by cameron | Mar 31, 2007 | Christianity, Iraq, Podcast, science vs religion
Greydon Square is the future of hiphop.
Raised an orphan by Seventh Day Adventists in Compton, Los Angeles, he did time at 17 for possession of a weapon, then joined the US Army for a tour of Iraq, where he did bible group in his spare time with a view to becoming a minister after he was discharged. However, the more he learned about Christianity, the more he questioned it.
Today he is studying cosmology and quantum physics at University and self-producing his own hiphop album with a powerful message – that rational thinking is superior to religion and faith.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Mar 29, 2007 | censorship, Iraq
Here’s a classic.
I’m currently reading a book at bedtime to the boys. It’s called “The Orchard Book Of Swords, Sorcerers and Superheroes”.
It has kids versions of classic tales, like King Arthur, Jason and the Argonauts, Ali Baba, etc. Tonight we were reading “Aladdin”. All of the usual things are in there, Aladdin, the magic lamp, the genie, etc. The only surprising thing was that the whole story was set in… CHINA.
A few times in the story it says they are in China. I’m scratching my head while I’m reading it, thinking “surely this was set in Persia”. The characters are all wearing turbans, etc.
After I finish and tuck the boys into bed, I turn to the front cover of the book to see when it was printed – 2003. The year we invaded Iraq. The book was printed in London.
AHA!, I think. I’ve uncovered censorship in children’s literature! The publishers didn’t want to mention Baghdad when we’re bombing the crap out of it so they re-set the story!
And so I start to write this post.
Except… when I go to Wikipedia to confirm the original location of the story, I read this:
Aladdin (a corruption of the Arabic name AlÄa ed-DÄ«n, Arabic: علاء الدين literally “nobility of faith”) is one of the tales with a Syrian origin in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, and one of the most famous.
The “China” of the original tale much more closely resembles the medieval Muslim world of the other Arabian Nights stories, so much so that in retellings the “Chinese” element is often quietly forgotten.
The story concerns an impoverished young ne’er-do-well named Aladdin, in a Chinese city, who is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb in the far west….
Well I’ll be….
by cameron | Feb 14, 2007 | Australian politics, CIA, Iraq, US politics
Did anyone else watch the last part of the re-broadcast on SBS of Adam Curtis’ documentary “The Power Of Nightmares” tonight? This whole idea, that the concept of al-Qaeda as a complex and orchestrated global terror “network” was the invention of the U.S. government, is fascinating.
On the surface, even those of you fully subscribed to the “War On Terror” have to wonder… where is the evidence?
5+ years after USUK invaded Afghanistan, where is the evidence for al-Qaeda?
Most of the detainees still at Guantanamo are not scheduled for trial. As of November 2006, according to MSNBC.com, out of 775 detainees who have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 340 have been released, leaving 435 detainees. Of those 435, 110 have been labeled as ready for release. Of the other 325, only “more than 70” will face trial, the Pentagon says. That leaves about 250 who may be held indefinitely.
(wikipedia)
And what evidence has been presented publicly that any of them belong to some kind of terrorist network?
The way “Nightmares” presents the story, U.S.A.ma bin laden just picked up on the idea from the US after 9/11 and, after first denying he had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, eventually caught on to the potential of the idea of being the mastermind of a vast international terror network and changed his story…. “Oh, I mean, Yes, YES! I am the… what did you call it? MASTERMIND, yes, bwaahaha, I am a mastermind. I want killer whales with frickin’ lasers on their frickin’ heads!”
In all seriousness, how long are we going to accept the “trust us, we have intelligence” argument from the USUK neo-cons?
Let’s look at some of the other “intelligence” the USA presented:
“The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program … Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.” — President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
Ummm, no.
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” — President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.
Ummm, no.
“We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” — Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on “Meet the Press.”
Ummm, no.
“[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade.” — CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening’s speech by President Bush.
Ummm, no.
“Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.” — Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.
Ummm, no.
“We know where [Iraq’s WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.” — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.
Ummm, no.
“Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited.” — President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.
Ummmmmmm, no.
When are going to work out that these guys are either (a) lying through their asses or (b) smoking some bad weed?
The other really interesting idea in the last episode of “Nightmares” is this move that the USUKAU governments have made from “what is” governing to “what if” governing. That is, instead of people being imprisoned because of what they “have done”, they can be imprisoned because of what they “might do”, despite there being no evidence to support that intention.
Remind you of anything?
Hmmmm…. religion?
“I’m going to believe in God because he “might” be real and if he is, and I don’t believe in him, then bloody hell, I’m going to be sorry down the track. Don’t worry that there isn’t any evidence to support the theory that he exists. Don’t even worry that there is overwhelming evidence to refute the theory. Better to be safe than sorry.”
So our politicians are now extending that concept to governing. It is apparently called the “Predictive Theory”. You dream up the worse possible scenarios and convince people they need to act as if they could be true despite there being no evidence for them right now. That way you scare the crap out of people and get them to give you permission to do pretty much whatever you want – spend billions of dollars fighting ghosts, throw people in prison without a fair trial, tap phones and email, and disappear billions of dollars of funds into unknown hands.
Gee Eddie, who won 1 to 100 tonight?
by cameron | Feb 10, 2007 | Australian politics, Iraq, US politics
If any of you are still sitting there thinking “well, they didn’t have any WMD, they weren’t connected to al Qaeda, so why *did* we have to invade Iraq” – one of the reasons has emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the U.S. House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction.
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover. The memorandum details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.
(link)
Yep – money. Shitloads of money, funneled from the pockets of Iraqi citizens (via U.S. Congress) into the pockets of…. nobody knows. But it isn’t hard to guess. Just follow the hype. Who wanted the war? Who campaigned for it hardest? Who manipulated the perceptions of the public in order to justify it?
The report continues:
The memorandum concludes: “Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste … thousands of ‘ghost employees’ were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA’s control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States.”
According to Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, the $8.8bn funds to Iraqi ministries were disbursed “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for”. But, according to the memorandum, “he now believes that the lack of accountability and transparency extended to the entire $20bn expended by the CPA”.
This is what “Operation Shock And Awe” was mostly about – the cynical redistribution of wealth from the hands of the Iraqi people into the hands of foreign countries with larger armies. It’s like the countries we live in are primary school bullies taking lunch off of the Year One kids at lunchtime. If the kids report our bullying to the teacher (the UN Security Council) it doesn’t matter a damn because we OWN the teachers. They are part of the system of corruption and control.
Welcome to democracy.
by cameron | Feb 1, 2007 | Iraq, Uncategorized
ROFL! Mark made the brilliant observation on the recent Sensis post that Telstra’s American CEO, Sol Trujillo, in a November 2005 article on the ABC said:
SOL TRUJILLO: Google Schmoogle.
PETER RYAN: Speaking at yesterday’s release of Telstra’s strategic review, Mr Trujillo said Sensis was the answer, at least for Telstra, and that Google could be feeling some heat, at least locally.
SOL TRUJILLO: We’re outgrowing Google in Australia. We’re doing more, we’re growing faster and we have more capability, because we’re more relevant.
Well here’s the Alexa charts for Google’s Australian site versus Sensis versus YellowPages.com.au:
You may not be able to see the Sensis or YellowPages lines on the chart. That’s because they are wayyyyy down the bottom. Sensis has been a terrific asset for Telstra over the last few years but it’s time to face the facts – they are losing the battle for online search which, by all rights, was theirs to lose.
They aren’t the only ones that should be kicking themselves.
Back in 2003 I suggested to Steve Vamos, who had recently left Ninemsn to run Microsoft Australia, that we could take Hotmail and turn it into a White Pages killer. At the time I think Ninemsn were saying they had 7 million registered Hotmail accounts in Australia. My idea was that if we could create an incentive for people to put REAL contact information into Hotmail, instead of the dubious information usually in there, it could have become a serious online threat to Telstra’s WhitePages. Steve just laughed at me.
That’s why he and Sol get paid the big bucks I guess.
Of course, the Hotmail site is now a usability disaster of Iraq proportions. Not that I ever go into it anymore, but Belinda checks her old Hotmail account from time to time and I look over her shoulder… and shudder.
Speaking of shuddering.. I was just in Officeworks and saw that “Microsoft Windows(TM) Vista Home Premium Oh My God Can We Fit More Words Into This Title How Much Room Is Left Of The Box You Would Think We Are Charging By The Word Oh Hang On We Are Edition” is selling for $500! $300 for the upgrade! Wow. I nearly got excited about it yesterday when a mate of mine from MSFT told me that it can take a USB hard drive and turn it into RAM. Why isn’t THAT in the advertising?? But at those prices, I’ll have to wait until someone gifts me a copy. And just forget about paying $800 for the new version of Microsoft Office. I know that ribbon is kind of pretty but it ain’t $800 pretty.
by cameron | Jan 6, 2007 | Iraq, Uncategorized
Wesley Autrey, the gentleman who jumped on the tracks in the face of an oncoming train to save the life of a complete stranger.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4GaStsLadQ]
So what do you think happens with Autrey from here? Released an inspirational rap album? Biopic of the Week starring Eddie Murphy?
Amazing story. I don’t think my first instinct would have been to jump down. Especially with my two young kids standing there with me!! My instinct to survive would have been stronger than my instinct to save the guy in the tracks.
I wonder what it was about this guy, something in his upbringing, something in his genes, that gave him the impetus to risk his life like that in a split second to save someone he didn’t know.
Do you think you would have done the same thing?
And now this story, also from New York, of two guys who caught a three-year old baby when it fell five stories!
What is it about positive news stories of heroes from New York this week?
Either:
a) This is all a stunt to promote the new season of “Hereos” on NBC.
b) Mutant “Hero” genes are spontaneously switching themselves on inside nooyorkers, possible something to do with the drinking water.
c) The stories were all concocted by the industrial-military complex to take people’s attention away from the fact that GWB’s new Iraq plan will look very much like the old Iraq plan with a couple of new faces and some new catchphrases.
