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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  • Iranian Election Stolen?

    PATRICK DOHERTY, via Kate Brown Deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, Doherty co-wrote today’s Washington Post piece “The Iranian People Speak” with Ken Ballen of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion. The piece states: “The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people.…

  • Does the AMA Represent Doctors?

    President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak at the American Medical Association in Chicago on Monday. AARON CARROLL, M.D., M.S. Lead author of a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on doctors’ views on a national health program, Carroll is associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Health Policy and…

  • Soldier Refusing Deployment to Afghanistan

    VICTOR AGOSTO Available for a limited number of interviews, Agosto, a soldier based at Fort Hood in Texas, is publicly refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan. He recently wrote on military forms: “There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any…

  • Iranian Election

    MUHAMMAD SAHIMI Sahimi is professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California. Several of his articles about the election are available here. He also recently wrote a New York Times oped titled “Iran’s Power Struggle.” He contrasted Iran’s election system with U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. NIKI AKHAVAN Akhavan is…

  • Holocaust Museum Shooting

    LEONARD ZESKIND Zeskind is author of Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. More Information DAVID NEIWERT Neiwert is author of the just-released book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right as well as three other books on right-wing extremism and its effects on…

  • $200 Billion Supplemental: * Afghanistan * IMF and European Banks

    The current version of the supplemental spending bill contains about $100 billion for war in Iraq and Afghanistan and also about $100 billion for the IMF. A House vote in May passed with overwhelming Republican support and 51 Democrats voting against — but this did not include the IMF funding, which Republicans are opposing. This…

  • Congress Hears Single Payer

    On Wednesday, a House subcommittee dealing with health is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option” at 10:30 a.m. Also on Wednesday, there will be a briefing on healthcare reform, “How Do We Pay For It?” at 2237 Rayburn House Office Building at 1:30 p.m. Interviews are available with…

  • Hamas Letter to Obama

    Obama administration envoy George Mitchell is traveling to the Mideast. Rep. Donna Edwards recently returned from Gaza. As Obama was traveling to Cairo, the Palestinian group Hamas, which won the most recent Palestinian election, sent a letter to President Obama through the feminist peace group CODEPINK, which just had a delegation in Gaza. Here is…

  • European Perspectives: * Foreign Policy * Economy

    PATRICK SEALE Seale is a British journalist now living in France and a leading expert on the Mideast. His books include Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East. His most recent piece is titled “A New Middle East Alliance.” More Information ALBERT SCHARENBERG Scharenberg is a lecturer at the John F. Kennedy Institute at the…

  • Obama in 2002 on Egypt and Saudi Arabia

    “Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.” — Barack Obama,…

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