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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Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement
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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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.
"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.
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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Interview with Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, conducted by Scott Harris
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is a proposed trade and investment treaty being negotiated in secret by 11 nations that include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Japan has also expressed interest in joining the pact; however, that position was quite unpopular among Japanese voters in December’s election campaign. The 15 round of TPP talks held in Auckland, New Zealand from Dec. 3-12, drew militant protests. Despite growing opposition around the world, negotiators in New Zealand stated they hoped to conclude a deal by the end of 2013.
Although negotiations have been conducted under unprecedented secrecy, leaked documents reveal an agenda demanding aggressive intellectual property provisions which would roll back public health safeguards in favor of enhanced corporate patent and data protection. Critics charge those provisions would make it harder to gain access to generic drugs, such as retroviral medications to treat HIV and AIDS. Other concerns center around the treaty’s expansion of corporate power to challenge national laws on worker rights, environmental regulations and consumer protections.
While some 600 corporate advisers have participated in TPP negotiations – having access to drafts of the treaty’s language – the public, members of Congress, journalists, and civil society have been excluded. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Lori Wallach, director of Public Global Citizen’s Trade Watch, who was in New Zealand during the most recent round of talks. Here, she explains why she believes the TPP is the most potentially damaging agreement since the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1995 establishment of the World Trade Organization.
LORI WALLACH: Well, this is a perverse irony because, although people were divided about what NAFTA would do back the 1990s, the polling shows that one of the only things that actually unites the American public across Democratic, Republican, Independent, extremely conservative, extremely progressive - is opposition by majorities in each of those categories to more NAFTAs. NAFTA's actually united us in more opposition. The reason – and if people knew about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they would be up in arms and there would be a debate.
The reason they don't is unprecedented secrecy. This is a negotiation that has been going on since 2008, started by the Bush administration, took a hiatus, and at the end of 2009 the Obama administration picked it up. There have been 15 multi-week rounds of negotiations. There is a multi-thousands page draft text of 29 chapters of what isn't a trade agreement – that's the brand that we're being sold. In fact, what it is an enforceable system of binding global governance written largely by and certainly written for the biggest multinational corporations. Think effectively "NAFTA on steroids" with Vietnam, China, it would be open for any country to join. And the chapters of which only 5 of the 29 have to do with trade include new rights for the big pharmaceutical companies to expand, to raise medical prices, expand monopoly patents, limits on Internet freedom, penalties for inadvertent noncommercial copying, sending something to a friend. There are the same rules that promote off-shoring of jobs that were in NAFTA that are more robust that literally give privileges and protections if you leave.
There is a ban on "buy American" and "buy local" or "green" or sweat-free procurement. There are limits on domestic financial stability regulations. There are limits on imported food safety standards and product standards. There are limits on how we can regulate energy towards a more green future - all of these things are what they call "Behind the Borders" agenda. And the operating clause of TPP is: "Each country shall ensure the conformity of its domestic laws, regulations and administrative procedures with these agreements." That's to say, that we're told to conform all of our domestics laws - including all the important public interest laws fought so hard by people around the country – for these corporate dictates and it's strongly enforceable. If we do not conform our laws, another country can challenge us and impose trade sanctions until we do, but this one is even privately enforceable by the corporations themselves.
This is an agreement that actually formalizes the priority of corporate power over government. It allows any foreign investor to go to a United Nations or World Bank-based tribunal of three private sector attorneys and sue our governments for our taxpayer-compensation over any domestic policy or action that the foreign investor thinks undermines their expected future profits. I could not make this up, and in fact, it would be hard to believe, except this is one of the few chapters that has leaked. This whole negotiation has been the most secretive I have seen in 20 years of watching trade agreements. Not even the members with jurisdiction directly over the agreement are being allowed to see the draft.
BETWEEN THE LINES: What has been the role of the Obama administration, pushing the agenda if at all, forward on the TPP talks?
LORI WALLACH: What's heartbreaking is in fact the Obama administration has – despite President Obama's really terrific promises in his 2008 campaign promises to replace the old NAFTA job-killing race to the bottom model of trade agreements – in fact, the administration has recycled through in to their trade positions. Many of the very people who got us into NAFTA during the Clinton administration and those folks have picked up exactly where the Bush people left off, pushing this corporate agenda. And even more, which is just stunning; they've actually in areas like pharmaceutical, Big Pharma's rights to expand patent links in poor countries. The Obama negotiators have actually rolled back reforms that the Democratic Congress made Bush include in some of his later trade agreements, which is just remarkably are horrifying. But lock, stock and barrel, the rest is just straight up the same old, except NAFTA on steroids. So NAFTA had certain elements of each of the rules that are in TPP and TPP is the maximalist of corporate power.
Find more information about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade treaty and its critics at http://www.citizen.org/trade/.
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