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Latest News Release – Interviews AvailableRSS

NATO and ICC: Power and Accountability

May 18, 2012

AARON HUGHES, aarhughes at ivaw.org; SCOTT KIMBALL, scttkmbll at gmail.com
Hughes and Kimball are veterans and members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. They will be leading a rally and march on Sunday to the NATO meeting “security perimeter.” Kimball said today: “We plan on returning our medals to the leaders of NATO — it’s been destabilizing, not stabilizing, Afghanistan. We are against this militarism.”

Hughes explained his returning of medals: “Because every day in this country, 18 veterans are committing suicide. Seventeen percent of the individuals that are in combat in Afghanistan, my brothers and sisters, are on psychotropic medication. Twenty to 50 percent of the individuals getting deployed to Afghanistan are already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or a traumatic brain injury. Currently one-third of the women in the military are sexually assaulted.”

DAVID N. GIBBS, dgibbs at arizona.edu
Author of First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Gibbs is a professor of history and government at the University of Arizona who has written extensively on NATO. He said today: “NATO is an organization that lost its relevance with the Cold War. It was originally created to protect Europe against a military invasion by the Soviet Union. By any reasonable standard, it should simply have ceased to exist with the end of the Cold War in 1989. Today, it is largely an example of bureaucratic self-preservation, as well as a drain on the economy.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at law.uiuc.edu
Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. Yesterday, AllAfrica.com reported that Charles Taylor — in his first statements after being convicted by the UN Special Court on Sierra Leone: “President George W. Bush not too long ago ordered torture and admitted to doing so. Torture is a crime against humanity. The United States has refused to prosecute him. Is he above the law? Where is the fairness?” The report noted that “In January of 2010, one Professor Francis A. Boyle of the College of Law at the University of Illinois filed a Complaint with the International Criminal Court against President Bush and at least five of his senior officials for allegedly committing international crimes.”

Just this week, Boyle returned to the U.S. from Malaysia and the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, which convicted Bush in absentia. He said today: “The International Criminal Court has become a joke and a fraud. I supported it originally. But no more. It has no credibility whatsoever. It just goes after tin-pot dictators in Africa while the real war criminals such as Bush, Blair and Netanyahu get off scot-free. Hence I went out to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal to convict Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their consigliore lawyers.”

Recent Blog PostsRSS

Dying to Live in Mexico

May 15, 2012 by journalist ·

Cuernavaca, Mexico — In 2011, some 12,000 people were murdered in situations presumably related to the drug trafficking industry in Mexico. In 2010, the number was more than 15,000 killed. Between December 2006, when Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) took office and declared a “war on drug traffickers” and January 2012, depending on the source, some 47,000 to 60,000 people have been slain, and some 5,000 disappeared. This grim fact has become the centerpiece of Mexican politics and an inescapable force in daily life throughout much of the country.

But neither the number of people killed nor the cruelty of the killings can be understood without simultaneously taking account of another pair of figures. First, Calderón has repeatedly said that more than 90 percent of those killed were involved in “the struggle of some cartels against others.” Calderón does not cite a source for this estimate. The underlying logic, however, is clear: if you’re dead, you’re guilty. The perennial official refrain is “en algo andaba,” or, they were up to something; they were in the game. [more]

THE PAYROLL TAX CUT: Talk about a Ponzi Scheme!

September 9, 2011 by Gwendolyn Mink ·

Is President Obama trying to kill Social Security without explicitly saying so? He put Social Security “on the table” for consideration by his Deficit Commission — even though Social Security has not contributed to creating or sustaining the deficit/debt in the first place. He kept Social Security on the table when he made a deal to delegate deficit reduction authority over entitlements to an undemocratic Super Committee. Now, in a speech reportedly about jobs, he proposed to extend and increase the ill-considered FICA tax cut he embraced last December — a tax cut that directly undermines the financial integrity of Social Security.

According to the White House Fact Sheet on “The American Jobs Act” the FICA tax holiday for workers will be increased to a 50% reduction, lowering it to 3.1%. Under the 2010 tax deal, the payroll tax for workers was reduced from 6.2% to 4.2%. In addition to expanding the tax cut for workers, the President proposes to extend the FICA tax holiday to employers by cutting in half the employer’s share of the payroll tax through the first $5 million in payroll. [more]

Stop the Cuts to the Social Safety Net!

July 20, 2011 by Gwendolyn Mink ·

Medicaid cuts will injure communities of color disproportionately. 11 percent of Asian Americans, 14 percent of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, 27 percent of Latinos, and 27 percent of African Americans gain access to health care through Medicaid.

Medicaid cuts will injure women disproportionately. Women account for 70 percent of Medicaid participants.

Social Security is survival income for many older women, especially older single women. Fifty percent of women over age 65 rely on Social Security for 80 percent or more of their income. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research: Unmarried women living alone aged 65 and older are three times more likely to be living in poverty than married women aged 65 and older (16.6 percent compared with 4.8 percent). Without Social Security benefits, more than two-thirds of these unmarried women would live in poverty. [more]

Fires Near Los Alamos Nuclear Facility

June 29, 2011 by Greg Mello ·

The forests surrounding Los Alamos National Laboratory have burned and are certain to burn again with some regularity, whether from lightning or human causes.  If too many trees are allowed to remain near laboratory facilities, those too will sooner or later burn, despite everyone’s best efforts.

We are not as yet very concerned about radioactive or toxic materials being caught up in the present fire because we do not see, at present, much possibility of uncontrollable fire reaching any of those hazards.  There are not many trees near some of the most conspicuous hazards, such as the main nuclear waste storage site, and these wastes are not highly combustible in their present form.  The same considerations apply to buildings that contain nuclear materials — they are not very combustible.  We assume a reasonable degree of competence on the part of highly-trained firefighters involved, and sufficiency of equipment.

The reappearance of very high winds could complicate matters, however, as could the potential presence of unadmitted hazards in unknown locations.  A few laboratory areas do contain volatile soil contamination.

Much about Los Alamos is a de facto secret even whether or not the subject is classified.  This information deficit — the trust deficit that goes with it — create problems for firefighters as well as for the rest of us. [more]

In The NewsRSS

Concannon on SyndicatedNews.net and WBAI

April 10, 2012

Following his inclusion on the IPA news release Cholera in Haiti: Responsibility and Resurgence Brian Concannon was interviewed on SyndicatedNews.Net and WBAI Pacifica’s 5 O’Clock Shadow and Wakeup Call.

Pine on CBC Radio

February 17, 2012

Following her inclusion on the IPA news release Honduras Fire: Government Complicity?, Adrienne Pine was interviewed on CBC’s “The Current” yesterday. Her segment starts at about the 12:30 mark.

Goodner on MSNBC

January 4, 2012

Following his inclusion on an IPA news release, David Goodner of Occupy Iowa appeared on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show yesterday, January 3, to discuss the Iowa caucus.

Tricarico on Democracy Now!

November 11, 2011

Antonio Tricarico appeared on Democracy Now! yesterday to discuss the Italian financial crisis following his inclusion on an IPA news release.

Recent News ReleasesRSS

G8: Preventing a More Just World?

May 18, 2012

The Guardian is providing coverage of G8 summit at Camp David and NATO protests in Chicago.

DONNA SMITH, donnas at calnurses.org
CHARLES IDELSON, cidelson at calnurses.org,
Smith and Idelson are with National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of nurses in the U.S. They are holding a rally Friday in Chicago with other groups and musicians including Tom Morello. In a statement, they derided “the AWOL G8 world leaders, who decided to run off and hide in the woods of rural Maryland [at Camp David] rather than face a disgruntled public in Chicago as originally announced, to determine what they are doing to help average families, not just the banks and Wall Street high rollers, in the midst of a continuing economic gloom.” National Nurses United is calling for a “tax on Wall Street stocks, bonds, derivatives and other financial instruments that can raise up to $350 billion every year to help mitigate the economic crisis created by the banks, with the revenue available for jobs, healthcare, education, and other basic needs and services.”

[more]

Bilking the Poor: America’s Poverty Taxes

May 17, 2012

Multibillonaire Pete Peterson’s Fiscal Summit concluded on Tuesday with a stand for no-compromise austerity and Speaker of the House John Boehner laying out the case for massive spending cuts. Yesterday the Senate voted down budget proposals that would have slashed Medicaid, cut SNAP, voucher-ized Medicare, and shrunk most other domestic human needs programs. At the same time, these proposals protect and even increase the military budget and cut taxes for those at the top. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that nearly two-thirds of those proposed program cuts would hit low-income people disproportionately.

But authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Gary Rivlin argue that any discussion of the safety net and poverty alleviation has to include the ways that local and state governments and private enterprise actively prey on the poor.

[more]

U.S. in Yemen: Escalating War, Stifling Speech

May 16, 2012

AP is reporting: “Government troops and warplanes pounded al-Qaida positions in southern Yemen on Wednesday, killing at least 29 militants as part of a ramped up campaign against the group, military officials said.”

El Asbahi is founder and director of the Human Rights Information and Training Center in Yemen. He said today: “The U.S. military and the Yemeni government frequently launch these attacks and claim they are killing al-Qaida fighters. But the fact is quite often they are killing regular people, or political opponents of the regime who are not al-Qaida. This ends up having the effect of causing more resentment and gives al-Qaida more recruits. After the start of the uprising a year ago, the U.S. declared they would get rid of al-Qaida in a matter of three weeks. Today al-Qaida controls a region ten times the size of Bahrain with sea port access.”

This week El Asbahi is in Washington, D.C. with a delegation of the Arab NGO Network for Development, which also includes representatives from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia and other Arab countries.

He added: “Military intervention and use of violence has left a negative impact and does not achieve the stated goal of eliminating terrorism. The elimination of terrorism starts with the support of local development. Airplane and drone bombings nurture terrorism as they enroll more people struggling with poverty, anger and fear with al-Qaida which gives them a salary and a Kalashnikov to empty their anger. While in city of Taiz, a stronghold of the left and revolution in Yemen, they still talk fondly of U.S. aid and the ‘Kennedy project’ of drinking water distribution.”

[more]

Palestinian Hunger Strikers: “Fighting Ingrained Duplicity”

May 15, 2012

Reuters is reporting: “Standing up to Israel through non-violent resistance can produce encouraging results, Palestinians said on Tuesday, after a prisoner hunger strike produced some Israeli concessions.

“The deal under which some 1,600 Palestinian prisoners agreed on Monday to end a month-long fast against Israel’s prison policy was struck on the eve of Nakba (catastrophe) Day…”

[more]

Standing Up to JPMorgan’s Dimon and “Hedginess”

May 15, 2012


Stephany Griffith Jones is Financial Markets Program Director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. With José Antonio Ocampo, and Joseph E. Stiglitz she co-edited “Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis.” She said today: “Two billion dollar losses in JPMorgan give us further confirmation of the need to regulate the financial system much more, particularly increasing transparency of derivatives, forcing all derivatives on exchanges, and tightening the Volcker rule. Dilution of regulation by financial interests must be resisted strongly. More radical questions need to be asked: whether such complex financial activity, where risks are impossible to measure, and with no positive effect on the real economy, should be allowed at all?”

[more]
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