Jason Leopold is co-founder of The Public Record, and author of the book, News Junkie, which has been optioned by a Hollywood production company. Leopold was most recently senior editor for the online news magazine, Truthout.org.
He has worked as the Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire and as a city editor and reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He is a two-time winner of a Project Censored award for his investigative work on Halliburton and Enron, and is featured in the 2005 and 20
Here’s the transcript from CNN’s “State of the Union,” hosted by John King.
KING: We begin this morning with the massacre at Ft. Hood, Texas. Twelve soldiers and one civilian were killed and 38 others wounded in Thursday’s mass shooting by an Army psychiatrist. Ft. Hood plans a memorial service on Tuesday, and the White House says the president and the first lady will attend. Also on hand will be our guest this morning, the Army chief of staff, General George Cas... Read Full Story
Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers’ health by such companies.
Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it com... Read Full Story
Washington has been negotiating secret, “highly sensitive understandings” to “provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis,” investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports.
“The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust,” Hersh writes in the November 16th issue of The New Yorker magazine.
“Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapo... Read Full Story
Ordinary, average, struggling Americans might be scratching their heads over the news from the Labor Department that unemployment is up by four-tenths of a percent for the month to a record 10.2 percent, fully three-tenths of a percent higher than economists had been forecasting, and stocks do what? Rise by a quarter of a percent!
What’s going on here?
Well, the tube analysts are quick to say, unemployment figures are a “lagging” indicator. That is, employment generally lags the overall econo... Read Full Story
Congressman Anthony Weiner, D-New York, has agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to have a floor vote on his Medicare for All bill. A press release from Congressmen Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (sponsor of HR 676, a single payer bill) opposing it helped tip the scale.
But Weiner did not ask Pelosi to include in her bill the Kucinich Amendment to allow states to create single-payer. Pelosi made clear that President Obama opposes that, and u... Read Full Story
Former British Ambassador Craig Murray says UK and the US sent prisoners to Uzbek to be tortured.
“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” Murray said. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”
Read Full Story
It would be easy to read too much into the few statewide races that were decided last night, but I think it’s fair to say that the results in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates won–in New Jersey’s case knocking off a well-funded Democratic incumbent–that the results were a blow to the Barack Obama/Rahm Emanuel strategy of playing to the right, of avoiding confrontation in Congress and of ignoring the progressive voters whose enthusiasm and effort ba... Read Full Story
It would be easy to read too much into the few statewide races that were decided last night, but I think it’s fair to say that the results in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates won–in New Jersey’s case knocking off a well-funded Democratic incumbent–that the results were a blow to the Barack Obama/Rahm Emanuel strategy of playing to the right, of avoiding confrontation in Congress and of ignoring the progressive voters whose enthusiasm and effort ba... Read Full Story
Photo by John Soares via Chomsky.info
Political activist Noam Chomsky says that although President Obama views the Iraq invasion merely as “a mistake” or “strategic blunder,” it is, in fact, a “major crime” designed to enable America to control the Middle East oil reserves.
“It’s [“strategic blunder"] probably what the German general staff was telling Hitler after Stalingrad,” Chomsky quipped, referring to the big Nazi defeat by the Soviet army in 1943.
“There is basically no significant chan... Read Full Story
The USA Patriot Act, rushed into law by a panicky U.S. Congress in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, gave the government broad surveillance powers to spy on innocent Americans. But it also stipulated that three of its more controversial provisions should expire next month unless reapproved by lawmakers.
And it appears that reapproval may be about to happen – evidently with a green light from the Obama Administration and over strong objections from human rights and ... Read Full Story
