Progressive Commentary Hour

Progressive Commentary Hour - 11/04/14

The Rise in the Medical Kidnapping of Ill Children

Terri LaPoint is an investigative reporter and writer for Health Impact News' Medical Kidnap division, a new website reporting on incidences of hospitals and child services kidnapping children from their parents for medical reasons and to provide resources to families whose children have become victims of this practice. She has long been a passionate advocate for mothers and infants with her background in homebirth midwifery, childbirth and breastfeeding education, and doula work. She holds a B.S. in Cultural Anthropology and World Missions with a minor in Behavioral Science from Toccoa Falls Bible College. She speaks publicly as a voice for the voiceless. In addition to writing for Health Impact News, her articles also appear on The Inquisitr and the PolitiChicks websites

MedicalKidnap is the sole source for information on the growing number of incidences of medical and civil authorities kidnapping children for medical reasons.  More information can be found at MedicalKidnap.com and HealthImpactNews.com

Michelle Rider is a Licensed Practicing Nurse and the mother of Isaiah Rider, who is now 17 years old.  Her son has a rare condition called neurofibromatosis, which causes painful tumors on nerves. Isaiah has undergone multiple surgeries, including complications. When Michelle decided to seek a second opinion, the Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, which is suppose to specialize in such conditions, ordered Child Protection Services, to take custody of the child from her mother.    Both Michelle and Isaiah were told by Hospital officials they would not see each other again. Michelle lives in Kansas City and her son was placed in a foster home later in one of the worst sections of Chicago.  Michelle has a Facebook page entitled Team Isaiah.

Dr. Marc D. Feldman is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the author of over 100 peer-reviewed, papers in the professional literature.  Dr. Feldman is highly regarded as an international expert in Munchausen Syndrome, commonly known as factitious disorder, a psychological condition whereby a person feigns disease, illness or psychological trauma to draw attention and sympathy. He has been subject of hundreds of articles appearing in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and others. He has appeared on Good Morning America, Discover, Dateline, 20-20 and all major media national news sources.  Dr. Feldman is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School and frequently serves as an expert witness in court cases, including in the case of the medical kidnaping of Isaiah Rider by Lurie Children’s Hospital and Chicago’s Child Protection Services.  Dr. Feldman’s website is Munchausen.com

Randy Kretchmar is a Chicago Attorney specializing mental health law. He entered law later in life in order to better advocate for the universal right of citizens to refuse psychiatry and psychiatric medications.  He is a long time admirer of the work of Dr. Thomas Szasz – one of the great American social and moral critics of medical scientism -- and he has been associated with the Citizens Commission for Human Rights, perhaps the nation’s largest nonprofit mental health watchdog organizations.  Randy is presently the attorney for Michelle Rider and her son’s custody case against Lurie Children’s Hospital and CPS in Chicago.   

He periodically blogs at RefusingPsychiatry.blogspot.com

Lorie Blaylock is the mother of Kathryn Hughes, born in June this year with a rare condition known as Pierre Robin Syndrome – which is actually not a true syndrome but congenital facial abnormality that includes a cleft palate, small jaw and obstruction at the tongue base.   

Following an incidence of seizures a month after Kathryn’s birth and following the medical guidelines from University Medical Center Children’s Hospital in Lubbock Texas, shortly after the infant returned home, the Hospital and Child Protection Services returned to take custody of the child, and now Lorie only gets to see her infant for 2 hours every 3 weeks.   She has a Facebook page Bring Baby Kathryn Home.

Lorie will share more of her case. 

Progressive Commentary Hour - Kids for Cash - 10/28/14

Kids for Cash - the movie and the corruption of the US Justice System for Juveniles. 

Robert May is an award winning film director, producer and founder of SenArt Films, a film company dedicated to creating meaningful, commercially viable films aspiring to the highest levels of storytelling.   He is the director of the recent documentary “Kids for Cash”, about the judicial scandal sending juveniles to prison for the financial benefit of a couple corrupt judges and their cronies associated with the prison system. Earlier Robert produced Errol Morris’ Oscar winning film “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara” and Tom McCarthy’s “the Station Agent” which was recognized as one of the top 10 films of 2003 by the National Board of Review.  He has also produced “the War Tapes, which won Best Documentary at the 2006 Tribeca Film Fest and more recently the feature film “Bonneville” starring Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Joan Allen.  Listeners can visit the website KidsForCashTheMovie.com to learn more about the documentary and visit SenArtFilms.com

Emily Keller is a Staff Attorney at the Juvenile Law Center, the nation’s oldest non-profit public interest law firm for children. In addition to participating in the litigation of the Kids of Cash case, Emily focuses on litigation and policy efforts to improve the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.  Earlier, she was a law clerk in the US District Court for Connecticut.  She graduated magna cum laude at both Brown University with a degree in Public Policy and at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also a founding member of the group Legal Advocates for Children and Youth.  The Juvenile Law Center’s website is JLC.org

Hillary Transue is a former client of the Juvenile Law Center. She is one of the subjects in the Kids for Cash documentary having been a victim of Judge Mark Ciavarella.

 

Progressive Commentary Hour - 10/21/14

The mass destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, who's responsible, and why - with Dahr Jamail and Dr. Ann Jones. 

Dahr Jamail has become a world renown investigate journalist for documenting the human cost of the Iraq and the growing misery in the lives of Iraqi citizens. In 2003, frustrated with media reporting on the middle east by embedded journalists, Dahr went to Iraq to report on the realities of the war himself hence becoming one of the very few independent journalists in the country. He has also reported from Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. He has been a journalist for Al-Jazeera’s human rights department and was its online news producer based in Qatar. His stories appear on Truthout, TomDispatch, The Guardian, Le Monde, The Nation and other progressive news outlets.   He has received many prestigious awards including the Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice, the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage and four Project Censored awards. Dahr has written several books. His most recent, co-written with William Rivers Pitt, is “The Mass Destruction of Iraq: The Disintegration of a Nation, Why it Happened and Who is Responsible”    His website is DahrJamail.net

Dr. Ann Jones is seasoned war journalist and investigative reporter, a photographer and the author of eight books, now translated into ten languages. Since 2002, Ann has reported from conflict zones in Afghanistan – where she was an embedded journalist --  South Asia, Sub Sahara Africa and the Democratic republic of Congo.  Her focus has been on the impact of America’s wars upon civilians and the American soldiers who fight our wars. Her most recent book is “They Were Soldiers:  How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars – The Untold Story,” which was supported by a fellowship from Harvard University, and paints a horrid picture of the dead, wounded and mutilated, brain damaged and drug addicted, and suicidal causalities within our military ranks and its effect on families and loved ones.  Her articles frequently appear in the Nation and TomDispatch.  Ann resides in Norway and her website is AnnJonesOnline.com

Progressive Commentary Hour - Solar Storms in our past and future - 10/14/14

With  Lawrence Joseph, author of Solar Cataclysm: How the Sun Shaped the Past and What We Can Do to Save Our Future, and Dr. Robert Schoch, PhD, professor of Geology and author of Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past And Future.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 10/07/14

What was really behind the Libyan revolution to oust Colonel Gaddafi and the US’s strategy to use Islamic terrorists, with James and Joanne Moriarty

James and Joanne Moriarty were successful business persons living in Libya from 2007 until the overthrow and death of General Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.  While in Libya, there product providing enzymes to rejuvenate oil wells and clean up sludge pits earned $5 billion and were in the midst of building a manufacturing facility when the revolution began. During the rioting and collapse of the Gaddafi government and the new rule of radical Islamic factions, the Moriartys and other foreigners attempting to leave on a rescue ship were captured and held by al-Qaeda type militias, then eventually released.  They have produced a video of their ordeal – Escape from Al-Qaeda, which includes evidence of the US and its allies planning of a forced coup well in advance.  Their website is LibyanWarTheTruth.com

Progressive Commentary Hour - 09/30/14

What is the US’s real agenda in the Middle East and why is the US and its allies supporting radical Islamic terrorist organizations to orchestrate regime change in the region?With Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

US imperialism through its expansion of a global security state with Tom Engelhardt.

Progressive Commentary Hour - POLICING FOR PROFIT - 09/23/14

ERIC BALABAN:  The reemergence of debtor’s prisons and the social strategy to incarcerate the poor

Eric Balaban is a senior staff counsel with the National Prison Project (NPP) of the American Civil Liberties Union.  Since joining the ACLU in 1994, Mr. Balaban has represented over 75,000 prisoners in class action lawsuits challenging unconstitutional conditions of confinement across the country.  He is the co-author of two national ACLU Reports, Abandoned and Abused: Orleans Parish Prisoners in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina (2006) and In for a Penny:  The Rise of America’s New Debtor’s Prisons (2010).  More information on the ACLU’s prison project can be found at ACLU.org

 

DARPANA SHETH: The rise in civil forfeiture as profit making schemes for local law enforcement 

Darpana Sheth is an attorney with the Institute for Justice where she litigates cases to pro mote economic liberty and secure property rights.  She is currently the lead attorney on a federal class action against the City of Philadelphia and its law-enforcement officials challenging the City’s egregious civil-forfeiture practices. Darpana graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelors in Political Science and  received her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.  The Institute’s website is IJ.org and more information and what people can do about asset forfeiture can be found on the website EndForfeiture.com

Progressive Commentary Hour - A Look Back at the Russia-Ukraine Crisis - 09/16/14

Robert Parry is one of our leading progressive investigative journalists best known for his uncovering Iran-Contra story and Oliver North’s involvement which earned him the George Polk Award for National Reporting in 1984.  He current writes for Consortium News, and has covered many important stories on domestic and foreign affairs issues including the Nicaragan contra-cocaine connection, right wing terrorism, the demise of American media, the Bush and Obama presidencies, the rise and influence of the Neocons and our wars overseas.  He has worked as a journalist for the Associated Press, Newsweek and PBS Frontline.

 

He has written several books, his latest being “America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Obama”    His website iswww.ConsortiumNews.com

Eric Zeusse is an investigative historian and author with a long career of researching many of the topics and events that have been most troubling to Americans not afraid of critical thought.  In 1982 he won the prestigious HL Mencken Award for best investigative reporting on the toxic dumpsite at Love Canal in Niagara Falls New York.  His writings appear in all the leading progressive news sites such as Global Research, Huffington Post,  Business Insider, Salon.com, Commondreams, Alternet,  and others.   He has authored several books including “They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records 1910-2010” and more recently a revisionist investigation into the origins of the Christian religion entitled “Christ’s Ventrioquists: The Event that Created Christianity.”

Progressive Commentary Hour - 09/09/14

Professor Andrew Kolin is a professor of political science at Hilbert College in Hamburg, New York, where he specializes in American political thought, civil liberties, US foreign policy, and constitutional law. Much of his recent work has focused on the conflict between state power and democracy and the history of the US turning into a police state  

Kevin Carson is the Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory and researcher at the Center  for a Stateless Society, an academic left-wing Libertarian anarchist think tank that defends the ideals of social cooperation without aggression, oppression or centralized authority. His articles frequently appear on the P2P Foundation blog and have been published by Counterpunch and Before Its News.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 09/02/14

How the rest of the world views the US and its Quest for Empire:

Prof. Garry Leech is the director of the Center for International Studies and a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, Canada. As an independent journalist and author his research has focused upon the global struggle for social justice and on the U.S. intervention in Colombia under the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror.” Garry’s articles have appeared in numerous publications in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Latin America. For eleven years he was the founding editor of the Columbia Journal, with over 350 scholarly articles. He is the author of seven books, dealing with Colombia, the drug trade, broader critiques of capitalist globalization and the influence of the fossil industry on global economics and politics. His most recent book is Capitalism: A Structural Genocide which takes a hard look at how contemporary capitalism’s inherent and fundamental structure generates inequality, violence, and increased human suffering and death. His website is GarryLeech.com.     

Roman Baudzus is an economist and financial analyst who has specialized in the software and marketing industries. He studied business informatics at Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany where he is residing. Roman is a leading contributor to the German finance site Wirtschaftsfacts.de and writes about the financial, gold and commodity markets for Gold Money. His articles have also appeared on GlobalResearch and Paul Craig Robert’s blog.     

Andre Vltchek is a journalist, novelist, filmmaker, poet, playwright and philosopher who has covered dozens of war zones and conflicts with a focus upon the plight of oppressed and colonized peoples around the world. Among these areas have been Bosnia, Ukraine, Timor and Indonesia, Peru, Sri Lanka, the Republic of the Congo and other African nations. Among his most recent books are “Fighting Against Western Imperialism” and “On Western Terrorist: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare” – which was co-written with Noam Chomsky and will be turned into a film. Among his major documentaries are “Terlena about the Indonesian massacres in the 1960s, “One Flew Over Dadaab which is about the largest refugee camp in the world housing Somali refugees, and most recently The Rwanda Gambit, which challenges the official story about the genocide in Rwanda and the plunder of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Andre is also a senior fellow of the Oakland Institute and his articles and essays appear in CounterPnch, Asia Times, China Daily, Irish Times, Z Magazine and the Asia Pacific Journal. His website is AndreVltchek.Weebly.com.