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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!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement



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




SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017






SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017




SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017




SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017




SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven




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

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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.

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.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.


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White House–Congressional Fiscal Cliff Deal Comes at High Price

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Posted Jan. 9, 2013

Interview with Richard Eskow, senior fellow with the group Campaign for America’s Future, conducted by Scott Harris

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While the U.S. news media was hyperventilating with minute-by-minute reports on the drama surrounding the Washington-made “fiscal cliff” crisis, an 11th-hour deal between the White House and Congress was reached in the first hours of the new year, averting across the board tax hikes. The agreement allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire for families making $450,000 a year or more, marginally raised the estate tax, and tax rates on capital gains and dividends. The legislation extended unemployment benefits for a year, while continuing the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and refundable tuition tax credits for five years.

But the agreement deferred action for two months on the $109 billion in automatic domestic and Pentagon budget cuts; failed to address the debt ceiling that must be raised between Feb. 15 and March 1, and made no provision for dealing with the March 27 expiration of appropriation bills that fund the federal government.

The lack of congressional action on these critical issues sets up at least three more fiscal cliff-type political showdowns, that threaten to damage the nation’s credit rating and/or shut down federal government operations.

Many progressive activists and legislators were critical of the compromises made by the president that limited tax increases on the wealthy, taking $3.9 trillion in revenue off the table permanently. They worry that Republicans are now empowered to focus all future negotiations on budget cuts, rather than generating additional revenue. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Richard Eskow, a senior fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future, who assesses the negative fallout from the fiscal cliff agreement between the White House and Congress that may pave the way for benefit cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

RICHARD ESKOW: One of the big complaints about this deal is that the concessions are permanent on one side, but the cessation of hostilities is only temporary. So this leaves all sorts of battles yet to come and on a slanted, tilted playing field, because if you look at the election results in November, Democrats won the presidency, and they won it on a progressive platform – no matter what they may say now – that included tax increases of about $250,000, protecting Medicare and Social Security. They won on that platform, they won the presidency, they won the Senate, not only only in numerical numbers, but overwhelmingly in the popular vote. And interestingly, they won the House of Representatives in the popular votes by more than a million votes. But because of gerrymandering, the Republicans got to keep the House.

So now all the negotiation is being done on the terms of the party that lost – at least in the popular vote – all three branches of government. Now Mitch McConnell in the Senate is saying that we're done talking about new revenue, now the next discussions are about cuts and cuts only. So all of a sudden, the winning party with the winning majority and the winning mandate is on the defensive against those who want to do wildly unpopular things.

The Republicans are also saying with some sympathy, within the White House, I might add, that they want to cut what they call "entitlements" which is Medicare and Social Security benefits which has nothing to do with our long-term deficit. Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit and Medicare's cost problems don't have to with the benefits themselves, but with the problems with health care in this country. But that looks like that's going to be what's on the table. So this is, in my opinion, a very undemocratic with a small 'd' basis for these negotiations going forward.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Now, when it comes to tax revenue, there's been a discussion that Republicans declare any debate about more revenue is over and everything from here on in is about budget cuts. But where can the president and Democrats, progressives, more specifically, go with proposals to raise more revenue rather than cut programs for the working poor? What comes to mind are things like imposing a transaction tax on stock trades, closing loopholes for offshore tax havens and the like. Is any of that going to be on the table, you think?

RICHARD ESKOW: Well, again, I would hope so. But I'm not as optimistic as I'd like to be, because we even have some people in the White House embracing this notion that we should have lower corporate tax rates and tax "simplification" to go along with it. But, at the end of the day the lobbyists and tax lawyers usually win those fights.

Now, the president has sent ambiguous signals about taxing offshore income. We absolutely should do that, we should be pressing to do that. The financial transaction tax has not gotten a lot of play in Washington circles. A couple of people on the Hill have introduced it in a bill. But, I think it's critically important for two reasons. One, it's a source of new revenue and two, it's a very, very tiny transactional tax on each buy or sell transaction that takes place. And it would do two things. One, it would raise revenue, and two, it would make our economy more stable.

BETWEEN THE LINES: It seems that President Obama in past negotiations has offered up both an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67 as well as this proposal, called "Chained CPI" which would effectively be a benefit cut for Social Security recipients by monkeying around with the way Social Security payments keep up with inflation. Do you want to talk about how your organization and other activists are working to put pressure on the White House not to go down this road?

RICHARD ESKOW: First of all, this has been something that the White House has wanted to do for a long time. And you know, this upsets certain supporters of the president and so on. But I personally was in a private, off-the-record meeting with a very, very senior administration official who said in 2009 that they wanted to cut these benefits as a way of proving to the international bond markets that were serious, that sort of thing. But the international bond markets happened to love U.S. government bonds right now, so that's irrational. But I think that they're committed to it.

These cuts are opposed by 75 percent of Republican voters, according to our own polling, 76 percent of self-identified tea party members. People don't want this done. And if the president gives the Republicans cover to do it, two things will happen. One is it will be catastrophic for all of us as we get older. And two, even from a purely pragmatic political point of view, it's going to decimate the Democratic party.

And the partisans who work for that party, who support that party should be the most upset of all, because not only will it be bad policy, it'll be catastrophic politically. Campaign for America's Future and one of our affiliated groups that we work with – Social Security Works – and a number of other organizations are working very hard to prevent those things from happening.

Find information about Campaign for America's Future at ourfuture.org

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