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Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.



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The Resistance Starts Now!

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SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris





SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018



SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018





SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018




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SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017



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SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017



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SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017




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SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven




2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.



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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.


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Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

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"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.





Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.



JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

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In Aftermath of Devastating "Frankenstorm" Climate Change Group Launches Divestment Campaign Against Fossil Fuel Industry

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Posted Oct. 31, 2012

Interview with Daniel Kessler, media campaigner with the climate change group 350.org, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

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In the wake of a one-of-a-kind hurricane merged with a nor'easter storm that smashed into the East Coast on Oct. 29, the issue of climate change is now front and center – at least among those who consider the strange and extreme weather the world has been experiencing the past year or two to be linked to climate change. What's happening is exactly what 98 percent of the world's climate scientists predicted would happen. It's just happening much sooner than many thought it would.

Before Hurricane Sandy, the climate change group 350.org had already planned what it's calling their "Do the Math Tour," starting Nov. 7, the day after the presidential election. With both President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney trying to outdo each other in support of fossil fuel extraction, 350.org founder Bill McKibben says the time is right to promote the conclusion he reached in his recent article in Rolling Stone magazine – known reserves of oil, coal and gas hold five times more carbon than climate scientists think is safe to burn. Organizers hope their 21-city “Do the Math” tour will spark a nationwide fossil fuel divestment campaign at colleges and universities and inspire new protests against the industry.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Daniel Kessler, media campaigner with 350.org, about the tour and the divestment campaign, which will include a video appearance by Archbishop Desmond Tutu urging people to join the new movement based on the divestment model that helped to end apartheid in South Africa.

DANIEL KESSLER: We're launching our "Do the Math" Tour the day after the election, Nov. 7, and there's some symbolism behind that. We're looking kind of outside the political process, because the political process isn't moving at the speed that we need it to. So we're going to be pointing our energies at the fossil fuel industry and that's why we're launching this tour. We're going to 21 cities in about 25 days; we're going at breakneck speed. And the point of it is they're going around, and talk to people about the math behind the climate crisis, how much warming we can actually take on this planet, how much carbon we have left to burn, and how much carbon reserves the fossil fuel industry currently has. And when you look at the numbers, they currently have about five times in their reserves what we can burn if we want to stay below a safe level of temperature rise.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What does 350.org consider a safe level of temperature rise?

DANIEL KESSLER: You know, every country, including the U.S., came together in Copenhagen in 2009, and they all agreed that 2 degrees Celsius was the red line, the number we don't want to go beyond. And we've already raised the earth's temperature about 0.8 degrees Celsius, so we're almost half-way there.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Your campaign points to the fossil fuel industry as the enemy. What are you focusing on?

DANIEL KESSLER: Oil, gas and coal.The reason for it that the atmosphere doesn't really discriminate when it comes to fossil fuels; we actually need to stop burning all of them and transition to renewable energy as soon as we can. And so, those companies have been responsible for buying off our politicians, making sure we can't see progress in this country. And we're seeing what the effects are of burning their product. Most people have poked their head outside their window this year and seen some of the crazy, extreme weather that's going on. We broke 3,100 temperature records in June; we're now experiencing the 330th consecutive month where the average temperature has exceeded average norms. And so, things are getting crazy, and people are seeing that and we know who's responsible for it – it's the fossil fuel companies.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Daniel Kessler, what's your strategy? Divestment? Boycott?

DANIEL KESSLER: We're launching a divestment campaign. It's based on what happened in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, where students really rose up on campus and said it's immoral for their money to be wrapped up in companies that are investing in South Africa. And we're going to be launching a similar model, essentially saying it's immoral for school endowments to have their money wrapped up in fossil fuel companies, the same companies that are baking the planet that these students are going to have to inherit. So no, we're not asking people to boycott. That wouldn't be very effective, and yes, we all do use fossil fuels. But the question is, when are we going to transition off them? And what are the obstacles to doing that? The fossil fuel companies have an incentive to keep us hooked on their product, and they've done a very good job of that, and this effort around divestment is going to be a way to push back.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So this is a totally campus-focused tour?

DANIEL KESSLER: No, we're going to cities and to some universities, and one of the campaigns we're going to be focusing on next year is the divestment work, but it's by no means the only campaign we'll be running. We'll be doing lots of stuff that's aimed at the fossil fuel industry, and kind of attacking their social license to operate, essentially saying that their business model is predicated on cooking the planet, and that needs to stop.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Neither Romney nor Obama has raised climate change in this campaign, and alas, not one of the moderators for the vice-presidential debate or the three presidential debates mentioned it. What does that say to you?

DANIEL KESSLER: Well, you can interpret that in a lot of different ways. I've been thinking about it in two ways. One is that it's clear that in some respects the fossil fuel industry got what they've been trying to do, which is silencing our politicians and our voices around this and stifling dissent and making sure there's a lot of misinformation out there. And the candidates – you have to say it's kind of a moral failing on their behalf, that they haven't addressed the climate crisis. But the other way I've been looking at is from an electoral standpoint, and the polls show that people want a transition onto renewable energy, onto clean energy, and off of fossil fuels, so any politician who takes that challenge would probably see a benefit from it, so it's quite mysterious why neither candidate will address the climate challenge.

BETWEEN THE LINES: You mentioned this is just one of the campaigns 350.org is working on. Can you say anything about other campaigns?

DANIEL KESSLER: Well, we're going to be doing a lot of stuff, but most people are probably familiar with our efforts to stop the Keystone XL pipeline from coming down from Canada to the Gulf Coast. The president hasn't decided yet what the fate of that pipeline's going to be, and that's sort of our Number One political ask, is putting enough pressure on the president that makes him understand that the people don't want this pipeline, and he must say no to it. There'll be a lot of action around the pipeline. We're also doing a number of things internationally and lots of other campaigns in the States that we're not quite ready to disclose but I think people are going to think are really exciting.

Climate change group 350.org takes its name from the maximum amount of carbon dioxide – 350 parts per million – that scientists consider safe to prevent massive shift in the earth's climate, earth's atmosphere already measures 389 parts per million. Find more information on the "Do the Math Tour," on 350.org.

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