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Month: May 2008

Scott McClellan, Former White House Press Secretary, has written a scathing memoir about his time as the spokesperson for the Bush White House (from July 2003 to April 2006). The book, he says, discusses “the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.â€

Apparently McClellan positions himself as the poor innocent guy who was fed lies by the White House and ended up looking like an idiot. Personally I don’t buy it. This is the same lame story all of the American leaders have been giving during Senate and Congressional hearings over the last few years:
“Well, shucks, if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have said/done those things.”

It’s the standard “get out of jail” card and it smells of bullshit to me. It was obvious to everybody with a slender grasp of the facts that the Bush White House was bullshitting about Saddam. There were plenty of people arguing against their case. If you’re going to stand up in front of the world and put a story out there, like McClellan did every day for three years, then you had better be sure that story is true and correct. As someone in the comments on the Politico site said, he should have put his country (and the truth) first, and his obsequious toadying to Bush last.

I just finished reading Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy Of Ashes: The History Of the CIA” and thought I should talk more about it. I think this is one of the most important books that have come out in the last decade. Why? Listen to the show to find out. I start by reading out a list of countries that the CIA has committed acts of terrorism and violence in, either directly or indirectly, over the last 60 years. It’s a long, long list.

This is the longer audio piece from my chat with Jonathan Oxer. Jonathan has an RFID chip embedded in his arm which he can use to operate electronic devices in his house. Why? Listen and find out. If you haven’t yet seen the video to go with it, it’s here.

Australia slipped two places to be ranked only the 27th most peaceful out of 140 countries on the Global Peace Index 2008, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, while neighbour New Zealand is fourth.

The USA ranked 97th, below China, Cuba and Libya.

I wonder who much coverage this will get in the MSM. Are you, as a citizen of Australia, happy with the result? Do we want to be a peaceful nation?

You’ve heard me say I don’t believe in free will. Well tonight I’ve got world famous author, speaker, psychologist and memeticist Dr Susan Blackmore on the show to explain why SHE doesn’t believe in free will either. We discuss the reductionist perspective, what neuroscientists she’s interviewed believe, and how to live your life once you’ve discarded the idea of free will completely.

The Iranians wanted to nationalize their oil. They had done a deal with the British in 1901 to explore Iran for oil and just before WWI, Winston Churchill moved the British navy from coal-burning ships over to oil-burning ships and then basically took control of Iran’s oil production, leaving them with only 16% of the profits. The Iranians weren’t happy with the situation, to the British installed a Shah of their liking on the throne.

During WWII, Churchill invaded Iran, got rid of the Shah (who was thought to be too friendly with the Nazis) and installed his son on the throne.

After WWII, the Iranians decided to take control of their oil production back. And Churchill wasn’t happy. Britian took their case to the International Court of Justice at The Hague – and lost. So Churchill asked the American government to intervene. The President (Truman) said no. So MI6 turned to the CIA who said “sure that sounds like fun”.

They then spent millions of dollars undermining the government, spreading lies about them, hiring thugs to commit crimes around the country and then blaming it on communists, on propaganda accusing the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq of being a communist, etc. The BBC in Britian did their part, also broadcasting anti-Iranian propaganda to lend the events legitimacy.

Eventually US-backed troops stormed the Prime Minister’s offices, arrested him, and he spent the last years of his life in prison, replaced by a General Zahedi, picked by the US and Britian to be Mossadeq’s puppet successor.

What happened next? 25 years later the Iranian revolution happened, fueled by memories of the coup, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control and the country has hated the US and Britian ever since. Can you blame them?

Of course, the US and Britian denied all of this ever happened for almost 50 years until internal CIA documents were leaked in 2000.

So – the next time you hear about how Iran “hate our freedoms” or about the US trying to overthrow a country and other “conspiracy theories”, remember – Iran 1953.

It’s a simple program for using the built-in camera on your Mac to create movies and upload them to YouTube.

I’ve played around with Seesmic a bit as a video blogging tool but I find it’s not very podcast-friendly. Seesmic wants you to use their site to store and distribute your videos, which isn’t very useful for a podcaster who wants to create an rss feed to publish. Vidnik automatically uploads your video to YouTube and it’s easy enough to embed that into a blog post and create your own rss feed for it.

I don’t know any way to have this download automatically to an iPod though – anyone know of a way to create a feed which will automatically pull YouTube down videos onto a portable player?

UPDATE: Just noticed that my sound is out of synch on that video above. Bad YouTube!