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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  • From the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras

    ANDRES CONTERIS Conteris is in the Brazilian embassy in Honduras, where Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge. Conteris is the director of the Program on the Americas for Nonviolence International. He worked as a human rights advocate in Honduras from 1994 to 1999 and is a co-producer of “Hidden in Plain Sight,” a documentary…

  • Honduran President Returns as UN Meets

    As the United Nations meets this week, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed in June, has reportedly returned to Honduras where he took refuge in the Brazilian embassy from the coup government. MARK WEISBROT, via Dan Beeton Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot said today: “This could be the moment…

  • UN, G-20 and Climate Change

    Climate change is expected to play a central role in meetings of the United Nations and G-20 this week. ANASTASIA PINTO, ORIN LANGELLE HALLIE BOAS In Pittsburgh until Wednesday, Pinto is executive director of the Center for Organizing, Research and Education in India. She said today: “We’re already seeing climate devastation in India. Scientists are…

  • Pittsburgh and G-20 Protests

    CHARLES McCOLLESTER McCollester, author of The Point of Pittsburgh: Production and Struggle at the Forks of the Ohio, just wrote the piece “There are plenty of reasons to protest the G-20: The global economic system has deindustrialized America, despoiled the Earth and marginalized working people everywhere” for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. McCollester writes: “When the announcement…

  • UN Report on Israel and the International Criminal Court

    The Independent in Britain reports that “Israel targeted ‘the people of Gaza as a whole’ in the three-week military operation which is estimated to have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians at the beginning of this year, according to a UN-commissioned report published yesterday. “A UN fact-finding mission led by the Jewish South African former Supreme…

  • Real Bank Regulation

    NOMI PRINS, via Celeste Balducci Prins, a former investment banker turned journalist, is author of the just-released It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Her latest article is titled “Obama Banking Too Much on Banks,” which states: “Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, the government,…

  • Behind the Poverty Numbers

    New census numbers show “the share of people living in poverty rose to 13.2 percent in 2008 from 12.5 percent in 2007. That’s the highest poverty rate since 1997,” reports USA Today in an article headlined “Census: Income fell sharply last year.” ALICE O’CONNOR Author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor…

  • U.S. Spending in Afghanistan: Upside Down?

    NORMAN SOLOMON Executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon — recently back from Kabul — appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” on Sunday. Video is posted here. Questioned about administration policy in Afghanistan, Solomon stated: “We have to compare the rhetoric, where [President Obama] spoke a few weeks ago about development, about governance,…

  • Uninsured Numbers Show Mandate-Based Health Reforms Don’t Work

    Official estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau showing a marginal increase in the number of Americans without health insurance in 2008 — now estimated at 46.3 million, up from 45.7 million in 2007 — mask the true dimensions of the problem, a national doctors’ group said. Physicians for a National Health Program, a membership…

  • Supreme Court and Corporate Power

    ROBERT WEISSMAN, CRAIG HOLMAN, via Angela Bradbery President of Public Citizen, Weissman wrote the piece “Tightening the Corporate Grip: The Stakes at the Supreme Court” about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a case the Supreme Court heard Wednesday that could have far-reaching effects on corporate power. Holman is government ethics lobbyist for Public Citizen.…

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