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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  • Russia and Oil

    MICHAEL KLARE Klare’s most recent book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, and he is featured in the recently released documentary “Blood and Oil.” Klare said today: “The current conflict between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia has been widely viewed as a throwback to…

  • The “Demonization of China”

    DIANA PEI WU Diana Pei Wu is a co-founder of Chin Jurn Wor Ping (Moving Forward for Peace), a San Francisco area network of progressive Chinese Americans. CHARLES KERNAGHAN Kernaghan is director of the National Labor Committee, which has just released a report titled “Olympic Sweatshop: Speedo Production in China Breaks Records for Worker Abuse.”…

  • Olympics

    ROBERT LIPSYTE “Jock Culture” correspondent for Tomdispatch.com, Lipsyte is author of several books on sports, most recently Yellow Flag, a novel about stock car racing. He said today: “The focus has unfairly been upon China rather than the true Evil Empire, the Olympic Nation-State, which from the beginning (the all-male, naked Greek games) has been…

  • Truman: Hiroshima a “Military Base”

    The U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. On Aug. 9, it dropped another on Nagasaki and President Harry Truman delivered a radio address in which he falsely claimed: “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in…

  • Evidence on Anthrax Case Questioned

    The New York Times today published a piece “Anthrax Evidence Called Mostly Circumstantial.” MERYL NASS, MD A leading expert on anthrax, Nass knew the government scientist Bruce Ivins who died in an apparent suicide last week. She has a web page and blog. Nass said today: “The Justice Department has failed to provide to the…

  • Exxon’s Record Profit

    AP is reporting: “Exxon Mobil Corp. reported second-quarter earnings of $11.68 billion Thursday, the biggest quarterly profit ever by any U.S. corporation, but the results were well short of Wall Street expectations and its shares fell.” TYSON SLOCUM Slocum is director of Public Citizen‘s Energy Program. He said today: “Contrary to what Bush is claiming,…

  • After Collapse of WTO Talks

    DEBORAH JAMES Just back in D.C. from observing the WTO talks in Geneva, James is director of international programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and has been working extensively with farmers and trade unions. James said today: “Given what’s been on the table, no deal is better than a bad deal. A…

  • Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Still Backing Predatory Lending?

    Today, President George W. Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Last week, thousands of people lined up in Washington, D.C. to have the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America help them restructure their mortgages in the group’s “Save the Dream” event. The group, which has long criticized practices by Fannie Mae and…

  • Pakistan: Talks and Bombing

    PERVEZ HOODBHOY On a short visit to the U.S., the Pakistan-based Hoodbhoy recently wrote the piece “Anti-Americanism in Pakistan and the Taliban Menace.” He said today: “There was an attack yesterday in Pakistan by a U.S. Predator missile. The stories about that strike are running side-by-side in the Pakistani press along with Bush’s statements, made…

  • Pelosi Claims No Bush Crime, No Cause for Impeachment

    The following exchange occurred on “The View” on ABC this morning: Co-host Joy Behar: “You’ve ruled against impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney. And now Kucinich is trying to pass that. Why do you, why do you insist on not impeaching these people so that the world and America can really see the crimes that…

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