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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  • Movement on Health Care Reform?

    DAVID HIMMELSTEIN STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER Himmelstein and Woolhandler are professors of medicine at Harvard University and the co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program. Woolhandler said today: “Grassroots, single-payer activists successfully pushed the Democratic Party Platform Committee to propose ‘guaranteed health care for all.’ This is a huge improvement from their previous language that merely…

  • 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…

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