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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  • *Aristide

    Some news outlets have reported that Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned his democratically elected presidency in Haiti on Sunday. But TransAfrica Forum founder Randall Robinson told CNN during an interview Monday afternoon that he’d received a phone call from Aristide — and the Haitian leader said that he was “abducted by 20 American soldiers.” BILL FLETCHER Fletcher…

  • Manipulating the U.N.: Interviews Available * Spying on Annan to Wage War * Controlling Haiti

    Yesterday Clare Short, a former British cabinet minister, said that Britain spied on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. Short’s revelations came the day after the British government dropped charges against Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee who in early 2003 leaked a U.S. National Security Agency…

  • With Charges Dropped in U.N. Spying Case, Bush and Blair Governments Face Scrutiny

    “I have no regrets, and I would do it again,” former British intelligence employee Katharine Gun said on Wednesday in London, just after the government dropped charges against her for violating the Official Secrets Act. In early March 2003, the Observer newspaper in Britain published a U.S. National Security Agency memo describing a “surge” in…

  • *Haiti * Corporatizing Iraq * Sharon’s Wall

    EUGENIA CHARLES-MATHURIN MALINDA MILES Co-Director of Haiti Reborn/Quixote Center, Charles-Mathurin said today: “The United States has helped create this opposition to destabilize and undermine Haiti’s nascent democracy…. The U.S. is the only party which can bring to the negotiation table these groups which include members of the CIA-linked FRAPH death squads and the former brutal…

  • Politics of Economics: * Outsourcing * Jobs and Unemployment

    DOUG HENWOOD Author of After the New Economy, Henwood said today: “It seems the default explanation for the weak state of the job market more than two years after the official end of the recession is outsourcing. Or, in the crude form, foreigners are stealing our jobs. Reality is a lot more complicated than that.…

  • Power Struggles in Haiti and Venezuela: Interviews Available

    BILL FLETCHER Executive director of TransAfrica, Fletcher said today: “In recent weeks, the Haitian crisis has been deepening. In addition to mass protests against President Aristide, demanding his resignation, there have been military assaults in several cities and what appears to be a move toward insurrection. The alleged rebels have been described in different ways,…

  • Scandal on Pre-War U.N. Spying by U.S. Now Mushrooming in Mexico and Chile

    Statements from Mexican and Chilean government officials in recent days are bringing renewed interest to the subject of U.S. spying at the United Nations in early 2003 prior to the Iraq war. The story first broke in March 2003 when the Observer newspaper in London published a U.S. National Security Agency memo describing a “surge”…

  • New Support for British Whistleblower Katharine Gun

    Members of Congress today released an open letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair in support of Katharine Gun, the former British intelligence employee who faces two years in prison for leaking a memo to the press that exposed a U.S. surveillance “surge” against countries on the U.N. Security Council aimed at securing authorization for…

  • Bush’s Nuclear Proposal: Hypocrisy Charged

    JOHN BURROUGHS Burroughs is executive director of the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy. He said this afternoon: “While Bush proposes ad hoc measures to limit the capacity of other countries to produce nuclear materials usable in reactors or bombs, his administration has yet to agree to start negotiations on a verified treaty (the…

  • * Bush: A Call for Censure * Prosecuting Protestors

    TREVOR FITZGIBBON Fitzgibbon is a contact person for a campaign being launched today by MoveOn.org and the national coalition Win Without War to censure President George W. Bush for misleading the American people in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. This afternoon a news conference at the National Press Club included a father of…

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