by cameron | Sep 11, 2007 | US politics
Lest we forget… the Want To Know website tracks the verified events leading up to, during and post the 2001 attacks on America, with each event backed up by source material.
I particularly like this one:
Jan 2001: After the elections, US intelligence agencies are told to “back off†investigating the bin Ladens and Saudi royals. There have always been constraints on investigating Saudis. [BBC, 11/6/01, more]
Six years on, what do you guys think happened on 9/11? While I have yet to see any hard evidence to demonstrate that the Neo-Cons either knew about the attack in advance or obfuscated the investigations into it afterwards, there is little doubt in my mind that the attacks played straight into their hands and conveniently gave them the ammunition they required to fulfill their desires spelled out so clearly a year before the attacks in the PNAC report.
Do we know the truth? If not, will we ever know?
I doubt it. 44 years after JFK’s assassination we still don’t know for sure what happened.
by cameron | Aug 21, 2007 | Iraq, Uncategorized
From the most excellent Sox First blog comes news that PwC and IBM say that claims they used bribes to win government contracts is just STUPID! FOOLISH! PREPOSTEROUS! And they completely deny the basis of the allegations!
But they have agreed to pay $5.2 million to make those untrue, ridiculous allegations go away. And they also want you to know that Michael Jackson didn’t touch little boys either. Oh and the Iraq invasion has NOTHING to do with oil.
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PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM have settled allegations that the companies were involved in graft over government contracts.
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According to the Department of Justice press release, the firms had agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle the allegations. IBM has agreed to pay close to $3 million and PricewaterhouseCoopers just over $2.3 million. Not good news for Accenture, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems because allegations have been made against those companies, according to the release. |
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by cameron | Aug 8, 2007 | Iraq, Podcast
My guest today is a G’Day World listener from Paris, Bernard Malige. Bernard, who works as an engineer with Renault, helped me better understand the French system of taxation and social services. If you’ve seen Michael Moore’s latest film SICKO, you already know that in France, pretty much all health care (except high end elective procedures) is paid for by the Government out of your taxes. When I saw the film, I wasn’t sure how high the taxes were in France and Bernard offered to help out. Turns out, they are quite low. If you’re an American, you probably don’t want to listen to this show. It’ll just depress you. We also talk a little bit about the French public’s view on Iraq, the USA, Libya and Napoleon.
Bernard is now our official “European Correspondent”.
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by cameron | Aug 2, 2007 | Iran, Iraq, Uncategorized
Paul Spoerry has some great visual aids to help us understand the motivations behind the US’s middle east policies. Like this:
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Meanwhile, you have to love the pure frakking BALLS on the Bush administration. Who else could spin the sale of $70 Billion of weapons to the Middle East as “ensuring peace”?!!! Rice sez:
“We are helping to strengthen the defensive capabilities of our partners,” Rice said in a statement. “We plan to initiate discussions with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states on a proposed package of military technologies that will help support their ability to secure peace and stability in the Gulf region.”
Let’s look at the track record of the countries they have sold weapons to over the last 20 years… Iraq. Afghanistan. Iran. Israel. Saudi Arabia. How’s the peace strategy working so far, Condi?
The amount of money that the US itself spends on weapons every year is just insane.
The world spends US$780 billion every year on maintaining its military and buying new weapons —that’s $2.1 billion every day. Dr Oscar Arias estimates that if just 5% ($40 billion) of that annual $780 billion were channeled into anti-poverty programmes over the next decade, the whole world could have basic social services. A further 5% over ten years could provide everybody on the planet with an income above the poverty line. UNICEF estimates that spending just $7 billion a year for the next decade could educate every child on Earth.
(source)
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Laurel Papworth accuses my 2Web colleagues and myself of being sexist because there aren’t any women in our 2Web group!
Hey I, for one, am a HUGE supporter of the meme that we need more women in tech/web. Lots and lots. I’m sick to death of going to tech events and being surrounded by blokes. AFAIK, the 2Web group has never turned down an application for membership from a lady. If there is passive sexism involved here, it’s you girls being too passive about getting involved! Hike up your skirts girls! 🙂
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Telstra put GPS trackers into the cars of their technicians then informed them that if they had a problem with it, “they would face a review of employment.” Classy. According to The Age:
Victoria’s Workplace Rights Advocate Tony Lawrence investigated initial reports of the tracking devices and told The Australian newspaper he had referred what he believed to be a criminal matter to police.
It puts turning off Facebook into perspective.
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The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is back on and TPN’s man on the scene, Ewan Spence, is spending the next month chatting with the performers, audience and promoters! Catch it almost-live on TPN’s EFF show!
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Just for something a little bit different, I’m a guest today on Rod’s Atomic Show. He wanted to talk to me about how the nuclear industry might be able to use new media to change the perception of nuclear with the general public, bypassing the not-always-independent mainstream media. Did anyone else see that show on Frontline last night about the nuclear industry in France and Canada? I saw some of it. Fascinating.
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John Howard and his government never cease to amaze me with how much they have become the white, straight, Christian party. Today Howard announced legislation which will overturn State legislation which allows gay couples to adopt children from overseas. We need a Bill of Rights in this country. Badly.
by cameron | Aug 1, 2007 | Iraq, Uncategorized
From the Washington Post:
… The key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves “shaping” both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a brand identity that places what you are selling in a positive light, said clinical psychologist Todd C. Helmus, the author of “Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation.” The 211-page study, for which the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corp. $400,000, was released this week.
Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the “force” brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies’ competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been “We will help you.” …
Since I know you will want to read the whole study, it is here.
More:
… In an urban insurgency, for example, civilians can help identify enemy infiltrators and otherwise assist U.S. forces. They are less likely to help, the study says, when they become “collateral damage” in U.S. attacks, have their doors broken down or are shot at checkpoints because they do not speak English. …
(via Marc Andreessen)
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Richard Giles is on BoingBoing! Well done mate! With friends in high places, who needs Cam???
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More from the RAND report:
Public opinion polls suggest that much of the anti-Americanism observed in the Muslim world today is attributable to U.S. policies rather than to U.S. culture, values, or people. In a 2004 poll, for example, Zogby International found that residents of most Arab countries had positive opinions about “American services and technology,†“American freedom and democracy,†“American people,†“American education,†“American products,†and the like. But many of those same respondents held negative opinions about U.S. policies toward the Palestinian conflict and Iraq.
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Anil Dash links to a fascinating 1995 doco by Brian Springer called SPIN, about how the media was used for, and itself used, spin during the 1992 US Presidential elections. The most fascinating part for me was about 18 minutes in where they discuss a Demoractic candidate Larry Agran. For some reason Agran, although running third in the early polling, was totally ignored by the media. He was cut out of photos carried in newspapers and refused access to televised debates involving the other candidates. He was eventually imprisoned for interrupting a televised debate demanding he be heard, and was released from jail after the Democratic National Congress had already started. Another example of how you need to have access to media in order to participate in the political process and how the mainstream media interferes with politics when they want to. To suggest they just “report the facts” is a joke and a bad one at that.
by cameron | Jul 30, 2007 | environment, Gloria Jeans, Hillsong, Melbourne, Uncategorized
Shoe-lovin’ Telstran CathyE has created a Twitter profile purely for announcing Melbourne tech events. Very handy. Don’t forget MODM this Thursday night! We’ve got our biggest registrations to date and a new venue.
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I’m writing an article on Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 for MARKETING magazine. If anyone has any good examples of how Aussie companies are using Web2.0 in a respectable fashion, let me know so I can include them.
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Speaking of Enterprise 2.0, I had lunch today with Tony Clement, one of the guys behind AEGEON, a young Melbourne-based services company focused 100% on helping corporate clients adopt Web2.0 technologies. I’ve known Tony for a few years, he was a CTO client of mine back in my MSFT days, and it’s great to see him taking the stuff we were doing back then around web services and helping other companies adopt them. Tony ran one of the first significant Microsoft.Net-based projects in Australia back in 2001/2 and had a bold vision even back then for how to use web services in an enterprise environment to innovate and engineer value. Keep an eye on Aegeon. They are the first services firm I’ve heard of in Australia that is really throwing serious effort behind Web2.0.
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I’m back on my weight-loss regimen. Listened to The Health & Fitness Show #058 – Easily Identify Low Fat + Low Sugar + High Nutritional Value Food this morning. Lots of great tips from Beti on how to tell what you are putting into your body. I was thinking we should run a competition for G’Day World listeners to see who can lose the most about of weight over the next 90 days. Get a sponsor to put up a prize. Who’s in?
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McDonald’s just don’t get blogging, do they?
Some of you will remember the fake blog they put up in early 2005.
Now some hired PR guy in Perth is blogging on PerthNorg under the alias “cookie2”. He’s pushing the “Name the Burger” campaign that McDonald’s is running in Australia at the moment.
Cookie2 writes: “Burger naming legend Ken Thomas, renowned for his creativity in naming the Cheeseburger, Double Cheeseburger, McChicken and the Hot Apple Pie, has retired from the senior ranks of McDonald’s Australia, giving the company the opportunity to throw the job open to the Australian public.”
Unfortunately, Cookie2 (aka John Cooke a PR consultant working for McDonald’s Australia) has just broken Rule #1 of Corporate Blogging – Be Honest.
“Ken Thomas” is (perhaps obviously) a fictional character, created by advertising agency Leo Burnett.
So why can’t McDonald’s just tell the truth? Why not just start a campaign about naming a burger? Why do they have to make up some bullshit story? I don’t get the rationale. Do you? Can someone explain it to me?
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Watching this amazing “Russian Scam” video (aka “How To Take Someone’s Wallet Just By Asking Them”) by Derren Brown. Amazing.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIIz2FAgwcw]
After you’ve watched that, watch this guy’s attempt at explaining it using NLP.
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Just been watching Tanya Levin, author of a soon-to-be-released book about the very scary Hillsong Church, on Denton’s Enough Rope. My old mate Phil McCreddan has an article about Hillsong, which includes an interview with Tanya, on his Signposts blog. Interestingly, publisher Allen & Unwin were going to publish her book (“People In Glass Houses”) but pulled out of it, apparently because of a perceived risk of defamation. The book was picked up by Black Inc which is owned by Morrie Schwartz, who also published Monthly magazine. This is the church that has links to Gloria Jeans (see my earlier posts on that here and here and why I don’t drink Gloria Jeans anymore), has received a bunch of government grants, and where the founder’s father, who held senior positions in the church, but was forced to resign in 2000 following exposure of his homosexual paedophile activities whilst ministering in New Zealand some thirty years earlier.
I’m looking forward to reading her book.
