb14 hashtag on Twitter; for breakdown: accuracy.org/uprisings REEM KHALIFA Available for a limited number of interviews, Khalifa is senior editor for diplomatic affairs at Al Wasat in Bahrain. She said today: “The…

  • Environmentalist Faces 10 Years for Bids to Stop Drilling

    AP reports today: “Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher knew what he was doing when he made $1.8 million in false oil and gas drilling bids at a federal auction. He knew he couldn’t possibly pay for them. And he knew he could end up behind bars. “But he did it for the cause. On Thursday, a…

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