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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  • U.S.-Chinese Relations

    Henry Rosemont is visiting professor of religious studies at Brown University and author of several books including A Chinese Mirror: Moral Reflections on Political Economy and translations of Chinese classics. He said today: “China is a threat to the United States only if the United States assumes that it is, and pursues an aggressive foreign…

  • “From Military-Industrial Complex to Permanent War State”

    Gareth Porter just wrote the piece “From Military-Industrial Complex to Permanent War State,” which states: “Fifty years after Dwight D. Eisenhower’s January 17, 1961 speech on the ‘military-industrial complex,’ that threat has morphed into a far more powerful and sinister force than Eisenhower could have imagined. It has become a ‘Permanent War State,’ with the…

  • Obama’s New Approach to Regulation Is “Misguided”

    President of Public Citizen, Robert Weissman said today: “The dominant fact of American life in recent years has been grossly inadequate public protections. In the past several years, under-regulation and corporate disregard of safety rules have resulted in multiple salmonella and E. coli outbreaks, a flood of lead-tainted toys, a massive and environmentally devastating oil…

  • Tunisian Academic: “Will Not Recognize This Band of Thugs”

    NOUREDDINE JEBNOUN, [beginning Tues. 2:00 pm ET] Available for a very limited number of interviews with major media outlets, Jebnoun is visiting assistant professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He said today: “Today, in Tunisia, a new government has been announced and mainly led by the same old guard of…

  • Haiti: Return of Jean Claude Duvalier

    EZILI DANTO Danto is president of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. She just wrote the piece “Obama’s change in Haiti: The Return of Jean Claude Duvalier.” Danto states that Duvalier, a past dictator of Haiti, could not have been able to return without the cooperation of the U.S. and France. She notes that meanwhile, Jean-Bertrand…

  • Tunisia: U.S. Backing Dictatorship over Pro-Democracy Movement

    CNN is reporting: “Police in Tunisia’s capital city used batons and tear gas to clear a peaceful demonstration on Friday. … [This occurs] after days of riots that have killed at least 21 people.” STEPHEN ZUNES Zunes just wrote the piece “Pro-Democracy Uprising Fails to Keep Washington From Backing Tunisian Dictatorship.” Zunes is professor of…

  • Over 400 Gun Deaths Since Tucson?

    Rebecca Peters is a lawyer who was until recently director of the International Action Network on Small Arms, the global movement against gun violence. She said today: “In other countries — Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, Israel, Finland, Belgium — even a single tragedy of this nature leads to a commission of inquiry and to legal…

  • Cost of War: Breaking It Down

    Jo Comerford is executive director of the National Priorities Project; Chris Hellman is budget analyst for the group, which as part of the re-launch of its website, CostofWar.com, has just issued “What’s at Stake?” — 50 state-level briefs focused on the impact of war spending. Hellman said today: “In state after state, tough decisions are being…

  • Martin Luther King Jr. on Violence

    “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. … “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world…

  • Haiti One Year After the Earthquake

    MELINDA MILES Founder and director of Let Haiti Live, a project of TransAfrica Forum, Miles has been doing relief and advocacy work on Haiti for more than a decade. She said today: “One year after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, there are over 1 million IDP’s [internally displaced persons], over 3,600 have died from a cholera epidemic…

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