Between The Lines - Riki Ott: human and environmental impacts of fossil fuel use (Week Ending Nov. 4, 2011)

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!

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

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

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

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

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

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

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

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

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

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

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

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

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

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

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

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

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

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

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

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

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

"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

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Fossil Fuel's Damaging Effects on Human Health, Reason Enough to Demand Renewable Energy Future

RealAudio MP3

Posted Oct. 26, 2011

Interview with Riki Ott, marine toxicologist, activist, author and former commercial fisher, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

In the never-ending quest for harder-to-access fossil fuels, oil spills, gas explosions and pipeline leaks are everyday occurrences. The impacts of the quest for oil on ecosystems – while not always fully understood – are easy to see. But the effect on human health is often harder to determine and serious problems are often misdiagnosed or just dismissed out of hand.

Riki Ott is a marine toxicologist, activist, author and former commercial fisher who experienced the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska first hand. She spent years examining the continuing threats to sea life – and humans – from that 1989 disaster. After British Petroleum’s massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, she spent months helping local residents identify health consequences and demand help in getting medical treatment. Ott also spent time in Battle Creek, Mich., after a tar sands pipeline ruptured in July 2010 and spilled 1 million gallons of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River watershed.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Ott during the Connecting for Change conference, an East Coast Bioneers gathering held in New Bedford, Mass., Oct. 21-23, where she was a keynote speaker. Here, Ott discusses the human impacts of fossil fuel use and outlines her hope for a fossil fuel-free future.

RIKI OTT: I think the best argument for stopping all of our fossil fuel use is the human health impacts. This has been consistently covered up every time there's a spill or a disaster, like in the Gulf. "Oh, people have heat stroke; people are seasick; people have food poisoning."

I've been down there again recently, just in October, and people still have the same symptoms they had a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, but you don't get seasickness for a year and a half; or heat stroke for a year and a half. People have been on multiple rounds of antibiotics – or have been – with absolutely no change in their symptoms. This is because it's not a biological causation; it's chemical causation. And what I've been seeing is the petrochemical industry – and, unfortunately, the insurance company, which is influenced heavily by these big corporations – they don't want to acknowledge that oil makes people sick – very, very sick. And so they've covered it up. Medical doctors in the Gulf are intentionally – or very misinformedly, let me put it that way – diagnosing people with heat stroke and what-not because they know that if they put chemical illness, they will not get paid; the insurance company will not pay them.

There's all kinds of levels of this going on. We see this with the tar sands. I was shocked when I went to Battle Creek, Mich., in August, so it was about a year after the Enbridge pipeline spill. I was shocked that people were exactly as sick as they were in the Gulf, with all the same symptoms, and I realized that I'd hardly heard anything about this in the news. And then I realized, Oh, it's because it's a political game. Our nation at the highest level has no exit strategy off of oil, or fossil fuels. Forget natural gas as a bridge. Fracking is killing people. It's poisoning water – irreversibly damaging precious water to the point where it will be toxic for generations. We cannot afford these environmental costs; we cannot afford the human health costs of pursuing this addiction to fossil fuels until the last drop is gone. We have to get off of it. And what that's going to take, since our federal government has no imagination space to do this, and they've completely been high-jacked by the corporations, is it's going to take the people doing exactly what they're doing now – rising up and saying "Enough!" And becoming aware of the huge costs to human health and the environment and saying, "No! No bridge with natural gas; no such thing as clean coal; nuclear is a disaster waiting to happen." We need to seriously invest in clean, green, safe energies. I don't even call them alternatives. I call them energy options. This is all doable; we can do it now, and we need to do it.

BETWEEN THE LINES: If we did it now – they say we can do it, we just lack the political will – but it would also mean, I think, people would have to use less energy, which wouldn't necessarily be a terrible burden, based on how much we use now. But don't you think that's true?

RIKI OTT: I think part of the equation is we've been wasting an incredible amount of energy, and I don't think people are even aware of how much energy we're wasting. So there's a combination of we're using more than we need right now, and then there is the real fact that we as Americans have been living kind of high on the hog. And it's gonna take restructuring our lifestyles. I think that can be done in a way that actually makes our living better, where we'll have more free time, more quality time with our families. So, that's sort of the Bioneers dream, but I'm seeing this dream in Transition Towns, and other communities across the U.S. – Sustainable Seattle, Dreaming New Mexico. There are states and communities working toward this end of how could we be happier with less stuff. And it's real. The communities that are trying this are finding it's much more satisfying than the way we live now. So I'm actually looking at being really excited about what's around the corner, in terms of realizing our full potential as human beings, using less energy.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And just the last thing. You said in your talk that 95 to 100 percent of the hundreds of people from the Gulf whose blood was tested had traces of oil in their system and also evidence of the dispersants. That's shocking.

RIKI OTT: Okay, what happened when I was in the Gulf, literally by late June, July of 2010, people started asking me as I went back and forth across the Gulf. Is there any way that I can prove I'm feeling this way because of what happened in the Gulf, because of the BP disaster? And I said, Yes, we need to take volatile organic solvent blood profiles. And people did that. They did it across the Gulf, from Florida to Louisiana. And what was consistently found, whether they are 2-year-olds or 80-year-olds, whether they are just a visitor down to the Gulf or whether they have a beach home in the Gulf, that the level of oil that is showing up in people's blood is in the upper 95th to 100th percentile of people nationwide. In other words, they have more oil in their blood than 95 to 100 percent of the rest of us in the nation. This is toxic. It's an emergency situation. It is totally freaking people out down there. People are dying; people know people are dying, and people are struggling to get immediate triage for something the federal government and most of the medical doctors in the Gulf and BP are completely still denying at this point. It's an incredible situation – people are not backing down, though.

: Riki Ott's latest book on oil spill impacts is titled, "Not One Drop.” Find more information on the campaign for a fossil fuel-free future at www.rikiott.com.