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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  • NBC Keeps Kucinich Out of Debate

    ISABEL MacDONALD Communications director for the media watch group FAIR, MacDonald said today: “NBC’s exclusion of Kucinich from the Jan. 15 Democratic debate represents a particularly egregious example of preempting voter choice by the GE-owned network. “After inviting Kucinich to the debate, the network arbitrarily changed the criteria for participation, and disinvited him. When a…

  • Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy

    I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. … There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when…

  • White House for Sale?

    CRAIG HOLMAN Holman is government ethics lobbyist for Public Citizen, which has launched the web page White House for Sale that keeps tracks of money to candidates; they just updated their numbers Tuesday, below. He said today: “The practice of bundling, which allows candidates to take unlimited unregulated cash pulled together from connected operatives, has…

  • Suharto’s Legacy

    Reuters is reporting: “Indonesia’s ailing former President Suharto has pneumonia and is developing a blood infection which could lead to blood poisoning, causing a further deterioration in his health, his doctors said on Tuesday. Doctors have been battling to save the 86-year-old former strongman, who ruled the vast Southeast Asian nation for more than three…

  • Bush Trip — Interviews Available

    Bush is continuing his Mideast trip, meeting Tuesday with Saudi King Abdullah and Wednesday with the Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. MADAWI AL-RASHEED Available for a limited number of interviews, Al-Rasheed is author of A History of Saudi Arabia and Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a…

  • Lancet Study Author Assesses New Report on Iraqi Death Toll

    The World Health Organization reports on findings just published in the New England Journal of Medicine: “A large national household survey conducted by the Iraqi government and WHO estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence between March 2003 and June 2006.” LES ROBERTS Roberts is co-author of a study published in October 2006 by the…

  • Former Legal Adviser to Palestinians Blasts Bush

    FRANCIS BOYLE Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle is author of Palestine, Palestinians and International Law. He said today: “Contrary to what many are saying — that Bush has not accomplished much in his trip to the Mideast — he has accomplished a great deal of harm. “Bush called for ‘new…

  • Iraq Airstrikes

    AP reports: “U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives on the southern outskirts of Baghdad within 10 minutes Thursday in one of the biggest airstrikes of the war, flattening what the military called safe havens for al-Qaida in Iraq.” Al Jazeera reports that “a local Sunni tribal leader told Al Jazeera that…

  • * Mideast: Bush and Presidential Race * Rallying against Iran * Elliott Abrams

    STEPHEN ZUNES Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus and author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. He said today: “The only way there can be real progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace is if President Bush is willing to pressure Israel to: 1) suspend its construction of additional…

  • Clinton: Emotion and Policies

    KATHA POLLITT Columnist Pollitt just wrote the piece “Hillary Shows Feeling, Is Slammed,” which states: “Hillary Clinton, long criticized as cold, shows a bit of feeling and is attacked as overly emotional. It’s the latest installment of the ongoing double bind in which if she wears a black pantsuit she’s too masculine and if she…

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