News Releases

  • World Court to Announce Order on Israel Genocide Case Friday

    The International Court of Justice (also called the World Court) has announced it will “deliver its Order on the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case South Africa v. Israel this Friday, 26 January 2024, at 1 p.m.” (7 a.m. ET). South Africa filed its 84-page Application on Dec. 29, 2023. Oral arguments were made before the Court on Jan. 11 (South Africa invoking Genocide Convention: video, text PDF) and Jan. 12 (Israel defense: video, text PDF). See recent statement from UN experts: “Over one hundred days into the war, Israel destroying Gaza’s food system and…


  • Columbia University Scolds Students for “Unsanctioned” Gaza Rally Where They Were Attacked With Chemicals

    “Administrators at Columbia University responded to reports of students being injured by a chemical attack against an on-campus rally for Gaza by chiding students for holding protests without official authorization. Meanwhile, students told The Intercept that even as the school’s public safety department has said it is investigating the incident, school administrators themselves have yet to contact the victims — some of whom have had to seek medical care for their injuries.”


  • Gaza: How Much of the Human Toll Do Americans Really See?

    In a piece titled “Why We’re Not Seeing the Real Gaza War in the Media,” author Norman Solomon writes: “The media words and images reach us light years away from what it’s actually like to be in a war zone. The experience of consuming news from afar could hardly be more different. And if we hold beliefs or unconscious notions that media outlets are conveying war’s realities, that only ends up obscuring those realities all the more.”


  • Reporting on the Radical Right

    The editor of Reporting Right, a weekly guide for journalists, assesses some of the pitfalls of reporting on the radical right ahead of the 2024 election.


  • Will Biden Policy Starve Yemen?

    “The U.S. designation of the Ansar-Allah, also known as Houthis as a specially designated Global Terrorist is raising concerns about its impact on the peace process and the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen. With this designation, there is a heightened risk that the peace process could be derailed, as it may further estrange the Houthi and disrupt diplomatic efforts. This, in turn, could lead to the continuation of blockades at vital entry points such as airports, and seaports, exacerbating the already fragile Yemeni economy. Moreover, public servants, who have been awaiting their salaries since 2016 with the start of the peace process, now…


  • International Coalition Applauds South Africa; Denounces Countries Supporting Israel’s Crimes: “It Is the International Court of Justice on Trial”

    “This is not only Israel on trial. It is the International Court of Justice on trial. It is a test of the humanity of the world and whether the institutions we’ve built to protect it — today, this court in The Hague — withstand the test of Western impunity.” The ICGSP continues to expand with nearly 2,000 signatory organizations from 100 countries on the initial letter with list of organizations calling for “mobilization in defense of South Africa’s strong case for genocide. Member organizations are working to press their governments to submit Declarations of Intervention to the ICJ in support of emergency…


  • The Christian Evangelical Right and the 2024 Election

    An important movement within the Christian right, known as the New Apostolic Reformation, has broad implications for the 2024 election.


  • “How Biden Can Stop Houthi Attacks”

    “The Houthis had consistently expressed their demands publicly: an end to attacks on Red Sea ships in exchange for Israel halting strikes on Palestinians in Gaza, which have killed at least 23,000 so far, most of them women and children. There’s no guarantee the Houthis would have upheld their commitment post-ceasefire. But when a temporary truce did reign in Gaza from Nov. 24 to 30 of last year, the number of confirmed Houthi attacks in the Red Sea significantly diminished, according to the Institute for the Study of War.”


  • Namibia Attacks Germany’s Defense of Israel on Genocide

    Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza. On Namibian soil, Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions. The German Government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil.”


  • Bombing Yemen; Biden’s Case for Impeaching…Biden

    “The Declare War Clause is dispositive — only Congress can authorize the offensive use of the military. The President may respond to sudden attacks on the United States that have already broken the peace. Biden was not reacting to an attack on the United States in bombing Yemen. He was defending naval traffic in the Red Sea for which he needed a declaration of war against Yemen or the Houthis to conduct his bombing raids. What Biden has done is indistinguishable from what the UK, France, and Israel did in 1956 in attacking Egypt over nationalizing the Suez Canal. President…


  • Post-Election Decisions

    ERIC FONER Professor of history at Columbia University, current president of the American Historical Association and author of The Story of American Freedom and Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, Foner said today: “In 1876, there was a dispute over the Hayes-Tilden presidential election returns from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. An electoral commission was formed (which…

  • The Election: Process and Results

    STEVEN HILL Co-author of “Reflecting All of Us” and Western regional director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, Hill said today: “This may be the push we need to get rid of the Electoral College — which was actually designed to limit the popular will. But if we have a direct popular vote, we…

  • Election Perspectives

    GWENDOLYN MINK Professor of politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Mink said today: “What’s wrong with the two-party system is not that there are only two parties. What’s wrong is that ours is a middle-class party system that leaves out a host of programmatic alternatives and choices, and correspondingly demobilizes millions of…

  • Keeping Millions From Voting

    MARC MAUER Co-author of the report “Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States,” Mauer is assistant director of The Sentencing Project. He said today: “America has just replaced Russia as the world leader in its rate of incarceration and incarcerates far more prisoners than any other nation — nearly…

  • A Missing Campaign Issue: Economic Apartheid

    JOEL BLAU Author of Illusions of Prosperity: America’s Working Families in an Age of Economic Insecurity, Blau said today: “The economic fissure in American society is the great unmentionable of this year’s presidential campaign. Between 1977 and 1999, the after-tax income of the top fifth increased 43 percent, while the after-tax income of the top…

  • Military Spending and Policy

    WILLIAM HARTUNG President’s fellow at the World Policy Institute, Hartung said today: “When Gore and Bush have addressed the Pentagon budget, they have talked about how much to increase it, not whether to do so. That is remarkable if you consider that at $311 billion per year, the United States is already spending more on…

  • The Environment: Behind the Rhetoric

    PATTI GOLDMAN A managing attorney with Earthjustice Defense Fund, Goldman said today: “Differences between Bush and Gore include the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, which came up in the debates. There are also differences in the priority and strategies for recovering Pacific salmon…. Gore favors having labor and environmental protection in trade agreements while Bush has not…

  • Bush and Gore Agree Death Penalty Deters; But What Are the Facts?

    Last night, presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore agreed that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. “I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people’s lives,” Bush said during the debate. Gore agreed, saying: “I support the death penalty…. I think it is a deterrence. I…

  • Big Oil Gets Bigger: Chevron and Texaco

    Chevron has just agreed to acquire Texaco for $36 billion. This follows the BP-Amoco and Exxon-Mobil mergers. The following analysts are available for comments: WENONAH HAUTER Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, Hauter said today: “This trend towards more consolidation in the oil industry is bad for consumers in the long run and…

  • Perspectives on Mideast Crisis

    MARC ELLIS Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University in Texas and author of Oh Jerusalem: The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant, Ellis said today: “The escalation of the Israeli helicopter gunships firing into civilian areas is just appalling…. Justice would mean a shared real sovereignty of all of…

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