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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  • Did North Korea Break the Rules? Does the U.S.? Does Israel?

    In Prague on Sunday, Obama addressed nuclear policy, saying that North Korea “broke the rules once again.” Today, speaking in Turkey, he said the U.S. does not seek conflict with Muslim countries. JOHN FEFFER Feffer just wrote the piece “What’s Up with North Korea?” — which states: “North Korea has signed the appropriate international protocols…

  • NATO; Wall Street; Nevada Protests Against War

    REINER BRAUN Braun is in Strasbourg, where NATO meetings are being held. He is with the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and is able to arrange media interviews with many others from various countries protesting against NATO. The group is a leading organization in a broad anti-NATO coalition, which recently put out a…

  • G-20 Economics

    PAT DEVINE Devine is an honorary research fellow in social science at the University of Manchester. His books include Democracy and Economic Planning: The Political Economy of a Self-Governing Society, An Introduction to Industrial Economics and the just-published Feel Bad Britain: How to Make It Better. He is able to assess the G-20 meeting, global…

  • Why Does NATO Still Exist?

    JAN OBERG Currently in Sweden, Oberg will be in Istanbul from Sunday evening to Tuesday, overlapping with Obama’s time there. He is director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research. He said today: “Whatever reasonable purpose NATO might have served has long ended. For NATO, 60 is a good age to retire. It…

  • With Obama in Europe: Critical Perspectives

    MARTIN KHOR Available for a limited number of interviews, Khor is executive director of the South Center, a think tank of developing countries. He recently presented a paper to the UN, which begins: “The extraordinarily serious global economic crisis has its origins in the developed countries. Developing countries are not responsible, but they are severely…

  • “Globalization from Below”

    ARUN GUPTA Gupta is editor of The Indypendent newspaper in New York City focusing on economics. He recently wrote the piece “The Great Unraveling.” Gupta said today: “A different reality awaits President Obama as heads to Europe to meet with other leaders of the G-20 … On Sunday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called on…

  • Afghanistan and Pakistan

    SONALI KOLHATKAR Co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, Kolhatkar said today in response to Obama’s statement this morning: “When the president talks about ‘defeating’ Al Qaeda, it is crucial to ask what exactly that means. Does it mean killing every last member of Al Qaeda? When the president talks about…

  • Mexico and the “War on Drugs”

    JOHN GIBLER This week, Gibler is going back and forth between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. He is author of the new book Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt. Gibler said today: “As the violence related to drug trafficking plagues Mexico, the United States government still refuses to acknowledge the failure of the so-called…

  • Assessing Nuclear Power 30 Years After Three Mile Island

    HARVEY WASSERMAN Author of the new book Solartopia: Our Green-Powered Earth, AD 2030 (which includes an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), Wasserman just wrote the piece “People Died at Three Mile Island,” which states: “In March of 1980, I went into the region and compiled a range of interviews clearly indicating widespread health damage…

  • Rule by “Hedge Fund Democrats”

    NOMI PRINS Prins just wrote the piece “Geithner’s Plan: Pure Plunder” for Mother Jones magazine. Prins is a senior fellow at Demos and is the author of two books: Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and Jacked: How Conservatives Are Picking Your Pocket. She is a former investment banker turned journalist. She used…

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