Progressive Commentary Hour

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS Understanding the clash of worldviews and paradigms today, and why the need for a future "living economy" to sustain the preservation of our species is so urgent today Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris (Sah-toor-is) is an evolution biologist, philosopher, futurist and a former professor specializing in the designs of living systems. In addition to having taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Sahtouris has served as a consultant to the United Nations on indigenous peoples, has been leading voice in promoting the Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock, is a fellow of the World Business Academy, and has been an adviser for graduate business programs at universities. Currently she is a professor in the MBA program at Chaminade University in Honolulu.  Elisabet is a frequent  keynote speaker for many conferences focused upon humanity’s future and sustainable economic systems.  She was the primary organizer for the millennium 2000 Earth Celebration in Athens Greece.  Elisabet has authored several important books including “Biology Revisited” (a dialogue with the late Willis Harman -- an American futurist and  a co-founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences), and “Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution”.  Her website is Sahtouris.com

This is Camille Paglia's speech and question/answer discussion at Seattle Library. It was posted on the notoriously difficult to use CSPAN website.

In depth look at Propaganda and Censorship of alternative media and the internet, and the history of the government's use of the media as a weapon against democracy and citizens    Prof Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media, culture and communications at New York University where he specializes in modern propaganda, history of advertising, film and the major media.  He is the lead chief editor of the series Forbidden Bookshelf, which republishes important books that have censored, banned, ignored or wrongly criticized in the course of American history -- such as works by IF Stone, Lewis Mumford, Peter Dale Scott, Christopher Simpson and others.  Mark received his Masters and Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. He has written and contributed to many books, including "Loser take All" and "Fooled Again" which cover  ed election fraud. He runs the news and commentary blog "News from the Underground" that can be found at his website MarkCrispinMiller.com  

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS Why Christianity is becoming increasing unbelievable and why it must undergo a dramatic reformation in order to survive and be relevant. Bishop John Shelby Spong is a renowned American Bishop of the Episcopal Church priest who served in Newark until he retired in 2000.  As a liberal theologian he has represented an alternative voice for Christians and religious persons, and for decades has challenged the status quo in today’s religious institutions. As a life long Biblical scholar Bishop Spong consistently challenges the hard held Christian myths such as the virgin birth, miracle stores, the doctrine of atonement and Jesus as a universal savior, the ascension and other theological structures that continue to define Christianity. Bishop Spong has been a visiting lecturer to standing room audiences at over 500 universities, including Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.  He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina, Virginia Theological  Seminary, has studied Biblical scholarship at Yale, Harvard, Union Theological, Edinburgh, Oxford and others and has received several honorary doctoral degrees.  He has published over two dozen books, the most recent being "Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today." Bishop Spong’s weekly column can be found on his site JohnShelbySpong.com  

        CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS The Body-Mind Self, and the epigenetics of our culturally learned beliefs upon our health and quality of life Dr. Mario Martinez is a clinical psychologist specializing in psycho-neuroimmunology and anti-aging. For the past couple decades, he has been developing the discipline of cultural psycho-immunology as a mind-body theory that explains how our thoughts and their biological expression co-emerge within a cultural environment and history, which in turn affect our  immune, nervous and endocrine systems. This model is called Cultural Psycho-neuroimmunology. He is the founder of the Biocognitive Science Institute in Montevideo, Uruguay, which is now in Nashville Tennessee, and conducts research, lectures and offers seminars in Biocognitive principles and mind-body techniques. Dr. Martinez was the first to outline a blueprint for a new paradigm on the epigenetic relationship between the cultural beliefs we hold and the quality of our health. His latest  book is “Mind-Body Self: How Longevity is Culturally Learned and the Causes of Health Inherited.”  More about biocognitive mind-body science, workshops and events can be found on the Institute's website at www.BioCognitive.com

CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE MINDS The psychology and swerve in the reality and threats of climate change, malignant normality, our resilience to survive, and he legacy of one of America's great minds.   I am honored to invite tonight's guest and one of our Great Minds --   Dr. Robert Jay Lifton. Dr Lifton is a distinguished pioneering psychiatrist and a long time anti-nuclear war scholar activist who has been investigating the psychological impacts of warfare and terrorism, nuclear weapons, political violence and coercive thought reform and brainwashing for 6 decades.  Along with his mentor the famous developmental psychologist Eric Erikson and others, he formed the Wellfleet Psychohistory Group that investigated the motivations for war and genocide. For a time in the early 60s, Dr. Lifton lived in Hiroshima studying the psychological traumas of the survivors of the nuclear bomb and later the violence and trauma perpetuated on Vietnamese from exposure to Agent Orange .  His book on Nazi medical doctors was ground breaking for identifying how normal people can rationalize and support such atrocities and crimes against humanity. Earlier in the 1950s he had studied the impact of thought reform and brainwashing on POWs' mental health in Chinese prisons. Robert and another colleague successfully lobbied to have  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder recognized as a clinical diagnosis.  He has been a teacher and researcher at the Washington School of Psychiatry, Harvard and John Jay College.  He has written many important books based on his research Robert is the author of "The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope and Survival" and is among the leading psychologists leading the charge to warn Americans of Trump's abnormal mental condition. His website is RobertJayLifton.com  

William ("Bill") Binney  William Binney is a former high placed intelligence officer in the US National Security Agency, or NSA, where he was a technical director in charge of a department of several thousand employees engaged in military geopolitical intelligence analysis and the creation of the NSA’s mass surveillance program. After working with the agency for over 30 years, Bill resigned and turned whistleblower over the unconstitutional and illegal mass surveillance and spying of American and foreign citizens. He has been described as one of the best analysts in NSA’s history. Prior to his tenure at the NSA, Bill worked with the Army Security Agency and was a Russian specialist. He is a harsh critic of the US government spying on its citizenry and has been outspoken regarding the US’s demise into a police state comparable to the KGB, Stasi and Gestapo, and that the government’s massive data collection of phone intercepts, emails, tracking cameras and other spying mechanisms is part of a bigger mission to ultimately have control over the population.  Mr. Binney has been featured in numerous publications around the world, including Der Spiegel, BBC, USA Today and other media sources. Today he continues tirelessly to bring attention to the American people and other nations the massive scope of US intelligence spying and surveillance and the erosion of democracy making room for a totalitarian police state. 

 What has changed in Syria and Yemen since Trump came to power... an insider reporters look on the ground Vanessa Beeley is a British investigative journalist who has focused on the conflicts in the middle east – particularly in Syria, Gaza and Yeme. She is an associate editor of 21st Century Wire and was member of a peace finding mission to Syria and organized by the US Peace Council.  Vanessa was in Aleppo during and after its liberation after the city had been captured for almost 5 years by western backed Salafist terror organizations last year. She is credited with having exposed the fraud behind the faux charitable, volunteer organization the Syrian Civil Defense or better known as the White Helmets, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize and was featured in the documentary that recently received an Oscar award.   She is also a contributing writer for the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine, the Dissident Voice and manages the website The Wall Will Fall in London, where she blogs about her travels and reports from the Middle East.  She just recently returned to Paris from Damascus where she was doing investigative research. Her websites are TheWallWillFall.org   and   21stCenturyWire.com

The epidemic of childhood illnesses due to our agrichemical food industry and the failure of federal policies.  Dr. Michelle Perro is a veteran pediatrician having been in practice for over 35 years in acute and integrative medicine.  During the past decade, her clinical practice has dealt more with pesticide and food health advocacy.  Recently she has become an important voice warning the public about GMO foods and food toxins, pesticides and their health risks.  Michelle has been both a director and physician at New York's Metropolitan Hospital and University of California San Franciso's Childrens Hopsital in Oakland. She ran Down to Earth Pediatrics, a holistic urgent care clinic for children and more recently is an integrative physician at the Institute for Health and Healing at Sutter Pacific Medical Center in Sacramento.  She is the author of a new and important book, co-written with our next other guest Dr. Vincanne Adams,  which explores the links between GM foods, glyphosate or Roundup, and gut disorders with the serious epidemic of chronic illnesses.  Her website and more information can be found at GordonMedical.com Prof. Vincanne Adams is a professor and vice chair of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California medical school in San Francisco. Her areas of specialty have been the history and development of medical anthropology, reproductive health, scientific and medical sociology, health policy, and Asian and Tibetan medical systems and globalization.   She is currently the editor for the Medical Anthropology Quarterly, the flagship.  Earlier, Prof. Adams taught at Princeton University for 9 years, and she graduated with her doctorate in Medical Anthropology from the University of California programs at Berkeley and San Francisco.   

An deep view into the FBI and its role in the Steele dossier and the aftermath      Coleen Rowley is a former FBI special agent who was with the agency for 24 years. From 1990 to 2003, she was the Chief Division Counsel operating out of Minneapolis.  In May 2002, she blew the whistle and later testified before the Senate Judiciary about the FBI’s pre-911 failures to track and investigate Zacarias Moussoui, who has been identified as central to the 911 plot. She stepped down from her legal position with the Agency in 2004 after her unsuccessful issuance of warnings about the dangers of invading Iraq. In 2002, Coleen was selected by Time magazine as one of its 3 Person of the Year award. She ran for Congress to represent Minnesota’s 2nd District in 2006 with the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, and was on the group of whistleblowers, along with Ray McGovern to travel to  Moscow to present the Sam Adams Award for integrity in intelligence to Edward Snowden.  Coleen received a law degree from the College of Law at the University of Iowa, and her articles appear on Huffington Post, Robert Parry's Consortium News, Anti-war blog and other independent commentary sources.  Her website is ColeenRowley.com

An exploration into Islamic diversity,  the mysticism of Sufism, the extremism of Salafism and Wahhabism, and Muslim violence against Muslims  Prof Alexander Knysh is a professor of Islamic Studies at the Institute of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.  His areas of specialty are Islamic mysticism or Sufism, intellectual history, and Islamic movements in North Africa, Yemen, Russia and the Caucasus.  Dr Knysh received his doctorate at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in what was then Leningrad and now St Petersburg.  He was the executive editor for the Encyclopedia of Islamic Mysticism and the author of the recent book "Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism" commissioned by Princeton University Press.   

Ma’ikwe Ludwig is a regular contributor to Communities magazine and a member of the Board of Directors of the Fellowship for Intentional Community. She has lived in community for 20 years. Her latest book, Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption looks at the role of community, cooperation and social justice in addressing and surviving climate disruption, and was awarded the Communal Studies Association 2017 Book of the Year Award.Ma'ikwe is the former Executive Director of both the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture and Commonomics USA, an economic justice organization. She is in the process of founding Cooperative Revolution, a new group focused on cooperative economics and culture development. Her work integrates ecological, economic, social, political and personal approaches and technologies for a strongly holistic view of what real cooperation and sustainability take. Her 2013 TEDx kicked off a new era for her as public speaker and advocate for communities. She lives in Laramie, WY where a group of fellow economic radicals are working on starting an income-sharing ecovillage in the belly of the fossil fuel beast.

Saving Planet, Saving Ourselves Part 5 Humanity is faced with its greatest challenges since it evolved on Earth 200,000 years ago.  Rapid climate change and the degradation and destruction of our environment. The Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene Age, and henceforth all atmospheric and geological changes in the near and long term future will have humanity's footprint on it. It is critical that people begin to understand what we are experiencing now with more frequent droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme weather conditions, and it what portends for the future. 

Saving Planet, Saving Ourselves Part 4 Humanity is faced with its greatest challenges since it evolved on Earth 200,000 years ago.  Rapid climate change and the degradation and destruction of our environment. The Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene Age, and henceforth all atmospheric and geological changes in the near and long term future will have humanity's footprint on it. It is critical that people begin to understand what we are experiencing now with more frequent droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme weather conditions, and it what portends for the future.         

Saving Planet, Saving Ourselves Part 3 Humanity is faced with its greatest challenges since it evolved on Earth 200,000 years ago.  Rapid climate change and the degradation and destruction of our environment. The Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene Age, and henceforth all atmospheric and geological changes in the near and long term future will have humanity's footprint on it. It is critical that people begin to understand what we are experiencing now with more frequent droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme weather conditions, and it what portends for the future.