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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  • Ukraine: Stopping the Escalatory Ladder

    Carden is a former adviser to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. He has written for The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd and other outlets.

  • Pandemic’s Effects on Employment and Disability Among Older Americans

    A new working paper from the National Bureau for Economic Research found that labor force non-participation remains high in older Americans. Disability benefits, meanwhile, are depressed relative to pre-pandemic levels.

  • Should All Adults Under 65 Get Screened for Anxiety?

    the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that primary care doctors should regularly screen all adults under 65 for anxiety, even those without symptoms. Neuroscientist and anxiety specialist Judson Brewer says that “screening by itself is not so helpful. If you screen for something you don’t have a treatment for––who cares?”

  • How Nuclear Wars Can Start: Nuclear War Exercise, Then and Now

    For the first time since World War II, troops were also deployed to The Netherlands. The unprecedented nature of the troop movements certainly attracted Soviet attention.

  • New National Data on Long Covid

    In a report on new Census data from the Household Pulse Survey from September, the Center for Economic and Policy Research write that about 4.4 million adults report symptoms from long Covid that reduce their ability to carry out day-to-day activities by a lot.

  • Activists Demand a Halt to NATO Nuclear War Rehearsals; Congressional Action

    RootsAction.org has launched a campaign “Tell Congress and President Biden to make NATO cease its nuclear war rehearsals.”

  • Biden Pleads on Stock BuyBacks, but Why the Inaction?

    “in 2005-2015 Exxon Mobil distributed $224 billion in buybacks on top of $101 billion in dividends (a combined 86 percent of net income). As Vice President, Biden was an outspoken critic of stock buybacks, and he should know that an executive order that bans buybacks is the only way in which the oil companies will cease using the profits…

  • Call for Banning Killer Drones, from Ukraine to Ethiopia

    “”Killer drones are a particularly inhumane type of warfare with high error rates causing the deaths of civilians. Moreover, killer drones seek to desensitize us from war, make war seem ‘easier’ and thereby increase the chances of yet more wars.”

  • Critics of Intervention in Haiti

    Experts say “the last thing the Haitian people want is another ‘humanitarian’ invasion and occupation by the U.S. and the ‘Core Group.'”

  • Ukrainian Missile Crisis

    “During the Cuban crisis, Kennedy was under intense pressure to act militarily, by striking the Soviet missile sites or invading Cuba, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff; members of the Executive Committee (ExComm) of the National Security Council”

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