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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  • Freeman’s Attack on “Israel Lobby”

    Amb. Chas Freeman, who Tuesday said that he no longer accepts an offer to chair the National Intelligence Council, has released a statement reading in part: “The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods,…

  • Healthcare Reform and the “Marginalization of the Majority”

    RUSSELL MOKHIBER America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main Washington lobbying group for the health insurance corporations, is holding its annual meeting Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Washington. Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, Mokhiber organized a protest Wednesday outside the meeting. He recently wrote the piece “March 11: Burn Your Health Insurance Bill Day”…

  • “Capitalism Hits the Fan”

    RICHARD WOLFF Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Wolff is featured in a new film produced by the Media Education Foundation, “Capitalism Hits the Fan.” He said today: “We need to see this crisis historically to get a sense of how serious this is. In every decade from 1820 to 1970,…

  • How to Make Bush Accountable

    AP reports: “Senate Democrats on Wednesday suggested Republicans should join their call for a nonpartisan ‘truth commission’ to probe whether the Bush administration abused its power, or face partisan congressional investigations.” ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ Rodriguez just wrote the piece “A Call for Truth, Reconciliation and Justice Post-Bush.” The author of several books and a research associate…

  • “How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America”

    ROBERT WEISSMAN HARVEY ROSENFIELD Weissman, director of Essential Information, is lead author of a 231-page report, “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” released today. He said today: “The financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence-purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation…

  • Health Care Summit: Single Payer Excluded?

    RUSSELL MOKHIBER Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, Mokhiber just wrote the piece “Obama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead,” which states: “President Obama’s White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table. Obama doesn’t even want to discuss it. “Take the case of Congressman John…

  • Why Not Really Tax the Rich?

    GAR ALPEROVITZ Available for a limited number of interviews, Alperovitz is co-author of the new book Unjust Desserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back. He said today: “The Obama effort is positive, but it needs to be put in larger perspective to understand its limitations: The…

  • Health Care’s Central Role

    ELLEN SHAFFER Shaffer is co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis, focusing on health policy. She said today: “Obama said his plan will be only a ‘downpayment on what we must have: quality affordable health care for every American.’ He stuck with the program for cost control he campaigned on: large investments in preventive care…

  • Prosecution of Bush Administration Officials

    A host of organizations today released the following statement: “We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a nonpartisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice…

  • Nationalize Failing Banks?

    In the last few days, many Americans have been surprised by the sudden willingness of Republicans, such as “Lindsey Graham, Alan Greenspan, John McCain and a bevy of scholars and publicists on the payroll of the Peter G. Peterson Institute” to endorse bank nationalization, write Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson in a new article out…

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