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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  • Return of Ma Bell? FCC Net Neutrality Order a “Squandered Opportunity”

    Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron said today: “The new rules are riddled with loopholes, evidence that the chairman sought approval from AT&T instead of listening to the millions of Americans who asked for real Net Neutrality. …”

  • Cost of START Treaty

    Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and is on the coordinating committee of Abolition 2000, a disarmament coalition. She said today: “The Obama administration will pay a heavy price to ratify the modest START treaty should it receive the required 67 Senate votes this week to enact it…

  • Slavery and the States’ Rights Myth

    Loewen is author of the bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me and the new book The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader (with Edward Sebesta). Loewen said today: “In 1860 and 1861, when the Southern states seceded, they said why, and it was all about slavery — its protection and extension. They said nothing about states’ rights.…

  • D.C. Metro to Search Bags

    The D.C. Bill of Rights Coalition and the Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalitionith launched an online petition campaign today in opposition to the bag search program announced on Thursday, but not yet implemented, by D.C. Metro Transit Police. Elder and Udry are members of both civil liberties groups. The bag searching program was initially announced…

  • Civil Resistance at White House Led by Veterans

    Military veterans will lead a nonviolent act of civil resistance at the White House Thursday, Dec. 16, at 10:00 a.m. to protest the ongoing U.S. wars and occupations. Veterans For Peace organizers expect this to be the largest veteran-led resistance since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. Among the scheduled participants: Daniel Ellsberg, who…

  • Holbrooke

    Zunes just wrote the piece “Richard Holbrooke Represented the Worst of the Foreign Policy Establishment.” Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

  • New President’s House Exhibit Includes Slavery

    Lusane is author of the new book The Black History of the White House and an associate professor at American University. He said today: “The opening of the new exhibit ‘President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in Making a New Nation’ at Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell Center pavilion in Independence Park is an opportunity to highlight the…

  • Health Mandate

    Flowers is congressional fellow for the 18,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program; Almberg is the organization’s communications director. Flowers said today: “This ruling is just another sign of the deterioration of this complicated piece of legislation. What’s needed is a more reasonable, simpler approach, which would be enhanced Medicare-for-all.”

  • Obama, Congress and Taxes

    JOHN BERG Professor of government at Suffolk University in Boston, Berg is author of Unequal Struggle: Class, Gender, Race and Power in the U.S. Congress. He said today: “Ever since the Reagan administration, government policy has been making the rich richer, and working people poorer. This is not just about money, it’s about power: the…

  • Attacks on WikiLeaks Violating the Law?

    CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON Simpson is a professor who teaches about media, propaganda and media law at the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. He said today: “The ongoing information war campaign against WikiLeaks conducted by U.S. security agencies, politicians and crackpots is illegal under U.S. law as well as under international treaties. In…

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