by cameron | May 12, 2008 | CIA, Iran, US politics
I’ve been reading more from Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy Of Ashes: The History of the CIA” and have finished the story about how the CIA staged a covert coup d’état against the legitimate government of Iran in 1953. You can read the salient details in Wikipedia. Note: this isn’t a “conspiracy theory” – it was confirmed by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, when she called it a “setback for democratic government” in Iran.
Basically what happened is this:
The Iranians wanted to nationalize their oil. They had done a deal with the British in 1901 to explore Iran for oil and just before WWI, Winston Churchill moved the British navy from coal-burning ships over to oil-burning ships and then basically took control of Iran’s oil production, leaving them with only 16% of the profits. The Iranians weren’t happy with the situation, to the British installed a Shah of their liking on the throne.
During WWII, Churchill invaded Iran, got rid of the Shah (who was thought to be too friendly with the Nazis) and installed his son on the throne.
After WWII, the Iranians decided to take control of their oil production back. And Churchill wasn’t happy. Britian took their case to the International Court of Justice at The Hague – and lost. So Churchill asked the American government to intervene. The President (Truman) said no. So MI6 turned to the CIA who said “sure that sounds like fun”.
They then spent millions of dollars undermining the government, spreading lies about them, hiring thugs to commit crimes around the country and then blaming it on communists, on propaganda accusing the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq of being a communist, etc. The BBC in Britian did their part, also broadcasting anti-Iranian propaganda to lend the events legitimacy.
Eventually US-backed troops stormed the Prime Minister’s offices, arrested him, and he spent the last years of his life in prison, replaced by a General Zahedi, picked by the US and Britian to be Mossadeq’s puppet successor.
What happened next? 25 years later the Iranian revolution happened, fueled by memories of the coup, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control and the country has hated the US and Britian ever since. Can you blame them?
Of course, the US and Britian denied all of this ever happened for almost 50 years until internal CIA documents were leaked in 2000.
So – the next time you hear about how Iran “hate our freedoms” or about the US trying to overthrow a country and other “conspiracy theories”, remember – Iran 1953.
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepodcastnet-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=038551445X&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
by cameron | May 12, 2008 | Podcast, Video
I like the look of Vidnik:
It’s a simple program for using the built-in camera on your Mac to create movies and upload them to YouTube.
I’ve played around with Seesmic a bit as a video blogging tool but I find it’s not very podcast-friendly. Seesmic wants you to use their site to store and distribute your videos, which isn’t very useful for a podcaster who wants to create an rss feed to publish. Vidnik automatically uploads your video to YouTube and it’s easy enough to embed that into a blog post and create your own rss feed for it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iowtr2rwdN4&hl=en]
I don’t know any way to have this download automatically to an iPod though – anyone know of a way to create a feed which will automatically pull YouTube down videos onto a portable player?
UPDATE: Just noticed that my sound is out of synch on that video above. Bad YouTube!
by cameron | May 9, 2008 | Uncategorized
How do you get a dozen of the top online personalities in Australia to talk about your product?
Here’s one recent example of very clever marketing.
A couple of weeks ago, I participated in one of the more interesting online social networking / marketing projects I’ve seen in recent years – Project Vino.
Put together by wine podcaster Hugo Sharp, it involved about a dozen Australian Twitterers who were all sent the same three bottles of wine from Kirrihill. At 7pm on April 30th, we all jumped on Twitter, opened our bottles, and then drank them. Some of us were very sensible about it, tasting and then spitting. Others were… ahem… guzzlers. Hugo was on Twitter, walking us through how to properly taste the wine, what to eat with it, etc.
But I was on Yahoo Live Video with @jjprojects and @duncanriley and @kahunagirl and @ceibner and @bronwen and @m0nty and @spigrrl and others, chatting, drinking, debating religion, philosophy, ummm… you name it.
I ended up QUITE drunk but the good news is that I was only a few meters from my bedroom – and I didn’t need to drive.
Now I’m no great expert on wine, but I really enjoyed all three bottles from Kirrihill Wines
* Companions Cabernet Merlot ‘06
* Companions Shiraz Viognier ‘06
* Tempranillo Garnacha ‘07
I especially liked the Cab Merlot but the Shiraz was the group favourite I think.
As an experiment in online buzz-building, I think it was a pretty huge success.
Think about it: most of the dozen people who were drinking, sorry, TASTING, have 1000+ followers on Twitter. And all night we were talking about the event on Twitter, talking about the wine vendor, etc.
In addition, many of us are relatively prominent bloggers and we wrote about it, like I’m doing here.
Duncan wrote about it on TechCrunch, the #1 tech blog in the world. And he also threw some video up on YouTube which is now ranked in the top five on Google for searched on “Kirrihill”. What’s that worth???
You can check out the number of times “Kirrihill” has been mentioned on Twitter.
I learned a lot about wine tasting, Kirrihill Wines and new approaches to using Twitter and Yahoo Live Video (which I’d never even heard of before). A great night. Thanks Hugo!!
by cameron | May 9, 2008 | Podcast
My first show for a month!!! I explain why the big break on the show.
But the main topic for today is Myanmar, or what the ignorant Western media insist on calling Burma. As you’ve heard, they were hit recently by a terrible cyclone and there are potentially 100,000 people dead and millions homeless. Western aid is having trouble getting there because the Myanmar government won’t let them in.
But why? That’s what I ask on today’s show. How did Myanmar get to this place? What is it’s history?
Listen to the show to learn about the role in Myanmar’s history of the British military dictatorship, American gas interests and foreign spies infiltrating NGOs and charities, and then 6 o’clock news might make more sense.
Links:
Chevron’s involvement connected to HR abuses in Burma
Aid groups shelter spies
Condi Rice’s relationship with Chevron
Wikipedia’s entry on Myanmar
Today’s music:
Up The Empire
“Volcano” (mp3)
from “Light Rides the Super Major”
(The Cougar Label)
Buy at Cougar Label Shop
Buy at Amazon.com
by cameron | May 8, 2008 | Uncategorized
I just signed this online campaign being run by GetUp! to stop lobbyists from the BAD energy companies (oil, coal, etc) subverting the Federal Budget’s investments to clean up Australia. You should to. Only take a couple of seconds. They are trying to get 15,000 votes and they currently have about 4700.
