accuracy.org

News Releases

  • Interviews Available on Corporate Wrongdoing

    CHARLIE CRAY Cray is director of the Campaign for Corporate Reform for the group Citizen Works. More Information VIRGINIA RASMUSSEN Rasmussen, who works with the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, wrote the article “Rethinking the Corporation.” She said today: “The legislation signed by Mr. Bush today is a quickly-devised effort to send a message that the people are ‘winning,’ when, in fact, nothing of the sort has happened…. A law establishing oversight and imposing a few penalties we are told will set things right and get corporations in line, but will in fact leave the giant corporations and their…

  • Ritter and Von Sponeck on Iraq: Interviews Available

    The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to hold hearings on U.S. policy toward Iraq beginning Wednesday. Scott Ritter and Hans von Sponeck are available for interviews: SCOTT RITTER Ritter, who was a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is the author of Endgame: Solving the Iraqi Problem Once and For All. He said this afternoon: “Sen. Joe Biden is running a sham hearing. It is clear that Biden and most of the Congressional leadership have pre-ordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam Hussein from power regardless of the facts, and are using these hearings to provide political cover…

  • Interviews Available on Economic Crisis

    TOM SCHLESINGER Executive director of the Financial Markets Center, Schlesinger said today: “New information about the role of large financial holding companies in the Enron debacle raises questions about the effects of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), a 1999 law that completed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and permitted firms like Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase to combine banking, securities and insurance operations under one roof. The dealings between Enron and its banks also highlight another key question: Where were the regulators? This question applies most directly to the Federal Reserve, which received umbrella supervision authority over all financial holding…

  • Stock Market Slide: What Does It Mean?

    ELLEN FRANK Professor of economics at Emmanuel College in Boston and author of the forthcoming book Money Illusions, Frank said today: “For the last 10 years or so, the broad public has been encouraged, mostly because of 401(k) plans, to regard the stock market as a safe place to invest retirement funds and obtain consistently high, if occasionally volatile, returns. Small investors have been led to believe that a buy-and-hold strategy will yield a certain 7 percent return, when it almost certainly will not. Stock prices have risen faster than the economy, than sales, than corporate profits. This simply can’t…

  • Interviews Available: * Halliburton * The Fed

    JIM VALLETTE Coauthor of the report “Halliburton’s Destructive Engagement” and consultant to EarthRights International, Vallette said today: “Newsweek reported yesterday that the current CEO of Halliburton asserts that Cheney knew of the accounting practices of the company employed during Cheney’s tenure as CEO — the practices that are now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Halliburton is also a corporate welfare king, a major beneficiary of government aid toward fossil fuel industry projects in developing countries — to the tune of at least $6 billion in government aid packages since 1992. Newsweek reports that Halliburton fell from $54.02…

  • Interviews Available on Corporate Accountability

    * Pfizer merger DAVID HIMMELSTEIN, M.D. Associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, Himmelstein said today: “The Pfizer buyout of Pharmacia announced today is the industry’s response to the reality that they have very little in the pipeline in terms of new products. Drug firms still have the highest profit margins of any industry, but that is beginning to wane. The industry has spent the last decade basically buying innovation from academia. Research has focused on what’s profitable in the short run and less and less on the necessary science…

  • Universal Healthcare, Police Brutality, Marijuana Policy

    STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER, M.D. Associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, Woolhandler is co-author of a just-released study, “Paying for National Health Insurance — And Not Getting It.” She said today: “We pay the world’s highest health-care taxes. But much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks. And HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at the taxpayers’ expense. But politicians claim we can’t afford universal coverage. Every other developed nation has national health insurance. We already pay for it, but we don’t get it…. Government expenditures…

  • U.S. Policies on AIDS: Interviews Available

    Earlier this week, protesters at the 14th International Conference on AIDS in Barcelona [see: www.aids2002.com/IE_Home.asp ] shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as U.S. health secretary Tommy Thompson delivered a speech about U.S. policies regarding the global HIV/AIDS crisis. The conference continues through Friday. Available for interviews: ZACKIE ACHMAT Achmat, an anti-apartheid leader in South Africa since the 1976 Soweto uprising, is HIV-positive. He has refused to take anti-retroviral medicines until they are available to all South African HIV/AIDS patients through the public health system. In 1998, he founded the Treatment Action Campaign but was unable to travel to the Barcelona conference…

  • Bush’s Version of “Corporate Responsibility”

    CHARLIE CRAY Director of the Campaign for Corporate Reform for the group Citizen Works, Cray said today: “Although it appears there are good things in Bush’s speech, a lot of what he is ‘proposing’ is apparently inevitable considering the momentum in Congress for the Sarbanes bill. Bush could have closed the offshore tax haven loophole which allows CEOs to claim that they are not covered by the new proposals by locating overseas. He could have strengthened whistle-blower protections, he could have barred corporate criminals from getting government contracts. Bush’s SEC budget increase is much less than what is being proposed…

  • Some Major Civil Liberties Issues

    BARBARA OLSHANSKY Author of the recent book Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy, Olshansky said today: “Since the attacks of September 11, the United States has witnessed a sweeping revision of its immigration laws, foreign intelligence gathering operations, and domestic law enforcement procedures. These changes, like those adopted during some of the most notorious episodes in our nation’s history, involve a profound curtailment of our civil liberties. In the not-too-distant past, the U.S. government reacted to national security threats with policies that we now remember with horror. The Red Scare and the Palmer raids after…

  • Scientists Speak About Federal Agencies

    For Nature, Virginia Gewin spoke to 19 current and formal federal agency scientists at the EPA, CDC, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Institutes of Health. Her article serves as a resource documenting the kind of work that federal agency scientists have historically done and are no…

  • The “Magic Mistake” and “Enemy of the Sun”

    The book has a forward by Greg Thomas who teaches Black Studies and Literature at Howard University and discovered the misattribution, calling it “a magic mistake of revolutionary solidarity and kinship.”

  • “Covid Misinformation Star” Robert Malone

    Robert Malone is a household name in the anti-vaccine movement. The New York Times has called him a “Covid misinformation star.” A medical doctor and infectious disease researcher, Malone is a frequent guest on conservative podcast shows and is well-known for spreading misinformation about the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines. Throughout the pandemic, Malone…

  • Gaza Shelter Aid Blocked as Winter Nears: “The International Community Must Act Now”

    “More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered. The international community must act now to secure swift and unimpeded access.”

  • Slower Genocide, Rape Victim Fears for Life, Israel’s Potemkin Village Plans for “East Gaza”

    Shehada highlights that Israel continues airstrikes and attacks in the remaining area of Gaza, (West Gaza), and still prevents delivery of crucial humanitarian relief, including food, medicine and the desperately needed tents, prefab homes and construction materials which will be even more necessary during the winter months. The genocide continues at a slower pace.

  • Threats to First Amendment Rights

    For Documented, Anna Oakes writes that rulings in high-profile cases targeting noncitizen university students who have engaged in pro-Palestine speech, like those of Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk, could redefine First Amendment protections.  ANNA OAKES; [email protected]      Oakes is an independent journalist based in New York City. Oakes told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “For the…

  • Should Black People Be Allowed to Vote?

    “Asked by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut whether he would support bringing back ‘laws in this country to only allow white people to vote,’ Bozell refused to give a direct answer.“

  • Trump Seeks U.N. Blessing for Gaza Scheme

    “U.N. Security Council delegations, led by the U.S. as the co-perpetrator of the genocide in Palestine, with the support of complicit countries like the U.K. and France, and with the cooperation of U.S. client states in the region, are conspiring to merge elements of the French-Saudi colonial plan, with the U.S. colonial plan, in order…

  • Jews, Zionism and Mamdani

    “This is not a new debate. Anti-Zionism has existed since the birth of Zionism itself. The American Council for Judaism has proudly stood in this tradition since 1942, representing what was once the mainstream stance of the Reform movement: that Jewish identity, ethics, and community do not depend on nationalism, and that Jewish life flourishes…

  • Did Baerbock Coverup Germany’s Role in the Gaza Genocide at the ICJ?

    “Journalists should ask Annalena Baerbock if German diplomats — under her leadership as foreign minister — lied to the ICJ about Germany’s active military support at Israel’s request. A @DropSiteNews report suggests as as much.” 

Mastodon