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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  • After Step Aside Joe — Now What?

    “We’re glad to see that Joe Biden has finally ended his presidential run. When we launched our ‘Step Aside Joe’ campaign 20 months ago, we’d hoped he would withdraw early enough for there to be an open primary process like in 2020, allowing the Democratic Party to consolidate behind a candidate strong enough to repel…

  • World Court Rules Overwhelmingly Against Israel’s Occupation

    “The World Court has just rejected all Israeli, U.S. and western objections, ruled that the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (and all settlements), is entirely unlawful and declares Israel is committing racial segregation/apartheid in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories.] Importantly, they also ruled that the Oslo agreements do not…

  • J.D. Vance on Abortion Privacy

    J.D. Vance pressured federal regulators to kill a privacy rule that prevents police from accessing the medical records of people seeking abortions.

  • As World Court Rules on the Israeli Occupation, the U.S. Refuses to Recognize the Geneva Conventions

    The Genocide Convention case is ongoing and has resulted in Orders by the ICJ for Israel to stop its offensive in Rafah, which Israel and the U.S. have continued to ignore.

  • * RNC Protests * “Wars Overseas Will Come Home”

    “The wars I took part in, Afghanistan and Iraq, were waged by the U.S. under banners of freedom and democracy.”

  • The Only Kind of “Political Violence” All U.S. Politicians Oppose

    “A bipartisan sampling of the world’s greatest perpetrators and enablers of political violence has rushed to condemn political violence”

  • Election Denialism as a National Security Issue

    A recent poll found that two out of three Americans are concerned that political violence could follow the November election. According to election integrity experts, the public fears multiple kinds of election-related violence: pre-election, election day, and post-election. 

  • Israel’s Famine, Ethnic Cleansing and Settlement Plans Proceeding

    Haaretz reports in “Road to Redemption: How Israel’s War Against Hamas Turned Into a Springboard for Jewish Settlement in Gaza” that: The army’s activities in the occupied areas are diverse: expanding military bases, building infrastructure and even paving roads, all while under persistent Hamas fire. Based on satellite imagery analysis and other open sources, Haaretz…

  • What Does the Chevron Doctrine’s Overruling Mean for Disabled People?

    The future of public agencies is uncertain after the Supreme Court handed down the decision to overrule the Chevron doctrine. Experts say that disabled Americans will be disproportionately impacted by the decision. 

  • U.S. and NATO Give Canada “Marching Orders”

    She said today: “NATO has militarized Canadian foreign policy. Canada no longer does peacekeeping. Canada is at its lowest level in 30 years for peacekeeping with only 49 Canadian soldiers on United Nations peace support operations. Instead, Canada has over 1,000 soldiers leading a NATO battle group in Latvia. Over the 25 years, Canada has…

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