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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.

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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.

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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.





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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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GOP House Members Attack Endangered Species Act

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Posted Feb. 12, 2014

Interview with Brett Hartl, endangered species policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity, conducted by Scott Harris

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The federal Endangered Species Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in December 1973, has succeeded in saving many species during its four-decade lifespan, including the bald eagle, American alligator and the gray whale. The act currently protects more than 1,500 plants, insects, mammals, birds, reptiles and other creatures according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But now a group of 13 House Republicans are proposing to dismantle key elements of the law with potential deadly consequences for threatened species in North America.

These proposed changes would limit citizens’ ability to hold the government accountable for effective enforcement of the Endangered Species Act and give politicians more power than scientists in determining how the act should be administered. Environmental and conservation groups strongly oppose the GOP’s reform measures, warning that these changes would ultimately reduce protections for species and lead to more extinctions.

During the act’s 40 years of enforcement, business interests have often challenged the law where it was thought to cut into corporate profits. Logging interests, for example, have long complained about federal protection of the northern spotted owl. Federal wildlife officials are now considering extending protections for more than 250 additional species, including the endangered greater sage grouse in 11 western states – which would impose development restrictions opposed by the oil and gas industries and agribusiness companies. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Brett Hartl, endangered apecies policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity, who talks about the GOP assault on the Endangered Species Act and the potential impact on threatened wildlife.

BRETT HARTL: This past week on Feb. 4, Doc Hastings and 12 other sort of self-appointed very conservative Tea Party members of the House of Representatives released a report – kind of a loose use of the term "report" – outlining a set of recommendations that they would like to see made, to alter the Endangered Species Act, which they claim would reform it, but in reality would most likely gut the most important provisions of the law. And the reality is that, since the beginning of the Endangered Species Act over 40 years ago, individual citizens, environmental groups, even frankly, the state governments, have played a really constructive role identifying the species that are declining in this country, that need protection under the Endangered Species Act, and they have been the ones who have pushed the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect species under the act almost since the beginning. So this report – a now scheduled reform – seeks to basically limit citizen involvement and citizen participation in the Endangered Species Act and it’s really disguised as, what it really is, an industry effort to limit the reach of the Endangered Species Act.

As you’re probably well aware, there are a lot of state governments that recently have been taken over by the Tea Party and other conservative (factions) in the Republican Party who have been seeking to undermine environmental protections at the state level and local levels as well, so we see this as a coordinated effort to limit environmental protections for endangered species nationwide.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Brett, what exactly are the Republicans proposing here, in the House, and how would it affect federal protection of some endangered species?

BRETT HARTL: Sure, so, this report is quite long and a lot of the details are kind of "in the weaves," but from a big picture perspective, the goal of this entire report and strategy has always been, basically, delay.

It has been sort of the approach Republicans have taken to push back against endangered species getting protection. So in the mid-90s when Republicans took over the Congress, they eliminated all funding to list new species under the Endangered Species Act for just over a year, between 1995 and 1996, and they’ve limited the ability to spend money through a variety of wonky policy measures in the appropriations bill each year, and this report sort of follows that theme. One sort of easy to understand the example is, the report says that a species cannot be listed or protected under the Endangered Species Act until the Fish and Wildlife Service completes a "recovery plan" for that species.

Now, that may somewhat sound like not a terrible idea, but the reality is, that assembling the data and figuring out what is needed for recovery of a species that we know is declining is not an easy task; and, most recovery plans are implemented years, if not decades, after listing because it is actually such a complicated question about how to stop the decline of an endangered species and recover it.

So, this provision, which may seem at first glance intuitive, in reality would have the effect of delaying protections for hundreds of species for many years — and as long as the species is not officially listed, or protected, then industry and development can proceed without paying attention to the potential environmental impacts.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Brett, as you examined the support for these changes to the Endangered Species Act, can you point to the particular corporations or industries that are backing these measures, and what their benefit is if the Endangered Species Act were to be gutted, so to speak?

BRETT HARTL: I don’t want to point to a specific company, but I would say that protecting endangered species, there are some very obvious examples, that have been sort of "classic" in the sense of "the usual suspects" on either side.

The oil and gas industries in the U.S. feel an incredible opportunity, especially on public lands in the Western U.S., with advances in fracking and other shale gas techniques. And there are some wide-ranging species that are declining very rapidly, like the sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken in Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas that would be significantly harmed if these reforms were to go through.

You know, the timber industry has been trying to log the last old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest for a long time, and the Doc Hastings Report singles out the spotted owl as the perpetual reason that our forest industries are declining in the U.S., ignoring basically the entire global trade phenomena that really changed the markets.

And I think the final big one in the Northwest: the Pacific salmon are a difficult species because of all the dams, and all the other threats to them, and there’s always the tension between supplying hydroelectric power, and cheap power, and cheap water for farming, and not considering the end-stream effects of radically changing all these water bodies. So these are general tensions that we see that are driving us, but those are the big three.

For more information on The Center for Biological Diversity, visit biologicaldiversity.org.

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