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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  • Biden “Greenlight” to Israel as South Africa and Nicaragua Appeal to the World Court

        Boyle represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the ICJ and the South African application quotes his second request for provisional measures of protection: “The extreme gravity of the situation facing Palestinian men, women, children and babies, and the existential risk the Palestinian people in Gaza as a part of the Palestinian national or ethnical…

  • “Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation”

    “For more than three months the media and Israeli civil organizations have recycled the same allegations of sexual violence to claim Hamas committed mass rape on Oct. 7. They have treated unsubstantiated allegations of rape as solid proof. But there is zero forensic evidence, zero photo evidence, and no survivor testimony. These dodgy rape claims…

  • Ralph Nader Estimates 200,000 Palestinians Killed in Gaza

        “With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any…

  • Healthcare Cooptation by the Far Right

    The far right is exploiting the public’s distress over corporate health care and the dire lack of universal health care in the U.S. 

  • Vets Urging Criminal Investigations of Biden Weapons to Israel at State Dept. Offices

    In sixteen U.S. cities, March 5 to 7, members of Veterans For Peace will “hand deliver an exhaustively researched letter to U.S. State Department offices that has gotten no response from the department’s Inspector-General since February 11. … Josh Paul, former State Department senior official who resigned over weapons shipments to Israel said, “The Secretary…

  • Analysis of Trump’s Claim That Christianity Is “Under Attack”

    At the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville last month, Donald Trump told the audience that Christianity is “under attack.”

  • Harris’ Non-“Ceasefire”

    Kimberley added: “Is Harris calling for a ceasefire or is the president? She says this proposal is now on the table. So it isn’t new. … The word ceasefire has been co-opted. We must say end funding and weapons to Israel and no to displacing Palestinians in Gaza.” Journalist Laila Al-Arian writes: “She’s not calling…

  • Israel: Atrocities, Fabrications and Complicities

    “Civil society organisations around the world are demanding political leaders listen to the voice of the public. They want action to end the genocide now. To turn a blind eye is to be complicit. Signatories to the Genocide Convention are doing worse: in abrogation of their responsibilities under international law, many are continuing to enable…

  • Vets on Aaron Bushnell’s Self-Immolation

    See images of a vigil from Monday night for Aaron Bushnell who immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy, shouting “Free Palestine!” over and over again. MIKE FERNER, [email protected], @VFPNational Ferner is national director of Veterans For Peace, which just put out a statement: “Aaron’s motivation is strikingly similar to that of Norman Morrison,…

  • Political Journalism in 2024

    “If you have one political party in a two-party system that has built lying, cheating, and stealing into its DNA, and the media treats [both parties] as equal actors, then the media is biased toward the party willing to lie, cheat, and steal. The Republicans get a booster seat from mainstream journalism.”

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