News Items

  • NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Statement on Surveillance Legislation

    At this late hour (with all the fear mongering by national security authorities pushing to reauthorize and expand an unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program), unless the Amash-Lofgren Amendment is passed, Congress may end up passing a bill (S. 139) that actually gives criminal suspects more Fourth Amendment protections than innocent people.

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  • News Conference at Department of Justice on Threats to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange by Attorney General Jeff Sessions

    CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently called WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently stated that Julian Assange’s arrest is a “priority” of the Trump administration. This has caused numerous individuals — with differing perspectives on WikiLeaks — to warn of a growing threat to press freedom. The following will address U.S. government policy toward WikiLeaks and whistleblowers:

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  • Trump Education Policy

    Rhee and Moskowitz would certainly be zealous proponents of school choice. Selecting either of them would be a thumb in the eyes of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, who campaigned mightily for Clinton. Both have tangled with the unions and made clear their distaste for public schools and for teachers’ unions.

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  • Costas Panayotakis on the Brexit

    “The Brexit vote may have partly been an expression of right-wing xenophobia but it is also an expression of disgust across the continent with the neoliberal monstrosity that the EU has become. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the result will be honored. In the past, European political and economic elites have often ignored referendum results they didn’t like by cranking up Pro-European propaganda and repeating the referendum so that the sovereign people could ‘correct’ their mistake.”

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  • Breaking Down the Brexit Decision

    The political center has lost its commanding appeal and the public is drawn to vague slogans like “freedom” and “independence.” Right-wing projects are implausible as solutions to the problems faced by ordinary citizens but the electorate acts in desperation. The process has been under way for many years. Reagan and Thatcher were early signs. The parties of the center-left fell ever-more-completely under the sway of financial interests and rich donors, providing very little choice.

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  • From “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”

    All the laws and customs of civilized warfare may not be applicable to an armed conflict with the Indian tribes upon our western frontier; but the circumstances attending the assassination of Canby [Army general] and Thomas [U.S. peace commissioner] are such as to make their murder as much a violation of the laws of savage as of civilized warfare, and the Indians concerned in it fully understood the baseness and treachery of their act.

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  • Bradley on His Visit to the Philippines

    Princess Alice sipped punch under a hot tropical sun as “Big Bill” Taft deliver a florid speech extolling the benefits of the American way. A century later I ventured to Zamboanga and learned that the local Muslims hadn’t taken Taft’s message to heart: Zamboanga officials feared for my safety because I was an American and would not allow me to venture out of my hotel without an armed police escort.

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  • Video of Sterling News Conference

    On February 17th, 2016, Holly Sterling, Jesselyn Radack, John Kiriakou, Tim Karr, Delphine Halgand, and Cornel West spoke at a news conference at the National Press Club, then delivered a petition containing over 150.000 signatures to the White House calling for the pardon of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling.

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  • Media Advisory — Cornel West, John Kiriakou among speakers to urge Obama pardon for CIA whistleblower

    News Conference: Release of Petition Urging Obama to Pardon Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower; Speakers to Include Cornel West, John Kiriakou, Jesselyn Radack, Holly Sterling When: Wednesday, February 17 at 9:30 a.m. Where: National Press Club (Bloomberg Room), 13th Floor, National Press Building, Washington

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  • Noam Chomsky & Abby Martin: Electing The President Of An Empire (Full Transcript)

    At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Abby Martin interviews world-renowned philosopher and linguist Professor Noam Chomsky. Full transcript included.

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  • Pakistan Bombing: An Attack on Elections?

    Al Jazeera reports in “Pakistan mosque bombing survivors traumatised but undeterred” that: “At least 100 people killed and more than 225 wounded in a suicide attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar.”

  • Community Control Over Police

    February is Black History Month. Many have been startled that Black officers were involved in the killing of Tyre Nichols. But some analysts have been warning that the issue is the structure and nature of police forces, not simply their ethnic composition.

  • Physicians Say “Tripledemic” Should Have Been Declared a Pediatric Emergency

    physicians argue that at the height of the “tripledemic,” the federal government should have exercised its power to declare a national emergency in pediatric health while viral illness spiked in children and pediatric hospital departments were overwhelmed across the country. The declaration allows for emergency funding, regulatory flexibility, and innovation.

  • Economic Conditions Pushing Americans to Delay Health Care Treatment

    Gallup has found that 38 percent of Americans postponed medical treatment in 2022, compared with 26 percent in 2021. Americans were more than twice as likely to delay medical treatment for a serious condition compared to a non-serious one.

  • Is New Cabinet the “True Face of Israel”?

    Peled is an activist and podcaster. His books include The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. He has argued that while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has claimed Israel didn’t ethnically cleanse Palestinians in high profile interviews, some other Israeli ministers have advocated another such expulsion — while Netanyahu says the first never happened.

  • War is a Racket: Fox Guarding Hen House; Stock Buybacks Rip Off Taxpayers

    Earlier this month, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees named eight commissioners who will review President Joe Biden’s National Defense Strategy and provide recommendations for its implementation. But the Commission on the National Defense Strategy is largely composed of individuals with financial ties to the weapons industry and U.S. government contractors.

  • Regulators Could Break Up Wells Fargo — If They Stay Strong

    “Last week, prodded by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the main big-bank regulator of Wells Fargo, known as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), said it is looking at new ways to tame megabanks, which show signs of being ‘too big to manage,’ including breaking them up.”

  • Confronting the Corporate Exploitation of Tweens

    This massive abduction of our children into a manipulative and exploitative virtual reality, separating them from their parents, communities, nature and even their teachers — reality in a word — calls for action.

  • Peru: Protests, Oligarchy and Racism

    “In the eyes of Castillo’s supporters, this triumphalist celebration, the constant insults, the obstruction of presidential functions, and the abusive way that justice was served, all show that Peru is stuck in an oligarchical past. There is a ruling class that resists allowing the poor and working classes to be represented in the highest echelons…

  • New Dem Leader Jeffries “Has Record of Defending Human Rights Violations”

    Jeffries has been highly critical of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as Israeli human rights groups like B’tselem, for their recognition of Israel’s imposition of an apartheid system on Palestinians. Despite the overwhelming evidence in human rights reports that Israel’s policies meet the international definition of apartheid, Jeffries has dismissed the conclusions.

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