News Items

  • Calls to Suspend Syrian Refugee and Other Recent Anti-Muslim Statements by Government Officials

    Compiled by the Institute for Public Accuracy with Arun Kundnani and Deepa Kumar. Kundnani said: “While it’s very easy to denounce Trump’s recent repugnant, bullying statements — and much of the political class has — it’s important to keep several things in mind: First, as the compilation of statements by elected officials makes clear, he made these statements after many officials from across the country made scores of statements playing on unfounded fears against Syrian refugees and other Muslims.”

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  • Classified Politics: A System and a Clinton in Disrepute

    It is most unlikely, however, that Hillary Clinton will fall victim to accusations that rely on improper over-­classification. The State Department and White House, including President Obama himself, sought to protect her and to minimize the effects of her behavior. The case is extremely high­-profile, Democrats in Congress would attack any borderline classification, and a host of well-­paid lawyers would rise to her defense. Improperly classified items or those deemed Sensitive but Unclassified may be redacted from publicly released documents, but it is hard to imagine that Mrs. Clinton would be falsely accused of felonies.

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  • Video of Sterling News Conference

    Please enjoy the full video of Holly Sterling’s news conference, which was her first such appearance since her husband’s trial and imprisonment. The news conference also featured Thomas Drake, Delphine Halgand, Ray McGovern, and Jesselyn Radack.

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  • Open Letter to President Obama from Holly Sterling

    Does the government have no shame in destroying one man’s life and wasting tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to punish a man who had the audacity to do two things: Stand up for his constitutional rights and utilize proper channels provided to him to express concern for the citizens of our country? I am deeply saddened by our lives’ events that Jeffrey and I have suffered and endured. You publicly committed to a transparent government led by your administration, yet it has been shrouded in mistruth and secrecy.

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  • Unprecedented News Conference: Wife of Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower to Speak Out

    Jeffrey Sterling was convicted under the Espionage Act as a source for New York Times reporter James Risen’s book State of War. He began serving his three-and-a-half year prison sentence in June. His wife’s news conference will be the first time the spouse of a CIA whistleblower has made such an appearance.

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  • Cultural Shift Needed on Police Militarization

    Police militarization is a 25 year long trend that has only grown in momentum over time. The restrictions on militaristic gear directed by the White House while important symbolically, will certainly not substantively impact this trend in and of itself. Police militarization at this point is as much a cultural problem as it is a material one, and reversing the cultural trend toward police militarization will require more far reaching efforts.

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  • Watch the Short Documentary “The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling”

    “‘The federal courtroom in northern Virginia where Holly and Jeffrey Sterling returned for the sentencing on May 11 was the scene of a disturbing, though scantly reported, simulation of justice in late January. At the outset, covering the trial, I noted that ‘prospective jurors made routine references to ‘three-letter agencies’ and alphabet-soup categories of security clearances.’ Steeped in a local atmosphere of deference to mega-employers like the CIA and Pentagon along with numerous big contracting firms nearby, ‘the jury pool was bound to please the prosecution.’”

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  • On Jeffrey Sterling: From the Filmmaker of “Invisible Man”

    “The most shocking element of this story it that Jeffrey Sterling seems to be punished because he ‘pulled on Superman’s cape’ first with a racial discrimination suit they were able to squash and then by reporting what he considered a dangerous CIA operation to the proper government channels for hearing such a concern.”

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  • News Conference: Whistleblowers Weigh In on Policy

    William Binney (NSA), Thomas Drake (NSA), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Raymond McGovern (CIA), Jesselyn Radack (Justice Department), Coleen Rowley (FBI) and Kirk Wiebe (NSA) spoke at this news conference, sponsored by ExposeFacts.org, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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  • Netanyahu Victory Opens Door for One-State Solution

    Just before the election, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu ruled out the creation of a Palestinian State, which means that he repudiated the two-state solution to the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This has been the pronounced objective of American foreign policy since the Madrid Conference and the Middle East Peace Negotiations in 1991 held under the auspices of the United States government and with the full support of the international community.

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  • Prosecuting Manning for WikiLeaks: “Killing the Messenger”

    Glenn Greenwald writes today: “The U.S. Army yesterday announced that it has filed 22 additional charges against Bradley Manning, the Private accused of being the source for hundreds of thousands of documents (as well as [the video ‘Collateral Murder’]) published over the last year by WikiLeaks. Most of the charges add little to the ones…

  • Wrong Kind of Intelligence: U.S. Killing Children in Afghanistan

    Kelly and Brollier are with Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Kelly said today: “The drone intelligence and all of the other surveillance available to the U.S. military couldn’t help bomber pilots figure out, on March 1, 2011, that the nine people they believed to be insurgents, on a mountainside in the Pech Valley, were actually children.…

  • More Cuts — Or Make Rich, Corporations Pay Up

    RICHARD WOLFF Wolff just wrote the piece “How the rich soaked the rest of us,” which states: “The richest Americans have dramatically lowered their income tax burden since 1945, both absolutely and relative to the tax burdens of middle income groups and the poor.” Wolff is author of the book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The…

  • The Real “National Security” Budget: $1.2 Trillion a Year

    CHRISTOPHER HELLMAN Hellman just wrote the piece “The Real U.S. National Security Budget” (for TomDispatch.com), which gives a breakdown and states: “What if you went to a restaurant and found it rather pricey? Still, you ordered your meal and, when done, picked up the check only to discover that it was almost twice the menu…

  • “Deficit Fears Irrational, Cuts Will Impede Recovery”

    JAMES K. GALBRAITH, THEA HARVEY Chair of Economists for Peace and Security, Galbraith (available for a limited number of interviews) is Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. chair in government/business relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His latest book is The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned…

  • U.S. “Hypocrisy” on Libya and International Criminal Court

    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi, citing “universal principles.” MICHAEL RATNER President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner said today: “While it appears that serious crimes against humanity are being committed by the Libyan government, the referral of those abuses to the International Criminal Court by the…

  • Wall Street Criminality: Origin of State Crises

    Last night Charles Ferguson, director of “Inside Job” (about Wall Street’s wrongdoing), upon receiving the Oscar for best documentary, said: “Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong.” See video at…

  • Palestinians, Israel and Freedom and Democracy

    AHMET DOGAN, via Ann Wright, Greta Berlin Professor Dogan, whose 18-year-old son Furkan was killed during the Israeli military raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in May 2010, is in Washington, D.C. He hopes to convince U.S. officials to open an independent investigation into his son’s killing by Israeli commandos and to discuss with them what…

  • Libya

    Chair of the department of political science at the University of New England, Ahmida’s books include The Making of Modern Libya and Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya — largely about the little-known Italian genocide in Libya of 100 years ago. He said today: “Despite the brutal backlash it is too…

  • CIA Spy Captured in Pakistan: Fallout

    Dave Lindorff said today: “When Raymond Davis, the American who killed two Pakistani intelligence operatives in Lahore and now sits in a Lahore prison, was arrested, he claimed to have worked for a security company in Orlando. I checked it out for Counterpunch magazine. The address proved to be a vacant storefront in an empty…

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