Buy Nothing Day Nov 27 2009
Why? Because you don’t need all that shit. Really. You don’t.
Anonymous targets Australian Government over Internet Censorship
(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.
GDay World 373 – Kalle Lasn, Adbusters
Every now and again I get to chat with someone who has been an inspiration to me for many years – Noam Chomsky, Ray Kurzweil, Doc Searls, Leo Sayer, John Romero, Vint Cerf – and this is another of those episodes.
Kalle Lasn is the founder of Adbusters magazine and author of the books Culture Jam and Design Anarchy. He is the CEO of the Blackspot Anticorporation. For 20 years, Kalle has been trying to buy space on TV networks around the world to show Adbusters’ anti-consumerism commercials such as these:
He is continually rejected by the networks who refuse to take his money and show his ads on the ground that it will offend their larger advertisers. So Kalle has been fighting them in the courts to try to get equal access to the airwaves and, after 20 years of the cases being dismissed by the courts, he’s finally had a win. He joined me recently to talk about it.
Follow Adbusters on Twitter!
Adbusters are the folks behind “Buy Nothing Day”. I shot some video of folks promoting BND in Melbourne back in 2006:
Adbusters Wins Legal victory
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I’m a big fan of Kalle Lasn, editor and co-founder of Adbusters Magazine and author of the book Culture Jam. For 20 years, he’s been prevented from buying ads in newspapers, magazines and TV. They refuse to take his money! Why? It might have something to do with the content of his ads, which tend to say things “Consume Less”. Lasn believes the Canadian Charter grants EVERY Canadian citizen the right to access the public airwaves, so anyone should be able to buy ads under the same rules and conditions. So Adbusters has been trying to use the legal system to force the TV stations to play ball and in a recent ruling, the British Columbia Court of Appeal has overturned a previous BC Supreme Court ruling which means Adbusters can now take their case against the big media companies to the BC Supreme Court.
The Pentagon’s Propaganda Game Busted
From the Center for Media and Democracy:
Today, we struck a blow against propaganda, and for transparency and accountability.
In early 2002, the Pentagon began cultivating retired military officers who frequently serve as media commentators to help make the case for invading Iraq. The pundit program continued — promoting the Bush administration’s stance on the Guantanamo Bay detention center, warrantless wiretapping and other controversial issues — until New York Times reporter David Barstow exposed its existence in April 2008.
Thanks to Blake Hall of our IT staff and senior researcher Diane Farsetta, now you and anyone with web access can search the massive cache of military documents detailing the Pentagon’s illegal attempts to shape U.S. public opinion. The New York Times first obtained the documents. After the Times reported on the covert pundit program, the Pentagon posted the documents online in a desperate attempt at damage control. But the documents weren’t text searchable, making systematic analysis of this important information nearly impossible.
But we’ve now cracked the Pentagon’s code and made the 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents fully text searchable, posting them all on our SourceWatch website, for journalists, researchers and concerned citizens.
What’s great about this is that it is a further demonstration that the media has been compromised. We all need to understand that EVERY time we see a so-called “expert commentator” on mainstream media, the chances are they are a front for one organisation or another and CANNOT BE TRUSTED as an impartial source. This, by the way, goes for leftist commentators as well as those from the right. The system is played the same way by both camps. Our initial position on anything you see on the news or any current affairs show is “TRUST NO1” unless you are really sure of their credentials as an independent commentator.
G’DAY WORLD #229 – Sunshine and Dark Clouds
No guest today, just a bit of a chat about:
- Robert Rodriguez’s cooking show on the Sin City Recut DVD
a review of “The Receipt” by Will Adamsdale and Chris Branch, currently showing in the Melbourne Comedy Festival
- my review of George Romero’s 1985 classic “Day Of The Dead”
- my review of Danny Boyle’s current film “Sunshine” starring Aussie actress Rose Byrne and Cillian Murphy
- the spoof website MiningNSW which the Mining Council of NSW has been trying to shut down
- and then I finish with a little chat about my friend, the darkness, and what to do about it.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – Aussies can dial into +613 9016 9699. The rest of you can either pay international charges (cmon, what price can you put on being on my show??) or just start begging me to set up an international number.
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