Progressive Commentary Hour

Military and intelligence domestic surveillance on the American public David Rosen is a journalist, author and business development consultant who has specialized in investigating American history and government policy, the media and technology. His articles appear AlterNet, CounterPunch, Huffington Post, The Brooklyn Rail and Counterpoint in India.  He is also the author of the “Media Current” blog for Filmmaker magazine and was a consultant for the Sundance Institute.  In the past, Dave served on the boards and was treasurer for PBS’s Independent Television Service and as well as been an advisor to the Ford, Rockefeller, Johnson and Benton Foundations and a consultant for Rep. Richard Gephardt and Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak Professor Andrew Kolin is 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 conflicts between state power and democracy and the history of the US turning into a police state.  His latest book published this year is “State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W Bush” which traces the history of American politics for sowing the seeds for a national police state from the founding of the republic to the presen

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Special on Hydrofracking – all you will need to know Guests: Prof. Tony Ingraffea is the distinguished Anthony Dwight Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell University and head researcher of the Cornell Fracking Group – the nation’s leading computer simulation laboratory identifying the severe environmental risks as a result of hydrofracking. Jennifer Krill is the Executive Director of Earthworks  – a national nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the environment through advocacy and pressure on Congress, particularly concerning oil and natural gas ordinances and legislation.  Formerly she was a campaign director for the Rainforest Action Network. Dominic Frangello is a city council member for the township of Caroline, New York, in a region most directly threatened by industry’s fracking intentions. He is also the leading anti-fracking advocate in an effort to solicit commitments from NY elected officials to protect the state against fracking.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an award winning author, sociologist and geopolitical analyst. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica in Italy, a contributor the Moscow-based Strategic Cultural Foundation and an associate with the Center for Research on Globalization. Among his books are The Globalization of NATO, and a forthcoming book on the War on Libya and the Re-colonization of Africa. Russ Baker is a leading investigate reporter and analyst in alternative media best known for his coverage of the Hutu-Tutsi massacres in Rwanda, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the overthrow of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He is the founder of the progressive news site WhoWhatWhy.com, author of the bestseller Family of Secrets about the Bush family, and teaches journalism at Columbia University. Finian Cunningham is an Irish investigative reporter and journalist living in East Africa, and the Middle East and East Africa Correspondent for the Center for Research on Globalization in Montreal.

Dr. Jim Garrison is the co-founder and president of Wisdom University. As the co-founder and President of the Gorbachev Foundation, he was instrumental in the founding of the State of the World Forum in 1995, which generated a global network of leaders and visionaries from all walks of life to define a template for a more sustainable global civilization. in 2000, he initiated the launch of the Commission on Globalization which challenged the existing global governance system and gathered diverse stakeholders and scholars together to identify and design variable alternatives. Jim has graduate degrees in religion and theology from Harvard and Cambridge universities. His first book in 1980 was "The Plutonium Culture" and later most recent publications are "Civilization and the Transformation of Power" and "America as Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Nation" Dr. Paul Ray is widely acknowledged by many in the progressive community as a leading visionary and futurist exploring the future of human civilization. He is the founding director of the Institute of the Emerging Wisdom Culture at Wisdom University. Formerly Dr. Ray was a former executive of American Lives Inc., a market research and opinion firm specializing in analysis of lifestyles, values and expectations in American society and was a chief policy research on energy conservation for the Department of Energy, mines and resources for the canadian government. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Ray spearheaded research and consultations for over 100 projects. After surveying over 100,000 Americans dring a 13 year period, he identified an emerging subculture permeating much of the American society that are known as Cultural Creatives, which is the title of his book: "The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World."

The military legacy of President Obama and expansion of the American empire with distinguished guests Ray McGovern and Prof. David Vine. Vine is professor of Anthropology at American University and author of 'Island of Shame: the Secret history of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia' Ray McGovern served as an Army intelligence officer and a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Among his duties was preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers. Since retiring from government service, he has been one of our nation’s most vocal peace activists and journalists. As an act of conscience, in 2006 Ray returned the Intelligence Commendation Medallion given him at retirement for “especially meritorious service.” In 2003, he helped create Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) to expose the way intelligence was being falsified to “justify” war on Iraq. Ray’s opinion pieces appear in many leading newspapers here and abroad, including a major section in an important book, “Neocon’d Again” dealing with America’s war in Iraq. He holds degrees in theology and philosophy from Fordham University, is a graduate from Harvard Business School and has a certificate of theology from Georgetown University.

Matthew Stein is an engineer with a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a National Merit Scholar. He is the owner of Aloha Aina Builders, which specializes in hurricane resistant, energy efficient, and environmentally friendly homes, and is also president of Stein Designs which invents consumer and commercial water and bacteriological filtration systems, photovoltaic roofing and other energy efficient and sustainable products. Matt writes extensively on sustainable preparedness and self-sufficiency in the face of predictable and unpredictable catastrophic scenarios and conditions. in addition to writing on the future of perfect storms for the Huffington Post, he is the author several exhaustive books on how people can prepare themselves for having to rely on our own resources and ingenuity, most notably "When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability and Surviving the Long Emergency" and "When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide to Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival"

Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych is an immunologist living in the Bay Area who arrived at the conclusion in her research that vaccination science and its promises are remarkably unfounded. She is the author of the recent book " Vaccine Illusion: How Vaccination Compromises Our Natural Immunity and What We Can Do to Regain Our Health" which presents a very different approach to explaining vaccine failures in efficacy and safety compared to other publications opposing vaccines. Tetyana was born in the Ukraine and came to the US to receive degrees in Biochemistry from Mount Holyoke College, and an MA and PhD in Immunology from Rockefeller University. Subsequently she did post doctoral research at the Immune Disease Institute affiliated with Harvard Medical School and recently discontinued further post doc studies at Stanford School of Medecine. She is currently a new mom and offers classes to parents about vaccination and immunity. Roman Bystranyk is an independent investigator and writer who focuses on topics that rarely reach major media. He is the founder of HealthSentinal.com which is dedicated to the best information on health, the environment, and the world based on scientific, medical and other reliable sources.

An in-depth look at the World Trade Organization – what goes on behind its lack of transparency in free market trade treaties to push forward corporate globalization.  And a discussion into the Obama Administrations agenda in secretly negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement – which is being perceived as possibly worse that NAFTA. Guests – one of the nation’s foremost experts about the history and strategy of the WTO and international free trade agreements --- Lori Wallach, the Director of Washington DC advocacy organization and public think tank Public Citizen and a Harvard trained attorney who is has been described as a Ralph Nader with a sense of humor. And Arthur Stamoulis, director for the Citizens Trade Campaign, a national coalition of environmental, labor, consumer, family farm, religious, and other civil society groups founded in 1992 to improve the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

Special broadcast on ALEC Lisa Graves is the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, the publisher of PR Watch, SourceWatch, and BanksterUSA. She previously served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government, as a leading strategist on civil liberties advocacy, and as an adjunct law professor at one of the top law schools in the country. Her former leadership posts include: a Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senior Legislative Strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union (on national security and surveillance policies). Lisa has testified as an expert witness before both the Senate and House and has frequently appeared as an expert across the different radio and television net works. The Center for Media and Democracy recently obtained documents outlining about 800 bills, vetted and approved by major corporations along with Republican officials, who comprise the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC. It has been discovered that these bills are designed to rewrite state laws and target just about every area of American life – from education, union and worker rights, civil liberties, corporate oversight, health care, utilities, taxation – all which favor greater independence for the corporate regime and their domination over the privatization of people’s lives

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

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

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