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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  • End of the Internet?

    The Senate has been hearing testimony about Network neutrality on the Internet and is expected to take up the subject in telecommunications legislation next week. MARK COOPER Director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, Cooper said today: “Network neutrality has existed throughout the history of the Internet and created the most dynamic environment…

  • · Rove Walks? · Bush and Permanent Bases in Iraq

    ROBERT PARRY Parry is the founder and editor of ConsortiumNews.com. He wrote the piece “Letting the White House Walk?” last October. Parry said today: “This decision shows that Patrick Fitzgerald has taken a very narrow approach to prosecuting crimes in the course of this investigation.” Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s…

  • Guantanamo and Suicides

    In the aftermath of apparent suicides by three men detained at Guantanamo Bay, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., Commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo, stated: “They are smart, they are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act…

  • Zarqawi

    LORETTA NAPOLEONI Currently in Rome, Napoleoni is available for a limited number of interviews. She is the author of the book Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda’s New Generation. She said today: “Al-Zarqawi is a man we created out of nothing, because, let’s not forget that Al-Zarqawi was presented to the world as the link between…

  • · Palestinian Authority · East Timor

    ALI ABUNIMAH Abunimah wrote the new article “Dangerous Dirty Tricks in Palestine,” in which he states: “Without consulting [Palestinian Authority] Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, [Palestinian President] Abbas announced that Hamas would have 10 days to accept the prisoners’ document without any changes or he would call a referendum. Hamas made clear that…

  • · Congo · Sudan

    MAURICE CARNEY Time magazine’s cover story last week noted: “Simmering conflict in Congo has killed 4 million people since 1998, yet few choose to cover the story.” Executive director of Friends of the Congo, Carney said today: “The central issue of the Congo has long been its enormous wealth and the nexus that exists among…

  • Beyond Haditha

    DAVID MacMICHAEL A disabled veteran of 10 years active Marine Corps service in Korea, MacMichael was a Defense Department consultant from 1965 to 1969 in Southeast Asia. During most of that period he was attached to the office of the Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. In that capacity he reviewed…

  • UN Declaration on AIDS Causes Outrage

    The group ActionAid International is criticizing the declaration coming from the UN AIDS conference taking place in New York City. ActionAid International states that “the declaration does not commit governments to urgently fill the $10 billion funding gap … every year to finance the scaling up towards the goal of universal access.” Among those AIDS…

  • Blix Report

    Today the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission chaired by Hans Blix presented its report “Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The following nuclear disarmament specialists are available for interviews: JOHN BURROUGHS Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, said today:…

  • Deal with Iran?

    SELIG HARRISON Available for a very limited number of interviews, Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and author of five books on nonproliferation and Asian affairs. He said today: “What Iran’s going to say is that they agreed to suspend their uranium enrichment before because the European Union…

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