by cameron | Nov 3, 2008 | Podcast
While I was in Seattle last month, my good mate Buzz Bruggeman (CEO of the best application for Windows EVER – Activewords… why the hell hasn’t Microsoft bought him out yet??), took me to meet another friend of his, T. A. McCann, CEO of Gist.com, a start-up (funded by Paul Allen’s Vulcan) that integrates your email, social networking sites, and news searches to provide you with a dashboard that keeps you informed about news items relating to people who are important to you and to help you get more control over your email.
by cameron | Nov 2, 2008 | US politics
Interesting articles I’ve been reading today on Obama’s refusal to disclose the names of his millions of small donors. The Slate article sums up my thoughts:
Obama has campaigned (effectively) on a platform of making government more transparent, citing his efforts to do so in Chicago and Washington as signature achievements.
And yet…. they are avoiding disclosing the names of these small donors. Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist, but with such massively high stakes as are involved in an American Presidential election, I think it pays to be suspicious and naive to start with the assumption that ANY candidate is pure and holy. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who first said “The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.”
I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s excellent work “A People’s History Of The United States” where he makes the argument that the American Revolution was orchestrated by the American wealthy elite (George Washington was the richest man in America) to preserve and extend their own wealth and power. During a time of increasing class struggles in the American colony, the elite found a way to focus the anger of the populace on a foreign enemy, a tactic which successive US administrations have perfected ever since.
Slate – Yes, He Can
Judicial Watch – Obama Should Disclose
by cameron | Oct 29, 2008 | activism, Atheism, US politics
Today is my 2nd last day in Seattle. I’ve had an awesome time. I’ll have to tell you about it sometime. There’s a few podcasts I’ve shot while I’m here that I’ll get out asap. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a couple of thoughts about fund raising.
Obviously the USA is crazy about their Presidential elections at the moment and most, if not all, of the people I’ve met in Seattle are rooting for Obama. When I ask them who is funding Obama they tell me the same thing – he’s raised his money over the Internet from ordinary Americans!! It’s amazing!! The triumph of the little people over the politics!!
When I ask them how they know this to be true, they give me a strange look at tell me OBAMA SAYS IT’S TRUE! Oh well, of course.
My next question is usually “so how much did you give him?” and they usually answer “ummm nothing”. So who are these people who are funding Obama?
According to Kenneth Timmerman, who writes for the ultra-right-wing site Newsmax, Obama doesn’t need to disclose the names of people who donate less than $200.
Timmerman writes:
Campaigns are not required to disclose contributors who donate less than $200 — and Obama’s campaign refuses to release their names, addresses, and donation amounts. Obama has collected a staggering $603.2 million. Most of the money — $543.3 million — has come from individual contributors, half of it from “small†donors Obama won’t disclose.
So who are these people? How do we know that they aren’t big corporations – or non-US governments – who are making millions of small donations via credit cards over the internet?
Timmerman claims there is some strangeness about Obama’s donations. since Oct 14, the following people have donated:
OJ Simpson
Daffy Duck
Bart Simpson
Family Guy
King Kong
and
jkbkj Hbkjb
Timmerman’s source claims he made donations using several of these names and a disposable credit card. If Obama’s team aren’t picking up and rejecting fake names to ensure that 1) the person is real and 2) the person hasn’t donated more than the maximum amount of $2,300, then the system is open to fraud and manipulation.
Yet most Americans I talk to believe the Hollywood answer, that Obama is getting his funding from millions of small donations from believers.
Don’t get me wrong – I hope they are right and I am wrong. I hope I’m just being cynical. But there are questions here which the Obama campaign should be forced to answer.
The other great fund raising story I’ve heard lately is The Atheist Bus Campaign which launched Tuesday October 21 2008 in the UK. They hoped to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across London for four weeks with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” They overshot their goal. They have currently raised over £111,000!
For some months now I’ve been planning to move TPN over to a donation-based system. We’ll be asking out audience to contribute some funds to help cover our running costs. Wouldn’t you rather have media that doesn’t rely on corporate sponsorship or government funding? I guess we’ll see over the next few months how much people value TPN’s content.
by cameron | Oct 21, 2008 | Christianity, Gloria Jeans, Hillsong, Mercy Ministries, Podcast, religion
Today’s show is the latest in my series examining the Christian charity Mercy Ministries and it’s relationship with the Gloria Jean’s Coffee chain and the evangelical Christian church Hillsong.
My guest today is an Australian woman who is using the pseudonym “Sarah Mac” to protect her identity. She spent 8 months as a voluntary patient at Mercy’s now-closed center on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast and her story is horrifying. She tells me she was subjected to punishments if she forgot to take her medication, denied regular access to friends, family and qualified therapists, and kept in solitary confinement when she finally decided to leave Mercy. She left feeling worse about herself than when she entered and tried to commit suicide a few weeks later. She has since met with Mercy’s founder Nancy Alcorn and received an unconvincing apology. Despite her experiences, Sarah remains a Christian.
Despite her obvious discomfort is talking about her experience, Sarah was brave enough to share it with me in the hope that it will help other girls think twice about the decision to enter Mercy.
This is her story.
The G’Day World theme music:
Conquest
“Secrets of Life” (mp3)
from “End of Days”
(Dark Star Records)
More On This Album
