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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  • Petraeus to Target Iran?

    GARETH PORTER Porter, author of Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, just wrote the piece “Petraeus Testimony to Defend False ‘Proxy War’ Line,” which states: “Based on preliminary indications of his spin on the surprisingly effective armed resistance to the joint U.S.-Iraqi ‘Operation Knights Assault’ in Basra, Petraeus…

  • Clinton and Obama Supporting Scaled-Down Occupation in Iraq

    JOSHUA HOLLAND Holland just wrote the piece “Obama and Hillary Spin a ‘Big Lie’ About Iraq,” which states: “On the campaign trail, the two candidates often speak of bringing the troops home and ending the war, and Democratic primary voters, 80 percent of whom want U.S. troops out of Iraq within 12 months, reward them…

  • Since MLK: 40 Years in the Wilderness?

    Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis 40 years ago, on April 4, 1968. After his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, King accelerated and broadened his activism, emphasizing economics and militarism as well as racism. The following analysts can speak to the many aspects of King’s work and legacy in today’s context:…

  • Newly Disclosed Torture Memo

    The Washington Post reports today in its lead story, about a 2003 Justice Department memo: “Sent to the Pentagon’s general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of…

  • Bush and NATO

    AP reports that “President Bush on Wednesday [in Bucharest, Romania] renewed urgent calls for NATO to start the admission process for Ukraine and Georgia despite a split among alliance members and fierce Russian objections.” Bush was just in Ukraine and is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir Putin in Russia on April 6. Sen. TINY…

  • New Study: Majority of Doctors Want National Health Insurance

    The largest survey ever conducted among doctors on the issue of healthcare financing reform just found that 59 percent of doctors “support government legislation to establish national health insurance,” while 32 percent oppose it and 9 percent are neutral. Such plans typically involve a single, federally administered social insurance fund that guarantees healthcare coverage for…

  • The Fed’s Dealings: For Public or Private Interest?

    THOMAS FERGUSON ROBERT A. JOHNSON Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author or coauthor of many books and articles, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (University of Chicago Press). Johnson was previously a managing director at…

  • Escalating Warfare in Iraq

    The New York Times website reports this afternoon: “Fighting in two of Iraq’s largest cities threatens to destabilize a long-term truce that had helped reduce the level of violence in the five-year-old war.” Raed Jarrar, currently in Washington, D.C., is available for interviews. RAED JARRAR Jarrar, who was born and raised in Iraq, is Iraq…

  • Iraq War: The Real Cost

    In the recently released book The Three Trillion Dollar War, Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz conclude that the Bush administration drastically underestimated the economic consequences of the Iraq war: “By the administration’s own reckoning … the cost of the Iraq war, counting only the money officially appropriated, will soon be some $600 billion. … But…

  • McCain: Consistent on Iraq War?

    “I believe that success will be fairly easy.” — John McCain (9/24/02, CNN) “I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.” — John McCain (9/29/02, CNN) “The American people … were led to believe that this would be some kind of a day at the beach which…

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