Peninsula Peace and Justice Center

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Events

Saturday 11-Sep

Robert Scheer: The Great American Stickup

Sunday 19-Sep

Paul George: Iran and the Bomb - What's the Real Story?

Monday 20-Sep

Paul George: Iran and the Bomb - What's the Real Story?

Saturday 25-Sep

Robert Fisk: Lies, Misreporting, and Catastrophe in the Middle East

Friday 08-Oct

Reese Erlich: Conversations with Terrorists

PPJC TV Broadcasts

News & Research
Iraq War Foreign Affairs Domestic Issues Politics and Media Reform Economic Justice and Globalization Other

3/16/06 - The NSA Spying Debate

Elizabeth de la Vega
TomDispatch.com

It has now been three months since the Bush administration reluctantly admitted that it has been conducting warrantless surveillance on American citizens, despite the explicit prohibitions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Since then, the public has been treated to endless and, unfortunately, fruitless discussion about the issue. We have experts and scholars earnestly responding, and responding yet again, to administration arguments (both legal and factual) that can best be described as protean, internally inconsistent, and occasionally evanescent. We have the administration refusing to explain the program, but enjoining everyone to "trust them." And we have legislators trying to "fix" a problem that is undefined by proposing new laws that the administration doesn't want. We are, in short, trapped in an infinite loop.

3/16/06 - Missouri House OKs Birth Control Funding Ban

Kit Wagar
The Kansas City Star

The Missouri House voted Wednesday to ban state funding of contraceptives for low-income women and to prohibit state-funded programs from referring those women to other programs.

3/16/06 - UN Creates New Watchdog Over US Opposition

Thalif Deen
Inter Press Service

A running gag at the United Nations is that whenever the United States takes a defiant stand against an overwhelming majority of the 191 member states, there are only three countries that predictably vote with Washington most of the time - whether it is right or dead wrong.

3/16/06 - How to Lose Friends and Encourage Extremists

William Fisher
t r u t h o u t

When this year's Human Rights report appeared last week, William Fisher e-mailed it to six of his old friends in Egypt and asked them for their reactions "off the record." They had a lot to say, but it all came down to this consensus: The United States had forfeited its right to report on abuses committed by others by committing its own, failing to correct them, and then holding no one in authority accountable.

3/15/06 - FBI Documents Raise New Questions About Extent of Surveillance

Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

An FBI counterterrorism unit monitored - and apparently infiltrated - a peace group in Pittsburgh that opposed the invasion of Iraq, according to internal agency documents released on Tuesday.

3/14/06 - Experts Question Credibility of US Human Rights Report

William Fisher
t r u t h o u t

Foreign policy, legal, and human rights authorities are raising serious questions about the credibility of the US State Department's annual report on human rights, released last week.

3/12/06 - Guantanamo on the Mississippi

Jordan Flaherty
CommonDreams.org

Sometimes the injustices here in New Orleans leave me numb. But the continuing debacle of our criminal justice system inspires in me a sense of indignation I thought was lost to cynicism long ago. Ursula Price, a staff investigator for the indigent defense organization A Fighting Chance, has met with several thousand hurricane survivors who were imprisoned at the time of the hurricane, and her stories chill me "I grew up in small town Mississippi," she tells me. "We had the Klan marching down our main street. But still, I've never seen anything like this."