News Releases

  • Despite Denials from NATO Official, Questions Emerging

    Did Allies Demand Right to Occupy All of Yugoslavia? WASHINGTON — New questions are emerging about the actual terms of the Rambouillet accords prior to the initiation of NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia. When NATO spokesman Jamie Shea appeared at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday, a representative of the Institute for Public Accuracy asked him to clarify provisions in the Rambouillet text that some analysts say allowed for the military occupation of all of Yugoslavia by NATO troops. Although Shea replied that “there was no intention whatsoever of having any kind of NATO occupation regime in Yugoslavia itself,” Appendix…


  • Is Prominent Think Tank a Bastion of Racist Theory?

    One of the most influential think tanks in the United States also houses several of the nation’s most controversial pundits on race issues. In a new analysis, researcher Deborah Toler scrutinizes what she calls the “race desk” at the American Enterprise Institute. Toler, a policy analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, contends that mainstream AEI conservatives and racist hate groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens share a preoccupation with managing the emerging majority of people of color in the United States. According to AEI fellows, African Americans in particular constitute a major threat to Western civilization. In…


  • NATO: Critical Analysis

    BASIC (British American Security Information Council) BASIC can arrange interviews with Admiral Sir James Eberle, former NATO commander-in-chief; Otfried Nassauer of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security; and other NATO experts. More Information HUSSEIN IBISH Foreign policy analyst at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Ibish said: “The Clinton administration has made it perfectly clear that it regards ethnic cleansing as a legitimate tool of statecraft. The U.S. backed ethnic cleansing when the Croatians did it to the Serbs [in 1995], Turkey to the Kurds [throughout the 1990s] and Israel to the Palestinians [in 1948]. In fact, what this war is…


  • Colorado and Kosovo: What is NATO Teaching Our Children?

    President Clinton on the school shootings: “We must do more to reach out to our children and teach them to express their anger and to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.” MARY JOAN PARK A peace educator and director of Little Friends for Peace, a peace camp for young people, Park contrasted Clinton’s statement on the Colorado shootings with his bombing of Yugoslavia. When Clinton said children should “resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons,” Park’s son asked: “Why doesn’t he do it?” Park said today: “Violence unleashes more violence. Yes, Mr. Clinton, let’s talk about it, not fight…


  • Earth Day and Rambouillet

    ROBERT HAYDEN Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Hayden said: “The administration’s Rambouillet plan was a public relations fraud rather than a diplomatic compromise. It provided for the independence of Kosovo in all but name and the military occupation by NATO of all of Yugoslavia — not just Kosovo. This was plainly a proposal that no government could accept… NATO’s bombing of the petrochemical plant at Baric only a few miles from Belgrade risked the life, health and safety of the civilian population of 2 million in the city of Belgrade.…


  • Troubling Questions About Rambouillet

    The Clinton administration has repeatedly claimed that bombing is necessary because Milosevic would not agree to negotiations, citing his refusal to accept the Rambouillet text. But did Rambouillet represent real negotiations or an ultimatum? Some have said that the Serbian parliament “voted to be bombed” because it refused NATO troops as outlined in Rambouillet. But the New York Times has reported (April 8) that “just before the bombing, when [the Serbian parliament] rejected NATO troops in Kosovo, it also supported the idea of a United Nations force to monitor a political settlement there.” Did the administration start bombing because it…


  • Results of NATO Bombing

    WILLIAM HARTUNG Senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute and author of Military-Industrial Complex Revisited, Hartung said: “The bombings may or may not ‘degrade’ Milosevic’s forces, as the Pentagon intends; but they have certainly degraded the standing of the United States as a world leader. The air war in Kosovo underscores the weakness of the ‘Clinton Doctrine,’ which involves calling in the cruise missiles to deal with any and every problem. During this decade, the United States has degenerated from the world’s sole superpower to its designated bomber. The use of NATO forces to intervene in an internal conflict…


  • Balkan Fallout From NATO Bombing

    VIVIAN STROMBERG Executive director of MADRE (a group which has been working with multi-ethnic, democratic women’s organizations in the Balkans since 1993), Stromberg said: “We must move beyond a yearning for ‘good guys’ in the Yugoslav conflict and remember that behind the various political formations and armed groups are communities of people. In Kosovo, whole towns and villages are being burned out and butchered. In Serbia, people are being terrorized by NATO bombing… Both must stop; instead, the United Nations must do its job.” More Information MICHAEL SIMMONS Director of European Programs for the American Friends Service Committee, which has…


  • International Perspectives on the NATO Bombing

    ROBERT GREENBERG Assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the forthcoming “Language and Ethnic Identity in the Former Yugoslavia,” Greenberg said today: “Milosevic is looking for an exit strategy, with the cease-fire proposal and the possibility of the U.S. soldiers being released. We just don’t seem to want to deal with him. I don’t see the benefit of continuing to risk killing Yugoslav civilians and to risk losing any of our pilots. We should have some sort of resumption of negotiations; it’s an opportunity to cooperate with the…


  • After Two Weeks of Bombing: Now What?

    JONATHAN DEAN Author of “Ending Europe’s Wars: The Continuing Search for Peace and Security,” advisor on international security issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists and former U.S. representative to the NATO-Warsaw Pact armed force reduction negotiations, Dean said: “What’s needed is to bring Russia in as an intermediary with Milosevic, proposing that the peacemaking force be UN rather than NATO — this is an extremely important difference.” MICHAEL BEER Beer provided strategic nonviolence seminars to Kosovars in Pristina six months ago. Today, as civilian deaths from the NATO attacks increase, Beer (director of Nonviolence International) said: “NATO bombing of…


  • Interviews Available on Bush’s Mideast Plan

    STEPHEN ZUNES Associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, Zunes is the Middle East editor at the Foreign Policy in Focus Project. He said today: “It is remarkable how President Bush insists on democratic governance and an end to violence and corruption as…

  • Huge Pay Gaps: Enron and Beyond

    Enron disclosed in court documents on Tuesday that before collapsing last year it paid out $744 million in salary, bonuses and stock grants to the company’s 140 senior officers — an average of $5.3 million each. The following analysts are available for interviews about such practices: DEAN BAKER Co-director of the Center for Economic and…

  • $10,000 Fine for Taking Medicine to Children

    While the administration signals it is moving toward an all-out attack on Iraq, it has fined a Seattle resident, Bert Sacks, $10,000 for his admission that he took medicines to Iraq. Sacks decided to respond today [Monday] at a 10 a.m. news conference at the National Press Club. HOWARD ZINN A widely read historian who…

  • Earth First! and the FBI: What the Verdict Means

    Twelve years after Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari were arrested for the bombing of their own car, a jury awarded them $4.4 million Tuesday in their suit against the FBI and the Oakland Police for framing them. DARRYL CHERNEY, DENNIS CUNNINGHAM In 1990, Cherney was injured in a car bombing along with fellow Earth First!…

  • Sharon’s Settlement Policy

    President Bush has indicated that he would like to delay any Mideast conference. The following analysts are available for interviews on Israel’s continued building of settlements in occupied territory: JESSICA MONTELL; YEHEZKEL LEIN The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has released a new report titled “Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank.” Montell…

  • Interviews Available on Alleged Nuclear Plot

    JAY TRUMAN Director of the Downwinders organization, a group made up of people exposed to nuclear tests, Truman is one of the nation’s foremost analysts of the effects of nuclear weapons testing. He said today: “A radiological warfare agent is not a nuclear bomb, rather it uses a conventional explosion to spread radioactive material. There…

  • Corporate Crime: A Major Law Enforcement Role?

    RUSSELL MOKHIBER Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, Mokhiber said today: “Henry Paulson, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, is quoted on the front page of The New York Times today: ‘I cannot think of a time when business over all has been held in less repute.’ Why is that? Because corporate and white-collar crime inflict far…

  • Interviews Available: Families from Some Ground Zeros

    YITZHAK FRANKENTHAL, IBRAHIM BUSHNAQ Frankenthal and Bushnaq head a delegation of the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum. They will be in Washington, D.C. from June 5 to June 7. Frankenthal, who founded the group which is made up of members of Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones in the conflict, said today: “The…

  • Interviews Available: India and Pakistan

    PERVEZ HOODBHOY Professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, Hoodbhoy said today: “Nuclear affairs are now being guided by wishful, delusional thinking. The most frightening delusion is India’s trivialization of Pakistan’s nuclear capability…. Lacking any desire for political settlement … jihadists in Kashmir [are attempting to] provoke full-scale war between India and Pakistan,…

  • FBI Powers: Legal Analysts Sound Warning

    Some legal experts are criticizing the decision announced Thursday by Attorney General John Ashcroft to modify existing guidelines that govern FBI intelligence, foreign counter-intelligence investigations and domestic security terrorism investigations. Among those available for interviews: MICHAEL RATNER President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner said today: “The current Guidelines were established in the ’70s…

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