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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  • New Orleans

    CHRIS KROMM SUE STURGIS Executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, Kromm is currently in New Orleans and posting on the group’s “Facing South” blog. He said today: “Gustav exposes how vulnerable the Gulf Coast still is three years after Katrina, from the levees to coastal land loss. Even if this one didn’t cause…

  • Palin’s Record

    SHANNYN MOORE KELLY WALTERS Moore co-hosts a talkshow on KWHL in Anchorage. She said today: “Palin called into our show 45 minutes before going on stage with John McCain — and she said we were the only outlet she was calling. … Palin is against abortion rights even in the case of incest and rape…

  • Martin Luther King: “Our Only Hope…”

    Sen. Barack Obama speaks at Invesco Field in Denver to accept the Democratic Party presidential nomination tonight, the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the National March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Here are excerpts from King’s sermon “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break…

  • Assessing Party Conventions

    GWENDOLYN MINK Co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy and author of the forthcoming Feminism and Inequality, Mink is scrutinizing various portions of the Democratic Party platform on her blog. She was featured on IPA’s recent news release titled “Is Obama Clinton 2.0?.” ELIZABETH SANDERS Sanders…

  • Biden and Dividing Iraq

    Reuters recently reported: “Across racial and religious boundaries, Iraqi politicians … bemoaned Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama’s choice of running mate, known in Iraq as the author of a 2006 plan to divide the country into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.” VERA BEAUDIN SAEEDPOUR Editor of Kurdish Life and the International Journal of Kurdish Studies, Saeedpour…

  • Obama and Afghanistan

    Reuters reports: “The United Nations said on Tuesday it had found convincing evidence that 90 Afghan civilians, most of them children, were killed in air strikes by U.S.-led coalition forces in western Afghanistan last week.” SONALI KOLHATKAR Co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, Kolhatkar said today: “The war in Afghanistan…

  • D.C. Statehood Out of Democratic Platform

    ANISE JENKINS Jenkins is with the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition (Free D.C). She said today: “Non-voting U.S. House Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton speaks at the Democratic convention Tuesday night. She is the vice-chair of the DNC Platform Committee this year as she was in 2004. “Statehood for D.C. was dropped from the…

  • * Health Care * Michelle Obama

    CLAUDIA FEGAN, MD Co-author of the book Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience, Fegan is former president of Physicians for a National Health Program. She said today: “The reason I’m at the convention is that we have millions more people who are uninsured than when George Bush became…

  • Biden: The Senator from MasterCard/MBNA?

    JONATHAN TASINI Tasini is executive director of the Labor Research Association and editor of the blog “Working Life.” He just wrote the pieces “Biden and Bankruptcy” and “Is Joe Biden Good For Labor? Mostly, Yes.” DANNY SCHECHTER Director of the new film “In Debt We Trust” and author of the new book Plunder, Schechter said…

  • Biden: What Kind of Foreign Policy “Experience”?

    STEPHEN ZUNES Professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus, Zunes will be in Denver for the first few days of the Democratic Convention. His recent pieces include “Obama’s Right Turn?” He said today: “One of Obama’s strongest distinctions from McCain was his wisdom and courage…

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