Logos Radio Network

TNRA_2013-01-09_64k.mp3

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Today, in the second hour, we welcome journalist Chris Graham to the show. Chris is the founding editor of the National Indigenous Times and the recipient of the prestigious Walkley Award for Excellence in Indigenous Affairs reporting.

In the course of our interview Chris documents a range of unethical and downright deceitful practices engaged by ABC Lateline in their coverage of a scandal which indirectly led to the highy controversial and despised NT Intervention.

The “intervention” as it’s now simply called, was a combination of draconian changes to the law and unprecendented law enforcement measures enacted in 2007, including roll back of the Native Title Act, quarantining of welfare benefits and deployment of 600 soldiers from the Australian Defence Forces in remote communites in the Northern Territories. The measures were spurred by claims of rampant sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities which had first appeared on ABC television’s Lateline program in 2006.

During tonight’s interview Chris steps us through his research which shows conclusively that senior ABC producers engaged in distortion of facts, wanton fabrication of evidence, and used testimony of informants who were clearly lying.

Such practices are of course all too common at the ABC, as regular listeners to this show will know. As with the biased reporting and cheap attacks on the character of Schapelle Corby’s family, the one-sided coverage of the Syrian conflict or the suppression of critical evidence concerning the 9/11 terrorist attacks,  this shocking story adds weight to the case for radically overhauling or even dismantling the ABC which has flagrantly breached its charter so many times.

In the first hour of today’s show we give you a different perspective on the question of accesibility of assault weapons in the US in the wake of Alex Jones’ highly controversial appearance on CNN with Piers Morgan.

I hope you enjoy the show!

Related Links

• In 2006 the ABC’s Independent Complaints Review Panel (ICRP) received a complaint regarding a number of editions of Lateline
• BAD AUNTY: The truth about the NT intervention and the case for an independent media – Chris Graham At Large
• Mutitjulu women hit back at pedophilia claims

TNRA_2013-01-02_64k.mp3

TNRA_2013-01-02_16k.mp3
 

In the second hour of today’s show we bring you some audio clips from the late Dr. Thomas Szasz, psychiatrist, philosopher and intellectual giant of the modern era.

Szasz was well known for his critique of biochemical reductionism in psychiatry, but it is interesting to note that he was also a libertarian who passionately believed in the concept of self-ownership and the rights of the individual. Szasz did not see any legitimacy in the the way the State regulates our access to drugs, and the lectures we bring you today highlight some of his ideas in this area.

Inasmuch as we have words to describe medicine as a healing art,
but have none to describe it as a method of social control or political rule,
we must first give it a name. I propose that we call it pharmacracy, from the
Greek roots pharmakon, for ‘medicine’ or ‘drug,’ and kratein, for ‘to rule’ or
‘to control.’ … As theocracy is rule by God or priests, and democracy is rule
by the people or the majority, so pharmacracy is rule by medicine or physicians.

—Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers,
by Thomas Szasz, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 139.)

More information on this topic can be found in the book Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Freemarket.

 

In the first hour of the show we review some of the key themes which preoccupy TNRA, and take a close look at draconian changes to the family benefit which will save the government vast amounts of money.  We propose that these changes were needed in order to fund the celebrated carbon tax compensations doled out to low income Australians last year.

Well, the money had to come from somewhere!

Related Links

• Thomas Szasz: The Right to Take Drugs
• Thomas Szasz on Socialism in Health Care
• Dr Thomas Szasz, who has died aged 92, was an indefatigable critic of conventional psychiatry
• Welfare cuts to put ‘pressure on charities’
• Putting single parents on Newstart when their youngest child turns eight will help get people into work: Jenny Macklin
• “I Want No Part of It Anymore” – Loren R. Mosher, M.D