by cameron | Jan 22, 2007 | censorship, Melbourne, US politics
Here’s a sign of where we might be headed as a country – just days after our Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock was trying to get a book banned for mentioning euthenasia options, today we’ve got reports that Qantas refused a passenger, Allen Jasson, permission to board a plane in Melbourne because he was wearing a t-shirt calling George Bush a terrorist.
Qantas treats the T-shirt as a security risk or clothing that could upset passengers and had banned Mr Jasson from wearing it when he flew to Australia in December.
(link)
A “security risk”?? What are they concerned about? That it will explode? That it will cause a riot?
So what’s next? If I fly on a Qantas plane and say George Bush is a terrorist, will I get arrested? Will they read my blog before they let me fly? Will I have to sign a form agreeing not to speak negatively about Bush, Blair or Howard before I can fly Qantas? When did Qantas feel themselves responsible to curbing free speech on their flights?
by cameron | Jan 18, 2007 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Some of you may know that for a long while I co-hosted a weekly podcast here on The Podcast Network with Australian cleric Father Bob Maguire. Recently Poland-based News Corp blogger (figure *that* one out) Evan Maloney wrote a post suggesting that Father Bob would make a much better leader of the Catholic Church in Australia than the current top dog George Pell who, as Evan points out, has a track record of excluding women, gays, lesbians and tagging Islam. It’s worth reading the 90-odd comments on the post to get a whiff of the stink you can cause in this country if you *dare* criticize a powerbroker of the Catholic Church (even if in doing so you are extolling the virtues of another Catholic cleric).
by cameron | Jan 18, 2007 | Australian politics, CIA, Melbourne, Podcast, science vs religion, US politics
On the show tonight….
The word for the day is “blogorrhea“. To write a blog entry just for the sake of posting an entry, not because you have done anything interesting today.
Think you only use 10% of your brain? Think again.
Why should Australia’s Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock have the ability to stop someone from publishing a book? Do we want freedom of speech in this country or not?
If someone attaches a video camera to his shoe and films up ladies skirts on Melbourne trams, what law is he breaking?
Some Christian in Washington doesn’t want his kids’ school to show Al Gore’s film because it doesn’t agree with the Bible that the earth is only thousands of years old.
As Fidel Castro apparently takes his last breaths, I talk a little about the man and his 48 years in power.
Did LBJ have JFK killed?
- E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent who organized the Watergate break-in, says LBJ might have done it.
- Barr McClellan, father of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and a partner in the Austin law firm that represented Johnson, says LBJ did it.
- LBJ’s former mistress Madeleine Duncan Brown says LBJ did it
Oh and then I explain why our inability to disprove god and unicorns does nothing to change the fact that the existence of both is highly improbable.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jan 15, 2007 | Video
When will Australia get our own Jon Stewart??
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nojGpBqQ6Q]
by cameron | Jan 15, 2007 | Australian politics, climate change, energy debate, environment, Podcast
The word of the day is “Enterdrainment“: Any passive form of entertainment that is so incredibly mind numbing that it sucks the intelligence from the listener or viewer; ultimately over time reducing (or limiting) them to a simplistic proto-human mental state, incapable of cognition or rational thought.
Kind of like this show. 🙂
To give you a break from my attacks on religion, my guest tonight is Mark Pop who is a Sydney-based expert in solar energy and climate change. We talk about the economic and political challenges to solar energy as well as discuss the truthiness of climate change.
Some links from the show:
Blacktown to become Australia’s first “Solar City”
Solar power plant being built in Victoria
Get the United Nation’s version of “the facts” about climate change at:
United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change
The CSIRO’s website on climate change
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
