Social Justice & War

A money insider’s view of how crazy and corrupt our US-led world economic system really is, including drug money, mlitary spending, and the housing crisis.

Catherine Austin Fitts was Assistant Secretary of Housing – Federal Housing Commissioner under President Bush senior, Managing Director, Dillon Read & Co. Inc., and founder of Hamilton Securities investment bank. She has designed and closed over $25 billion of transactions and investments to-date and has led portfolio strategy for $300 billion of financial assets and liabilities.

http://www.solari.com

Two interviews on psychiatric abuse: Angela Bischoff’s husband Tooker Gomberg died in a suicide after taking anti-depressants; both were prominent Toronto environmental and peace activists. Wayne Lax survived 80 shock treatments and multiple hospitalizations over thirty years.

Today both Angela and Wayne are waging campaigns to reform the mental health system.

http://www.greenspiration.org
http://www.ect.org

After James Chasse, a man with a schizophrenia diagnosis, was killed by Portland police in 2006, reforms included improved police training. Julie Diamond discusses efforts to help teach police better de-escalation and conflict resolution techniques as an alternative to force and violence.

Check out http://www.mentalhealthportland.org, http://www.juliediamond.net, and another audio interview with Julie at http://www.katejobe.com/podcast.html

Clinical psychologist Bruce Levine discusses his new book Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy, an insightful exploration of the social and political causes of depression and how to heal by rebuilding communities.

http://www.brucelevine.net

Psychologist and advocate with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Marijuana Policy project, Mitch Earleywine discusses medical marijuana, dangers and uses, and the relationship between marijuana and psychosis.

NORML http://www.norml.org
the Norml podcast http://www.normlaudiostash.com
the Marijuana Policy Project http://www.mpp.org

Richard DeGrandpre, former editor of Adbusters magazine and author of Ritalin Nation, discusses his new book, The Cult of Pharmacology, and how the popular conception of “addiction” behind the War On Drugs is scientifically inaccurate: social context, learning, morality and meaning determine how drugs affect us, not simple addiction chemistry.

http://www.anxiousmind.com

Danielle, who works with a New York City policy NGO and is part of the activist Rockdove Collective, discusses the international Restorative Justice movement, creating effective mediation and community dialog as alternatives to the punitive prison-industrial complex criminal justice system. Danielle specifically focuses on using Restorative Justice for violent and serious crimes.

Check out www.rockdovecollective.org and www.restorativepractices.org

John Judge was active in the 1970s psychiatric survivor movement and is now special assistant to Congressperson Cynthia KcKinney. John discusses MKULTRA and other US psychiatric mind control experiments, which involved torture of thousands of mental patients. Judge also looks at the Jonestown massacre, LSD, and the convergence of Nazism with the roots of biomedical psychiatry.

Harvard University faculty Paula Caplan, author of They Say You’re Crazy: How The World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal and editor of Bias In Psychiatric Diagnosis.

Paula was on one of the writing committees for the DSM and offers an insightful perspective on the politics behind psychiatric pseudo-science. She discusses mental disorder labeling, including bipolar and post-trauma stress disorder, from a feminist perspective.

http://www.psychdiagnosis.net
http://paulajcaplan.net

Judi Chamberlin is a leading organizer with the psychiatric survivors’ movement and one of its earliest initiators. She is author of On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System and staff with the National Empowerment Center. Show is co-hosted by Cheryl Alexander.

http://www.power2u.org