Progressive Commentary Hour

Progressive Commentary Hour - 06/25/12

Dr. Peter Kornbluh is the senior analyst at the National Security Archives at George Washington University where he is the director of Cuba and Chile Documentation projects.  Formerly he was the co-director of the Archive’s Iran-Contra project.  He is former adjunct professor at Columbia University and has published many books including “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability”, based upon 24,000 declassified documents which was selected as the year’s best book by the Los Angeles Times, and also “The Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion ReExamined.” He has also published important volumes on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Iran-Contra scandal.

Dr. Kornbluh’s articles have appeared in the journal Foreign Policy, the New York Times and Washington Post, The Nation, and he frequently appears on national television and radio broadcasts.  He was the consultant for the Discovery-Times documentary “Kennedy and Castro: The Secret History.”

Dr. John Prados is a colleague of our guest Peter Kornbluh, and heads the Vietnam and Intelligence Documentation Project at the National Security Archives at George Washington University. He also co-directs the Archive’s Iraq Documentation Project and is a senior research fellow specializing in national security issues and central and military intelligence.  Dr. Prados has published over 20 books focusing on Vietnam operations, the Cold War, secret CIA activities, the Pentagon Papers, President Bush’s selling us the Middle East conflicts and others.  He has received wide recognition for his scholarship and was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  His most recent publications are the just released “In Country: Remembering the Vietnam War” and earlier “Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA”,  “How the Cold War Ended” and “Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War.”  In 2004, Dr. Prados also published “Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War.”

Barrie Zwicker is a Canadian investigative journalist who has been recognized as one of Canada’s leading media critics. He was an award winning writer for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Detroit News and other publications. Barrie is also a television and documentary film producer and a political activist who researches false flag operations and mainstream media complicity with official reports and lack of journalistic due diligence.   His book “Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 911” earned gold in the 2007 Independent Publishers Awards.  His video documentary on 911 media news, “The Great Conspiracy” was made available in 2004.

Barrie is also a avid cross-country cyclist who will be completing his cross-Canadian journey ending in St. John’s Newfoundland this year.

Alan Hart is a highly regarded British journalist and investigative reporter and author who has been covering the Israel-Arab relations and Middle East conflicts for 40 years. He was a correspondent for ITN’s News at Ten and BBC’s Panorama programs, which covered wars and conflicts . Over the years Alan has interviewed and met with all of the most significant leaders on both sides of Israeli-Palestinian issues. His biography of Yasser Arafat in 1984, “Arafat: Terrorist and Peacemaker?” has been revised and re-released over the years, and his most current book is “Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews” which deconstructs in hard terms the mythologies and politicalization that is associated with the term.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 06/18/12

We have with us in the studio Dr. John Casti, a world renown scientist in complexity and systems theory and a futurist who is visiting the US from his home in Vienna Austria.  Dr. Casti is the co-founder of the X-Center, a research institute focusing on human caused extreme events – also known as X-Events in complexity science -- and how to anticipate them.  Earlier, he was a senior scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna where he headed the project on Extreme Events in Human Society.

In the past Dr. Casti has worked with the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit theoretical center devoted the study of complex adaptive systems, and he has taught on the faculties of Princeton, University of Arizona and NYU.

He is the author of “X-Events: The Collapse of Everything” which outlines a variety of different scenarios of future human caused catastrophes that may be on the horizon.  His earlier book “Mood Matters: From Rising Skirt Length to the Collapse of the World Powers” looked at the science of social human behavior to determine how the collective moods of populations bias the social events that take place.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 06/11/12

Progressive Commentary Hour - 06/04/12

The erosion of civil liberties, human rights and the demise of American democracy Peter Dale Scott is a former professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley (where he was also the co-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program), a recognized poet, a former Canadian diplomat and a scholar and on domestic and international political issues including war and conflict, the drug trade, the politics of oil and the assassination of JFK.  His website is PeterDaleScott.net Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University in California where he teaches courses in political sociology, media censorship, and the sociology of power and the media. He is the former founding director of Project Censored, an internationally known research program and watch organization that annually identifies the “Most Censored” news stories not appearing in mainstream media Steve Lendman is an independent , progressive economist and investigative writer who consistently tackles the most critical issues in the world as soon as they emerge.  He has degrees from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and recently received the International Journalist award from the prestigious Club of Mexico. Steven is the host of the The Lendman News Hour heard on the Progressive Radio Network every Thursday at 11 AM and every Saturday and Sunday at 1 PM.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 05/28/12

The first in our weekly program that will feature important documentaries and their director – beginning with the documentary Economics of Happiness by world renown environmental and social activist Helena Norberg-Hodges

Helena Norberg-Hodges is an author, activist and filmmaker who is regarded by many as a pioneer of the “new economy” global movement. Earth Journal included Helena among the 10 major environmentalists and she has appeared worldwide in the media.

Educated in Sweden, Germany, Austria, England and the United States, she specialized in linguistics, including studies at the University of London and at MIT. Since 1975, she has worked with the people of Ladakh, or “Little Tibet” in the western Indian Himalayas, to find ways of enabling their culture to meet the modern world without sacrificing social and ecological values. For these efforts she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’.

Helena is the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture based in the US and UK, an organization that examines the root causes of our current social and environmental crises, while promoting more sustainable and equitable patterns of living. She is also a founding member of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and a co-founder of both the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.

Helena’s book, Ancient Futures, has been described as “an inspirational classic”. She is also the producer and co-director of the award-winning film, “The Economics of Happiness”, which sheds on the failures and destruction wrought upon societies from corporate globalization and outlines a new economics based upon localization to rebuild communities.

Progressive Commentary Hour

An in depth analysis of the political changes threatening Europe’s status quo and its economic implications for Europe and the US Marshall Auerback is a Fellow at the Economists for Peace and Security, a global strategist for the investment group Madison Street Partners in Denver and a Research Associate at the Levy Institute.  He has a wide range of expertise in the global investment arena, having covered the stock market for a decade along the Pacific rim and Southeat Asia and formerly ran the Asian-Pacific hedge fund for the Tiedemann Investment Group in New York.  Earlier Marshall has also covered investments in Russia, the former Soviet Republics and Africa.   He writes for Naked Capitalism, the Huffington Post, Truthout and many business and investment publications. Marshall has a magna cum laude degree from Queens University and a law degree from Oxford. Dr. Jack Rasmus is a professor of political economics at St. Mary’s College and Santa Clara University in California.  Prior to teaching, he was an economic analyst for several global corporations and an organizer, negotiator and business representative for several labor unions. At one time he was elected at the National First Vice President of the National Writers Union. Besides his articles for progressive news and commentary sources, he is the author of several books, the most recent being “Obama Economy: Recovery for the Few” (Palgrave-McMillan) which analyzes the reasons behind the failure of the Obama Administration to initiate a economic recovery and its consequences.

Progressive Commentary Hour

Progressive Commentary Hour

Ratlines – the secret networks giving sanctuary to Nazi and Ustashi war criminals and a look at the forces that have shaped some of America’s most terrible recent events Peter Levenda is a philosopher and historian, who specializes in the interface between politics and religion and the occult. In the 1960s, for a very brief period he was involved with the American Orthodox Catholic Church, which had served as a front for American intelligence operations and was later implicated in the assassination of JFK.  He has a higher degree in religious studies and has written extensively about Eastern and Western spiritual and occult traditions and their interconnections with political and criminal events. Peter is a member of the American Academy of Religion, TAK (the religious studies honor society), and is a charter member of the Norman Mailer Society. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Peter is a veteran of private business, having worked with trade with China for 25 years, and is author of the Mao of Business. He has lived and traveled extensively throughout Asia and other continents. He is best known for his research and study about Nazi occult beliefs – Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult – with a forward by Norman Mailer.  His tome, Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft is a monumental three volume set that we will touch upon during our conversation . His most recent publication is Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler, a book that continues the research he began in Chile in 1979 about the escape routes for Nazi war criminals and scientists to the US, South America, the Middle East and as far as Indonesia and the far East.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 04/30/12

America’s Failed War on Drugs and the need to legalize marijuana.

An in depth articulate investigation into marijuana use in America and its demonization by the government’s war on drugs; how it has increased incarceration in the private prison systems for industry profits, and the benefits for legalizing marijuana for medical use and entertainment.

Judge James Gray has been a trial judge in Orange County, California for 29 years and has been a US candidate for Congress and the Senate for the Republican and later Libertarian Parties. He is one of the nation’s most articulate critics of the failures of our War on Drugs and supporters of the legalization of marijuana.

Michael Ruppert is a former LAPD narcotics investigator and whistleblower who was forced out of the police department while holding its highest ratings. He has been at the forefront of exposing government and intelligence complicity in America’s international and domestic drug trade.

Joseph Pietri is a former drug smuggler before and after Nixon’s declaration of America’s War on Drugs for several decades who operated out of south and southeast Asia. He is currently an active advocate for medical marijuana.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 04/23/12

Martha Rosenberg is an investigative health reporter, commentator and an editorial cartoonist who has written extensively on the dangers of industrial food and pharmaceutical drugs, devious practices by the Big Drug Makers, pharma advertizing, dangers of antibiotics and FDA incompetence in drug oversight for efficacy and safety.  She is a frequent contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, Providence Journal and the Chicago Tribune. Martha has recently published her first book, “Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp the Public Health” which includes many interviews with physicians, researchers and insiders willing to come forward to speak about the devious practices of the drug and food industrial complexes. Dr. Bruce Levine is a clinical psychologist in Cincinnati and an activist, author addressing the societal problems in our corporate healthcare system.  He is regular contributor to Z Magazine, Alternet, Adbusters, the Ecologist and the Huffington Post.  Bruce is a member of Mind Freedom International, and is on the Advisory Council of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Pyschology. His most recent book, “Get Up Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite” is a thorough investigation into the psychological underpinnings behind the American public’s passivity and aura of powerlessness to stand up against corporate and political powers who are removing the democratic freedoms in the nation.