Episodes
Tuesday Dec 30, 2014
Tuesday Dec 30, 2014
David talks with Judith Levine in Episode 42 about sexual assault, particularly about whether new ideas about “affirmative consent” are going to lead to injustices. The conversation also covers a description of restorative justice, and how it can produce better outcomes for both the victim and the perpetrator (if both decide to participate), leading to behavior changes without the lifelong consequences of a sexual crime conviction. David and Judith talk about several recent cases, some of which involve minor sexual misconduct, and some appear to involve the punishment of perfectly normal sexual behavior, based on this new desire to use harsh mechanisms to eradicate sexual misconduct on college campuses. And why so much attention to campuses, where increasingly financially privileged young people congregate, and not the home, workplace or the military or other domains? Is this actually class bias masquerading as a desire for justice?
Judith Levine is the author of four books, most relevantly the award winning, “Harmful To Minors: The Perils Of Protecting Children From Sex”. She has also written many articles, such as “To stop campus rape, let kids grow up”. http://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/to-stop-campus-rape-let-kids-grow-up/Content?oid=2416807 and “Campus Rules are about Punishment not Sex”, http://bostonreview.net/blog/judith-levine-yes-means-yes-campus-rape-punishment-sex. She is on the board of the National Center for Reason & Justice (ncrj.org).
You can find out more about her at http://judithlevine.com.
Tuesday Dec 23, 2014
"Mad in America" with Robert Whitaker - 12.23.14
Tuesday Dec 23, 2014
Tuesday Dec 23, 2014
Robert Whitaker is the author of two important books critical of the current drug-oriented psychiatric treatment dogmas in western approaches to so-called mental illness – “Mad in America” and “Anatomy of an Epidemic”. He has received several award s for his writing, including a George Polk Award and a National Association for Science Writers award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Whitaker talks about the evidence that pharmaceutical drugs for diseases, such as the ill-defined ‘schizophrenia’, do not work, and actually make things worse. Those who don’t have access to these drugs, in the third world, do better, and those who go off their medications do better than those who stay on. He believes that the reason the drugs are still widely used is because they do have short term benefits, and they are also addictive, so when people try to stop them their symptoms often worsen significantly for some time. They become a trap for doctors and for patients.
Tuesday Dec 09, 2014
Ebola and Polio - 12.09.14
Tuesday Dec 09, 2014
Tuesday Dec 09, 2014
In Episode 40 David wraps up coverage of the Ebola epidemic, which is now winding down. He points out that the CDC, WHO and African governments have more money, and GSK has its vaccine trials well under way. The money has been made, the infectious panic is not needed any more.
The vaccine causes David to segue into talking about the polio vaccine, because this is considered to be the most successful vaccine in history, except that simply examining the timing of polio epidemics tells us that this could not be the case, that the epidemic was declining long before the majority of people were vaccinated
Wednesday Dec 03, 2014
James Fetzer on the JFK Assassination, 9/11 and other ‘conspiracy theories’ - 12.02.14
Wednesday Dec 03, 2014
Wednesday Dec 03, 2014
David intended to talk to Professor James Fetzer about the JFK assassination, 9/11, and other situations in which the government’s story about the event has major holes, and alternative theories abound. They did talk extensively about these things, but first started talking about Wikipedia is used to punish and dismiss dissidents, by describing them as conspiracy theorists, discredited and so on.
Fetzer believes that the JFK assassination involved multiple shooters employed by the CIA and right-wing Cuban anti-Castro activists, to prevent the CIA from being broken up after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, and to heighten cold war tensions, which was very profitable for the military industrial complex. In his view Oswald was just a patsy, and his convenient assassination left only the government to tell the story.
David and Fetzer talk more about the mechanisms and evidence of 9/11 rather than the reasons why someone would want to instigate such an attack and blame it on a dozen muslims. Interesting parts of his view are that sophisticated nuclear charges, rather than nano-thermite, brought down the towers, and reduced it to a small pile of dust, and that planes did not fly into the twin towers, but projected holographic images.
For further information about his ideas and evidence, please see http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/fetzerexpandedx.pdf, http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/10/03/the-complete-midwest-911-truth-conference-parts-1-2-and-3/ and his blog at http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.ca