Recently I spent an hour chatting with rebel Catholic priest Peter Kennedy in his South Brisbane church St Mary’s.
Peter’s “sins” include talking about and promoting advaita and trying to include homosexuals and women in his services.
View part one here and part two here.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odp3ctAgEQc&hl=en&fs=1]
Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout.
I love the term they are using for bankers who deliberately defraud society – “banksters”. Black says the entire financial system is one big ponzi scheme, making Bernie Madoff looking like an amateur and fall guy for the larger crime which involved the entire financial system and governments who allowed them to go unregulated.
“(Karl Marx is) the most accurate prophet in all of history, there should be no doubt about this.” – Richard Metzger, written on Boing Boing.
I hope the current financial crisis leads to a new generation of people reading Marx and those of us who have read him before should be re-reading him.
As David Harvey says in the below video, the G20 governments are just trying to re-boot the same kind of capitalism we’ve had before which has seen a series of collapses over the last 30 years, each collapse leading to the bankers being bailed out by the taxpayers and walking away scott-free so they can do it all over again, “sticking it to the people”, as Harvey says. Rampant consumerism is to blame for our problems and Marx predicted this 150 years ago. Propping up the old regime isn’t the answer. We need a new model. And we need to start figuring out what that model might be. We need to pressure our leaders to start thinking about it, talking publicly about it, not just propping up the old broken system.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkTMO93Jyp0&hl=en&fs=1]
Read Marx’s DAS KAPITAL along with David Harvey here.
Recently I spent an hour chatting with rebel Catholic priest Peter Kennedy in his South Brisbane church St Mary’s.
Peter’s “sins” include talking about and promoting advaita and trying to include homosexuals and women in his services.
View part one here.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3996567&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Peter Kennedy, Rebel Priest, Part Two from Cameron Reilly on Vimeo.
Today I spent an hour chatting with rebel Catholic priest Peter Kennedy in his South Brisbane church St Mary’s.
Peter’s “sins” include talking about and promoting advaita and trying to include homosexuals and women in his services.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3972804&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Peter Kennedy, Rebel Priest – part 1 from Cameron Reilly on Vimeo.
Irwin Zalkin is a US attorney whose firm, The Zalkin Law Firm PC, specializes in clergy sexual abuse cases. He joins me to talk about the recent news that the Vatican can be sued in a United States court over alleged molestation by its priests.
If you want to keep TPN on the air, please show your support. If just the listeners of this show contributed $20 a month, I could fund TPN indefinitely!
|
Our job is to monitor the centres of power. I think that, in the end, is the best definition of journalism I have heard: to challenge authority – all authority – especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.
– Robert Fisk, The Great War For Civilisation
“’Have we made it impossible for bright rising stars and maverick go-getters to live within our organisation?’ When we become too preoccupied with policy, procedure, and the fine-tuning of conformity to organizational standards, in effect, we have squeezed out some of our most gifted people.” – Hans Finzel, “The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make”
(via The Practice Of Leadership)
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepodcastnet-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0781445493&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
Telstra’s ongoing failure to realize what a gift Leslie Nassar is for them boggles my mind.
But not really. I’ve had first hand experience with how poorly large organizations in Australia handle mavericks.
When I left Microsoft in 2004, it was partly a result of my blogging and slightly critical comments I made about Microsoft in a blog post. Like Telstra, Microsoft’s local management at the time felt it was unconscionable for an employee to say something negative about the company in public. And I wasn’t even saying something negative about their products, in fact it was the opposite. I said the products were great but the marketing didn’t reflect that. Which, let’s face it, wasn’t the world’s best kept secret. Everyone knew that then, as now, companies like Apple and IBM were stomping all over Microsoft’s marketing. I was just speaking what I felt was the truth. That, apparently, wasn’t one of Microsoft “core values”. Anyway, things got nasty, and I resigned.
Now – I’m not saying I’m the world’s smartest bloke, but I think in the five years since I’ve left Microsoft, I’ve demonstrated that I can do a thing or two. I think I have some potential. Could Microsoft have used that potential? Could they have embraced and extended my maverickness for their own benefit? Perhaps.
I think the same thing when I read what’s going on with Leslie at Telstra. He’s obviously demonstrated that he’s a clever and creative personality. He’s generated lots of press even before he was outed. Surely a smart company (and a smart manager) would be thinking “Let’s figure out how to use someone like this to our advantage”, and not “let’s crush him if he doesn’t fall into line”. I’ve met his big boss, Telstra’s CTO, Hugh Bradlow, a few times over the years. I’ve even done a few podcasts with him over the last year. He’s obviously a very smart guy.
But let’s be honest – Telstra has brand problems. Stop ten people at random in the street and ask them what they think about Telstra and what do you think you’ll hear? Good reports or bad reports? Surely this is a company that could benefit from someone who is smart, sassy, funny and cheeky.
Don’t fire Leslie – give him his own show on Telstra Media. Turn him into the new John Clarke.
If I had the funds, or if I was running Optus, I’d hire him in a heartbeat.
Then again, if they fire him they might be doing him a favour. It’ll give him a chance to land at a company that values people with original ideas.
UPDATE (1.45pm 26 March): Leslie sets the record straight and tells Hugh Bradlow to go fuck himself.
On today’s show I get to chat with one of the most powerful men in Hollywood – Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation – about their new film MONSTERS V ALIENS and the introduction of their new 3D technology. I also chat with the director of the film, Conrad Vernon.
