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…


  • What’s Driving the Military Budget?

    FRIDA BERRIGAN Senior research associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute, Berrigan said today: “If President Bush has his way, total military spending for 2003 will reach $396 billion, an $87 billion increase from January 2001. It would be the largest increase since the Reagan administration. But this spending spree…

  • Interviews Available: Andersen Indictment

    RUSSELL MOKHIBER Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, Mokhiber said today: “Much of the history of corporate crime and violence in this country has never seen the light of day because corporate executives follow closely the advice of corporate counsel — when in doubt, shred it. Corporate lawyers have become so cavalier about the subject that…

  • Nuclear Posturing: Interviews Available

    In his news conference on Wednesday afternoon, President Bush responded to several questions about nuclear policies. The following analysts are available for interviews: JOHN BURROUGHS Executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Burroughs said: “Contrary to what Bush said today, the Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] expands the circumstances in which nuclear weapons could…

  • Israel-Palestine: What Paths to Peace?

    KHADER SHKIRAT A visiting fellow at Harvard Law School and director of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment based in Jerusalem, Shkirat said today: “This is not ‘a war by two sides’ — two armies poised against each other. Israel is occupying and oppressing Palestinians. The Israeli military forces…

  • * Shadow Government * “Bunker Busters”

    CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON Professor of communication at American University and author of National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administrations, Simpson is available for limited interviews. He said today: “Senate Majority Leader Daschle knew or certainly should have known that there are contingency plans for a shadow government. But he apparently did not know that…

  • Interviews Available on Domestic Policy Issues

    WENONAH HAUTER Hauter is director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project. She said today: “It is outrageous that the Department of Energy had to be taken to court to be forced to release the documents relating to Vice President Cheney’s energy task force. We will look forward to the documents becoming public and seeing…

  • Back from Afghanistan: Interviews Available

    KELLY CAMPBELL DAVID POTORTI Family members of Sept. 11 victims have formed a non-profit organization seeking effective alternatives to war as a response to the terrorist attacks. Peaceful Tomorrows favors the creation of an Afghan victims fund to match the outpouring of support for U.S. victims. Four family members have recently traveled to Afghanistan to…

  • War in Colombia

    A fierce assault by thousands of U.S.-backed Colombian government troops — launched on Friday to retake a large safe-haven region controlled by rebels for three years — has already resulted in confirmed reports of civilian deaths. The Bush administration is now seeking more than $500 million in additional aid to the Bogota regime, which would…

  • Pentagon and Propaganda

    CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON Associate professor of communication at American University and author of the books Blowback and Science of Coercion, Simpson said today: “Donald Rumsfeld strongly implied last night that the Department of Defense is not running covert operations in its military operations. The truth of the matter is that U.S. psywar and covert operations against…

  • * Iraq * China * Korea * Milosevic Trial

    DENIS HALLIDAY Halliday is a former UN Assistant Secretary General and ex-head of the UN oil-for-food program. He said today: “The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were in Iraq just two weeks ago. Those types of monitoring programs could be expanded to include chemical and biological weapons capability, but re-starting an Iraq-specific regime like UNMOVIC…

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