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 Richard Wolff, professor of economics at New School University, conducted by Scott Harris
Running on an uncompromising anti-austerity platform, Greece’s Syriza party, the Coalition of the Radical Left, won a decisive victory over the conservative New Democracy party in the economically battered nation’s Jan. 25 election. Syriza fell only two seats short of winning an absolute majority in Greece’s 300-seat Parliament, prompting party leader Alexis Tsipras to form an alliance with the small, center right Independent Greeks party to form a governing coalition.
Sworn in as Greece’s new prime minister, Tsipras has vowed to re-negotiate better terms for Greece with its creditors as his nation suffers from 26 percent unemployment and a 30 percent decline in its GDP. Since the imposition of harsh austerity measures, one-third of Greece's population has slipped below the poverty line and many people have lost health insurance and now struggle to pay for basic necessities like heat and electricity.
With the election behind him, Tsipras must now convert his victory at the ballot box into convincing the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund to ease the terms of their collective $270 billion 2010 bailout.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Richard D. Wolff, professor of economics emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who is currently a visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs at New School University. Here, Wolff discusses the significance of the Syriza party victory and the ripple effect their anti-austerity message may have across Europe.
RICHARD D. WOLFF: This is a major left-wing shift in European economics and European politics. Let me explain how and why. What the (Jan. 25) vote means is that finally, after waiting and watching for seven years while their incomes were savaged — average income in Greece is 40 percent lower today than in it was in 2010. One-quarter of their labor force is out of work. They have lost benefits from medical care to pensions. It's really a disastrous savaging of a society. They finally passed a verdict: They're not going to wait any more, they're not going to watch any more, and they voted in a political party committed to turning Greece fundamentally around, and not just in terms of getting rid of the austerity policies, the savaging of their society in order to pay off the banks that they feel let them down in the first place, but more than that, they're willing to question to question all of the status quo. They're willing to question capitalism as an economic system. They're really representing a whole radical new direction.
And since there are other countries in Europe facing not quite as bad, but almost as bad conditions – and I'm thinking here of Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy – this is something that is very likely going to spread and represent, as I say, a historic shift.
BETWEEN THE LINES: What can Alexis Tsipras and Syriza do to renegotiate the austerity imposed on Greece by the troika, by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the European Central Bank and the European Commission? Does he have the power in terms of his new leadership position in Greece to force a renegotiation?
BETWEEN THE LINES: Professor Wolff, we only have a couple of minutes left, but I wonder if you would tackle this question. Discuss for our audience the ripple effects that you see from the Syriza Party victory in Greece, the Coalition of the Radical Left's win here in this election on other countries across Europe that include Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland. How deep and wide will be the effects, in your view.
RICHARD D. WOLFF: They're incalculable at this point, in other words, we're only guessing. But I think they will be significant and I think they will reach across the Atlantic Ocean and affect us here in in the United States as well. And here's why.
Five years ago, the groups that came together to form the coalition called Syriza altogether got 3 or 4 percent of the vote in Greece. They were a small marginal party, and nobody took them seriously as a contender for power. They would be the first to agree that what created their opportunity politically was the failure of capitalism to prevent this crisis, to deal fairly and equitably with helping people through it, and all the while making the gap between rich and poor worse.
Those realities about how capitalism worked since 2007 destroyed the political support for the status quo, the traditional two parties and produced an unexpected surge in which a marginalized leftist party becomes the powerhouse in the country. The French worry about it. In Spain, there's already a group that's explicitly doing the same thing, called Podemos. In Ireland and Portugal, also. But even here in the United States, what this teaches is, "When two parties" seem to have a lock on politics, like the traditional two in Greece did. The system can undo their dominance. And if it can happen in Greece, why not in the United States as well?
Richard Wolff is also author of “Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism.” Visit Richard Wolff's website at rdwolff.com.
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