Announcements 




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.



Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.



The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement



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




SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017






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



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017




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



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017



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



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




SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017




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.


Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling


resist (Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

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.


Between The Lines on Stitcher

stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

inequality
"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.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

Between The Lines Blog  BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Between The Lines Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Podcasts Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts:  direct  or  via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

RSS feed  twitter  facebook

donate  Learn how to support our efforts!

Climate Change Activist Groups Gear Up to Fight New GOP Senate Majority Push to Build Keystone XL Pipeline

Posted Nov. 12, 2014

MP3 Interview with Karthik Ganapathy, U.S. communications manager with the climate change group 350.org, conducted by Scott Harris

keystone

It’s a sad irony that in less than two months after the world’s largest protest confronting climate change in New York City on Sept. 21, the U.S. midterm election conferred all political power in the U.S. Congress to the Republican party. The GOP largely dismisses the science behind the assertion that climate change is a dire threat to the planet. Perhaps the most determined foe of climate change policy in Washington is Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the likely next chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe, a proud climate science denier, has often stated that global warming is a hoax and that a warmer planet may have a beneficial effect on our lives.

Come January with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, all that stands between a dramatic roll back of many existing environmental polices and the trash can is President Obama’s veto pen. Top Republican priorities include targeting Environmental Protection Agency rules limiting carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, dismantling or weakening the federal Clean Water Act, expediting approval of liquefied-natural-gas exports and ending the decades-old ban on crude oil exports.

But perhaps the most important and symbolic environmental policy issue up for debate next year is the decision facing the White House on the future of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry 900,000 barrels of dirty tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast. President Obama has said that he will only allow the pipeline to be built if it doesn’t significantly worsen carbon pollution. And although a State Department review of the project concluded the project won’t increase carbon emissions, environmental groups assert the study was deeply flawed and that tar sands oil and its extraction produce more greenhouse gases than natural gas and traditional crude oil. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Karthik Ganapathy, U.S. communications manager with the climate change group 350.org, who discusses the results of the midterm election and the coming showdown over the Keystone XL pipeline.

KARTHIK GANAPATHY: The electorate that votes in a mid-term election in a year with an unpopular president, you know that's generally going to favor the opposition party. So I don't think that it surprised anyone that the Republicans did well on (Nov. 4). But I think it would be a mistake to fixate on this sort of "we're doomed" kind of coverage that we've been seeing everywhere. Yes, Jim Inhofe is going to be the new chairman of the environment committee and yes, he wrote a book denying that global warming is real.

But I think time and again, the environmental movement has been written off as something that has no power, that can't get anything done. And I think that's largely been a mistake. Every time that the D.C. Beltway has sort of written us off and said, "Keystone's going to get built no matter what, Keystone's get built," "No, this time for real, Keystone's going to get built," I think every time grassroots supporters have sort of mobilized to stop that and to show that voters in this country really do care about climate change.

BETWEEN THE LINES: In talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, it's in the crosshairs of the new Republican majority in the Senate, where you have a lot of politicians in post-election interviews talking about getting the Keystone XL pipeline going and under construction is one of the top priorities. What is your view of President Obama and where he's going with this? He put off the decision until after this election, but certainly he's not in any kind of stronger position here when it comes to Congress to stop it, if that's what he wants to do.

KARTHIK GANAPATHY: I think ultimately this is the president's call. I think a lot of the coverage that we've been seeing has sort of fixated on the idea that now the Republicans have both houses of Congress, the Keystone's a done deal, that even suggesting that it doesn't have a chance of passing is ludicrous. And I think that's mistaken. At the end of the day, this is the president's decision. And you're right that we've sort of kicked the can down the road in terms of making a decision.

But when President Obama outlined his Keystone principle, he laid out a clear litmus test, and that's if Keystone harms the environment or it accelerates the development of tar sands to the point where it will cause significant damage to the environment then that's not something that the State Department can sign off on. And so, I think at the end of the day, the president has all the information he needs to reject the pipeline. And for our part, we're going to keep putting pressure on the president and on congressional leaders to do the right thing here.

For the president, this is the last two years of his presidency. He doesn't have to worry about politics any more, he doesn't have to worry about which voters are going to turn up at the polls. But what he has to do is what's right for him and for his legacy. And he's made some progress on climate, more than any other president before him, I would argue. And so, I think that for him to approve Keystone would be a huge oil splotch, I think, on what otherwise could be seen as a pretty good climate record.

BETWEEN THE LINES: One of the concerns I know of many climate change activists and environmentalists is that President Obama, confronted by the new reality of the Republican-controlled Senate, might trade away the Keystone XL pipeline for some measures that might be positive in another area, in terms of maybe Congress laying off an attack on new EPA regulations on carbon emissions from coal plants, for instance. Do you think some kind of bargain might be in the making where Keystone could be traded away in favor of some other policy gain?

KARTHIK GANAPATHY: You know, I really hope not. You're certainly not the first one to speculate that, and that could be possible. But, I think at the end of the day, I really think this comes down to the president for what legacy. And I think it would be a mistake for him to sort of bargain. I think a lot of people would say that a defining feature of the Obama presidency has been to start negotiating in a position that's far too centrist to begin with, so you end up with a compromise measure that's really more of a Republican bill and then still get the right opposed to it just on principle because it's something that the president supported. I think it's fair to say that's been a recurring theme in the Obama presidency. So I think that for him to negotiate too much in terms of "let's protect this section of the EPA regulations if we approve Keystone," I think that's a mistake, and not least because Keystone is disastrous policy, the much-touted job creation, the economic benefits that the Republicans claim will come from Keystone. Numerous analyses have shown that a lot of the jobs are temporary jobs that will happen in constructing the pipeline. And the permanent jobs created could be as few as 20, that's less than a shopping mall. I think it would be a disastrous mistake to approve that on any sort of economic benefit while ignoring the massive impact that it would have on the environment. Tar sands is, as I'm sure you know, is one the oiliest, dirtiest physical extraction method there is, and so signing off on that would be a huge mistake.

But I think at the end of the day, what you're going to see is an event or a series of events between now and January that send a message that Keystone is linked fundamentally to the climate deniers who say that global warming is a myth.

For more information on climate change action and 350.org visit, http://350.org.

Related Links: