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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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2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

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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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Rush Limbaugh’s Attack on Law Student Sandra Fluke Provokes Campaign to Shut Down His Show

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Posted March 14, 2012

Interview with Terry O'Neill, president of National Organization for Women, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

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On his Feb. 29 nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh attacked a female law student named Sandra Fluke, who had volunteered to testify before a congressional committee about the need for birth control to be covered under the Affordable Care Act. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman, Darrel Issa, had earlier prevented Fluke from testifying before his committee, because he said, the focus of the hearing was not on women's health, but on religious persecution.

In his broadcast, Limbaugh called Fluke a slut and a prostitute, then followed that up with a demand that she videotape herself having sex and post it on the Internet. The attack set off an immediate call by outraged women and men for advertisers to drop their support for his three-hour daily show. On March 12, ThinkProgress.org reported that 140 advertisers, including dozens of major national corporations, had requested their ads no longer air on Limbaugh’s program. Lifelock and Lear Financial are among the companies continuing to stand by Limbaugh.

NOW, the National Organization for Women has called on Premiere Networks, the largest radio syndication company in the U.S., and a wholly owned subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, to fire Rush Limbaugh. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with NOW president Terry O'Neill about the controversy and what her organization is doing to increase the pressure on Limbaugh’s advertisers and stations to drop the conservative talk show.

TERRY O'NEILL: I have said that the words "slut" and "prostitute" are not the problem with what he said. His first diatribe against Sandra Fluke was very long and involved an extraordinary, basically, fantasy, a sexual fantasy about her sex life. He insisted that she was having so much sex that she needed more and more birth control, which -- hello -- that's not how birth control works. But he said she was having so much sex he couldn't believe she could still walk -- and, by the way, it's clearly defamatory. I don't know if she intends to file a lawsuit against him, but he absolutely crossed the line. She's a private figure, she's not a public figure. So it wasn't the slut word or the prostitute word, it was the whole diatribe against her when her only crime was to go to the U.S. Congress to offer testimony about the importance of birth control as basic preventive health care for young women.

In response to the first diatribe...we now have a media hall of shame. We call out people in the media when they launch misogynistic attacks on women who are in the public sphere. And when Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, we called that out on our media hall of shame and encouraged our activists to contact Clear Channel and encouraged Clear Channel to dump him, take him off the air, because we felt he should have been fired. There followed two days by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show where he doubled down against Sandra Fluke. The second radio show was the one where I believe he engaged in the sexual fantasy about watching her have sex on a video; he did it again the next day. So for three solid days, three hours a day, he was viciously attacking Sandra Fluke.

Since then, we have renewed our call for Clear Channel to fire him. Our allied organizations...I know that Crystal Ball from northern Virginia put up a website called www.BoycottRush.org, and there's another website called www.StopRush.org. So there are a number of organizations that are mobilizing. So it's up to 140 advertisers, and I think the next wave is going to be the stations. I have said publicly on a number of occasions that the stations need to drop him, and I believe that will continue to happen. This thing is not going to end; it's continuing to roll along. In fact, we're going to be speaking with Media Matters, a non-profit organization that has followed Rush's very shameful history of attacking women, people of color, immigrants, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender people, you name it. Media Matters has been really great at tracking his history of bigotry on the air, and we're working with them to continue to exist that Rush Limbaugh doesn't belong on the air.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Terry O'Neill, it was reported on March 12 that, without explanation, Premiere Networks told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. These spots are how Premiere makes its money from Limbaugh's show and other shows it syndicates. Some stations are running free public service announcements in those slots.

TERRY O'NEILL: That's a significant dent in the profitability of that show, but it's not enough. And as long as Clear Channel has decided to stand by their man, the individual stations need to drop him. So far, only two out of 600-odd stations have dropped him, but my expectation is that you'll begin to see more and more as pressure begins to build on stations to drop him. I think the reality is that stations have not personally felt a lot of pressure. I think the activists around the country are still focused on advertisers. And you can see that, because only a few days ago it was at 50, and now it's 140.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So what are NOW's grassroots activists doing to try to get Rush off the air?

TERRY O'NEILL: We're still working on the plan about how to roll all this out. But I will tell you that NOW chapters are energized and women are already gearing up to go after those stations.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Some people say Rush Limbaugh is a talk show host -- this kind of outrageous talk is par for the course and what listeners should expect, and he has a First Amendment right to say it.

TERRY O'NEILL: Rush Limbaugh does not have a First Amendment right to be on the radio. He has a First Amendment right not to be prosecuted by the government for what he says. He does not have a First Amendment right to be carried by Clear Channel. He doesn't have a First Amendment right to be supported by advertisers. Obviously, he has a right to free speech, but he does not have a right to defame Sandra Fluke. That's why we have defamation laws in this country. Libel and slander is something that's wrong, and there's no First Amendment right to commit libel and slander, which I believe is what he did. I don't know if he's going to be sued for it. But by the way, he's decided to go after me personally, for some of the remarks I made about Rush. He seems to believe it's to his benefit to keep this issue going, and as long as he decides it's to his benefit, he's going to be spewing vile statements and ugly comments wherever he thinks he can spew them, but from my point of view, he has crossed a line, and he needs to be off the air. It's just that simple.

To learn more about the National Organization for Women, visit www.now.org.

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