by cameron | Dec 8, 2011 | Iran, Podcast, US politics
Why do the Iranian people distrust the United States? Because they “hate our freedoms”, as Bush said about Al Qaida? Or do they have genuine reasons?
How many of us know the history of America and England’s involvement in the illegal and covert overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953?
My guests today are Daniel Burwen & Ash Aiwase, two of the guys behind Operation Ajax, one of the most exciting apps I’ve seen developed for the iPad so far.
Check out the trailer:
Operation Ajax Trailer
I chatted with Daniel and Ash recently about how Operation Ajax came about and how the iPad can make a dent in the Universe.
You can hear No Illusions on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favorite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, BlackBerry or Palm phones
On-demand and on the go!
Dont have Stitcher? Download it for free today at Stitcher.com or in the app stores. Stitcher SmartRadio- The Smarter Way to listen to radio.
by cameron | Dec 7, 2011 | Australian politics, climate change
Via Google Public Data Explorer
by cameron | Dec 6, 2011 | Podcast, science, singularity
My guest today is Nikola Danaylov (who also goes by the pseudonym Socrates), host of The Singularity 1 on 1 Podcast and SingularitySymposium.com and SingularityWEBLOG.com.
He was born in Bulgaria, but moved to Toronto in 1998 where he obtained degrees in Political Science, Philosophy and Economics. About 18 months ago he started the Singularity 1 on 1 podcast and since then has interviewed major big brains, from Kurzweil and Vinge to Wolfram and Stross.
You can hear No Illusions on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favorite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, BlackBerry or Palm phones
On-demand and on the go!
Dont have Stitcher? Download it for free today at Stitcher.com or in the app stores. Stitcher SmartRadio- The Smarter Way to listen to radio.
by cameron | Dec 5, 2011 | US politics
Just in case you were wondering what happened with that bill before the U.S. Senate that I mentioned in last week’s show? Well… it passed.
Via the World Socialist Web Site:
The US Senate voted Thursday night to approve a military funding bill that codifies into law the criminal state practices begun under Bush — and continued under Obama — in the name of the “global war on terror.”
It explicitly authorizes the military’s indefinite detention without trial of American citizens and mandates that all non-citizens charged as terrorists—including those arrested on US soil—be detained indefinitely by the military rather than brought to trial in a civilian court.
The legislation was part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which provides $662 billion to finance the US military machine and its multiple wars abroad. The act passed the Democratic-controlled body by an overwhelming margin of 93 to 7, underscoring once again that there exists no serious constituency for the defense of democratic rights within any section of the American ruling elite or its two big business parties.
Thrown out by this legislation is the right guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution for all those accused of a criminal offense to a “speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,” and the core provision of the Fifth Amendment declaring that no person shall be deprived of liberty “without due process of law.” It legalizes the abrogation in practice over the past decade of the bedrock principle of habeas corpus, which requires that the state bring a detained individual before an independent court and show just cause for imprisonment.
Read More: World Socialist Web Site
Here’s an interesting sidenote. When I searched for the NDAA in Google News, I was flat out finding a link to the legislation on many large news sites.
by cameron | Dec 5, 2011 | capitalism, US politics
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80DbxSZ_FB8&w=420&h=315]
Here’s what Trotsky said about the rise of Fascism.
At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium — the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat — all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.
From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the co-operatives. When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance the patterns set by Mussolini — the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role — but it means first of all for the most part that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism….
Sound familiar?
by cameron | Nov 30, 2011 | Podcast, US politics
News updates from around the globe. Includes the following stories:
Former Tasmanian MP found guilty of having sex with a 12 year old girl, but gets no jail time.
Time Magazine Doesn’t Want To Show U.S. Citizens Pictures Of Revolution.
U.S. Senate Are Voting On Legislation That Allows Their Military To Arrest Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime, and in Any Country. Including the U.S.A.
More US Soldiers Committed Suicide Than Died in Combat
US Military Manipulates the Social Media
U.S. Army and Psychology Largest Experiment Ever
You can hear No Illusions on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favorite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, BlackBerry or Palm phones
On-demand and on the go!
Dont have Stitcher? Download it for free today at Stitcher.com or in the app stores. Stitcher SmartRadio- The Smarter Way to listen to radio.
by cameron | Nov 29, 2011 | US politics
Revolution? In the U.S.A.? It’s not happening. It’s not happening. It’s not happening. It’s not happening. It’s not happening.
by cameron | Nov 25, 2011 | Podcast, US politics
Doug La Follette (born June 6, 1940) is an American academic, environmental activist, and politician from the state of Wisconsin. A Democrat, he is the current Secretary of State of Wisconsin and has served in that role since 1983. He is also a Fulbright Distinguished American Scholar and the author of the 1991 book The Survival Handbook: A Strategy for Saving Planet Earth.
I had the chance to chat with Secretary La Follette this morning for an hour about the attempts to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, President Obama’s track record in his first term and the trend of U.S. politics since Reagan.
by cameron | Nov 25, 2011 | technology
3D printing is an amazing phenomenon. So is Kickstarter.
Brook Drumm from printrbot.com designed a new, easy to build, inexpensive 3D printer for the home. To get it into production, he needed to raise $25,000. So he created a project on Kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printrbot/printrbot-your-first-3d-printer/widget/video.html
Instead of raising $25,000, he’s already raised $171,000! I can’t wait to have one of these machines!
Imagine – the next time a plastic doohickey on one of your kitchen devices breaks, instead of throwing the entire unit out because you can’t get a replacement doohickey, you just download or create a blueprint for the piece and make it yourself at home!
by cameron | Nov 23, 2011 | Brisbane, climate change, Iran, media 2.0
According to Neiman Journalism Lab:
“Dan Schultz, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab (and newly named Knight-Mozilla fellow for 2012), is devoting his thesis to automatic bullshit detection. Schultz is building what he calls truth goggles — not actual magical eyewear, alas, but software that flags suspicious claims in news articles and helps readers determine their truthiness. It’s possible because of a novel arrangement: Schultz struck a deal with fact-checker PolitiFact for access to its private APIs.”
(via Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news » Nieman Journalism Lab.)
It’s a fascinating idea. Imagine browsers having a plug-in that is able to fact check all sorts of data using sources such as Wikipedia. It could have a huge impact on the future of news media. Imagine reading an article on, say, climate change in The Australian, and this “truth goggles” plug-in pointing out all of the inconsistencies in their reporting.
Or imagine reading Hilary Clinton ramping up the case for invading Iran because they are weaponising uranium, but have “truth goggles” pointing out that there is no evidence to support this claim.
Of course, this process doesn’t *need* to be automated with an algorithm. Chrome extensions like “Glass” allow people to comment on websites. For example, see this screenshot of a comment I left using Glass on a story in the Brisbane Times today about News Ltd corruption allegations from former QLD senator Bill O’Chee.
Could we all use tools like Glass to subvert the ability of the mainstream media and certain blogs to spin bullshit to their readers? Of course there is always the comments section of most sites these days, but perhaps they tend to get moderated and news sites promote comments by their faithful believers. Would Glass-like tools also get corrupted by flame wars? How do we keep them clean and useful? User moderation ala Wikipedia?
