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News Releases

  • Fallujah

    RAHUL MAHAJAN Currently in New York City, Mahajan said today: “I was in Fallujah during the attack in April, and reported on the closure of the Fallujah General Hospital as well as the closure of the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Najaf. This time, U.S. forces have gone a step further. Not only did a bomb destroy the Nazzal Emergency Hospital, but Fallujah General Hospital was a primary initial target in this assault. It has been occupied and largely kept from functioning by U.S. soldiers; they have also turned it into a military target by attacking resistance fighters from nearby positions.…

  • Electronic Machines with No Paper Trail Questioned

    THOM HARTMANN Hartmann is author of the recent article “The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy — Privatizing the Vote” and the book Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights. He said today: “Why are we allowing corporations to exclusively handle our vote, in a secret and totally invisible way? … Particularly a private corporation founded, in one case, by a family that believes the Bible should replace the Constitution; in another case run by one of Ohio’s top Republicans; and in another case partly owned by Saudi investors? … About two years ago, I wrote…

  • Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?

    TERESA FEDOR Ohio State Senator Teresa Fedor said today: “There was trouble with our elections in Ohio at every stage. It’s been a battle getting people registered to vote, getting to the ballot on voting day and getting that vote to count. There is a pattern of voter suppression; that’s why I called for [Ohio Secretary of State] Blackwell’s resignation more than a month ago. Blackwell, while claiming to run an unbiased elections process, was also the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. Additionally, he was the spokesperson for the anti-business, anti-family constitutional amendment ‘Issue 1,’ and a failed…

  • Election Day Turmoil

    RALPH G. NEAS People for the American Way Foundation President Neas said: “The Election Protection ‘Nerve Center’ at People For the American Way Foundation’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, continues to operate as a voter assistance and coalition information clearinghouse, with 34 computers and 55 telephone lines. … On Election Day, information will pour into the Nerve Center from the field offices and legal command centers around the country. Reporters are free to call the Nerve Center at (866) 204-1941 or People For the American Way Foundation at (202) 467-4999 to get the latest information.” More Information More Information CHELLIE PINGREE Common…

  • Study Finds 100,000 “Excess” Civilian Deaths Since Iraq Invasion

    The leading medical journal The Lancet has just published a study on civilian mortality in Iraq since the invasion. LES ROBERTS Co-author of the report, Dr. Roberts is an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said today: “Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths, and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that the collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results…

  • * Provisional Ballots * Instant Runoff Voting Implemented in San Francisco * Voter Rights * The Right to Cast a Vote That Counts

    MILES RAPOPORT Rapoport is the president of Demos, a non-partisan, non-profit organization. He said today: “The question of whether to accept provisional ballots cast at the wrong polling place pits voter access not against the worthy goal of fraud prevention, but instead against more mundane concerns of administrative convenience. As a former secretary of state, I certainly sympathize with the difficulty of administering elections, especially when voter interest is high. But election officials must not let the challenges of a full Election Day workload get in the way of one of their core duties: facilitating ballot access to all eligible…

  • * Disappeared Weapons * Iraqi WMDs

    The 380 tons of high explosives missing from al Qaqaa in Iraq have become an issue in the waning days of the presidential campaign. The New York Times reports the explosives were there when U.S. soldiers arrived, but when local Iraqis asked the soldiers to guard them, they “were told this was not the soldiers’ responsibility.” KSTP-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul reports that one of its film crews “in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.” More Information IMAD KHADDURI A former nuclear…

  • New Evidence of Voter Blacklist in Florida?

    ION SANCHO Sancho, the Supervisor of Elections for Leon County in Florida, said today: “The possibility of a statewide program to ‘challenge’ African-American voters in Florida on Election Day raises the specter of obstruction, chaos, and ultimately, voter disenfranchisement. During a recent interview, investigative journalist Greg Palast showed me a list of hundreds of African-American citizens registered to vote in Jacksonville. He told me the list came from the Republican Party.” Sancho added: “Florida has a seldom-used voter challenge provision in its elections laws, allowing partisan poll watchers to challenge voters coming in to vote. In the 16 years I…

  • Perspectives on the Cost of War: * Iraqi Family * American Families * U.S. Soldiers * U.S. Taxpayers

    KHALID JARRAR FAIZA JARRAR RAED JARRAR The Jarrar family lives in Baghdad, and has set up a blog listed below. Khalid Jarrar said today: “The costs of war have been so many innocent souls, Iraqi and American souls, and the destruction of a country. … Explosions outside our home are common. … There isn’t any political process, there is a military process that is hoped to accomplish political goals. The government is planning to attack, with the help of the American army, anyone who doesn’t agree with it. The resistance is widely respected by Iraqis, terrorism is widely condemned. People…

  • Eyewitness Accounts of Actions by Republican-Funded Organization; Group Accused of Voter Registration Fraud in Three Swing States

    Librarians in Oregon and Pennsylvania are providing eyewitness accounts of voter registration activities of Sproul and Associates, a group which has received $488,000 from the Republican National Committee. Employees of Sproul and Associates in Nevada have said that they witnessed supervisors tearing up completed registration forms from Democrats. The Associated Press has reported that “a [Nevada] state judge refused to reopen registration for Clark County residents whose voter applications might have been destroyed by [the] Republican-funded group. … Officials at the Nevada secretary of state’s office, the state attorney general’s office and the FBI said they were looking into whether…

  • As Bombing Proceeds: Now What?

    JIM JENNINGS President of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization, Jennings was in Afghani refugee camps in Pakistan this May. He has been involved in humanitarian work for the past 20 years around the world. Jennings said today: “The conditions of the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan earlier this year were the worst I have…

  • Bombing Afghanistan

    JOHN QUIGLEY Professor of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley said today: “We have to ask, ‘Will this protect the U.S. from further attacks?’…. Military action should have been done through the Security Council at the United Nations. As it is — a U.S. and U.K. military action — it is illegal under international…

  • First Casualties of War

    ROGER NORMAND Executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, which has recently put out several fact sheets on Afghanistan, Normand said today: “Afghanistan was one of the world’s poorest and most devastated countries even before this crisis. The UN has abandoned its relief operations, and all neighboring countries have sealed their borders.…

  • Foreign Policy and Terrorism

    ZIEBA SHORISH-SHAMLEY Founder and director of the Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan, Shorish-Shamley said today: “It is unfortunate that it took a tragedy of this magnitude for the world to take notice of the ongoing tragedy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several years ago, I quit my position as a university professor…

  • Opponents of Terrorism and War

    THOMAS GUMBLETON A Catholic Bishop from Detroit, Gumbleton said today: “The Pope has called for ‘peaceful negotiations and dialogue’ in the current crisis…. Some have rushed to portray us who are opposed to the Bush administration’s plans as naïve and lacking realism. But if you look at the facts, it is clear that it is…

  • Preventing Further Disaster

    HARVEY WASSERMAN A specialist in nuclear issues, Wasserman warns of the possibility of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility. More Information CHRIS TOENSING Toensing is editor of Middle East Report. More Information PERVEZ HOODBHOY Hoodbhoy is a professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. More Information REV. GRAYLAN S. HAGLER Pastor at the Plymouth…

  • “Not in Our Names”

    Some family members of the victims killed in the September 11 attacks are speaking out in opposition to the administration’s apparent military plans. Judy Keane, who lost her husband Richard, said: “Bombing Afghanistan is just going to create more widows, more homeless, fatherless children.” [CNN, 9/25] Jill Gartenberg, whose husband Jim was killed, said that…

  • Legal Issues: * Where’s the Evidence? * Civil Liberties

    On Monday, President Bush said: “We’re acting based on clear evidence, much of which is classified, so it will not be disclosed.” Today, Attorney General Ashcroft testified in favor of granting the government new powers. The following legal analysts are available for interviews: JOHN QUIGLEY Professor of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley said…

  • The Economy: Now What?

    ROBERT POLLIN Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Pollin wrote “Economic Slide Makes Spending Respectable” in today’s Los Angeles Times. He said today: “U.S. economic policymakers have failed for almost a year to respond adequately to the looming global recession. As the stock market plunge makes clear, the calamitous events of…

  • Critical Voices

    PHYLLIS BENNIS Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-editor of Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader, Bennis said today: “In Bush’s speech we got no doctrine, no strategy, no evidence. What we did get was a lot of Wild West rhetoric — dead or alive material. In Afghanistan, 25 percent of the…

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