News Release Archive - 2010

Wright and Kelly in Afghanistan

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AfghanistanKATHY KELLY [back in the U.S. Jan. 4]
ANN WRIGHT [back in the U.S. Dec. 28]
Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence; she is also available via Skype: kathy.vcnv. Wright, a former State Department diplomat and retired Army colonel, helped re-open the U.S. embassy in Kabul in 2001. She resigned from the State Department in protest of the Iraq invasion in March of 2003.

Wright said today: “The U.S. needs to be removing its troops from Afghanistan. This increase in military operations in Afghanistan with massive loss of life, multiple times more than previous years — plus the reach into Pakistan — is making things much more unstable, not stable.”

Kelly said today: “Commenting on impoverishment and displacement caused by military offensives, a Pakistani op-ed recently compared hunger and anger to two live wires. When the wires touch, they create an incandescent and uncontrollable flash. [Read more…]

Indefinite Detention and Assassination: “Clock Back to Pre-Magna Carta Times”

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ProPublica reports: “The White House is preparing an Executive Order on indefinite detention that will provide periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, according to several administration officials.”

In an ABC interview, Attorney General Eric Holder has publicly said the United States wants to “neutralize” the Yemen-based Muslim cleric Anwar al-AwlakiAmerican Empire: Before the Fall, who is said to be the first U.S. citizen added to a CIA list of targets for killing. See Democracy Now report

BRUCE FEIN
Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General and General Counsel to the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan and is author of the new book American Empire: Before the Fall. He said today: “The AmericaThe United States and Torturen Empire has pushed the due process clock back to pre-Magna Carta times. The new national slogan is, ‘Anything and everything for professed safety, but nothing for liberty or freedom.'”

MARJORIE COHN
Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and author of the new book The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse. She said today: “Indefinite detention violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [Read more…]

Return of Ma Bell? FCC Net Neutrality Order a “Squandered Opportunity”

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Save the InternetCRAIG AARON, via Jenn Ettinger
Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron said today: “The new rules are riddled with loopholes, evidence that the chairman sought approval from AT&T instead of listening to the millions of Americans who asked for real Net Neutrality. These rules don’t do enough to stop the phone and cable companies from dividing the Internet into fast and slow lanes, and they fail to protect wireless users from discrimination. No longer can you get to the same Internet via your mobile device as you can via your laptop. The rules pave the way for AT&T to block your access to third-party applications and to require you to use its own preferred applications.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Cost of START Treaty

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Signing of STARTALICE SLATER Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and is on the coordinating committee of Abolition 2000, a disarmament coalition. She said today: “The Obama administration will pay a heavy price to ratify the modest START treaty should it receive the required 67 Senate votes this week to enact it into law. The president originally promised the weapons labs $80 billion over ten years for building three new bomb factories in Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Kansas City to modernize our nuclear arsenals as well as an additional $100 billion for new delivery systems — missiles, bombers and submarines. He then sweetened the pot with an offer of another $4 billion to the nuclear weapons establishment to [try to] buy the support of Senator Kyl. Additionally, he is assuring the Senate hawks that missile development in the U.S. will proceed full speed ahead, even though Russia and China have proposed negotiations on a draft treaty they submitted to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to ban space weaponization. Every country at that conference voted in favor of preventing an arms race in outer space except the United States [Read more…]

Slavery and the States’ Rights Myth

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The Confederate and Neo-Confederate ReaderAP reports today: “Exactly 150 years after South Carolina became the first state to leave the United States, a group whose purpose is to preserve Confederate history is holding a dance in Charleston.” This is creating much controversy and, says James Loewen, much disinformation about the causes of the Civil War:

JAMES LOEWEN
Loewen is author of the bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me and the new book The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader (with Edward Sebesta). Loewen said today: “In 1860 and 1861, when the Southern states seceded, they said why, and it was all about slavery — its protection and extension. They said nothing about states’ rights. Why would they? The federal government was doing what they wanted, from recapturing fugitive slaves to low tariffs. On the contrary, South Carolina (and other states) inveighed AGAINST states’ rights, attacking states that refused to return slaves, for example.” [Read more…]

D.C. Metro to Search Bags

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DC MetroPAT ELDER
SUE UDRY
The D.C. Bill of Rights Coalition and the Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalitionith launched an online petition campaign today in opposition to the bag search program announced on Thursday, but not yet implemented, by D.C. Metro Transit Police.

Elder and Udry are members of both civil liberties groups. The bag searching program was initially announced in 2008, but was put aside due to widespread community opposition. Udry, who is also director of the Defending Dissent Foundation, said today: “Metro officials are referencing a recent alleged bomb plot against Metro as justification for the random bag searches. They should remember that the plot was not real. It had been hatched by FBI agents, and the public was never in any danger.” For more, see here [Read more…]

Civil Resistance at White House Led by Veterans

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White House protest Dec. 16, 2010Military veterans will lead a nonviolent act of civil resistance at the White House Thursday, Dec. 16, at 10:00 a.m. to protest the ongoing U.S. wars and occupations. Veterans For Peace organizers expect this to be the largest veteran-led resistance since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

Among the scheduled participants: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers; Mike Ferner, Veterans For Peace national president; Leah Bolger, Veterans For Peace vice president and retired Navy commander; Ray McGovern, retired CIA official; Coleen Rowley, FBI whistleblower; and Chris Hedges, author and former New York Times war correspondent.

See: stopthesewars.org [Read more…]

Holbrooke

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Richard HolbrookeSTEPHEN ZUNES
Zunes just wrote the piece “Richard Holbrooke Represented the Worst of the Foreign Policy Establishment.” A previous version is here.

Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Also see: [Read more…]

New President’s House Exhibit Includes Slavery

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The Black History of the White HouseThe Philadelphia Inquirer writes: “After more than eight years of street demonstrations, arguments, haggling, and missed deadlines; after unprecedented public debate about the impact of slavery on life in Philadelphia and the United States and on the life and moral character of George Washington; after thousands of news articles, feature stories, and TV and radio programs, the site marking the intertwined lives of presidents and slaves is set to open to the public with a simple ribbon-cutting at noon Wednesday.”

CLARENCE LUSANE
Lusane is author of the new book The Black History of the White House and an associate professor at American University. He said today: “The opening of the new exhibit ‘President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in Making a New Nation’ at Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell Center pavilion in Independence Park is an opportunity to highlight the long history and contemporary status of race relations in the United States. [Read more…]

Health Mandate

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AP is reporting: “A federal judge rejected a key provision of the Obama administration’s health care law as unconstitutional Monday, ruling the government cannot require people to buy insurance, in a dispute that both sides agree will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

MARGARET FLOWERS
MARK ALMBERG
Flowers is congressional fellow for the 18,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program; Almberg is the organization’s communications director. Flowers said today: “This ruling is just another sign of the deterioration of this complicated piece of legislation. What’s needed is a more reasonable, simpler approach, which would be enhanced Medicare-for-all.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167