Between The Lines - Jesse Lava: “Koch Brothers Exposed,” film Documentary (Week Ending Oct. 26, 2012)

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.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

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

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.)

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"Koch Brothers Exposed": Film Documentary Examines Right-Wing Groups, Causes Supported by Multi-Billionaires David and Charles Koch

RealAudio MP3

Posted Oct. 17, 2012

Interview with Jesse Lava, campaign director with Brave New Foundation, conducted by Scott Harris

Billionaire brothers, David and Charles Koch have become well known in recent years for their financial support for right-wing political causes and their very public personal commitment to defeat President Barack Obama in the 2012 election. Heirs to the oil fortune left by their father Fred, founder of Koch Industries, David and Charles have over the past nine years sponsored private retreats where wealthy conservative donors, Republican politicians and right-wing activists gather to discuss politics and pledge funds for the cause. Last winter, at a three-day retreat in California, the Kochs and more than 250 of their allies pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 election. A source who was at the retreat reported that Charles had personally pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million to beat Obama at the polls this November.

More recently, In These Times magazine reported that Koch Industries sent voter information packets to 45,000 employees and contractors working for their Georgia Pacific subsidiary endorsing Mitt Romney while warning that “many of our more than 50,000 US employees and contractors may suffer the consequences,” if they vote for Obama and Democrats.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jesse Lava, campaign director with Brave New Foundation, who oversaw the investigation that was the basis for Robert Greenwald’s newest documentary film, “Koch Brothers Exposed.” The film examines the Koch brothers’ involvement in polluting industries and the effects on “downwind” communities, efforts to resegregate public schools, the undermining of Social Security and the imposition of new laws designed to suppress voter participation. Here, Jesse Lava explains why he believes it’s important for Americans to know about the financial power behind the Koch brothers’ radical conservative political agenda.

JESSE LAVA: These are two guys who have $62 billion between them. And, they use that wealth to keep down what has been metaphorically termed the 99 percent, or say, symbolically termed the 99 percent. And they do it in a lot of ways. One key way is they use their wealth to create an echo chamber of misinformation. So let's take one issue as an example. Social Security. They've given millions upon millions of dollars to all kinds of think tanks – the Mercatus Center, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation. And these think tanks put out papers saying that Social Security is going broke. How many times have you, have all of your listeners heard that expression? "Social Security is going broke." "Social Security is going bankrupt."

That's because the Koch brothers and people like them have paid a lot of money to make sure that that's the message you hear. They create this echo chamber by funding these groups to say this, even though it's not true. And then politicians hear that, they put that into bills. Media outlets, such as Fox News – but also lots of regular mainstream outlets as well – will put that into their news stories and act as if it's true. Soon enough, you start hearing it so many times that you think, "Gee, we've got to start cutting Social Security if we want to save it." The reality is that Social Security has $2.7 trillion surplus and for decades it is expected to remain solvent. The only thing that will make Social Security insolvent is if we cut it.

So this argument that we need to destroy Social Security in order to save it is the kind of the thing that the Koch brothers do in the public discourse to achieve a minimal government and a pro-corporate agenda where things like Social Security – which is an extremely popular program – they don't want those kinds of examples of successful social programs being in existence. That's why they want to dismantle Social Security.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Now Jesse, I wanted to ask you about something that was in the news just in the last couple of days. It turns out that Koch Industries on Oct. 1, sent voter information packets to 45,000 employees of its Georgia Pacific subsidiary, saying to the employees and their contractors that they may suffer the consequences of voting for President Obama and Democrats. This has maybe been done by some employers at some time through U.S. history and elections. But certainly this is an outlier in terms of the way employers behave when it comes to an employee's personal choice and who they vote for in U.S. elections, is it not?

It absolutely is. I mean, certainly, corporations have PACs, political action committees and corporations get politically active. They kind of like to hide behind that, and say, hey, this is just free speech. The problem is that is free speech with an imbalance of power. And in that very same article that came out in the magazine, "In These Times," we had somebody who had given a quote to the Nation magazine and who had said things against the Koch brothers and their politics and working for Koch Industries. And in this article, it revealed that he had been punished for that. That he had applied for a promotion to become a shop foreman in a Koch factory and he was denied the ability to do that because they said, "You're too political." And I think he knew exactly what that meant. He had given this quote to the Nation magazine.

So it is a dangerous way to approach things and it actually reflects the broader problem of accountable corporate power and the general problem of weak unions, of workers who cannot collectively bargain, of a situation where workers are completely dependent on their employers, and employers who can say, hey, we're just doing free speech. It is de facto intimidation.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What's the objective of this film in addition to alerting us to the activities and the predilections of the billionaire Koch brothers? Is this a call to action and if so, for what?

JESSE LAVA: Absolutely. We need to take our democracy back. I know that sounds gauzy and you hear things like that all the time, but really, there is something profoundly important at stake. We're not supposed to be in a plutocracy. We're supposedly in a democracy. The problem is that most people have no idea what the Koch brothers are doing. For the people who are listening, think about your cousins, your brothers, your coworkers. Most of them, maybe they kind of, sort of heard of the Koch brothers. Probably they haven't or maybe they haven't. This has to get out there, because the way that people can fight to get their democracy back is if they know the mechanism by which it's being taken from them.

And that's what the Koch brothers are doing. They're precisely trying to take our democracy from us. And with this film, we hope to inspire, educate and agitate. We want people to show this to everyone they know. Go to KochBrothersExposed.com. You can get a DVD there. You can do screenings. You can sign up to do a screening where people in your area can come to it. Go and do that so that people understand how their democracy is evaporating. That's how we can get it back.

Learn more about the film and the Koch brothers' political agenda by visiting KochBrothersExposed.com.