by cameron | Dec 30, 2007 | Uncategorized
This post “I Don’t Respect Your Religion” by Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks is right on the money.
Here’s an excerpt:
Read the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. They are all full of violent, bloody fantasies that teach you over and over to kill your enemies. Christians love to think they are the exception to this rule. They’ll say the Old Testament doesn’t really apply anymore because the New Testament overruled all the gory, masochistic violence of the earlier book. So, then I guess Genesis isn’t true either since that’s in the Old Testament? Oops.
Then, you’ll get the excuse that Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Yeah, I know, that’s why in Matthew 10:34 he says, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Sounds down right Christian of him.
But even if you can make up pathetic excuses for this obvious blood-lust and call to violence, it doesn’t matter. Because in the end Jesus murders almost all of us anyway. Jesus doesn’t just kill the “liars” and the “sexually immoral” and the eight other categories of people who get thrown in “fiery lake of burning sulfur.” He kills all of the “unbelieving” folks as well. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you get the lake of fire! What a swell guy.
Personally, though, I’m not convinced that Bhutto’s assassination had anything to do with religious fundamentalism. It seems to me to be a clean hit. I am amazed, though, at this video of her interview with Sir David Frost in early November, where, around the 6 minute mark, she clearly says that Osama Bin Laden was murdered, names his murderer, and Frost doesn’t even ask her to clarify the statement. She mentions it almost in passing. But then, according to Wikipedia, a week later, when she was placed under house arrest, she asked one of the policeman “Shouldn’t you be looking for Osama bin Laden?”
I’ve also been reading about the list of corruption charges again her and her husband on Wikipedia. Were they trumped up? Why did Musharraf drop the charges upon her recent return to the country? I would love to get some decent analysis of the situation.
Al-qaida has supposedly claimed responsibility for the assassination but it still isn’t clear to me WHO is behind Al-qaida. We know for a fact that the Afghani mujahideen were armed, trained and funded by the USA in the 80s. Hell, evenRambo liked them. It isn’t clear to me if or when the USA actually stopped funding them. And if it isn’t the USA, then what is the involvement of the USA’s ally, Pakistan and the Pakistani Taliban?
The only thing I know is that when I read simplistic descriptions of her assassination thrown about in the media with the propaganda words “terrorism” and “al-qaida” I am drawn into looking deeper. Superficial explanations don’t seem to do her or her legacy justice.
UPDATE 31 December, 2007: There are now reports that the BBC edited out Bhutto’s comments about Bin Laden’s murder. What I don’t understand though is where the original video, the one where Bhutto names the murderer, comes from if the BBC edited it out before broadcast?
by cameron | Nov 22, 2007 | Cuba, Uncategorized
Yesterday I was presented with an early Xmas gift from Nick Hodge – Fidel Castro’s “My Life”, a recently published volume of interviews conducted by Ignacio Ramonet, the long-time editor of the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique, professor of communication at the University Denis Diderot in Paris and founder of Media Watch Global.
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepodcastnet-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1416553282&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
This has jumped to the very top of my reading list.
Ramonet spent one hundred hours interviewing Castro between 2003 and 2005. Castro then reviewed the entire manuscript in 2006. This, then, is the closest we will ever get to having Fidel Castro’s autobiography.
Ramonet says he wrote it because young people around the world know little of the truth about Castro. After 48 years of American negative propaganda against him and the Cuban Revolution, the perception of Castro is mostly negative. He is perceived as a brutal dictator, a relic from the Cold War. Ramonet, however, paints a very different picture of the man. He describes him as “shy, a polite, affable man who pays attention to each person he talks to and speaks without affectation, yet with the manners and gestures of a somewhat old-fashioned courtesy that has earned him the title of ‘the last Spanish gentleman’.” He is also “indefatigable” – in his eighties, he still sleeps on average 4 hours a night, working through until five or six am every day, with his entourage of young assistants asleep on their feet. He lives frugally, with no luxury spent on himself – no palaces for Fidel. He is a man with a never-ending series of Big Ideas.
Ramonet writes of Castro:
“Moved by humanitarian compassion and internationalist solidarity, he has a dream, which he has spoken about a thousand times, of bringing health and knowledge, medicines and education, to every corner of the planet.
As for Cuba itself, Ramonet writes:
“Although the face of Fidel is often in the press, on television and in the street, there is no official portrait, nor is there a statue or coin or avenue or building or monument dedicated to Fidel Castro or any other living leader of the Revolution.
Despite the unceasing harassment from abroad, this little country, clinging to its sovereignty, has achieved undeniably admirable results in the area of human development: the abolition of racism, the emancipation of women, the eradication of illiteracy, a drastic reduction in infant mortality rates, a higher level of general knowledge…. In questions of education, health, medical research and sports, Cuba has achieved results that nany developed nations would envy.
Despite the persistent attacks by the United States and the 600 assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, Cuba has never responded with violence. For forty-eight years, not a single act of violence encouraged or sponsored by Cuba has occurred in the United States.”
Cuba gets (and deserves) criticism from Amnesty International for some of its policies which deny it’s citizens civil freedoms, such as the freedom of association, freedom of opinion, freedom of movement, and the use of the death penalty. However there are no reported cases of torture in Cuba or ‘disappearances’, the murder of journalists or political assassinations or protest marchers beaten by police. There has NEVER been a popular uprising against the regime – in nearly fifty years. To understand why Cuba has some of those civil freedom restrictions, you have to understand the forces trying to destroy Cuba.
The Unites States government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in this decade alone trying to oust Castro, through NGO’s such as the “National Endowment for Democracy” (NED) and the “United States Agency for International Development” (USAID), which alone has delivered over $65 million to anti-Castro groups since 1996. According to Ramonet, hundreds of journalists around the world are paid to spread negative propaganda about Castro. Funding is provided by the USA to terrorist organisations hostile to the Cuban government such as Alpha 66 and to the now-perhaps-disbanded Omega 7.
Cuba has been under a devastating and evil economic embargo from the USA since 1960, severely crippling its economy, and yet Castro continues to defy their attempts to destroy the Revolution. He has survived relentless attacks on his person and his country by the most powerful economic and military superpower on the planet for 48 years while continuing to improve the living conditions of the 11 million citizens of Cuba.
The key to understanding Cuba and Castro is that you have to understand what life was like back before the Revolution when Cuba was governed by a series of corrupt and brutal regimes directly supported by the US government and US corporations. The quality of life for the citizens of Cuba was terrible. Castro changed all of that. He ousted Bastista’s corrupt regime and the US interests that backed it. He has significantly improved the living conditions of the Cuban people, all while fighting off the US government’s continued attempts on his life.
Please – read this book.
by cameron | Nov 12, 2007 | Uncategorized
I met some people at MODM recently who told me they had never – EVER!! – bought anything via Ebay. WTF? Who are you people? Even Nicole, who is currently cutting my hair, has bought something from Ebay (although she said it wasn’t very successful – it wasn’t what she thought it would be like… she assures me it wasn’t a sex toy. It was a dress.).
Anyway… a couple of weeks ago I bought a remote control for my old XBOX from someone in Hong Kong. It turned up okay but doesn’t work very well. I mean, it works if I’m no further away than a meter or two from the box – but if I’m lying in bed (the old XBOX is the bedroom media center) it’s a pain in the ass.
So I gave the seller a neutral review on Ebay – not negative, because she shipped it quickly and it was as described… it just doesn’t work very well. The next day, I got an email from the seller saying she was very sorry that I wasn’t happy with the item and asking me if I would reconsider my review if she gave me a $5 refund. I asked the folks on Twitter what I should do, and the unanimous response was that I should leave my review as it is and that the seller was trying to buy a positive review.
So I ignored the first email. Then, yesterday, I got a message from Paypal saying I had received a full refund on the product from the seller! Now I’m feeling torn. On one hand, the product isn’t very well made – but that isn’t the seller’s fault. She has been very responsive to my review and has, of her own volition, given me a full refund and not even asked for the product back. To be fair, I didn’t complain about the quality of the product when I received it and, if I had, she might have been willing to give me the refund and under those circumstances I probably WOULD have given her a positive review. When we buy something off of Ebay (or anywhere else for that matter), isn’t that all we ask for? Good service? Obviously we hope the product will always be first class but, when it isn’t, we just want good service?
So I’m torn. I don’t want to have my review “bought” but, on the other hand, i want to be fair to a seller who is trying hard to do the right thing. Or is she?
by cameron | Oct 29, 2007 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Well as I sit in my hotel room after spending a couple of days with some of WA’s digerati (I say WA instead of Perth because Duncan Riley lives a few hours away) as well as some ring-ins from the Eastern states such as Nick Hodge, Stilgherrian and Paul Montgomery, as well as Adam and Jared (what happened to you guys? I hardly saw you yesterday and didn’t see you at any of the events today?), I’m trying to distill my thoughts.
The Perth digerati crowd certainly has a lot of energy. I was impressed by the amount of people who turned up to Podcamp, especially as most of them were from Perth. Bronwen Clune seems to be the Mother Goose of the Perth digerati crowd, running around keeping everyone in beer and skittles, with my old mate Richard Giles hanging back, giving both Bronwen and I a lot of shit, but acting as another lightening rod for the digerati here. Duncan lives out of town but his personal brand and the fact that he writes for the hottest geek site on the planet (although there has been a lot of talk over the last few days about whether or not TechCrunch still carries the cache it did 18 months ago) casts a big shadow over everyone here.
Getting back to Podcamp and geek meetups in general… the feedback on my unkeynote has been sparse, I still think I freaked most of them out. Mike seems to agree, although he seemed to like it. Stil called it “passionate” and thinks my use of a picture of Che Guevara gave him permission to use a picture of Goebbels.
I still get the feeling though that we geeks, we early adopters of the new new tools, the Twitterers, the Facebookeranians, the SecondLifers, the podcasters and bloggers, are still running around playing with these shiny new toys like 3 year-olds in a sandbox. When I look at people at gatherings like those over the last couple of days, I think about how wealthy and privileged we are. We all sit around with our shiny Macbooks and our iPhones and play with our communication toys which let us talk to enormous numbers of people all over the world, and yet we seem to lack direction. Whenever we get together at events like Podcamp or MODM, whilst there is a certain level of geek community bonding and a few impassioned conversations, that there is a general lack of BIG IDEAS. I’m including myself in this by the way. I come away from these events feeling slightly hollow, like a great opportunity has been missed. That there should be more going on than just getting together, having a few drinks, comparing toys, exchanging a few anecdotes, swapping business cards. Shouldn’t we be doing something more when we get together?
Nick summed up my rant from our recent podcast as “Geeks For Good” (I love how he describes debating with me as “like fighting a intellectual tornado”), and I think that sums it up pretty well – shouldn’t we be using our geek powers for good? Is it just me? Does anyone else out there feel like us geeks have a responsibility to use our understanding of computing and new communication technologies to make the world a better place? Or is it all just about making ourselves richer and buying newer toys?
Where is the sense of responsibility? The sense of purpose, of destiny, of time and place and manifesting these things to advance the chances of the human race to survive this century? I so much want to meet someone who has an awe-inspiring vision to share with me, something to expand my consciousness, threaten my perspectives, build me a new dream, entice me, invigorate me, dazzle me. Instead I find myself being the guy ranting and raving about changing the world and feeling like everyone is staring at me like I’m a lunatic. Maybe I am. Maybe it’s me, I’m just missing a few screws. Maybe it’s my messiah complex. I just feel like we’re all wasting time, wasting opportunity.
ANYWAY…
Someone during the Q&A after my session yesterday (I think it was Brett) asked me if podcasts were all just like radio. And yes, I do. I think most podcasts are just like radio. And that bothers me, has done for a long time. Shouldn’t we be doing something new, exciting, fresh? Something that hasn’t been done before? And the more I thought about that issue over the last couple of days, the more the ideas which Duncan’s post a month ago started in my mind have been taking more shape.
There is something new happening and it’s in the emergence arising from a loosely-coupled combination of the new tools – it’s podcasting + blogging + twitter + facebook + second life + real events like MODM or Podcamp. The new form of conversation lies in the intersection of these things, not in any one of them. It is messy and rambling and it is swirling around us, impossible to define or pigeon hole, but it is real and it’s growing stronger each year, a milieu that contains within it the beginnings of the true new communications platform, the true 21st century media. The conversation might start with a blog post then migrate over to a podcast then get expanded on in a Facebook group, debated in Twitter, then turn into a 4 hours group discussion in Second Life.
I don’t know what to call it yet (any ideas?), but I’m intrigued by it, excited by it and determined to harness it and use it for good.
All this talk of Geeks For Good reminds me of that episode of “The West Wing” when President Bartlett says to the new guy Will Bailey:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Do you know why?”
Will thinks for a moment, then answers ‘It’s the only thing that ever has.’
Cue theme music…
technorati tags: podcampperth07
by cameron | Oct 12, 2007 | technology
Okay geeks and nerds, time once again to make yourself useful.
I was a lucky birthday boy and got myself an XBOX 360 for my birthday this week. As I’m used to using my old chipped XBOX as a media center, I was looking forward to using the new one in the same way (while I move the old box to my bedroom). I want to stream music and video from my PC down to the XBOX. I’ve got music working okay but video is a no go. The XBOX can find the PC, can see the video directory, can see the folders underneath it, but can’t see the actual files.
Then I read that the 360 will only stream WMV videos. Jesus H Christ. Of course, everything I want to stream down is in DIVX or XVID. So I heard about this app called Tversity which will transcode DIVX into WMV on the fly. I’ve got it installed and the 360 can see it okay, it’s streaming music via Tversity okay, but the 360 says it can’t find any videos still.
Last night in SL a few people told me it might be because Vista Business doesn’t have Windows Media Center and I’ll need to upgrade to Ultimate, but if that’s the case, why can the 360 stream my music okay? Doesn’t make sense to me.
Anyway… any ideas? Prove to me your geek mad skillz.
Oh and… should I get it chipped? Or not? Thoughts?
