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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  • Assessing the Blackout: Interviews Available

    GREG PALAST Palast is coauthor of Regulation and Democracy (a book that includes analysis of power markets) and author of the best-selling The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He said today: “Like some sort of mediaeval doctors bleeding their patient, the Bush administration keeps pushing for more deregulation when it’s been the problem — not…

  • *Blackout * New Nuclear Weapons

    LLOYD J. DUMAS Dumas is the author of Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies and is a professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. He said today: “The massive failure that knocked out power to the Northeast and Midwest U.S. and Canada looks like the disastrous blackouts of 1965 and…

  • * Schwarzenegger and Ken Lay Meeting * Perspectives on Recall

    DOUG HELLER CARMEN BALBER Consumer advocates with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Heller and Balber said today: “The California energy crisis was the culmination of a decade-long push to remove consumer protections and regulatory oversight of California’s electric power system… Leading the charge was Ken Lay, the former CEO and Chairman of Enron,…

  • Doctors Call for National Health Insurance

    Today an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (embargoed for 3 p.m. ET), backed by more than 7,000 physicians, proposes national health insurance. A news conference on the proposal, including two former Surgeon Generals, was set to take place today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., at 10 a.m. Dr.…

  • * Jobless Recovery? * Forecast * Vacation Starvation?

    ROBERT POLLIN Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of the forthcoming book Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity, Pollin said today: “Recently there has been much talk, and some signs, of a recovery out of the long stagnation that has gripped the U.S.…

  • Nuclear Precipice: Korea and Iran

    BILL MESLER A former editor of the Seoul-based Korea Economic Journal, Mesler said today: “The upcoming talks in Beijing are a positive sign. Unfortunately the Bush administration has continued to make unacceptable demands without offering any concrete concessions, which continues to hamper the possibility of reaching a fruitful accord. The Bush administration says it wants…

  • Weapons of Mass Deception?

    SHELDON RAMPTON, JOHN STAUBER Rampton and Stauber are the authors of the just-released Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq. They said today: “In our book we report that the Bush administration’s phony claims about Iraq go well beyond those mere 16 words in the State of the Union…

  • * Israel’s Wall * Sharon’s Policies * Liberia * WTO in Montreal

    MARK LANCE Lance, a professor at Georgetown University, was in the West Bank in June and July with a delegation of university faculty and has written about the wall that Israel is constructing in the West Bank. He said today: “Sharon claims that Israel is building a ‘security fence’ so that it can protect itself.…

  • * Hussein’s Sons * 9/11 Report * Abbas and Bush

    ANAS SHALLAL The Pentagon has just released pictures of dead Uday and Qusay Hussein. Shallal is founder of Iraqi-Americans for Peaceful Alternatives. He said today: “This is reminiscent to me of previous coups in Iraq. As a child, I remember seeing the killing of Abdul Karim Kassem on TV in 1963. Now, we have the…

  • The Economy: The Other Credibility Gap

    ROBERT McINTYRE McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, said today: “Recently a lot of issues have come to light regarding presidential credibility about the war on Iraq. The administration also has serious credibility problems when it comes to economics. For example, the president has given numerous speeches implying that most people stand to gain…

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