News Releases

  • Interviews Available: * Mideast * Venezuela

    SARAH ANNE MINKIN JOSHUA RUEBNER A member of Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel, Minkin will attend the National Rally in Solidarity with Israel today in Washington at the Capitol. She said today: “There is a growing Jewish movement in this country and around the world working for justice and peace for Israelis and Palestinians.” Ruebner, co-founder of the group, said today: “As Jews who love justice and peace, it’s offensive to us that, in our name, Israel is pursuing policies completely out of line with the truths of Judaism.” More Information KATHY KELLY, JEFF GUNTZEL Members of Voices…


  • Taxation Without Representation — and Representation Without Taxation

    BILL ALLISON Co-author of The Cheating of America: How Tax Avoidance and Evasion by the Super Rich Are Costing the Country Billions — and What You Can Do About It, Allison is managing editor at the Center for Public Integrity. More Information SCOTT KLINGER (via Betsy Leondar-Wright) Co-director of Responsible Wealth and a chartered financial analyst, Klinger is the author of United for a Fair Economy’s new report “Titans of the Enron Economy: The 10 Habits of Highly Defective Corporations.” He said today: “Enron’s profits in the five years ending in 2000 were $1.8 billion, which would mean $625 million…


  • Interviews Available: Mideast Crisis

    DIAA HADID Hadid, an Australian citizen, is assisting Ittijah, a Haifa-based network of Arab associations. With many phone lines in the West Bank cut, Ittijah is connecting media to Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. More Information NAJEH JARRAR Professor of sociology at An-Najah National University, which is in Nablus, Jarrar is currently in Jenin. He said today: “For 10 days, we’ve been under curfew, no electricity, no water, a shortage of food. The Israelis conquered the city four days ago and searched the houses one by one. Today they forced out the residents of the refugee camp. Some of…


  • Israeli Palestinian Conflict: Voices

    ALI ABUNIMAH Abunimah is vice president of the Arab-American Action Network More Information MARC ELLIS Ellis is director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University. He is author of Practicing Exile: The Religious Odyssey of a American Jew and a recent essay about this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (which is Tuesday) entitled “A Revolutionary Coincidence.” EMAD FRAITEKH Internet director for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Fraitekh is from Nablus. Two of his cousins were killed in Nablus when a missile from an Apache helicopter hit their home late last week. He is in contact…


  • Crisis in Middle East: Interviews Available

    JOEL CAMPAGNA Program coordinator on the Middle East and North Africa for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Campagna said today: “We are outraged by the Israeli army’s continuing attacks against journalists. Today’s incident in Ramallah, in which the army fired stun grenades and rubber bullets at reporters, is reprehensible. On several occasions in recent days, the Israel Defense Forces have opened fire on, or in the direction of, working journalists, in a clear effort to intimidate journalists reporting in the West Bank. These actions must cease and we call on the IDF to lift the restrictions now in place on…


  • U.S. and Israeli Policies: The Road Ahead

    SIMONA SHARONI Sharoni is professor of peace and conflict studies and Middle East politics at Evergreen State College and executive director of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development. An Israeli Jew who served in the Israeli army, she said today: “Sharon will probably do as much damage as he can before Powell gets to Israel next week, the same way he did before Zinni’s trip. Israel’s leaders have proven that they can go into the West Bank towns anytime they want. There should be an inquiry commission to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Israel in the…


  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Interviews Available

    CHRIS TOENSING Editor of Middle East Report, Toensing talked this morning with Boston Globe reporter Anthony Shadid, who was shot yesterday. Shadid has written for Middle East Report. Toensing said today: “The bullet missed Anthony’s spinal cord by a centimeter. The talk of him being ‘caught in the crossfire’ is misleading. The circumstantial evidence is that an Israeli sharpshooter hit him. His jacket clearly said ‘TV’ on both the front and back. The Israelis slowed his treatment by trying to prevent his Palestinian translator from leaving Ramallah with him. Israel has demanded that all journalists get out of Ramallah. This…


  • Interviews Available on McCain-Feingold Law

    JOHN MOYERS Editor and publisher of TomPaine.com, Moyers wrote the recent article “Measuring the First Step: Campaign Finance Reform and the ‘Fannie Lou Hamer Standard.’” He said today: “At best, McCain-Feingold is a first step. It does nothing to get at the heart of the problem, which is that we have privately financed public servants. That’s oxymoronic. He who pays the piper calls the tune — we need to give candidates a clean money option.” More Information SPENCER OVERTON An acting professor of law at the University of California at Davis specializing in voting rights, campaign finance and property law,…


  • Interviews Available: Perspectives on Arab Summit

    AS’AD ABUKHALIL Associate professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, and research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, AbuKhalil is author of the just-released book Bin Laden, Islam, and America’s New “War on Terrorism” and The Historical Dictionary of Lebanon. He said today: “The Arab people are not holding their breath over the results of this summit. Twenty-five Arab summits have been held in the name of ‘liberating Palestine’ while the plight of Palestinians continued to worsen and while Israeli occupation expanded. The U.S. government may be holding its…


  • Bush’s Latin America Trip: Interviews Available

    LARRY BIRNS and ALEX VOLBERDING Birns is director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and Volberding is a research fellow there. Birns said today: “Bush’s trip is more about ginning up enthusiasm for the ‘war on terrorism’ and the ‘drug war’ than aimed at promoting meaningful progress at democratization and human rights. Bush’s heralded $5 billion in aid carries stiff conditions mandating that recipient countries accept the Treasury Department’s economic game plan and is almost insignificant given the magnitude of world poverty — over 40 percent of the population of Latin America lives below the poverty line…. Bush’s call to…


  • Iraq: What’s Missing From the Hearings?

    As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee continues to hear testimony from the individuals it has selected, the following analysts are available for interviews: PHYLLIS BENNIS Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-editor of Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader. Her testimony was put in the Congressional Record on Wednesday;…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

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