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Infectious Myth – “Open Media with David Christopher”? – 01.26.16

In Episode 86, David Crowe interviews David Christopher of OpenMedia.ca about a variety of media issues, including net neutrality, government warrantless eavesdropping on everyone’s communications, media ownership concentration, and how the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will negatively affect internet users. OpenMedia.ca is similar to the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) in the United States, and many of the issues are similar.

Since the interview is relatively short, and David (Crowe) didn’t manage to get into the important media issue of freedom of speech, on the internet, or elsewhere, he continues by discussing it. The backlash against a white human rights journalist who photoshopped her face into different races and cultured. The irony of jargon of people who claim to be excluded actually excluding others from participating in discussions. Why the “Je suis Charlie Hebdou” activists are very selective about what kind of speech they rally to protect.

Finally, David addresses some environmental issues: Are tens of thousands of coal jobs more important than neurological coal pollutants? Can milk contaminated with pesticides cause Parkinson’s? What’s happening with the water in Flint, Michigan?

The resources David references can be found at: http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/86.php

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Infectious Myth – Vaccination Policy in the UK with Christina England – 01.12.16

In Episode 85 David discusses with Christina England, the findings of her book entitled, “Vaccination Policy and the UK Government: The Untold Truth” which she co-authored with University of British Columbia Senior Research Fellow Lucija Tomljenovic
This interview, drawing on the materials in the book, describes how serious vaccine adverse events, especially death, have often been blamed on parents in England, often using the concept of “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” with Christina England (Shaken Baby Syndrome is also discussed in her new book book). Parents are accused of either imaging the symptoms in their child, or of creating them by abuse or poisoning. Christine describes how these ideas were promoted by prominent doctors Roy Meadows, who invented the term Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and also David Southall, and these ideas are still current, despite serious findings by medical institutions against both and many reversals of criminal convictions. She also describes how people fought back, including herself and psychologist Lisa Blakemore-Brown. Despite progress, many parents and other caregivers are still in jail, some serving life without parole, despite the fact that others were eventually released.
You can find out more about the book Christina England co-authored at: http://www.ageofautism.com/2015/12/new-book-vaccination-policy-and-the-uk-government-the-untold-truth.html

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Infectious Myth – Canada’s Indigenous Genocide with James Daschuk – 01.05.16

In Episode 84 David discusses the genocide of indigenous people in Canada with James Daschuk, an associate professor in the faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. Despite Canada’s reputation as a polite and kind society, its treatment of its native population is as shocking as in other colonizing nations. Recently Canada has completed an investigation into its residential schools, which were used to destroy native culture under the guise of providing a standard education, and that resulted in physical and sexual abuse, opportunities for biomedical experimentation, and even starvation. This led to the destruction of native families and a continuing cycle of dysfunctional families, alcoholism, drug abuse and imprisonment. Canada is also about to start an investigation into the shocking number of women, mostly indigenous, mostly poor, often drug addicts or sex workers, who disappeared without authorities bothering to search for them. The most notorious of these was the case of Robert Pickton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton), who confessed to killing 49 women in the Vancouver area. Finally, David and James delve into the history of the colonization of the prairies, the broken treaties, and the Indian Act that relegated natives to a child-like legal status, that James describes as apartheid.

You can find out more by reading Daschuk’s 2013 book “Clearing the Plains” that was a surprise bestseller in Canada and has won several awards: http://www.uofrpress.ca/publications/Clearing-The-Plains

Another surprise bestseller is the book of recollections of an elderly Cree man about growing up in a residential school, recommended by Daschuk: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/residential-school-survivors-memoir-details-decade-of-utter-cruelty/article23556082/

An article on biomedical experiments in the 1940s and 1950s that took advantage of the under-nourishment at residential schools, and even prolonged it, can be found at: https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/histoire_sociale_social_history/v046/46.91.mosby.html

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Infectious Myth – End of Year Thoughts – 12.29.15

In Episode 83 David closes out 2015 on a positive note, talking about heroism and kindness, continuing on the subjects of vaccination, medical corruption, and the environment, and ending with discussions of terrorism, eavesdropping and justice (or injustice).

Links to articles used in this episode can be found at: http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/83.php

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Infectious Myth – War Peace and Lesser Concerns – 12.08.15

In Episode 82 David discusses the causes of violence around the world, particularly gun violence in the United States. He also addresses political correctness, in the form of campus protests, good and bad, and also the notion of “Cultural Appropriation”. And speaking of politically correct, he addresses science that is politically correct, but perhaps not scientifically correct.

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Infectious Myth – Medea Benjamin on Peace and the Cycle of Violence – 12.01.15

In Episode 81 David talks with Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, and a well-known peace and anti-war activist, about the violence that infects the world today. Starting with the recent spate of violent incidents in Paris, Beirut, Mali, Colorado Springs and elsewhere, David and Medea discuss the financial motivations for war, the blowback and unintended consequences that occur, how destruction of governments, as in Iraq and Libya, helps produce organizations like ISIS. They discuss the fear of many Americans about the possibility that a jihadist could be hiding amongst refugees, while tolerating 30,000 gun deaths a year. How fear is manipulated to get taxpayers to support more funding for more wars, avoiding the discussion of how wars created the incidents that produced the fear in the first place. How fear is used to justify more widespread communications monitoring and censorship, and bigger budgets for intelligence agencies that continue to be unable to stop these attacks (often claiming insufficient budge). The jihadists benefit from our fear, and from attacks on Islamic countries that kill civilians, such as the recent Russian bombing of a busy market, bombings of wedding parties, and the recent US and Saudi bombings of hospitals.
For more reading on this subject, and some of the sources David used, see http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/81.html
You can find out more about Medea Benjamin’s work with Code Pink at: http://www.codepink.org

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Infectious Myth – News Roundup – 11.17.15

In Episode 80 David updates us on vaccine problems, the problematic military malaria medication mefloquine (Lariam), the (in)justice system, Facilitated Communications and sexual assault. He discusses a case of a sports star who appears to have gone unpunished for a vicious assault, while another star was convicted in the public eye before the evidence point out it was a false allegation of rape. Colorado high school students drop their pants for each other. Who is a victim, who is a pedophile, and who is just a teenager exploring their sexuality? Yale students go into a tizzy when a professor says they are adults. Mizzu students fire their president, and then try to fire the press. And Amherst students want their president to apologize for all the wrongs in world history.

For a list of resources for further exploration of these stories see http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/80.html

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Infectious Myth – Addiction is not a Disease – 11.10.15

In episode 79 David talks with Marc Lewis who has unique experience in the area of drug addiction, as both a former addict, and today a neuroscientist and professor of developmental psychology at Radboud University in Holland. He described his personal voyage into and out of addiction in his 2011 book, “Memoirs of an Addicted Brain”. His recently published book, “The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease” is titled to illustrate his conclusion that addiction is desire gone wrong, and that the addict gets trapped into a vicious cycle of desire, use, disappointment, repeat. David observes that loneliness, separation and isolation are a common factor at the start of many addiction stories, and that drugs only worsen this (as does imprisonment, the other common approach to drug addiction).

For more information on Marc Lewis, see his Wikipedia page at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_David_Lewis

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Infectious Myth – Life for Drugs – 10.27.15

In Episode 78 David the over-criminalization of drugs in the United States with Amy Povah. It is not just that recreational drugs are criminalized, but the sentences are sometimes absurd. Amy received a 24 year sentence in the 1990s largely because she refused to infiltrate her ex-husband’s ecstasy manufacturing operation. Her sentence was so egregious it was covered by Glamour magazine and the television show, “60 Minutes”, and her sentence was eventually commuted by President Clinton after she had served 9 years. She started helping some of the women she was in jail with, and eventually broadened the scope of her organization to other women, and then to men who also commonly received these lengthy sentences. One of her most shocking observations is that a single witness can produce a conviction, even if the witness has a motivation to lie, to receive a lesser sentence for themselves, and even if the victim of the false testimony is not a bit player in the conspiracy, but an innocent pawn. Amy describes several shockingly unjust convictions and talks about how the war of drugs is finally starting to wane, but there are still of millions of Americans in jail for non-violent drug convictions, and even if marijuana is legalized, people serving life for small quantities of marijuana won’t necessarily be released.

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Infectious Myth – Feedback and News – 10.27.15

Some negative feedback was received from two people who are opposed to abortion, and one of these people felt that it was generally men who were getting abused in family court, not children or mothers.
An article in the Washington Post indicates that there may be more guns that people in the USA. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/05/guns-in-the-united-states-one-for-every-man-woman-and-child-and-then-some/
A woman has an ex-husband loaded with weapons, and is worried about her daughter’s safety, when she visits, and also worries that he might come after her. But the police refuse to investigate.http://gunvictimsaction.org/news/convicted-domestic-abuser-amassing-an-arsenal-lets-wait-until-something-happens-say-police/