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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  • Supreme Court’s Guantanamo Decision

    BARBARA OLSHANSKY Olshansky is director counsel of the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been representing several of the Guantanamo detainees including Jumah Al Dossari, who has repeatedly attempted suicide. She said today: “This is a major victory for our democratic institutions and for our organization. The Supreme Court…

  • Gaza and Israel

    NASEER ARURI Aruri is chancellor professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and author of the book Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine. He said today: “Virtually every one of the nearly 100 Hamas officials and lawmakers that Israel has taken prisoner has called for the release…

  • · Bomb and Run — for Office · Scuttling Peace Plans · The Oil Timeline

    JAMES ABOUREZK A former U.S. Senator from South Dakota, Abourezk said today: “Bush clearly wants to have images of U.S. troops coming home before the election. During the Vietnam War, when Nixon felt the pressure to pull troops out, he resorted to increased bombing, putting civilian lives at high risk. Nixon wanted to ‘turn things…

  • Realities of Gaza

    MARC GARLASCO Garlasco is senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch and has recently returned from Gaza, where he investigated the June 9 shelling deaths of a Palestinian family on a beach there. The Israeli military inquiry disavowed responsibility for the bombing. Garlasco said: “An investigation that refuses to look at contradictory evidence can hardly…

  • Telecom Giants: Their Way on the Information Superhighway

    The Senate is considering telecommunications legislation which would end “network neutrality” and give the telecom industry additional powers. The New York Times reports today that AT&T “has revised its privacy policy for its television and Internet customers, asserting that the personal information it collects is owned by the company.” Full article The following analysts are…

  • Congress on Iraq and War: Lax and Spend?

    WILLIAM D. HARTUNG In the June 20 article “Tanker Inquiry Finds Rumsfeld’s Attention Was Elsewhere,” the Washington Post reported: “A series of reports … indicate that five years into the Bush administration, the department’s system of buying new weapons is broken and dysfunctional… ‘DOD is simply not positioned to deliver high-quality products in a timely…

  • An Impoverished Minimum Wage?

    Congress is deliberating on the minimum wage. The following analysts are available for interviews: HOLLY SKLAR Co-author of the report “A Just Minimum Wage: Good For Workers, Business and Our Future” and the book Raise The Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All Of Us, Sklar said today: “Childcare workers and security guards struggle…

  • Coming to Ramadi: Terror From the Skies?

    Reuters is reporting: “Helicopters flew over the Iraqi town of Ramadi and warplanes could be heard screaming overhead as U.S. troops hunted down insurgents in the rebel stronghold on Monday, a Reuters witness said.” The following specialists are available for interviews: DAHR JAMAIL Jamail, who was in Fallujah while it was under siege in 2004,…

  • Iranian Peace Offers

    Sunday’s Financial Times story “Iran ‘Ready To Limit Nuclear Programme’” reports that “Iran’s leadership is ready to limit its nuclear programme but will not suspend uranium enrichment as a precondition for talks, two regime insiders have told the Financial Times.” Full article Also on Sunday, the Washington Post reported — under the headline “In 2003,…

  • Military Personnel Refusing War

    EHREN WATADA Available for a limited number of interviews, First Lt. Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to the war in Iraq. He said today: “I am wholeheartedly opposed to the continued war in Iraq, the deception used to wage this war, and the lawlessness that has pervaded every aspect…

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