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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  • Congress and Israel: Two Views

    STEPHEN ZUNES Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus and author of the book Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.” His most recent piece is “Jihad Against Hezbollah,” in which he writes: “Just as Washington’s concerns about the threat from Iraq grew in inverse correlation to its military…

  • Behind the Moves at the UN

    BRENDAN SMITH JEREMY BRECHER Legal scholar Brendan Smith and historian Jeremy Brecher are co-authors of the recent article “A Road to Peace in Lebanon?” and co-editors of the book In The Name Of Democracy. Brecher said today: “If the U.S.-French Security Council proposal crashes, that will create enormous pressure for a plan — pushed by…

  • Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings

    MARYLIA KELLEY Kelley is executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) located in Livermore, California. She said today: “On August 6 and 9, 61 years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people from around the globe will gather to stop nuclear weapons and war.…

  • Claims vs. Facts on Qana

    Today, the Washington Post ran an op-ed headlined “The Rules of War,” by Moshe Yaalon, former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and now a distinguished military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.(Full article) Yaalon was head of Israeli army intelligence when Israel bombed a civilian shelter in Qana in…

  • Real Consequences of War: · Health · Environment · Terrorist Groups

    CESAR CHELALA Chelala, an international public health consultant, wrote a recent article titled “In Gaza and Lebanon, Children Have Become Pawns,” which states: “Despite a formidable set of international laws protecting children’s rights, including the Convention of the Rights of the Child signed by Israel, Palestinian children are still paying a high price in the…

  • Castro and Cuba

    FRANCISCO G. ARUCA Host of a daily Spanish-language radio program, Radio Progreso in Miami, Aruca said today: “The Cuban-American community is not a monolith. Many of us are in favor of lifting the embargo and having a dialogue and negotiations.” More Information SAUL LANDAU Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and…

  • Will the UN Stop This War?

    ROBERT NAIMAN Naiman is national coordinator of the new D.C.-based advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, which issued a statement today saying: “Under international law the UN Security Council is supposed to act to stop crimes against peace but [it] cannot do so in this case because it is paralyzed by the veto of the Bush…

  • Qana Bombing Aftermath

    JUDITH BROWN CHOMSKY Judith Brown Chomsky is a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is litigating a class action lawsuit in U.S. federal court in connection with Israel’s 1996 shelling of a UN compound also in Qana, Lebanon, which killed more than 100 civilians. She said today: “Ten years ago the U.S.…

  • Critical Voices on Lebanon

    RANA EL-KHATIB Now living in Beirut, el-Khatib is working with the YMCA focusing on getting relief and medical supplies to displaced people in Lebanon. She wrote a recent article, “Israel Sows Seeds of Hatred,” which was published in the Toronto Star. Her family is originally from Haifa. A book of her poetry is titled Branded:…

  • Exxon: Record Prices, Record Profits

    AP is reporting: “Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday it earned $10.36 billion in the second quarter, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. “The earnings figure was 36 percent above the profit it reported a year ago. High oil prices helped boost the company’s revenue by 12 percent to…

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