Progressive Commentary Hour

The real Syrian Narrative -- cutting through the American mainstream misinformation and lies

Dr. Henry Lowendorf is on the Executive Board of the US Peace Council – an pro-worker, anti-imperialist, peace organization founded in 1979 and committed to social justice and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The Council is an NGO member of the United Nations under its affiliation with the world’s largest peace organization, The World Peace Council. He is the Chair of the Greater New Haven Peace Council, a position he has held since 1985 and held a career as Associate Director of technology assessment and research at Yale University for over 20 years. Dr. Lowendorf has   He holds degrees in Cell Biology from University of Michigan and a doctorate in Biology from Case Western University.  His organization’s website is USPeaceCouncil.org which has many news announcements and articles about the war and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Gerry Condon is the Vice President for the Executive Committee of Veterans for Peace – an international non profit composed of military veterans, their families and allies dedicated to building a culture of peace and to expose the true costs of war and conflict.   He is a Vietnam era veteran and also a war resister who spend six years in Sweden and Canada for refusing orders to fight in Vietnam. Gerry has a long history of veterans peace activism having organized the first veteran delegations to revolutionary Nicaragua in 1983 and 84. From 1993 to 1994 he worked for Pastors for Peace to organize humanitarian aid and political solidarity caravans to Cuba. For the past dozen years, he has been on the front lines supporting war resisters in Canada, Germany, the US and elsewhere from going to Afghanistan and Iraq.  The website if VeteransForPeace.org

Disrobing the deception behind the enormous public relations and propaganda network supporting the Big Chemical Agricultural Industry such as Monsanto and Dupont  

Stacy Malkan is the co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which seeks to remove harmful chemicals from the beauty products and which followed her award winning book “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.”  She is currently the co-founder and director of US Right To Know and was the media director for California Right to Know. Earlier Stacy was spearheaded the communications for Health Care Without Harm which succeeded in having mercury removed from hospitals and closed down medical waste incinerators around the world. She has appeared in the Human Experiment produced by Sean Penn and other films. Experience Life Magazine listed her as one of the five visionaries leading the charge to better health.

Gary Ruskin is the co-founder and executive director of US Right to Know, a non profit organization with the mission to bring transparency and accountability to our nation’s food and GMO industries and expose corporate failures that threaten the public’s health. In 2012, he was the campaign manager for California Right to Know (Proposition 37) and earlier directed the Congressional Accountability Project for 14 years, which opposed corruption in the U.S. Congress. For nine years, Gary was executive director and co-founder of Commercial Alert and also served as the director for the Center for Corporate Policy. He has often been quoted in major newspapers across the country and has appeared scores of times on national TV news programs. He received his undergraduate degree in religion from Carleton College, and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.  US Right to Know’s website is USRTK.org

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS

The theological deification of capitalist market,  the secular quest for prosperity and why we should be deeply concerned. .

Professor Harvey Cox is one of America’s most preeminent theologians and the Hollis Research Professor emeritus at Harvard Divinity School, the oldest professorship at Harvard going back to 1721. Prof. Cox has been called one of the most important liberal theologians during the last half century and a leading trend spotter in American religion.  He has also been a prominent civil rights and anti-war activist throughout his career. His book, The Secular City published in 1965 remains one of the most read theological books in the nation and predicted much of what we now witness unfolding as dogmatic religious beliefs become stronger and secular values take on higher spiritual value and meaning. Forty years ago, Prof. Cox viewed this as a maturing of humanity and a divine gift, rather than a threat to religion. Now at 87 years old, Prof. Cox has published another text – “The Market as God” (Harvard University Press) – which lays down the argument along with Pope Francis’ observation that the capitalist market has been deified and has reached divine status in post modern civilization and consequently our ethical problems dealing with rampant inequality, climate change and global poverty are more difficult to solve. 

The War No One Wants to Talk About – Is there a genocide underway in Yemen?

Cutting through the lies and  of Washington and American media

 

Kim Sharif is an attorney in the UK and the director of the non-profit human justice organization Human Rights of Yemen.  She is Yemeni by birth, a Shiite Muslim, and leading figure exposing the media lies both in the US and the UK over the illegal war being waged by Saudi Arabia upon the diverse populations in Yemen and with the military assistance of the US and UK.  She has been campaigning on behalf of the people of Yemen since the war started and has taken part in many NGO human rights and anti war panels in the UK and Geneva to increase public awareness of the genocide underway.

A look at US Foreign Policy and American global hegemony through the eyes of the US government’s support of Salafi terrorism and its war on terror

Our guest has a very unique background that is rarely ever heard on a more liberal program.  Dr. Scott Bennett is a US Army Special Operations Officer who specialized in global psychological operations and warfare. He was also a counter-terrorism analyst for one of the nation’s largest defense contractors Booz Allen Hamilton – the same firm Edward Snowden worked at when he released the troves of documents to Glen Greenwald at the Guardian.  Dr. Benett has worked at the highest levels of government – US Special Ops Command, US Central Command, the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism and other federal agencies. From 2003 to 2008 he served in the Bush administration and before that was a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.  IN addition, Scott turned whistleblower filing numerous reports to Congress on corruption within the government and military, including international banking funding of Salafi terrorism including ISIS. He was also charged, stood trial and incarcerated in a federal prison where he met whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld who revealed the Swiss banks such as UBS tax evasion operations, and much more that we will discuss.  Scott has written and important book of his experiences and investigations – “Shell Game: A Military Whistleblowing Report About the Betrayal and Coverup by the US Government of the Union Bank of Switzerlan Terrorist Finance Connection to Edward Snowden’s Leaks about Booz Allen Hamilton and US Central Command”  His website is ArmyPsyOp.wix.com/scottbennett where you can find further information, publications, and videos and presentations.

 

 

 

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS

Geoengineering:  heading towards a planetary catastrophe in the years ahead and its unpredictable backlash contributing to global warming

Dane Wigington is  a geoengineering scientist with a background in solar energy who is highly regarded as one of the foremost experts and commentators on stratospheric aerosol geoengineering and solar radiation management.   He is a former employee at Bechtel Power Corporation and worked on the first commercial solar plants in the United States.  As a climate researcher, Dane has been studying the issue of geoengineering and chemtrails for over a decade.  He has appeared  in numerous documentary films and pubic appearances educating the public about he advese effects of weather modification and is featured in Michael Murphy’s documentary “Why in the World are They Spraying.” Dane hosts and is the lead researcher for the iwebsite GeoEngineering Watch. org.  He lives on his wildlife preserve near Lake Shasta in Northern California. And it was through his observations in the change of the forests, atmosphere, biodiversity and health of the land that alerted him to the implications of excessive geoengineering operations in his region.

 

The case of the US government genocide of indigenous Americans

Danny Sheehan is one of our nation’s most important and influential Constitutional and public interest lawyers.  During the past 45 years he has handled such public interest cases as the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate Break In, Iran Contra and the Silkwood murder case.  He has represented victims of he Three Mile Island nuclear disaster and fought against the American Nazi Party on hate crimes. He is the founder of the Christic Institute and the Romero Institute, the latter being a nonprofit public policy center in Santa Cruz California. Danny has his law degree from Harvard University and later returned to study at the Harvard Divinity School.. He is the author of “The People’s Advocate: The Life and Legal History of America’s Most Fearless Public Defense Lawyer,”   And his websites are DanielPSheehan.com   AND   RomeroInstitute.org

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS

The role of NATO in the 21st century and the serious global problems of conflict it presents

Colonel Lawrence (Larry) Wilkerson is a retired US Army Colonel and the former chief of staff to General Colin Powell while he was Secretary of State.  He is currently a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of  Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Col. Wilkerson started as an assistant to Gen. Powell an 1989, and remained with him through his term in the Bush administration.  He has been an outspoken critic of the Iraq War, the Bush and Cheney White House, including his own preparation of what became of Powell’s infamous 2003 presentation to the UN.  He has had a very distinguished career having been trained in the Army, Marines and Navy.  Col. Wilkerson is a frequent commentator on radio television programs including The Ed Show on MSNBC. He has also been featured in several important documentaries, including “Why We Fight”, “The Israel Lobby”, and “No End in Sight.”  In 2009 he received the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence.

A look at Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family regime through the eyes of Bill’s former mistress for almost 20 years

Dolly Kyle is former active attorney and currently a novelist and author. She is best known as having been an intimate romantic partner and confidante of Bill Clinton before his marriage to Hillary and during his time in the Governor’s mansion in Arkansas.  Dolly met Bill when she was 11 years old he was 13.  They were sweethearts as teenagers and continued an off and on relationship over the years as they both pursued their individual careers, and ending the relationship when Bill sought the White House in 1991.  Dolly went on to receive a degree and her jurist doctorate in law at Southern Methodist University. She practiced real estate law in Dallas for approximately 20 years and founded the non profit Lawyers for Affordable Housing organization to assist and protect low-income and poorer homeowners. In addition to her novels, Dolly is the author of Hillary the Other Woman – her political memoir and analysis of Hillary Clinton during her decades affair with Bill.  Her website is DollyKyle.com

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS

Understanding the coup in Turkey – and the history of CIA/US involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic terrorism

F. William Engdahl is an award winning geopolitical analyst, strategic risk consultant and author who specializes on the rise of the US as an international superpower. His writings deal with empire building through the roles of financial control of global banking, the food chain, medicine and bioengineering and energy, primarily oil. He holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and did graduate work in comparative economics at Stockholm University in Sweden. He has taught at Beijing University and lectured widely at business and economic institutions throughout the world including Russia, Turkey, London, Croatia and elsewhere. His articles appear in Global Research, New Eastern Outlook, Asia Times, Financial Sense and RT among others. William has written many important books, his latest being “The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy” which provides a history of the US intelligence’s relationship with the origins of Islamic terrorist and jihadi organizations and movements. His website is WilliamEngdahl.com