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.
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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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Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris
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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Tweets by @BTLRadioNewsPosted Dec. 26, 2012
Interview with Lisa Graves, executive director, Center for Media and Democracy, conducted by Scott Harris
A week after the Dec. 14 shooting rampage that ended the lives of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association broke its self-imposed silence with a public statement issued by NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. The press conference was twice disrupted by anti-NRA activists from Code Pink Women for Peace, whose members held up signs which read, “NRA: Blood On Its Hands," and "NRA: Killing Our Kids." During the media event, the NRA reiterated its opposition to new gun control laws and blamed mass shooting incidents on America's entertainment industry, violent movies and video games.
LaPierre stated that the massacre at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School committed by Adam Lanza, using an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, could have been prevented or stopped if there had been armed, trained security personnel on site. LaPierre went on to say that, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” There was widespread pushback against the NRA position and advocacy of new laws to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as 100 percent background checks for everyone who purchases a gun.
Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, who formerly served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice where she worked on national gun policy. Here, she examines the relationship between the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the firearms public policy agenda of both organizations.
LISA GRAVES: Well, I found Wayne LaPierre's press conference on Friday (Dec. 21, 2012) to be bizarre and really tone deaf. I think the notion that we can prevent these awful tragedies by having more guns in our schools is really wrong-headed, and quite frankly, he's ignoring history and the terrible tragedy in Columbine in Colo. There was an armed guard at that school, and he took at shot at the shooters. But that didn't stop the shooters. The shooters were still able to get into the school and murder those children. And I think that if you think about it just logically, you can't have a gunman, in essence - a volunteer or a paid guard in every single classroom, in every single school in every single town and city in the country. It's an absurd suggestion and quite frankly, it's not the only absurd thing he said. This is a man who stood there before the American people and basically said, guns kill people, video games do.
You know, a video game has never pierced a person's heart, a gun has. And in this instance, as everyone knows all too well, a young man was able to murder 20 children in a matter of seconds, if not minutes. And so, I think that Wayne LaPierre has signaled that his alliance is with the most extreme elements of the gun society in this country. And he's certainly doing the bidding of his real masters, which are one of the primary funders of the National Rifle Association, which are corporations. The NRA is a membership organization of some gun owners in the United States, as well as a nonprofit corporation that represents some of the biggest gun manufacturers in the world, like a trade group. When you look at the amount of money that the NRA has, it spends well over $100 million a year. It has well over $100 million in assets beyond what it spends a year. And it pays a corporate-style salary. Wayne LaPierre's get paid nearly a million dollars a year, including salary and benefits to be a front man for the weapons industry, quite frankly, in my opinion.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Lisa, your organization, The Center for Media and Democracy, has done extensive research and investigation of the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise known as ALEC. Tell us a little bit about the role ALEC has played in extending the influence of the NRA on gun policy in this country. And it would be important to also explain the NRA's relationship with ALEC.
LISA GRAVES: This is a group that exists in large part, I would say primarily to push legislation into law. And what it does is it creates an equal partnership where, under its own literature, corporations get a voice and a vote on these bills. Then these bills are brought back to the state houses in capitals across the country and these ALEC legislators introduce these bills, cleansed of any reference of the fact that they were pre-voted on by corporations, some of the biggest corporations and special interests in the world like the NRA.
The NRA has been a long-time member of ALEC. It was the chair of ALEC's crime task force. It was even the chair of ALEC's public safety and elections task force. A few years ago, ALEC decided that it was going to make it harder for Americans to vote through restrictive voting measures, through restrictive voter ID rules. So the NRA and ALEC go way back. That legacy is quite startling.
BETWEEN THE LINES: To put the question bluntly, Lisa, specifically, who benefits financially from the NRA's opposition to almost all gun control legislation? And this, despite the fact that there's been polling of the membership of the NRA, which generally supports some of the common sense gun control laws that have been proposed both before and after the Newtown tragedy.
LISA GRAVES: Who profits from these NRA-ALEC laws? The gun manufacturers and the gun dealers and the gun sellers. They're the ones who profit from these types of measures. And who profits from the NRA's efforts to thwart reasonable protections, reasonable public safety measures about hand guns? It's the gun industry. And that gun industry is a global industry. Some of these companies are foreign companies, foreign-held holding companies and other companies. They sell a number of weapons to the U.S. military and then they sell civilian-grade weapons that are similar to military-grade weapons, and weapons like the Bushmaster with a 30-bullet clip. It's not a hunting weapon. It's a weapon for war; it's a weapon for killing people and for killing them as quickly as you can.
And so, those are the types of weapons, and those types of clips, access to those weapons and clips are one of the chief objectives that the NRA has pushed over the years in its efforts to thwart the original assault weapons ban and to ensure that it expired. And that goes for both the regular Bushmaster and other semi-automatic types of weapons with these large clips of ammunition.
For more information about the Center for Media and Democracy, visit PRWatch.org.
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