Progressive Commentary Hour

Progressive Commentary Hour - 04.14.15

US government negligence in exposing US troops to dangerous chemicals, toxins and bioweapons and the coverup

Dr. Doug Rokke is an expert in depleted uranium and its health risks. Having served in the US armed forces for four decades, including combat duty in Vietnam and Gulf War 1, he is a retired Major who served as the US Army's Depleted Uranium Project Director in the mid-90s, and developed the congressionally mandated education and training materials for handling with depleted uranium incidents.

Dr. Rokke has taught nuclear, biological and chemical warfare and emergency medicine for 25 years and has served as an advisor to the CDC, the US Institute of Medicine, the US Senate, the Department of Defense and other federal agencies and departments. He is also a retired professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

Doug is included in Who's Who in America and has been nominated Who's Who in the World. Due to his outspoken concerns and warnings over depleted uranium’s horrible health risks to military personnel, he has been subject to ongoing retaliation by the Department of Defense who have for years denied any adverse health and environmental effects from uranium weapons.

He is the co-host of “Warrior Connection” heard every Sunday evening at 7:00 pm Eastern time on the Progressive Radio Network. 

Major Denise Nichols is a Chairwoman for the National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition.  She is retired Major and a registered flight nurse from the US Air Force having served in both the Vietnam and Gulf War campaign. During Operation Desert Storm she served on the border of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Although her unit was theoretically in the exposure zone where depleted uranium demolition occurred, the Department of Defense did not include Air Force units among those under chemical threat. She has testified before Congress on behalf of veterans and has been interviewed nationally and internationally on issues concerning Gulf War Illness and Agent Orange.  Since retiring from the Air Force she has been a teacher on nursing faculties at several universities. The Coalitions website is Veterans-Coalition.org

Captain David Winnett is a retired captain from the US Marine Corps and had served in the Corps for 20 years both as an enlisted marine and a commissioned officer. During Operation Desert Storm he served as the Transportation officer for multiple troop displacements. Later he was stationed at Guantanamo and assisted with Haitian refugee operations.  Following his retirement David worked for the California municipal services for 15 years and took on veteran advocacy activities full time.  He is a member of the Department of Defense’s Congressional Directed Medical Research Program for Gulf War Illness Research, which is dedicated to identifying effective treatments and diagnosis of conditions that effected upwards to 210,000 veterans during the Gulf War in the early 1990s.  He is also a published poet and administrates the largest closed group on Facebook dealing with Gulf War Illness. The Congressional Medical Research Program’s website is CDMRP.Army.Mil/gwirp

Progressive Commentary Hour - 03.31.15

Clearing up the confusion about Russia and the new Russia-US cold war

Dmitry Orlov is a Russian-American engineer and author writing on the potential economic, environmental and political decline and collapse of the US and modern industrial culture.  He was an eye witness to the collapse of the Soviet Union and has researched extensively its causes and the reasons for the failure of both the Soviets and the Americans to predict and understand it accurately. Dmirty is very popular among the Peak Oil community such as Richard Heinberg and frequently writes on the looming energy crisis. 

He has written five books, notably “The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors Toolkit,”  and more recently collections of essays under the titles “Societies that Collapse” and “Communities that Abide.”  He publishes weekly on his popular blog ClubOrlov.com and for the Energy Bulletin. Dmitry and his family currently live on a sailboat fitted with solar panels and the necessities to carry them through for many months.  

Progressive Commentary Hour - 03.24.15

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS

The politics behind the US empire and its consequences for American citizens

Prof. James Petras is the Bartle Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University in New York and an expert in America’s interference in global politics, especially Latin America and the Middle East.  He has a long commitment to social justice issues and workers’ rights and was a member of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America. Prof. Petras is also the recipient of many awards including the Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association and the Robert Kenny Award. 

He has written over 60 books in 29 languages and published over 600 articles in professional journals.  His editorials in major news publications such as the New York Times, The Nation, the Guardian, Le Monde, and several latin American publications and others are in the 1000s.  His most recent book is “The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East”  

Progressive Commentary Hour - 02.24.15

The lack of efficacy and health risks of the HPV Vaccines – Gardasil and Cervarix, with Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic, Dr. Ken Stoller, and Dr. Mark Flannery

Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic is an early career postdoctoral fellow. She received her PhD in Biochemistry, from the Comparative Genomics Centre at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. In 2010, and  joined the Neural Dynamics Research Group at the University of British Columbia to work on with renowned neuroscientist Prof. Christopher Shaw’s. Her research has focused up the neurotoxic properties of the human papilloma virus vaccines and aluminum vaccine adjuvants. Recently she was a visiting research at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel to discover the HPV vaccine mechanisms leading to autoimmune disorders. Lucija is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. She and her colleagues are among the few courageous university researchers undertaking independent and honest experiments into the causation for adverse vaccine effects.

Dr. Ken Stoller is a board pediatrician medicine and a environmental activist. He is a founder and president of the International Hyperbaric Medical Association, a diplomat of the American Board of Pediatrics and a founder of the Humane Farming Association. Having become frustrated with medical agency and association cover-ups and the corporate medical lobbying powers over the rapid rise in children’s developmental disabilities, Dr. Stoller and other physicians testified before Congress on the role vaccinations have played, particularly mercury, in the rise of autism and other related conditions.  In 2006, he met with environmental scientists at CDC headquarters to discover their concern about mercury but being powerless to affect the agency’s policy. His letter of resignation to the American Pediatric Association, published in a distinguished peer review medical journal, raised quite a storm in the pediatric community.   His website is BodiesInRebellion.com

Dr. Mark Flannery is a Chiropracter physician in southern California and a fellow of the American Association of Integrative Medicine.  He specializes in functional medicine under the guidance of the pioneer functional medical scientist Datis Kharrazian. He became internationally renown for his work treating individuals with Hashimoto hypothyroidism.  More recently he has been observing the serious side effects of the HPV vaccines in young adults and has been investing treatments for vaccine injuries. Dr. Flannery has degrees from University of Southern California and Rochester Institute of Technology, and received Doctor of Chiropractic degree graduating cum laude from Cleveland Chiropractic College, Los Angeles.  His website is DrFlannery.com

Progressive Commentary Hour - 02.17.15

Special Broadcast on HIV and AIDS – The science and censorship

Joan Shenton is a long-time medical documentary film director, who started covering controversies over HIV and AIDS in the late 1980s. Despite winning awards for her films she was eventually censored and for years could not work in the field. More recently she produced the historical documentary, "Positively False" and, most relevant to tonight's discussion, "Positive Hell", the story of former heroin addicts in Northern Spain who have been living with an HIV diagnosis for almost 30 years, almost entirely without drugs and with the exception of one person in the documentary, in health. Joan is also the author of "Positively False". She heads the Immunity Resource Foundation in the UK which has a fantastic collection of archival AIDS documentary footage. Her website is joanshenton.com

Bobby Russell was diagnosed as HIV positive in late 2004. In 2013, he learned that a negative HIV diagnosis on a Western Blot HIV test had been withheld from him. Consequently went off the AIDS drugs and sued for restitution due to the damage from the drugs he had taken for 8 years.  The case was recently thrown out on a technicality and he is appealing.  His story and information can be found at his website bobbywrussell.com

Anne Sono Blumenthal is a German journalist and filmmaker in Berlin who has been engaged in the HIV-AIDS controversy. She is the founder of Blue Bell Media and the director of the film “I will Not Go Quietly, which follows the lives of several HIV positive women who refused AIDS drugs and instead embarked on living a more active, natural and healthy lifestyle.

Prof. Peter Duesberg is professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley.  He was the first to isolate a cancer gene through his work with retroviruses back in 1970 and mapped the genetic structure of this class of viruses. His work in retrovirus research awarded him an election to the National Academy of Sciences and Outstanding Investigator Grants from the National Institutes of Health.  Based upon his knowledge of retroviruses, he has been at the forefront in challenging the virus-AIDS hypothesis and has published in the world’s leading medical journals.  As a consequence, Dr. Duesberg’s hypothesis has won support from many scientists who have been outcast from publishing their views, including Nobel laureates such Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR technology. 

Prof. Henry Bauer is professor emeritus of chemistry and science studies and a former dean at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and was the dean of the university’s college of Arts and Sciences for a stint.  After his retirement he served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration for seven years. Prof Bauer did his doctorate at the University of Sydney in Australia and post-doctoral work at the University of Michigan.

He is the author of several books including “Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth, and earlier “The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory,”  which was among the first books to gather together two decades of research on HIV and AIDS and to identify the scientific contradictions. 

Terry Michael is a seasoned political reporter and press secretary who is currently the executive director for the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism, which sponsors the Politics and Journalism Semester to educate future political reporters. In the mid-1980s he was the press secretary for the Democratic National Committee and later the press aide for Congressmen Paul Simon and Robert Matsui. Terry has several journalism awards including the distinguish service award from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Presidential Award of the Association for Education in Journalism.  Although being a journalist and gay man living in Washington DC, the most critical city on the HIV-AIDS agenda, he became active in the controversy 5 years ago, particularly on issues of censorship in the mainstream media.  His website is terrymichael.net

Special broadcast on autism and the vaccine connection - Part 2 - 02.10.15

A continued conversation with Dr. Brian Hooker on a recent CDC cover-up, as well as a conversation with investigative journalist Janine Roberts.

Special broadcast on autism and the vaccine connection - Part 1 - 02.10.15

With Lawrence Palevsky, Brian Hooker, and Anne Dachel. 

Dr. Palevsky is a board certified pediatrician who utilizes a holistic approach to children’s wellness and illness. Over the years he has lectured and spoken extensively about vaccine risks and vaccine adverse reactions, including autism spectrum disorders and neurological damage. Dr. Palevsky received his medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine a three-year pediatric residency at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Since 1991, his clinical experience includes working in pediatric emergency and intensive care medicine, in-patient and out-patient pediatric medicine, neonatal intensive care medicine, newborn and delivery room medicine, and conventional, holistic and integrative pediatric private practice. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, and Past–President of the American Holistic Medical Association. Dr. Palevsky’s current practice is in Northport Long Island and Manhattan where he specializes in treating acute and chronic pediatric and adult conditions. For more information about his practice and work, his website is DrPalevsky.com Dr. Brian Hooker is an Associate Professor of Biology at Simpson University in California, and a senior consultant for ARES Corporation, specializing in environmental restoration design. As a bioengineer, Dr. Hooker spent 16 as a team leader for the Dept of Energy’s Genomes to Life Center for Molecular and Cellular Systems at its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he investigated gene-protein networks, cell signaling and cellular metabolic pathways. He is a prominent leader in the organization Focus Autism, which is investigating the scientific evidence for a vaccine-autism connection. Brian has a 16 year old son with autism and has been active in autism community for almost a decade, including researching and analyzing data on the association between vaccines and autism. Over the years Brian has filed many FOIAs with federal health agencies and has received 1000s of pages of documents that support the need to question the efficacy and safety of vaccination. He has been the point independent researcher in the recent whistleblower case with Dr. Thompson from the CDC regarding vaccine dangers. His website is FocusAutism.org Anne Dachel has been the leading media editor for Age of Autism for the past 8 years and is the author of the recent book, “The Big Autism Cover Up: How and Why the Media is Lying to the American Public,” which focuses on her 12 years of close monitoring of coverage about the autism epidemic and the way it covers vaccine safety and efficacy. Anne is the mother of four children, two were vaccine injured. She has been an educator for over 30 years and works with developmentally disabled children. She lives in Chippewa Falls Wisconsin and the website with her daily reports and analysis is AgeOfAutism.com

Progressive Commentary Hour - 02.03.15

With John Pilger on the IMF & World Bank's economic warfare. 

John Pilger is a multi award-winning investigative journalist, author, film director and playwright.    A major theme overriding his reporing is social injustice and human rights violations. While reporter for London’s Daily Mirror, he twice received Britain’s Journalist of the Year awards for his reporting from Vietnam. While in the US, he reported on the blight of America’s poor following the assassination of Martin Luther King and was present when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.  He also reported on the plight of Cambodia in the aftermath of Pol Pot’s regime, which led to his documentary “Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia.”  He also performed multi-year investigations into the damage caused by the drug Thalidomide, Indonesian occupied East Timor, and struggles of the indigenous Aborigines in Australia. Has directed over 50 documentary films, including the noteworthy “The War You Don’t See” (about Julian Assange and Wikileaks) and “War on Democracy” (about US covert efforts in Chile, Venezuela and Boliva). Over the years he has contributed to BBC, the Guardian, Radio Australia, al-Jazeera and Russia Today.  We will be hearing from his documentary film ”War by Other Means” which takes a hard look at the failures of the World Bank, such as the bank’s corrupt Structural Adjustment programs, and in particular in the Philippines, where 44% of the country’s national budget has gone towards paying foreign debt off alone. The devastation the World Bank has contributed to in developing nations such as Philippines provides a compassionate case for debt cancellation for at least the most indebted nations to western corporation interests and supported by the World Bank and IMF.

If you would like to learn more about John Pilger, his website is JohnPilger.com

Progressive Commentary Hour - 01.27.15

The epidemic of underage sexual escort services to the rich and powerful, with investigative reporter Nick Bryant. 

Nick Bryant has been writing on the plight of disadvantaged children for over a decade. He is the author of "The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse and Betrayal."

Progressive Commentary Hour - 01.20.15

Special broadcast on vaccine updates and the cracks in the Vaccine paradigm with Drs. Andrew Wakefield, Toni Bark, Brian Hooker, and advocate John Gilmore

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is a gastroenterologist and academician specializing in inflammatory bowel disease and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine or MMR. He is a former Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and has published over 130 original scientific papers and book chapters. In 1998, he and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in London reported a novel inflammatory bowel disease in children with developmental disorders such as autism.  Dr. Wakefield resisted pressure to stop his investigations into a possible link between vaccinations, intestinal inflammation and autism. In 2001 he was awarded the fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists and he has been a board member of the American charity Medical Interventions for Autism.

Dr. Wakefield is the co-founder and director of the Autism Media Channel which airs on various TV stations –www.AutismMediaChannel.com. His book “Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines, The Truth Behind the Tragedy” recounts his research into autism, the MMR vaccine and GI illnesses and his legal struggles by government and medical health authorities to discredit him and his work.

Dr. Toni Bark is a pediatric physician and a prestigious homeopathic doctor practicing in the Chicago area. She is currently the vice president of the American Institute of Homeopathy and has studied with many of the most famous international homeopathic doctors. In addition to her medical degree from Rush Medical College and pediatric internship at New York University, Dr Bark has degrees in psychology, a masters in Healthcare Emergency Management from Boston University Medical School, and was trained by Dr. Erica Fromm at the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis.

Dr. Bark is a regular guest speaker at the University of Chicago and contributed to Mary Holland’s and Louise Habakus’ important book “The Vaccine Epidemic”

Her website and blog is www.Disease-Reversal.com

Dr. Brian Hooker is an Associate Professor of Biology at Simpson University in California, and a senior consultant for ARES Corporation, specializing in environmental restoration design.  As a bioengineer, Dr. Hooker spent 16 as a team leader for the Dept of Energy’s Genomes to Life Center for Molecular and Cellular Systems at its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he investigated gene-protein networks, cell signaling and cellular metabolic pathways.  He is a prominent leader in the organization Focus Autism, which is investigating the scientific evidence for a vaccine-autism connection. Brian has a teenage son with autism and has been active in the autism community for almost a decade. Over the years he has filed many FOIAs with federal agencies and has received 1000s of pages of documents supporting the need to question the efficacy and safety of vaccination.  He has been the point independent researcher in the recent whistleblower case with Dr. Thompson from the CDC regarding vaccine dangers. His website is FocusAutism.org

John Gilmore is the Executive Director of the Autism Action Network, a national, not-profit, grassroots advocacy organization that influences legislation and public policy on a wide range of issues impacting the autism community, including access to healthcare, health insurance reform, special education, vaccine rights and civil rights of the disabled. His organization works at the state, federal and sometimes local level to influence the lives of people with autism and their families. Founded as A-CHAMP in 2005, initial efforts focused on the partially successful campaign to ban mercury as an ingredient in vaccines. Currently his focus is fighting against attempts to limit vaccine choice rights and to expand mandatory vaccines to attend school or work.

Mr. Gilmore has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkley. He lives in Long Beach, NY with his wife and two teenage sons, one who vaccine injury as an infant and is diagnosed with autism.  For further information, his organization’s website is AutismActionNetwork.org and on Facebook