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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  • 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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