by cameron | Oct 4, 2009 | Cuba, geopolitics
Tonight I finally had a chance (thanks to Jason Nelson) to see Part 1 & 2 of Steven Soderbergh’s amazing film CHE, depicting the life of Che Guevara, starring (and produced by) Benicio Del Toro.
It’s an amazing film that, predictably, did very poorly at the US box office. I believe it opened in cinemas in Australia just recently so go see it if you can. If you can’t, try to pick it up when it comes out on DVD. The depiction of Che in these films is the most honest ever put into a major movie. It puts lie to the propaganda and lies told about Che by Americans for the last 50 years.
Jean-Paul Satre called Che "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age" and the "era’s most perfect man."
Listen to the full 1964 radio interview with Che which appears, in part, in the first film.
by cameron | Oct 3, 2009 | Catholicism
The Vatican was kind enough this week to give yet another excuse to SHUT THEM DOWN PERMANENTLY.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, made a statement assuring the UN human rights council that Catholic priests involved in having sex with young boys aren’t really engaged in paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.
"Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."
Ohhh that’s okay then…. you stupid fucking asshole.
Apparently Archibishop Clueless made this statement after an international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, Keith Porteous Wood, accused it of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Archbishop Clueless also accused other churches of having an equally bad track record of child abuse, something that Irwin Zalkin refuted when I interviewed him earlier this year.
Clueless went on to say that “available research” showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse. As The Daily Irrelevant noted:
Only???
And that’s your defense of what happened? Really?
The USA has easily the largest percentage of their population incarcerated or on probation of all countries in the world.
There are 1 in 32 people in the US either behind bars or on Probation, and that’s for ALL convictions combined.
That’s less than 3%. And the vatican has the fucking nerve to say it’s “only” 5%.
Folks, I ask again – when are we going to shut the Catholic Church down? It’s a disgrace. At the very least, in Australia, we should be having a Royal Commission into the levels child abuse perpetrated by the Catholic clergy in Australia over the last 70 years, like the one they recently concluded in Ireland.
When I interviewed Dr Wayne Chamley from Broken Rites a few months ago, he suggested that if we had a Royal Commission into Catholic child abuse in this country we would discover TENS OF THOUSANDS of victims.
Let’s do something about it. If we don’t, history will judge us as a bunch of spineless, assholes with no integrity.
Oh sure, everyone seems more than happy to throw the book at Polanksi, but go after the Catholic Church? Oh no, we couldn’t do that.
(link to the story via The Daily Irrelevant – thanks Russell)
by cameron | Sep 21, 2009 | media 2.0
There’s a fascinating post on Dissident Voice about the battle going on in the UK between the BBC and corporate media who are apparently threatened by the breadth of the Beeb’s online offerings.
Quotes:
"The Murdochs of this world are naturally unable to conceive that corporate sponsorship compromises news reporting, showering pound and dollar-shaped sticks and carrots that inevitably cause journalism to slither in corporate-friendly directions."
"In his dystopian novel, 1984, George Orwell described the art of thought control called “Newspeak”:
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
We are offered a “debate” confined between two false poles: the claim that the BBC is a threat to the “independent news” provided by commercial interests, and the claim that the BBC is a rare source of “independent, truthful” reporting. Modern journalism acts to “narrow the range of thought”, thus serving the powerful interests that control the mass media."
This idea about "a debate confined between two false poles" is something that Chomsky has been talking about for decades. In the West, we’re told that we have a ‘free press’ but, in reality, we have a press that’s owned either by wealthy individuals (Packer, Murdoch, Stokes, et al) or the Government… whose hold on power is often regulated BY those wealthy individuals and their control over the way the population thinks due to their media assets. And so what tends to happen is that our media discusses the happenings of the day in a limited fashion, always confining the debate between two false poles, making it LOOK like we have choice and healthy debate, where in reality we’re only given a small range of options to discuss.
My favourite example in Australia is to look at our election coverage. What is the range of debate and discussion given in the Australian media, during election cycles or any other time for that matter, to alternatives to our consumerist capitalist economic model? Where is the open discussion about the benefits of Socialism or Communism? It doesn’t happen. Why? Because the aforementioned wealthy owners of the media companies don’t want the people thinking about Socialism or Communism unless, of course, it’s to talk about the failures of those alternative models. The reason they don’t want us thinking about these alternatives is that if we moved towards them, they would lose their wealth, power and privilege.
This is why we need a NEW media that isn’t controlled by corporate interests.
by cameron | Sep 11, 2009 | advertising
Here’s an ad campaign I doubt we’ll see in Australia. Click on the image below to watch the video. Pretty disturbing stuff. I like it a lot.
by cameron | Sep 9, 2009 | activism, Culture Jamming
(via Anonymous targets Australian Government over Internet Censorship.)
Unlike Duncan, I *am* in favour of this action. Surely when basic rights such as freedom of speech are being threatened, the public have a right and indeed a responsibility to fight back against oppression with whatever non-violent means are at their disposal? How is this any different to blockading Parliament House in protest? It seems to be it’s just the digital form of a traditional protest.
