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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  • Was Flooding of New Orleans a “Natural Disaster”?

    IVOR VAN HEERDEN SANDY ROSENTHAL Author of The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina — the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist, van Heerden is featured in the new film “The Big Uneasy,” a documentary by Harry Shearer that is playing tonight in theaters across the country. Van Heerden is an adviser…

  • Distorting Martin Luther King: Critics of Beck and Sharpton

    Saturday, August 28 is the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Rallies are planned by Fox host Glenn Beck and by Al Sharpton. DEDRICK MUHAMMAD Muhammad just wrote a piece titled “A Dishonor to the Legacy of Dr. King,” which states: “Does…

  • Katrina Plus Five

    JORDAN FLAHERTY Author of the just-released book Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six, Flaherty said today: “I’m concerned about those who have been kept out of most discussions of the city’s future. More than 100,000 former New Orleanians remain displaced in 5,500 cities across every U.S. state. A recent survey found…

  • Disaster in Pakistan

    SNEHAL SHINGAVI Shingavi is an assistant professor of South Asian literature at the University of Texas in Austin. He addresses several aspects of the current crisis in his two-part interview with The Real News, “Why isn’t the world rushing to rescue Pakistan?” SHAHID MAHMOOD Mahmood was an editorial cartoonist for Dawn, a national newspaper in…

  • Egg Recall — “Consolidation Putting Consumers at Risk”

    PATTY LOVERA Assistant director of Food & Water Watch, Lovera said today: “This egg recall is not a fluke. It’s just the latest example of how the consolidation of food production puts consumers at risk. This particular recall is about two production facilities responsible for over 550 million eggs under 30 different labels, but large…

  • Assassination Squad in Afghanistan

    PRATAP CHATTERJEE Chatterjee just wrote the piece “The Secret Killers: Assassination in Afghanistan and Task Force 373,” which draws on the Afghanistan field reports recently exposed by WikiLeaks and now organized at DiaryDig.org. The piece states: “Task Force 373 may be a nightmare for Afghans. For the rest of us — now that WikiLeaks has…

  • How Fox Used “Raw Corporate Power” to Crush a Critic

    BARRY NOLAN The media watch group FAIR reports: “Boston TV newscaster Barry Nolan was outraged to learn back in 2008 that Fox host Bill O’Reilly was getting an award from the local chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. So Nolan made flyers documenting various O’Reilly outrages and distributed them at the…

  • Islam — and War

    DONNA MARSH O’CONNOR TALAT HAMDANI O’Connor and Hamdani are members of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. O’Connor’s daughter was killed in the 9/11 attacks. Hamdani is a Pakistani-American living in New York. Her son, Salman, was a New York City police cadet who disappeared on 9/11 and was wrongfully accused of participating in the…

  • Petraeus Media Blitz

    NORMAN SOLOMON, http://www.normansolomon.com Solomon today wrote the piece “Gen. Petraeus Goes to Media War,” which states: “Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, with the evident approval of the White House, has launched a fierce media blitz to cripple the policy option of any significant military withdrawal a…

  • Big Polluters Funding Initiative to Gut California Environmental Law

    AP reported earlier this week: “The Texas-based oil companies that are the primary backers of a November ballot effort to suspend California’s global warming law are among the state’s biggest polluters, according to a report issued Tuesday by two groups advocating for inner-city residents. “Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. have contributed more than $4.5…

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