News Releases

  • Pinochet’s Release

    JOYCE HORMAN Joyce Horman is the widow of Charles Horman. Along with another U.S. citizen, Frank Teruggi, he was detained and murdered in September 1973 in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s bloody military coup backed by the U.S. government. She has worked to uncover the facts about his murder for more than 26 years. Today she said: “With this decision to allow Pinochet to go to Chile rather than face justice in Spain, it becomes even more important to press the U.S. intelligence agencies to release the remaining documents they have on the cases of Charles Horman and Frank…


  • Religion and Politics

    REV. JIM WALLIS Editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, Rev. Wallis said: “Al Gore and George W. Bush have talked about how much Jesus influenced them. The question has been whether that’s an appropriate thing for a candidate to talk about. It is very appropriate for a candidate to speak of their personal faith — if they say what it means in relation to public policy issues. So what would Jesus say about poverty in the midst of prosperity? What would Jesus say about 44 million Americans without health insurance?…. Talking about whether Bush’s speech at Bob Jones University will affect how…


  • Bradley and McCain: Insurgents?

    MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD Editor of The Progressive, Rothschild said: “Bradley doesn’t represent a real alternative to Gore or McCain or Bush. He supports the death penalty. He favors tougher sanctions on Iraq. Along with Gore, he has been a leading proponent of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization; and he, like Gore, has carried water for the pharmaceutical companies. Bradley’s health plan is a far cry from universal care, and he leaves the insurance companies firmly in command. He voted for aiding the contras in 1986. Bradley — like Gore, McCain and Bush — is for bloated Pentagon spending and has…


  • Scientist’s Resignation Raises Questions About Nuclear Policy

    A month ago, Andreas Toupadakis held a classified position at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But he resigned his post, voicing criticisms of U.S. nuclear policy. Interviews are available with Dr. Toupadakis and other nuclear policy analysts: ANDREAS TOUPADAKIS Prior to joining the staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s “Stockpile Stewardship” program on nuclear weapons, Toupadakis worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Shortly after resigning, he issued an open letter which reads in part: “I have seen how easy it is for nuclear contamination to occur, and how hard it is to clean it up…. Do nations possess nuclear, chemical…


  • Rising Cost of Oil… And Embargo

    WENONAH HAUTER During the last year, gasoline prices have gone up from about 90 cents a gallon to $1.36, while crude oil has gone from $12 to $30 a barrel. Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, said today: “Throughout the history of the oil industry, it has been plagued with sharp peaks and valleys in oil pricing. The recent rise in oil prices is completely predictable. Most of the time, oil interests are able to collude and keep prices high. But, occasionally, like last year, their cooperative — some would say non-competitive — efforts fail and prices…


  • Still “Missing”: Truth About Chile

    A front page New York Times story reported Sunday on passages of State Department documents which show that the U.S. government knew far more than it acknowledged about the murder of two U.S. citizens in Chile. Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, who supported the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, were detained and murdered in September 1973 in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s bloody military coup backed by the U.S. government. Their execution was the subject of the film “Missing.” The following people are available for interviews: PETER KORNBLUH National Security Archive senior analyst Kornbluh, who has led the…


  • Pharmaceutical Drugs: Mergers and Medicare

    Pfizer Inc. announced today that it plans to buy Warner-Lambert Co. for $90 billion in stock in a deal that creates the world’s second largest pharmaceutical company. Meanwhile President Clinton and others are putting out proposals on Medicare. The following analysts are available for interviews on these and other subjects related to the pharmaceutical industry: SIDNEY WOLFE, M.D. Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Dr. Wolfe said today: “This would be the 29th significant merger in the pharmaceutical industry in the last decade. There is no evidence that the economies of scale have resulted in price savings to consumers…


  • Major Foreign Policy Issues: Austrian Neo-Nazis, Sanctions on Iraq, NATO and War Crimes, Israeli Nukes

    MARTIN A. LEE The author of “The Beast Reawakens,” a recent book about neofascism and right-wing extremism in Europe and the U.S., Lee said today: “The inclusion of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party, a movement with openly fascist roots, in the national governing coalition in Austria is one of the most dangerous developments in contemporary European politics. Holocaust-deniers and neofascist ideologues are influential figures within the Freedom Party, and its dramatic rise to power has coincided with a sharp increase in racist violence in Austria, where shocking levels of anti-Semitism persist. There is reason to be concerned about a spillover effect…


  • New Hampshire: Battle of the Big Bucks

    On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, some analysts argue that money has largely determined the front runners. GEORGE W. BUSH Raised in this race: $57,120,597. Top career patrons: Enron Corporation (natural gas), $555,275; Sanchez family (banking, oil and gas), $322,400; Vinson & Elkins (law firm), $316,950; Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (a leverage buyout firm; its founder bought the Texas Rangers from Bush and his partners in 1998), $305,150; Bass family (financed Harken Energy’s drilling in Bahrain in 1990 when Bush was a Harken director), $273,927; The Sterling Group (merchant bank), $259,000; MBNA Corporation, $244,416; Pilgrim’s Pride (poultry),…


  • State of the Issues

    The following analysts are available to comment on President Clinton’s policies and his State of the Union address: KAREN DOLAN Coordinator of the Progressive Challenge project, Dolan said: “The economic boom has bypassed millions of Americans; there’s been a widening of the gap between rich and poor. We need more progressive taxation… Clinton has missed an incredible historic opportunity to reduce the military budget and shift spending to pressing human needs.” More Information EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON Author of “The Crisis in Black and Black,” Hutchinson said: “The government has not lived up to its promises in ’empowerment zones.’ You see…


  • Democratic National Committee Blocks Its Own Autopsy

    Responding to the news that the Democratic National Committee is blocking the release of its own autopsy on the 2024 Democratic defeat, RootsAction issued a statement today pointing to the exhaustive autopsy that the group recently released: “The DNC is failing to acknowledge, much less learn from, the Democratic Party’s avoidable failures in 2024. This is a recipe…

  • Babies Freezing to Death, “Gazafication” of the West Bank

    Drop Site News reports Thursday morning: “A fourth child has frozen to death in Gaza in just 10 days — two of them babies — as Israel continues blocking tents and winter shelter aid, despite UN supplies pre-positioned at the border that could immediately shelter more than 1.3 million displaced Palestinians.”

  • * Threatening Venezuela * Gaza Genocide Never Stopped

    A mobile billboard in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the group RootsAction, demands an end to warmaking. 

  • What Men Think About Falling Birth Rates

    For Vox, Rachel Cohen Booth looked into data about men’s perspectives on falling birth rates, caregiving and domestic labor. The data shows that American men are more likely than women to see falling birth rates as a problem and more likely to desire a return to “traditional gender roles.” Booth contends that “understanding men’s attitudes…

  • Why is the National Guard in Syria?

    DeCamp is news editor of Antiwar.com and host of “Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp.” He just wrote the piece “Gunman Who Killed Three Americans in Syria Was Member of Syrian Government’s Security Forces,” which notes that President Trump and other U.S. officials “have called the incident an  ‘ISIS attack’ and have left out” the fact “that the…

  • Autopsy: “How Democrats Lost the White House”

    A new report by RootsAction, titled “How Democrats Lost the White House,” conducts an autopsy on the 2024 presidential election, concluding that Vice President Kamala Harris lost while courting “moderate” Republicans rather than speaking to her core bloc: Democratic working-class, young, and progressive voters. The pivotal factor in her loss, the autopsy suggests, was the…

  • Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met last week to vote on changes to CDC recommendations for the hepatitis B vaccine series for infants. Public Citizen notes that the committee “voted 8 to 3 to recommend replacing the long-standing practice of administering the first dose of the hepatitis B…

  • Google/YouTube Accelerating Attack on Free Speech on Palestine

    “The scale of content deleted specifically due to U.S. sanctions is also difficult to quantify since such decisions happen without transparency. A recent investigation by The Intercept revealed that YouTube quietly deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian human rights organizations due to the Trump administration’s sanctions against the groups for assisting the International Criminal…

  • Anti-Genocide Activists Target Huge Military Hub for Israel in New Jersey

    “Early morning Friday, dozens of protestors convened at 1A Colony Road in Jersey City to picket G&B Packing, whose warehouse is operated by Interglobal Forwarding Services — a company that works closely with the Israeli Ministry of Defense and U.S. federal contractors to ship military cargo to Israel and supply its genocidal assault on Gaza.“

  • YouTube Deletes Musician’s Entire Catalogue

    “It seems abundantly obvious to me that everyone who believes in free expression, whatever side of various political equations they may be on, should be concerned about what YouTube just did to me. If it could happen to me because of my allegedly controversial political viewpoints, it could happen to you because of yours.”

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