Progressive Commentary Hour - 12/19/11

Guests: John Feffer and Robert Parry

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal and  has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He also serves on the advisory committees of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation.

 

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 right wing terrorism, 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.

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Progressive Commentary Hour - 12/12/11

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Progressive Commentary Hour - 12/05/11

The role and necessity of spirituality in political and social activism

 

Rabbi Michael Lerner is clearly one the nation’s greatest Jewish intellectuals and spiritual political activists. As a teenager, Rabbi Lerner was a student of Abraham Joshua Heschel, a great socially responsible mystical thinker who marched with Martin Luther King. During the 60s, he was a chair of the Berkeley chapter of the Students For a Democratic society and was incarcerated as member of the Seattle Seven.  Michael is the founding editor of Tikkun Magazineand is the founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, a spiritual activism organization dedicated to care, gratitude, spiritual insight in all dimensions of human society, and respect for the earth. 

 

Professor Robert Thurman holds the Jay Zong Ka-pa Robert Thurman Chair of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Columbia University. He is the President of Tibet House US and is President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. The New York Times has hailed him as the “leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism.”  In 1962, Prof. Thurman was ordained as a Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, with whom he has remained a close colleague to this day.  He has written many books on Tibetan culture, art, politics and Buddhism. His most recent is “Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as a Solution for China, Tibet and the World” – an attempt to find a win-win situation in the Tibet-China crisis. 

 

Prof. Dan McKanan is the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, where he specializes in the American history of religious and spiritual movements for social transformation. He is the author of “Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition” from Oxford University Press, that provides an all-encompassing look at religious activism during the past 200 years of American history.

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Progressive Commentary Hour - 11/28/11

Guests: Celia Farber, Professor Henry Bauer, David Crowe 

Celia Farber is a journalist who covered the HIV wars extensively since 1987, in various magazines. Some of these writings are collected in her book: "Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS" published by Melville House Press, (now Random House) in 2006. 

Activist Michael Callen called Farber "..the best AIDS journalist in the world."  She also has enemies, of course. Her 2006 article for Harper's magazine detailing the totalitarian corruption of HIV/AIDS research was titled "Out of Control: AIDS And The Corruption of Medical Science." The attacks from the AIDS industry were predictable and fierce. Still, she won the 2008 Semmelweis Clean Hands Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.

Prof. Henry Bauer is professor emeritus of chemistry and science studies and a former dean at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.  After his retirement he served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration for seven years. He is author of the book 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.

David Crowe is the President of the Reappraising AIDS Society and a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. He hosts the www.ReThinkingAIDS.com  website, which is science and news resource on all international research and commentary challenging the current HIV/AIDS model.  David is also the former president and treasurer for the Green Party in Alberta Canada.

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Progressive Commentary Hour - 11/21/11

Guests: Dr. Samuel Epstein, Darrell Rogers, and Dr. Len Saputo

Dr. Samuel Epstein is a leading international authority on the causes and prevention of cancer. He is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and the Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.  Frequently he has been invited to give testimony to Congressional hearings as an expert witness on the cancer risks of pesticides, petrochemicals, cosmetic products, rBGH hormone in milk, sex hormones in meat, and irradiated food. He has also served as a consultant to the US Senate Committee on Public Works.

 

Dr. Epstein is a sharp critic of the close relationship between cancer drug makers and our professional and government health agencies, in particular the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute.  He has written 11 books and authored over 250 peer reviewed papers dealing environmental carcinogens in our everyday products and the reasons for why we are in fact losing the war on cancer. He has also received numerous awards from such organizations as the National Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Justice Award, Bioneers Award, and the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel Prize).

 

Among his more recent books is “National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society:  Criminal Indifference to Cancer Prevention and Conflicts of Interest.”

Darrell Rogers is the Communications Director with the Alliance for Natural Health- USA, which has been at the forefront for spearheading amendments to the Senate 510 Food Safety Bill, but ultimately wants it defeated. Matt has a higher degree in Government studies from Catholic University in Washington DC and has worked in public policy and public affairs issues with Senatorial campaigning and on Capitol Hill.  He has also worked as a political affairs specialist for one of the largest political consulting firms in DC.  www.ANH-USA.org

Dr. Len Saputo is a board certified physician in internal medicine and the Founder and Medical Director of Health Medicine Foundation in California, a nonprofit education foundation of integral healthcare providers and community leaders dedicated to a holistic vision of wellness.   He has been practicing since 1965 after graduating from Duke University’s medical school. 

 

He has co-authored several books on natural wellness health, his most recent being “A Return to Healing: Radical Health Care Reform and the Future of Medicine” which is a detailed critique of the dominant conventional medical establishment and paradigm, how it is a dismal failure, and what an integral approach to healing can provide to make it more humane, healthy and sustainable.

 

Len also hosts the program “Prescriptions for Health” on the Progressive Radio Network.

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