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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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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who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!
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Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.
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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.
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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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Tweets by @BTLRadioNewsInterview with Kerry St. Pe, executive director at the Barataria-Terrebone National Estuary Program, conducted by Melinda Tuhus
In late summer, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, issued a report claiming that three-quarters of the more than five million barrels of oil that erupted from British Petroleum's Deep Water Horizon's oil rig after the platform's explosion which killed 11 workers -- had disappeared. Many biologists and scientists studying the Gulf oil spill were very skeptical of that finding. But a more recent government report from November more or less confirms that study. Still, the long-term impact of the massive BP oil spill on the environment and the fishing industry won't be known for many years.
The use of toxic chemical dispersants to break up the massive oil slicks and the building of sand berms -- or artificial barrier islands to defend against the movement of oil into estuaries rich with sea life -- continue to be controversial five months after the flow of oil into the Gulf was stopped.
Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Kerry St. Pe, executive director of the Barataria-Terrebone National Estuary Program, in the bayou country west of New Orleans that was most heavily effected by the BP disaster. He talks about the oil spill's short- and long-term impacts, as well as effective and ineffective measures used to mitigate the damage.
KERRY ST. PE: There was heavy impacts in the B-T basin, but it wasn't even comparable to the impacts I received in a 1997 spill of 10,000 barrels that occurred deep in the estuary. There's no way that 10,000 barrels were felt in the B-T basin from this spill, although there was a lot more oil released than 10,000 barrels, but most of that oil flooded into the open Gulf. But nevertheless, the B basin in particular was heavily impacted, particularly in the bird area. We had a lot of nesting birds that were impacted, a lot of pelicans, a lot of shore birds and a lot of endangered species.
To the naked eye, things look pretty good. I mean, the oil came in and affected some of the vegetation; it killed marine organisms, especially the young life stages -- the post-larval and larval shrimp and fishes. Of course, that's what you don't see. The vegetation has recovered; the places that were killed above the sediment -- all that died, but the grass has resprouted from the rhizomes. I would say it's 90 to 95 percent recovered. But it's the offshore stuff, offshore breeding stocks, offshore fisheries -- we don't know how much that was affected. The long-term effects we won't know for several years, while the monitoring goes on. We have to monitor so we can find out what the impacts are to the offshore breeding stocks; we have to monitor long enough so we can tell that what we've seen as far as impacts or changes in the population are due to the oil rather than to normal fluctuations in the populations.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Kerry St. Pe, at least 1.8 million gallons of the chemical dispersant Corexit were sprayed both on the surface and deep underwater to try to break up the oil. What's your view on their use?
KERRY ST. PE: Dispersants don't lessen the impact, the toxicity of the oil at all. They don't do anything to lessen the impacts of the oil. The only thing they can do is transfer the area where you see impacts, -- and with the southeast winds we have in Louisiana, predominantly, there's no question that most of that oil, if not all of it, would have been stacked up in our internal estuary, being blown by the southeast wind. And downwind is the B-T national estuary, as well as the Breton Sound estuaries. So by dispersing it, by allowing the dispersed oil to be mixed with the water column, you have a situation where the oil is now moving in accordance with the currents, which takes it away from Louisiana. So those impacts are felt in the open Gulf, which is a lesser impact as far as vulnerability of the organisms.
BETWEEN THE LINES: So, on balance, then, did you support the use of dispersants the way they were used?
KERRY ST. PE: Yes, I did. In my opinion it was the best thing to do.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal initiated a project, which is ongoing, to build sand berms along the shoreline, ostensibly to protect the estuaries from the oil. But a lot of experts said it wasn't going to be effective. What do you think?
KERRY ST. PE: We didn't support the building of the sand berms at all. We didn't formally object to the construction of the sand berms, although we did voice opposition in the media. That was going to be at a cost of $180 million, and BP was paying for it, and aside from the enormous waste of a resource, a waste of sand that we could have used to construct the barrier islands legitimately, they built these sand berms, which were six-foot high levees of sand, for the purpose of "keeping the oil out." We saw that as a...not a good thing.
Contact the Barataria-Terrebone National Estuary Program at 1-800 259-0869 or visit their website at btlnep.org
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