News Items

  • Media Advisory: Whistleblowers to Speak About Surveillance and Cyber Issues

    “President Barack Obama is set to sign an executive order on Friday aimed at encouraging companies to share more information about cybersecurity threats with the government and each other, a response to attacks like that on Sony Entertainment. … Obama will sign the order at a day-long conference on cybersecurity at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley.”

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  • Delegation of U.S. and UK Whistleblowers in London: News Conference on “Special Surveillance Relationship” — News Advisory

    Whistleblowers from four American and British “national security” agencies will hold a news conference in London on November 21 in a direct challenge to surveillance policies of the U.S. and UK governments. The whistleblowers — from the NSA, FBI, State Department and GCHQ — will speak about the effects of their governments’ policies on freedom of the press and democracy. They are traveling as a delegation co-sponsored by the U.S.-based organizations RootsAction.org and ExposeFacts, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The news conference is being hosted by the Foreign Press Association.

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  • In Response to the Government’s Lynching of James Risen

    It has been a sharp learning curve for Jim Risen, but by having numerous grand juries and two administrations relentlessly hounding him, he has learned how deeply the government’s malevolence descends. But there was always one steadfast assertion he wound not compromise, Jim Risen assured his sources, from the very start of their first encounter, that he would never divulge their identities nor what information they provided him with.

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  • Militarization of U.S. Police: Ferguson, Mo.

    Community policing reforms came about as a corrective to the 1950-60s professional police model which created a large gulf between police and citizens. Few noticed that underlying all the CP rhetoric was a little noticed yet foretelling trend of para-militarism as found in SWAT teams. What we’re witnessing today, though, with the influence of the Dept. of Homeland Security since 9/11 — along with growing emphasis on military hardware and tactics — is the expansion of police militarization throughout entire police departments — and indeed, the entire police institution.

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  • Unconstitutional acts of war in Iraq

    President Obama ignored the wise direction of President George Washington when he casually told the nation — and Congress — that U.S. military forces will engage in acts of war in Iraq for an extended period of weeks and maybe months. Bombing, he said in a brief statement last week, is needed here and there, but he promised there will be no U.S. boots on the ground. … The announcement seemed almost an afterthought as the president headed for vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. He neglected to seek approval of Congress before authorizing bombardment of the military forces of ISIS, the…

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  • News Conference: Edward Snowden’s Passport, Political Asylum and Related Issues

    Ray McGovern, Coleen Rowley and Norman Solomon spoke at this news conference, sponsored by RootsAction.org and hosted by the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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  • NSA Veterans and Whistleblowers Respond to Obama Speech

    Minutes after President Obama’s major address on NSA surveillance on Friday, Jan. 17, the Institute for Public Accuracy held a news conference with noted NSA veterans and whistleblowers.

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  • The War on Poverty at Fifty

    Fifty years after Lyndon B. Johnson made it the centerpiece of his first State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, the War on Poverty remains one of the most embattled—and least understood—of Great Society initiatives.

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  • Edward Snowden: Profile in Courage

    Edward Snowden may go down in history as one of this nation’s most important whistleblowers. He is certainly one of the bravest.

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  • Obama’s Economic Race Legacy

    From the start, President Barack Obama has shown little interest or loyalty in the issues that affect the poor, working class and people of color in the United States. For almost his entire first term he didn’t utter the words poor or poverty. Early on he reminded African Americans: ‘I’m not the president of black America. I’m the president of the United States of America…’

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  • Kosovo War: “Humanitarian Interventionism” Ten Years Later

    March 24 marks the tenth anniversary of the start of the bombing of Yugoslavia by a U.S.-led NATO force. The bombing continued until June 10, 1999. DAVID N. GIBBS Author of the soon-to-be-released book First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Gibbs is an associate professor of history and political science…

  • Saving Money on Health Care

    RONALD LIND, M.D. An anesthesiologist in St. Charles, Iowa, Lind is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and will be at the forum today. Lind will be speaking at a news conference beforehand. He said today: “The single payer ‘Medicare for All’ proposal put forward by Rep. John Conyers had over 90…

  • Beyond the AIG Bonuses

    SARAH ANDERSON Anderson is director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, which just released the report “Beyond the AIG Bonuses: The Taxpayer Subsidies for Executive Excess That Haven’t Yet Hit the Headlines.” Her past pieces include “Executive Pay and the Stimulus Bill,” “The CEO Pay Debate: Myths v Facts” and…

  • Former Senator: “Let the Republicans Filibuster”

    MIKE GRAVEL In the D.C. area this week, Gravel is a former two-term senator from Alaska who ran for president last year. He is author of the book A Political Odyssey. He said today: “Whenever something comes up that [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell is adamantly opposed to, he just threatens a filibuster. Then [Senate…

  • Iraq War Anniversary

    LORETTA ALPER Alper is the producer and co-director of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” a film that documents a pattern of falsehoods disseminated by successive administrations and major media to go to war, as well as a series of rationalizations to keep wars going. The film highlights the…

  • Assessing the El Salvador Election

    The Los Angeles Times reported: “Mauricio Funes, an affable political moderate running on behalf of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, claimed victory after nearly complete returns gave him a lead that experts said was insurmountable.” The following are in El Salvador and are reachable via Jesse Stewart [[email protected]], who works with…

  • Can Single Payer Get a Fair Hearing?

    DEB RICHTER Chair of Vermont Health Care for All, Richter is a physician in rural Vermont. She said today: “Vermont Governor Jim Douglas and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick have been asked by President Obama to host a regional New England health care summit at the University of Vermont on Tuesday, March 17. We do not…

  • How to Stop AIG’s Bonuses

    Four leading analysts on finance Monday issued a statement outlining how to stop the AIG bonuses: “AIG’s decision to pay out at least $165 million in bonuses takes the bank bailout program’s abuse of the public trust to a whole new level. “This act simply cannot be allowed to stand. The only question is how…

  • What Should the Global Economy Look Like?

    Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 countries are gathering for meetings in Britain. HA-JOON CHANG In the U.S. until Sunday, Chang will then be in the UK where he is Cambridge University economics professor. He is author of Bad Samaritans — The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of…

  • Beyond Madoff

    The cartoonist Tom Toles makes the point that a main difference between Bernard Madoff and other Wall Street “charlatans” is that he’s admitting guilt. CHUCK COLLINS Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, is co-author of “Paying For a Strong Economy: Seven New Revenue Sources That Can Revitalize America and Reduce Financial Speculation.”…

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