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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  • Scrutinizing U.S. Goals in Afghanistan

    GARETH PORTER Porter recently wrote the piece “Obama Had Rejected His Own Speech’s Surge Rationale,” which states that Obama in his West Point speech “said the escalation was for a ‘vital national interest’ and invoked the threat of attacks from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, asserting that such attacks ‘are now being planned as I speak.’…

  • Afghanistan War a “Folly”

    THOMAS E. MAHANY Mahany, a Vietnam War veteran (101st Airborne Division), now a stonemason and artist from Michigan, has been on a water-only fast in front of the White House since Veterans Day. He sent Obama a second letter yesterday, stating: “The policy of procuring soldiers through the Presidential Authority of Stop-Loss, USC 12305, Title…

  • Afghanistan Escalation

    PRATAP CHATTERJEE Chatterjee just wrote the piece “Paying Off the Warlords, Anatomy of an Afghan Culture of Corruption.” He is an investigative journalist, senior editor at CorpWatch and author of Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War and “Iraq, Inc. REESE ERLICH Freelance foreign correspondent Erlich has covered…

  • Repression in Honduras

    SERGIO MONCADA A co-founder of Hondurans for Democracy, Moncada is a D.C.-based environmental policy analyst. He said today: “We’re gravely disappointed that the State Department has said it will recognize the results of Sunday’s fraudulent election. We’re getting reports of widespread fear and intimidation by the military, especially in rural areas. The U.S. has taken…

  • Economists Opposing Fed Audit “on Payroll”

    The Los Angeles Times reports: “Ron Paul wins a key battle in war to open Fed’s books.” Huffington Post senior congressional correspondent Ryan Grim writes: “As the debate over an audit of the Federal Reserve intensifies in the House, one camp is trotting out eight academics that it calls a ‘political cross section of prominent…

  • Veteran Fasting Outside White House

    THOMAS E. MAHANY Mahany, a Vietnam War veteran (101st Airborne Division), now a stonemason and artist from Michigan, has been fasting in front of the White House since Veterans Day. He sent Obama the following letter the day after Veterans Day: Dear Mr. President, In May of 1970 I spent 29 days in Lafayette Square…

  • China, U.S. and Global Warming

    SIMONE LOVERA Based in Paraguay, Lovera is co-founder of the Global Forest Coalition. She said today: “The U.S. per capita carbon dioxide emissions are so much higher than China’s emissions. In 2005, the U.S. was nearly 23.5 while China is 5.5 [tons of CO2 per person per year]. It’s inappropriate for the U.S. to be…

  • Hunger: * Record in U.S. * Global Meeting

    The Washington Post reports today: “The nation’s economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people — including almost one child in four — struggled last year to…

  • Washington as Wall Street’s “Biggest Profit Center”

    ROBERT WEISSMAN Public Citizen today released a report titled “Financial Industry Invests Heavily in Key Lawmakers.” The group states: “The industry — including banks, investment firms, insurance companies and real estate companies — has given $42 million in campaign contributions to lawmakers and their leadership political action committees since the current election cycle began in…

  • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Prosecution

    DAVID SWANSON Cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org, Swanson is author of the recently released book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He said today: “Providing charges and trials, even belatedly, even for selected prisoners is progress. But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured, and our president has forbidden our Justice Department to prosecute…

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