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…


  • Major International Issues: * Racism Conference * Israel’s Occupation

    LORETTA ROSS Founder and executive director of the National Center for Human Rights Education, Ross is at the UN conference on racism, which begins on Friday in South Africa. She said today: “The Bush administration should not come to the conference. It would likely play an obstructionist role, refusing to acknowledge that the enslavement of…

  • Argentina and IMF

    As the IMF and Argentina’s government agree to another loan package of $8 billion and further austerity programs, the following analysts are available for interviews: BEVERLY KEENE Coordinator of Dialogue 2000, a coalition representing human-rights and other groups in Argentina, Keene said today: “This new agreement with the IMF brings no resolution to growing unemployment…

  • The Incredible Shrinking Surplus

    With the White House reporting today that the current-year surplus has plummeted to $158 billion from the $281 billion projected in April, the following policy analysts are available for interviews: STEVEN KULL Author of the report “Americans on Federal Budget Priorities,” Kull is director of the Center on Policy Attitudes, which conducted a scientific online…

  • “Welfare Reform”: Five Years Later

    Wednesday (Aug. 22) marks the fifth anniversary of President Clinton’s signing of the “welfare reform” law. Re-authorization for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the program that came out of the 1996 legislation, will be a subject of controversy during the next year. The following policy analysts are available for comment: NOEL A. CAZENAVE Co-author of…

  • Faith-Based Initiative

    As the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives releases a report this afternoon at the Brookings Institution, the following individuals are available for interviews: REV. JAMES LAWSON Pastor emeritus of the Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles and one of the architects of the civil rights movement, Lawson said today about the…

  • Forest Fires

    THOMAS POWER Chair of the economics department at the University of Montana and author of the paper “Destroying Forests to Save Them: Rational Responses to the Summer of 2000 Wildfires,” Power said today: “The argument of many of the Western governors is that significant expansion of Western logging will reduce fires. But from an economic…

  • IMF and World Bank: Dodging Scrutiny?

    Anticipating major protests, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank announced late Friday that they will be scaling back their fall meetings in Washington to only two days, Sept. 29 and 30. The following policy critics are available for interviews: NJOKI NJOROGE NJEHU Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, a coalition of…

  • Stem Cells and Beyond

    RUTH HUBBARD Professor emerita of biology at Harvard University and author of Exploding the Gene Myth, Hubbard is on the board of the Council for Responsible Genetics. She said today: “The most immediate problem with Bush’s stance is that by saying there will be no federal funding for initial stem cell research, that means there…

  • Americans: “Vacation Starved”?

    President Bush is on a month-long vacation, but many people in this country get scant time off. The following analysts are available for interviews about how Americans would benefit from more vacation time: DEBORAH FIGART Co-editor of the recent book Working Time, Figart is professor of economics at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey. She…

  • Racism Conference

    Debate is now raging about the agenda for the World Conference Against Racism that begins in Durban, South Africa at the end of this month. The following analysts, most of whom will attend, are available for interviews: More Information LORETTA ROSS Executive director and founder of the National Center for Human Rights Education, Ross said…

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