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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  • “The Truth About Veteran Suicides”

    The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee is holding a hearing Tuesday at 10 a.m., “The Truth About Veteran Suicides.” It will be webcast on their website. Among those testifying is Steve Rathbun from the University of Georgia, who has been cited in a CBS News investigation on veteran suicides: “In 2005 … in just those 45…

  • Gas Prices

    JOAN CLAYBROOK TYSON SLOCUM Claybrook is president of Public Citizen. Slocum is director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. Claybrook said today: “Oil executives and speculators are getting rich on the backs of American consumers. Indeed, on average, it costs a company such as Exxon Mobil about $20 to extract a barrel of oil, which in…

  • McCain Health Plan

    The following physicians — members of Physicians for a National Health Program — are each available for a limited number of interviews. AARON CARROLL, MD Carroll is assistant professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research and the Indiana University School of Medicine. ROCKY WHITE, MD White, who comes…

  • Escalation of U.S. Air War

    In a front-page piece headlined “U.S. Role Deepens in Sadr City,” the Washington Post reports today: “In the Sadr City clash, the U.S. soldiers responded by firing rockets armed with high-explosive, 200-pound warheads, killing 28 fighters, [Lt. Col. Steve] Stover said. In a separate incident in Sadr City, a fixed-wing aircraft dropped a bomb at…

  • Aftermath of Supreme Court Voter ID Decision

    JUSTIN LEVITT WENDY WEISER Levitt is counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and author of the paper “The Truth About Voter Fraud.” Weiser is deputy director of the Center’s Democracy Program. Following the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision Monday on the Indiana voter ID law, the Center issued a statement: “Under Indiana’s law, voters must…

  • Rev. Wright: Dialogue Beyond the Sound Bites

    Rev. JOHN DECKENBACK Rev. GRAYLAN S. HAGLER Deckenback is conference minister for The United Church of Christ (the same denomination as Rev. Jeremiah Wright). Hagler is national president of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice of The United Church of Christ and senior minister of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington,…

  • Police Brutality and Racism

    AP reports: “Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.” DE LACY DAVIS The founder and president of Black Cops Against Police Brutality and a retired…

  • Food Crisis and Biofuels

    The Washington Post reports on its front page today: “More than 100 million people are being driven deeper into poverty by a ‘silent tsunami’ of sharply rising food prices, which have sparked riots around the world and threaten U.N.-backed feeding programs for 20 million children, the top U.N. food official said Tuesday.” MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA…

  • Fallout from New York Times “Pentagon Pundits” Story

    The recent New York Times front-page article “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” discloses Pentagon records which “reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated. “Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts [on TV] as ‘message force multipliers’ or ‘surrogates’ who could be counted on…

  • Earth Day: * War * Toxics

    STEVE KRETZMANN Kretzmann is founder and executive director of Oil Change International. He co-authored the recently released report “A Climate of War,” which found: “The projected total U.S. spending on the Iraq war could cover all of the global investments in renewable power generation that are needed between now and 2030 in order to halt…

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