by cameron | Nov 11, 2009 | capitalism
Tonight we finally got to see Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story.
While it’s undeniably a powerful film that everyone should see, I have one major complaint with it – he let Obama off the hook.
Everyone knows that Moore isn’t a big fan of Bush and Cheney. That has been very clear in his last couple of films. So it isn’t surprising that in Capitalism, he continues to (rightfully) blame a lot of America’s current financial woes on the Bush / Cheney administration.
However Bush isn’t in office today. And Moore’s only critique of Obama is to mention VERY briefly that Goldman Sachs were the biggest private investor in Obama’s election campaign. Apart from that slight jab, he not only completely let’s Obama off the hook for the current crisis, he actually continues to paint Obama in a positive light, as a beacon of hope that things are changing in the USA.
Now while I know Obama wasn’t in power during the years when the Clinton and Bush administrations whittled away most of the regulations in the financial system, it definitely WAS Obama who, late last year, convinced Congress to pass the bailout vote – a disastrous piece of legislation that Moore spent a great deal of time discussing. Yet in all of his coverage of that event, he never once showed an image of Obama or mentioned Obama’s critical role in making sure the bill passed.
And I have to ask – why not? I know that Moore championed hard for Obama on the election trail. But I thought that would make sure that he would have determined to hold his man to at least an equal if not higher standard than the other guys. It looks like I was wrong. At least in this film, Moore has given Obama a Get Out Of Jail Free card. It saddens me.
There’s a great scene in the film where Moore debunks Ronald Reagan and explains how RR was just a pretty boy frontman for the financial cartels. It’s sad that he can’t see that Obama is EXACTLY the same.
On another note, I hope that Moore’s next film shines a light on his own religion. He says he’s been a practising Catholic all of this life. In this current film, he makes the Catholics out to be good guys. I wonder if he has the integrity to turn his keen eye on his own? He could start by interviewing Irwin Zalkin.
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 | Jul 14, 2009 | Catholicism, Christianity
Yet another Catholic leader turns out to be a paedophile – Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado. The only problem is that he’s dead and he escaped punishment. He also apparently had an affair with a woman, fathered her child, and misused funds.
Maciel was the founder of the Catholic congregation called the "Legion Of Christ", which claims to have 70,000 members.
The Independent has a length article on him.
by cameron | Jun 27, 2009 | Uncategorized
I was at this concert. I’ll never forget this opening number. It was TOTALLY INSANE. This video doesn’t begin to do it justice. Instead of the footage of the audience in the first 30 seconds it should have shown the stage. First thing you heard was the loud thunderous thumping. Then the top of the stage opened up and bright white lights blinded you. Then MJ marched up from inside the stage. Lights dimmed, smoke cleared, he screamed, everything exploded.
I still say it was the most amazing concert I’ve ever been to in my life. He was at his peak and – let’s face it – BAD was his last interesting album. After that he just melted down and become more freak than artist.
I was talking to Chrissy the other day, wondering who taught Michael how to dance – turns out it was a guy called Jeffrey Daniel. Check this video out:
Let’s remember though that the evidence seems to indicate that Michael was a very disturbed human being, a paedophile who only didn’t end up serving 20 years in jail because he could afford to buy his way out of trouble with $22 million of hush money.
And I don’t care that "he had a tough childhood". Yeah sure – being super rich and famous and talented must be a bitch. Guess what? Lots of people who end up committing criminal behaviour had messed up childhoods. And while we should definitely be understanding of that in our legal system, and recognize that emotional and psychological damage need to be treated responsibly, it’s not a ‘get out of jail free card’.
Unless, of course, you are someone who can spend $22 million on out-of-court settlements – like Michael Jackson – or priests in the Catholic Church.
by cameron | Jun 26, 2009 | Podcast
In this, the latest show in my series trying to show that the Jesus story is probably a myth or hoax, my guest is a PhD student at the University of Helsinki in the field of biblical study. He chatted with me recently about the evidence to support the theory that there once was a man called Jesus about whom the stories we know of as the Christian bible were constructed around.
Interestingly, Francis doesn’t seem to believe the biblical stories and yet considers himself a Catholic.
If you want to hear my other shows about the historicity of Jesus, check out this page.
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