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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  • * Botching Health Care Reform * Ballot Measures in Mass.

    QUENTIN YOUNG, M.D., via MARK ALMBERG Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 18,000 doctors who support a single-payer, Medicare-for-All approach to reform, said today: “Health care reform was botched. People wanted serious reform and didn’t get it. What was adopted was so defective that ultra-conservatives were able to…

  • Election Perspectives

    BILL FLETCHER Jr. Fletcher is editorial board member of The Black Commentator and co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal. He recently wrote the piece “Enthusiasm?: I Am Not Interested in Things Getting Worse!” JOHN R. MacARTHUR MacArthur is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the book You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers…

  • Election Protection

    WENDY WEISER LEE ROWLAND, VISHAL AGRAHARKAR, via Jeanine Plant-Chirlin Weiser is director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Project. Rowland is counsel, Agraharkar is pro bono counsel and Plant-Chirlin is acting communications director for the Center. Weiser said today: “The biggest challenges to the vote this year are continued problems with the voter…

  • Angry Populism, Prejudice, and Superficial Punditry

    CHIP BERLET Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates. He recently wrote the piece “Tea Party Loyalists Biased Against Blacks, Latinos, Immigrants and Gays.” Berlet also recently delivered the talk “Reframing Resentments in the Tea Party Movement,” which states: “The signs, slogans, stories, and tropes of the Tea Party troops are often incomprehensible to…

  • Behind “Voter Fraud” Charges

    CHRIS KROMM Executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, Kromm said today: “Outlandish claims of ‘voter fraud’ — while backed up by little evidence — are reaching a fever pitch. In the 2010 election season, Tea Party groups like True the Vote in Texas are calling for ‘millions’ of volunteer poll-watchers to challenge and…

  • Charles Koch Refuses to Debate Prop 23 with California Student Leader

    Student Joel Francis presented a debate challenge letter in person to the Wichita, Kansas offices of Koch Industries’ CEO Charles Koch. Koch has bankrolled the California ballot initiative, Proposition 23, with at least $1 million. JOEL FRANCIS, via Gabriel Elsner California State University, Los Angeles senior, former Marine and debate team veteran Joel Francis traveled…

  • WikiLeaks Documents Show U.S. Helicopter Killed Iraqis Trying to Surrender

    JOSH STIEBER Stieber is a veteran of the Bravo Company documented in the video “Collateral Murder,” released earlier this year by WikiLeaks. The British Telegraph reports: “An American military legal adviser told helicopter crew that Iraqi men were valid targets as they could not surrender to aircraft, the documents show. “The Apache helicopter killed the…

  • “Travesty at Guantanamo”

    LISA HAJJAR, [currently at Guantanamo] Hajjar is an editor of Middle East Report and an associate professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. She is covering events from Guantanamo Bay. She recently wrote the piece “Travesty in Progress: Omar Khadr and the U.S. Military Commissions.” MICHAEL RATNER President of the Center for Constitutional…

  • Administration Targeting Record Number of Whistleblowers

    JESSELYN RADACK Radack is homeland security and human rights director of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest group based in Washington, D.C. She is a whistleblower herself and is closely following the cases of whistleblowers whom the Obama administration is prosecuting. She said today: “Daniel Ellsberg, famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers, in…

  • WikiLeaks Documents Expose Realities of Iraq War

    Several media outlets have released information based on documents from WikiLeaks about the Iraq war this afternoon. See WikiLeaks Twitter feed PRATAP CHATTERJEE Chatterjee is a regular columnist for the British Guardian, which has had access to the WikiLeaks documents. He is the author of three forthcoming articles, which will appear in Comment is Free…

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