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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  • Bush and Nukes in India

    President Bush will be visiting India and Pakistan this week. A major agenda item is a nuclear agreement between the U.S. and India. The following analysts are available for interviews. (India is 10.5 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.) M. V. RAMANA Faculty member at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in…

  • Sectarianism in Iraq: Roots and Alternatives

    HADANI DITMARS Ditmars is the author of the just-released book Dancing in the No Fly Zone: A Woman’s Journey Through Iraq and has covered Iraq since 1997. She said today: “Pre-invasion Iraq despite the twin tyrannies of sanctions and Saddam had been a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-lingual society. The people self-identified as Iraqis first, not…

  • Port Security

    Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates, is slated to buy a British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which runs major commercial operations at ports in six U.S. cities. PRATAP CHATTERJEE Chatterjee is executive director of CorpWatch and was in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates last month. He…

  • Execution and Medical Ethics: “Do No Harm”

    AP reports that the execution of Michael Angelo Morales, scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Tuesday in California, was delayed “after two anesthesiologists refused to participate because of ethical concerns about their involvement.” COREY WEINSTEIN, M.D. A doctor in private practice in California and a correctional medical consultant, Weinstein said today: “I was on the American Public…

  • Abu Ghraib

    AIDAN DELGADO Delgado was with the 320th Military Police Company at Abu Ghraib; he is now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. More Information JENNIFER HARBURY Harbury is the director of the Stop Torture Permanently (STOP) Campaign and author of the recent book Truth, Torture, and the American Way. More Information LILA RAJIVA…

  • · Haiti · Iran · Egypt

    BILL FLETCHER Fletcher is the president of TransAfrica Forum and is available for interviews about the Haitian elections. More Information MUHAMMAD SAHIMI Sahimi is professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California and co-author, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, of the recent op-ed “Defusing Iran with Democracy.” More Information SHERIF HETATA…

  • Response to Katrina: “One Failure After Another”

    MALCOLM SUBER Suber works with the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund. He said today: “It wasn’t Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, it was the government failure on the levees. And it’s been one failure after another since. The government has failed to ensure that people can return to their communities and now FEMA is evicting…

  • Medicare: Rich HMOs, Sick Patients

    STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER Associate professor of medicine at Harvard University, Woolhandler said today: “The Bush health agenda is to privatize Medicare — to shift the taxpapers’ money away from sick patients and toward the drug and insurance industries. The Medicare Part D bill included over $40 billion in excess payments to HMOs. Because the Medicare Part…

  • Military Spending: How Big? How Effective?

    CINDY WILLIAMS Principal research scientist at the Security Studies Program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Williams is editor of the books Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century and Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System. She said today: “In terms of military spending, we still have not…

  • Cartoon Controversy: Beyond the Caricatures

    AS’AD ABUKHALIL AbuKhalil has been writing extensively about the cartoon controversy on his blog. He said today: “The double and triple standards of Western governments are quite clear, even if you take ‘freedom of expression’ as a criterion of analysis. Al-Manar TV, for example, has been banned from Europe and the U.S. … [but] European…

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