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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.


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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.)

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Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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Unchecked Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons Modernization Moves 'Doomsday Clock' Two Minutes Closer to Midnight

Posted Jan. 28, 2015

MP3 Interview with Kennette Benedict, executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, conducted by Scott Harris

doomsday

In 1945, a group of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the world’s first atomic bomb during World War II, founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Two years later, the publication created the "Doomsday Clock," “using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The Bulletin’s Security Board, which includes 17 Nobel Laureates, makes the decision on when to move the Doomsday clock’s minute hand forward or backward.

In an announcement made on Jan. 22, the Bulletin moved the doomsday clock two minutes forward, to where it now stands at just three minutes before midnight, or world-wide catastrophe. The group cited two critical issues: unchecked climate change and global nuclear weapons modernization as the basis for their decision. The shift of the Doomsday Clock hands to three minutes to midnight is the first such adjustment to be made in the past three years.

The Bulletin's statement read in part, “In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.” Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kennette Benedict, executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who discusses her group’s message of warning that was directly linked to the decision to move the "Doomsday Clock" forward two minutes.

KENNETTE BENEDICT: We talk about the state of the world every time we meet twice a year, and take the clock extremely seriously, I'll tell you. I mean, I know that it seems a simple design, it surely is simple and that way it's very powerful. But the scientists on this board do make any changes lightly. They include scientists who have worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from the Scripps oceanographic institute, from the Stockholm Environment Institute. We have physicists from India and from Princeton. We have people who have worked in the government and the intelligence community on issues of national security, especially nuclear weapons.

This year, I think they were particularly taken with not only the IPCC report, which was not very encouraging, that is, climate change is accelerating. We also heard from Richard Somerville about the Antarctic glacial melt and one of his colleagues published a paper last May, a glaciologist who's working there for a long time who said essentially that one of the major fields there is melting there and there's no way to stop it, and when that goes we will have three feet sea level rise. Doesn't sound like a lot, but if you're living on a coastline, you can imagine what three feet higher water would do. And it would mean that some of the islands that are already threatened by rising sea levels will surely just go under. Some island nations will be gone.

And so, there's a sense that there are things are happening even faster than the climate scientists had originally predicted. And I think that was a bit alarming to many. The other things that we talked about were the state of nuclear arsenals in the world. We published something called "The Nuclear Notebook," which has estimates of the nuclear arsenals of countries around the world. These numbers are state secrets, so we can't know for sure, but these are really the best estimates that anyone has been able to come up with.

And we still have 16,300 nuclear weapons, most of them in the United States and Russia, and we've been seeing a slowing of the dismantling, especially in the last year or so, the U.S.-Russian relationship is a bit tattered, you might say, even before the Ukraine crisis – Russia's taking of Crimea – things were not going terribly well. And we've now just heard that the cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, which has been happening for the last 25 years, to jointly dismantle our weapons is really stalled.

We're also seeing modernization of weapons, and you know, a lot of people might think "Oh well, that's good, you know, because then they'll be safer and more reliable." And there's some truth to that. But what may look like a simple modernization, to other countries might look like a buildup. For instance, we're very worried about China's modernization program. Many people think that it's really a cover for developing more lethal and maybe even more weapons. And so when the people look at the United States and its also "modernizing program," they have the same fears and thoughts. And so we begin to get into a kind of cycle of thinking, "oh well, they're modernizing, we better do more, too." And that's the beginning, really of another nuclear arms race.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Kennette, before we say goodnight, the important part of this report, of course, and the reason for the Doomsday Clock primarily is to alert and raise consciousness about the dangers facing our country and the world. Please review for our audience some of the recommendations that were in this report that accompanied the movement of the Doomsday Clock forward.

KENNETTE BENEDICT: Yeah, there are kind of simple recommendations, but obviously will take a lot to accomplish. First, getting some kind of a cap on carbon emissions would really help. We need to stay below two degrees centigrade warming in order to have a planet that will be inhabitable for us. So that's certainly one that people could tell their representative about and help them understand.

We also need to reduce our spending on nuclear weapons, and I think this is one where this is about money, this is about taxes that you're paying and where they're going and telling your representatives to, you know, that we're not spending a whole lot more on nuclear weapons would be terrific, along with submarines, aircraft and missiles which send these nuclear weapons around the world.

We also need to be sure that the U.S.-Russian relationship gets back to some kind of communication level. And as much as we all are feeling what's happening in the Ukraine and to the Ukrainian people, turning Mr. Putin into a demon is not going to solve that problem. So for those who may have a special sympathy for the Ukrainian people, I just ask whether they hate Mr. Putin more than they hate nuclear weapons, because it's the nuclear weapons that are going to rear their ugly head if we don't get that relationship straight. So, I think those are the main things, and I think people everywhere can keep doing what probably many in among your own audience do, which is reduce C02 emissions, buy cars which are fuel-efficient, work in your cities and towns. There's a terrific city mayors movement on sustainability in cities and getting more efficient infrastructure, you know, and making your houses more efficient. All that really does help. I know it's hard to see it in the short term, but in the long term, it will make a big difference.

For more information on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists visit thebulletin.org.

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