Between The Lines - Richard Silverstein: Obama Break with Netanyahu's Settler Expansion Too Little, Too Late (Week Ending Jan. 13, 2017)

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

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

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

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

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

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

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

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

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

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

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

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

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

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

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

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

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

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"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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Obama Break with Netanyahu's Settler Expansion Too Little, Too Late

Posted Jan. 4, 2017

Interview with Richard Silverstein, author of progressive blog Tikun Olam, conducted by Scott Harris

The Obama administration’s decision not to issue a veto on a Dec. 23 United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem set off a firestorm in the U.S. and Israel. The U.S. abstained, allowing the Security Council resolution to pass with 14 votes. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted President Barack Obama, accusing him of a "shameful ambush" at the United Nations. Netanyahu was joined by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who also criticized the UN resolution, and stated that the Palestinians would no longer have a platform at the UN when he took office.

In response, outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry defended the Obama administration’s UN vote in a Dec. 28 speech, warning that Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements jeopardized the two-state solution that has been supported by both Democratic and Republican presidents in recent decades.

Israel asserted it would ignore the UN non-binding resolution, and in defiance announced that it planned to move ahead with the construction of nearly 6,000 new homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Richard Silverstein of the progressive blog Tikun Olam. Here, he discusses the contradiction between the Obama administration’s recent move at the UN and its policy towards Israel over the past eight years, the future of the two-state solution and what we can expect from the incoming Trump administration on Middle East policy. [Rush transcript.]

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: To put this all in context, I think we need to go back to the beginning of the Obama first term when he went to Cairo and made a very bold, brave speech to the Arab world talking about a new leaf, a new page in relations between the U.S. and the Middle East and how we were going to be constructive in our engagement with them and we were going to turn away from war as an instrument of policy. And everybody was very hopeful and those of us who were in the peace camp in terms of the Israeli-Arab conflict really thought he was going to be bold and he was going to go in new directions.

And we, over the course of the years, have grown very distressed and disappointed because he gave up, essentially. He refused to expend the necessary political capital to make those things happen. He refused to pressure Israel in any very serious way as some presidential administrations have done in the past. He just wanted to go along to get along basically after awhile. And then, you know, we have last week all of a sudden, as he's leaving office or about to leave office, he decides he's going to get some gumption and he decides, well, I'm going to let this resolution not be passed reviewing it. And the U.N. Security Council over the past eight years has really covered Israel's behind and vetoed ever possible resolution that is Israel viewed as a threat, including resolutions that actually agreed with our own policies. We've been vetoing right and left on Israel's behalf and all of sudden now, we did a good thing – we did the right thing, and we let this resolution pass. We, of course, could have done something even more courageous and we could have voted for it, but at least we let it pass. And the Israeli response was howling in anger, then I think, in order to staunch this blood flow, Kerry announced the speech that he was going to give.

The speech was pretty good in some ways, but it really overall was too little, too late.

BETWEEN THE LINES: In the wake of this controversial vote at the United Nations Security Council and the admission by outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry of the likelihood of the demise of the two-state solution, is it your view that the two-state solution is dead?

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Every Israeli government, whether it was a right-wing or a left-wing government, has refused to negotiate seriously. So, I think for all intensive purposes, two-states can't happen and that leaves really only one possible solution, and that is a one-state solution. What would that look like? Right now, we essentially have a one-state solution and Israeli is controlling most of the West Bank and there are some calls by right-wingers to annex all the West Bank. It's a question of what would they do with the Palestinians they annex? Would they give them full rights – which is doubtful. Would they give them no rights, which is possible? Or would they give them sort of second class status? And if we go in that direction, we're really talking about apartheid. We're really talking about bantustans, we may be talking about Israel granting certain small enclaves of Palestinians autonomy of some kind. But really, essentially, this is a one-state solution and we have to decide, is Israel going to be a democratic state or is it going to be an apartheid authoritarian state?

BETWEEN THE LINES: Well, into this mess comes incoming President Donald Trump. What do we know about Donald Trump and what he'll bring to the U.S. position on this conflict?

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: He's really a tabula rasa. He's never made any – until this campaign – any serious statements about the Israeli-Palestinian or Israeli-Arab conflict. But all of the signs that we have seen are really alarming. Very, very alarming. This could be the most right-wing U.S. administration in terms of Israel that it has ever been in the history of our country, going back to 1948. Any part of the Middle East could, if a match is dropped in the right place, could lead to an intense explosion. We really could have a regional conflagration. There are nuclear weapons involved. Israel has at least 200 of them. We have to remember, really, this is one of the most frightening periods since I've been starting to write my blog.

See Silverstein's blog at richardsilverstein.com.