Partnering up with ourbrisbane.com is exciting because they are THE site to tell you about what’s happening around Brisbane. They have huge reach in Brisbane, about 500,000 people visit their site each month. When I made a decision to move up here early last year, the first site I ended up on to learn more about Brisbane was ourbrisbane.com and I remember thinking at the time "I wish they had some podcasts".

Well, now they do.

Yes, say my guests:

Andrew Hadley, COO, Credit Union Australia
Tony Beck, Group Manager, Corporate Affairs, ME Bank (Members Equity)

They both belong to organisations that can provide all of the same services that you get from your bank - and they will do it with less fees and with much more customer service. Why? Both organisations are owned by their members instead of shareholders. In CUA’s case, they are owned by their customers. In ME’s case, they are owned by a group of superannuation firms which, in turn, are owned by their members.

So both organisations exist to provide good service - not solely for the sake of returning profits to shareholders. And, judging by their NPS scores, it makes a difference.

Do you want an independent media?

Today’s music is by:

Rick Estrin & The Nightcats
“U B U” (mp3)
from “Twisted”
(Alligator Records)

Buy at Amazon

So why do we feel as though we are having a single stream of conscious experiences? Perhaps it was useful for our past survival to have a false model of ourselves, to attribute our body’s actions to an inner self, and to see the world in terms of spiritual forces and non-physical agents, when there are no such things. Perhaps it is possible to give up these illusions by practising watching the mind.

Susan was a guest on G’Day World talking about free will back in May 2008.

Read the rest of her recent article in The Guardian here.

Some insight into the way banks work from Dilbert creator Scott Adams (who says he was working at a bank when Dilbert was born):

Banks and credit card companies make a lot of money from late fees. They have a naked interest in keeping their service as inconvenient as possible.

Makes sense, right? Except that it’s another example of good profits vs bad profits (as Jen Storey explained on my last banking podcast). This rational might increase bank profits in the short term, but in the long term it pisses us off. That doesn’t matter too much to the existing bank executives, as their bonuses are based on THIS year’s profits and not the long term future of the bank. They are incented to have a short term outlook. The bank execs also know that we don’t have much choice. Except that we DO. That’s why I set up an account with a credit union last week (CUA). I’ll be shutting down my bank accounts over the next month and moving everything over to CUA - a credit union is owned by its MEMBERS and not SHARE HOLDERS, so it has an incentive to provide good service, not to maximize profits at the expense of service.

Read the rest of Scott’s blog post here.

It’s horrifying! Death to villany in Iran!

Oh no, wait… that’s London in May 2009.

Funny - i don’t remember people changing the colour of their Twitter avatars when THAT happened…

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.

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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.

Do you want an independent media?

Abigail Washburn & The Shanghai Restoration Project
“Sala” (mp3)
from “Afterquake”
(Undercover Culture Music)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Puretracks
More On This Album

"Bank Customers Deposit Their Anger On The Internet".

Of course, News.com didn’t mention my stories. Coincidence?

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

(read the full story)

"… designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership".

The article goes on to say:

The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change.

Now think about the activities of the last couple of weeks. Starting to add up for you?

And who was running JSOC? General Stanley A. McChrystal, President Obama’s recently anointed Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan.

The guy was just rude, obnoxious and uninformed.

I’ve had a 3G card from 3 for the last 18 months and never used it. But I’ve paid my $29 a month - so they have done very well out of me.

When I did try to use it a couple of days ago - because my TPG account has been capped for a couple of days - the throughput on the card was terrible, I’m talking single digits. I rang 3 support and was told their network is overloaded in my area (inner suburb of Brisbane) and that it might take a month to resolve.

So I rang them back today and asked them today to cancel my account - and was told there would be an $80 charge! When I explained they are not providing me with the service I signed up for, the guy on the phone had the temerity to try to tell me that it is MY FAULT because I recently moved house!! And that just because they agreed to give me coverage in one location, didn’t mean they provided access across 100% of the country!

I explained that I’m not in Alice Springs - I’m in an inner suburb of Brisbane where they normally DO provide access but they haven’t provisioned their network sufficiently.

But he just kept talking over me, not listening at all. I had to raise my voice for him to even stop talking for a second to let me finish my sentence.

Eventually he went and "spoke to a supervisor" and agreed to cut my cancellation charges in half. I said that I refused to pay them a cent more and asked to speak directly to a supervisor. He said someone would call me - WITHIN 48 HOURS.

It takes 48 hours to get someone to call me back?

What kind of operation are they running?

Network is down.

48 hours to get a call center supervisor to call me back.

Pathetic.

They have made $522 bucks out of me on this card and provided ZERO SERVICE.

That’s a figure that comes from the National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee (NIDAC is a division of the Australian National Council on Drugs, a Federal government body) report "Bridges and Barriers - Addressing Indigenous Incarceration and Health".

There are about 750,000 aboriginal people in Australia out of a total population of about 23 million. They comprise about 3% of the total population. But, according to the report:

"One in four prisoners in Australia is Indigenous and their over-representation in the jail system is only getting worse."

3% of the population - 25% of the prison population.

And it’s just getting worse.

"In the decade to 2007, the number of Indigenous Australians in prison rose by 6.7 per cent a year, on average.

Aboriginal people went from comprising 18 per cent of the prison population to 24 per cent."

Why?

Obviously it’s a complex issue and there are lots of reasons, some that go back 200 years, but I believe the major reason is this:

Aussies are racists.

And I know most Aussies are going to hate that - but I think it’s true.

Wikipedia defines racism as:

"… the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

Ask most Aussies why they think one quarter of the prison population is Aboriginal and I guarantee you most of them will shrug their shoulders. They just don’t care. Why? Because we’ve been programmed not to care. We’ve been programmed to think aboriginals are just lazy, child-molesting alcoholics. Unless, of course, they excel at an Anglo sport, such as athletics or footy. Then they’re alright. Or if they excel at an Anglo art - musicians and actors, they’re okay too. Or if they become a politician and survive in the Westminster System (the form of government instituted by their occupying power) - then they’re alright in our books too.

But as for the other 99% of the Aboriginal population - we’ve been told, over and over, by the mainstream media and successive governments, that they are mostly just lazy, child-molesting, petrol-sniffing alcoholics who don’t appreciate the money we throw at them, who drive a car until it runs out of petrol then leave it by the side of the road, who rip perfectly good fridges out of houses and leave them to rust in their backyards.

So most Aussies just shrug their shoulders, as if to say "what more can we do?".

Meanwhile, a 45,000 year old civilisation is being wiped out in our backyard.

A people who lived in harmony with nature for 45,000 years, who lived sustainably, who didn’t feel the need to go out and invade other countries, a civilisation that was already 40,000 years old when the Great Pyramid of Cheops was built - is being wiped out as a direct result of the Christian invasion and occupation of their country.

Our country.

Imagine if the headlines said "One in Four Prisoners is Muslim". I think that would create more of an uproar. I guarantee you a week from now, people won’t even be talking about this issue in the press.

But we’ll still be talking about Neda.

We’ll still be talking about Andrew Symons.

We’ll still be talking about Utegate.

We’ll still be talking about Transformers 2.

We’ll still be talking about whatever we’re told to talk about.

Just not the Aboriginals.

Racism isn’t just when you put on a white robe and burn people on crosses. That’s just an extreme expression of racism. That’s just a convenient version of racism that lets the rest of us off the hook. We can say "oh I’m not a racist". 

Meanwhile, we let a 45,000 year old civilisation disappear.

I think we’re guilty of the same kind of insidious racism that allowed the people in Germany 60 years ago to turn their heads while their Jewish population were being lead out of their homes.

It’s the kind of racism that says "they don’t look like me - so it doesn’t matter."

If we - the people - don’t talk about it, the politicians won’t talk about it.

Oh they will - they will have committees, Kevin Rudd will say sorry for the lost generation - but it won’t be a major focus.

He’ll spend his time looking after the interests of mining companies and banks.

He’ll spend his time worrying about how to get re-elected.

But the Aboriginal people of Australia are a long way down the list.

It’s up to us. We need to make this a priority.

We need to say "not on our watch".

At the time of writing this, I’ve done 19,563 public posts (not counting DMs)  which works our to about 27 per day over two years. As I’m usually online about 18 hours a day, that works out to an average of only 1.4 posts per online hour.

I often have people who aren’t yet using Twitter ask "how do you find the time?" Although I guess I’m possibly a fairly heavy user of Twitter compared to most, I only post on average once every 45 minutes. Each post takes… what… ten seconds? Hardly a big time waster. Let’s say I spent another couple of minutes every hour scanning replies, DMs and general tweets in my feed. I guess if I was generous, I might say I spend 6 minutes an hour reading and responding - that’s 1.8 hours a day (6 minutes x 18 waking hours) or 10% of my day. And it does sound like a lot. Until I factor in the following:

1. I work from home. No daily commute to listen to the radio and catch up on the morning news / gossip. Let’s say most people spend an hour a day commuting, either in their car or on public transport. That’s an hour they spend (out of 18 hours in the waking day) probably reading or listening to some kind of media. On those rare occasions during the week when I am in the car, heading to meetings etc, I’m normally listening to podcasts.

2. I don’t watch TV news. The only TV I watch at all is pre-recorded stuff on my laptop (at the moment - Mad Men, The Daily Show, Kings and DVDs). Most people spend 30 - 60 minutes a day watching some kind of news / current affairs (including those god-awful morning shows). I get my news from Twitter and from scanning the  blogs. Oh and from podcasts when I go for my run, of course.

3. I’ve been living alone for the last year, my girlfriend living half a world away, and so I’ve had no social life and tweet mostly (I suspect) in the evenings to provide some relief from work. Wow… that sounded a lot more pathetic than it feels. :-)  I guess it’s true - people on Twitter are losers who have no social life.

So, I figure most people spend a couple of hours a day watching, listening or reading the news. I might (and it’s a stretch) spend the same amount of time on Twitter. If I counted the amount of time I spend on Twitter and reading blogs, I’d say it’s about the same. So, for me, Twitter and blogs have replaced mainstream media.

As I said, I’m probably a fairly heavy user of Twitter, which is justified somewhat by the line of work I am in (social media). Having a good handle on how Twitter works is my business.

Let me tell you some of the things I dislike about Twitter at the moment:

• MLM chumps.
• Affiliate pimps.
• People who auto-send DMs pimping stuff when you follow them.
• Follow Fridays.
• The way people are jumping on the Iran bandwagon without much evidence of critical thinking. Cmon people - think.

For the record, I immediately un-follow people who commit the first three crimes.

Okay, now the things I like about Twitter:

• Intelligent debate - it’s hard to find, but it’s out there. Too many people seem to think you can’t have an intelligent discussion 140 characters at a time, but that’s just wrong. It just requires discipline and clarity.
• Support - Twitter is better than any tech support service I’ve ever used. But I’m not just talking about tech support. Mention that you’ve got any sort of problem, and you’ll usually have a stream of people - most of whom you’ve never met in real life and probably never will - offering to help out. These people counter-balance the brain dead MLM and affiliate folks and stop me from giving up all hope for the human race. 
• The sense that this is the dawn of…. something. Something big. Something important. Something profound.

Twitter kind of reminds me of the skin jobs on BSG when they are on their base ship, dipping their hands into the pink water that somehow plugs them into the control feed of the ship. It’s also a bit like being Superman with his super hearing, just letting the entire planet’s voices wash over you.

I often find myself wondering about what a mind-blowing platform Twitter (and the interwebs in general) could be in an historical sense for the human race - just imagine jumping in the TARDIS and scooting back 100 years to 1909, then trying to explain the concept of Twitter to folks. What potential! The whole world (well… the connected world) talking to each other! The kids in New York shouting out real time support to the kids (or are they embedded CIA operatives pretending to be kids?) in Tehran! I wonder what the folks in 1909 would want to do with it. Or imagine going back another 30 years to 1879 and explaining it to Karl Marx. I wonder if he’d think it was the perfect medium to discuss MLM, Jon & Kate (and I honestly have NO frakking idea who they are), and whether or not Megan is as hot as Angelina.

Here’s my question for you all - are we smart enough for Twitter? Or will we waste it?

My guest on today’s show is Michael Doneman - one part business coach, one part social activist, one part guru.

Over the last few months his name has come up in a startling variety of conversations I’ve had with people. These people have a few things in common - they are very bright, have a sparkle in their eye, are entrepreneurs, think they can change the world - and they are students of Doneman.

Michael explains the basis of his business / school, Edgeware, where he teaches something he calls “ethical entrepreneurship” and we discuss the future of capitalism.

This is also the first interview in my series where I intend to interview Brisbane’s Best Minds. If you want to nominate someone to be interviewed as part of this series, please submit their details here.

Further links:

John Gray video

Edgeware site

Follow Michael Doneman on Twitter

Do you want an independent media?

Abigail Washburn & The Shanghai Restoration Project
“Sala” (mp3)
from “Afterquake”
(Undercover Culture Music)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Puretracks
More On This Album

A few people on Twitter tried to suggest there was no connection between abuse in Ireland and in Australia, so I invited Dr Wayne Chamley from Broken Rites onto the show. Broken Rites is an Australian advocacy group that works with victims of religious child abuse. He believes that if we had a Royal Commission into Catholic child abuse in this country we would discover TENS OF THOUSANDS of victims.

By the way folks, don’t forget - if you are looking for an easy way to listen to the G’Day World archives (all 381 episodes!), and you’ve got iTunes installed, go to our page on iTunes. While you’re there, give the show a quick review!

Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen review from Cameron Reilly on Vimeo.

Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen is prety good as far as blockbusters go if you can look past the silliness and you dont get a headache from the Michael Bay cut-cut-cut bot fighting scenes.

SPOILERS ALERT

It starts 2 years after the last film.

Sam Witwiky is about to go off to college. He’s still dating Mikaela (the hot as usual Megan Fox). Blunty told me she isn’t that hot in real life and so I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the morning.

As he’s packing to leave home for college, Sam pulls out the jacket he wore in the first film out of the closet and a piece of the AllSpark falls off of it. Apparently it got caught in his jacket when the AllSpark was destroyed. His mum didn’t wash the jacket? In TWO YEARS??? What kind of mother is that? My mother would have found that shit, washed it and the washing machine would have come alive and eaten her up like cookie monster eating cookies.

Anyway, the bit of the AllSpark falls on teh floor and all manner of kitchen implements come alive and start trying to kill Sam. Lucky he’s got a simpering Bumblebee living in his garage who exists soley to save Sam’s ass, like some big yellow slave. Sam even talks him like a cross between his house boy and a starved dog.

MEANWHILE, back on the ranch…. Optimus and the other autobots are running around with some soldiers trying to kill a bunch of Decepticons who are hiding. Two years and they cant find a bunch of Decepticons? WTF?

And other piece of the AllSpark which was left over from the first film is being protected in some military base. Without any autobots protecting it! WTF? The most powerful piece of tech in the UNIVERSE and it’s being protected by a handful of dopey soliders? RIIIIGHT.

So, of course, some Decepticons break in, steal it, and use it to bring Megatron back to life. He flies up into space to meet his master. Megatron has a master? I thought he was the big boss of the bad guys?

Noooo. Turns out he’s Darth Vader to an Emperor guy (who even refers to Megatron as “my apprentice”) who we find out is called THE FALLEN.

APPARENTLY… this guy, Teh Fallen, was on earth 12,000 years ago, building a machine would would suck the sun dry to use as energy. He was a Prime autobot who turned bad. He was defeated by the other Primes but, for some reason, not killed. He’s been recovering…. for 12,000 years. Waiting for his revenge.

And apparently he can’t get back into the game until all of the Primes are killed - the last being Optimus.

So Megatron hunts Optimus down and kills him. Yep - KILLS HIM.

Oh somewhere in here, Sam started having crazy visions of alien symbols, spazzing out in his astronomy class. His professor is played by Rainn Wilson from the US version of The Office.

It turns out that the AllSpark uploaded everything it knew about the history of the Transformers into Sam’s brain. That’s right - the entire history of a billion year old civilization was uploaded into this guys brain. And he didn’t have any side effects for TWO YEARS.

Riiiight.

Oh yeah and Sam gets orally raped by a decepticon disguised as a hot chick at college. Hot chick is played by Aussie Home & Away star Isabel Lucas. I didn’t know she was an Aussie though, of course, because I don’t watch shitty Aussie TV. I found out from IMDB.

So apparently 12,000 years ago, during the big fight between the Primes and The Fallen, there was this other superduper energy source called “The Matrix” (riiight) that was supposed to power the sun-eating machine. Some of the Primes sacrificed themselves to bury it somewhere seeekret. Sam has to find it to bring Optimus back to life.

It turns out it’s buried somewhere in Egypt. Shades of Indiana Jones! A bunch of lame secret messages leads to the Petra in Jordan. I fully expected to hear Shia le Bouf say “Hey this is the place from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade!”

But no.

The find the Matrix, have a big fight with the Decepticons, finally stick the Matrix into Optimus, he wakes up, gets all pimped out, and kicks everyone’s ass, including Megatron and Teh Fallen.

End of movie.

Best bits?

The cameos from Deep Roy (as an Egyptian military guy at a border crossing), Rainn Wilson and, of course, the return of John The Fucking Man Turturro half way through the film.

Oh and you know that scene in the trailer of Megan Fox bending over the bike? Yah. That bit. That’s pretty good too.

In the end, what makes the film work for me is the humour. It’s the laughs. The big problems with the film, again, are that the scenes with the boys fighting are hard to follow and likely to give you a headache. It’s like someone threw up on the screen, just crap everywhere. I can’t tell who is who, all I know is that the bad guys are chrome and the good guys have colour. That’s it.

Final notes:

The VMAX cinema at Chermside is very nice, all leather seats, mmmm.

By the way folks, don’t forget - if you are looking for an easy way to listen to the G’Day World archives (all 381 episodes!), and you’ve got iTunes installed, go to our page on iTunes. While you’re there, give the show a quick review!

“As the financial institutions we have come to rely on appear to topple under their own weight, it’s only natural that we rush to support them. These are the banks, investment groups, and insurance firms to which we have outsourced our savings, financing, and investing. They fund our businesses and lend most of our currency into existence. Were we just a bit more aware of how this dependency developed, however, as well as what it costs us in the long run, we might choose instead to exploit their temporary vulnerability toward very different ends. Indeed, if we had our wits about us, we would seek to put our biggest banks out of our misery, for good.”

"The failure of giant banking is less a crisis  than it is an opportunity to rediscover the long lost art of local commerce."

Download the manifesto.

Remember that this bank used to be owned by the Government until it was privatized by the ALP under Paul Keating.

Commonwealth Bank announced on 11 February 2009 a net profit after tax of $2,573 million for the half year ended 31 December 2008. This represents an increase of 9 percent on the prior comparative period.

However it has a Net Promoter Score of -40. MINUS 40! Companies obtain their Net Promoter Score by asking customers a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”Based on their responses, customers can be categorized into one of three groups: Promoters (9-10 rating), Passives (7-8 rating), and Detractors (0-6 rating). The percentage of Detractors is then subtracted from the percentage of Promoters to obtain a Net Promoter score.

According to the NPS site, “Banking had an average NPS of approximately 15%.”

Now, I’ve had a few people say “but their shareholders are happy”. Sure. For now. What’s important to understand, though, is the concept of “Good and Bad Profits” (as Jen Storey mentioned on last week’s banking show).

To quote again from the NPS site:

The right goal for a company is to deliver customer experiences of such high quality that customers recognize the value in the relationship and become Promoters. These Promoters generate good profits and fuel true growth. They become, in effect, part of a company’s marketing department, not only increasing their own purchases but also providing enthusiastic referrals.

By contrast, companies can boost short-term profits by exploiting customer relationships, raising prices when they can get away with it, or cutting back on services to save costs and boost margins. Those practices boost bad profits by extracting value from customers at the expense of loyalty, creating Detractors. Companies can not achieve long-term sustained growth on the basis of bad profits.

Which basically translates like this:

If you screw people over to make more money, it will catch up with you sooner or later.

Congratulations on the -40 score Commonwealth Bank. You must be really proud.

If all you know about Che is stuff you’ve picked up from US media, then take some time today to educate yourself about the other side of the Che story. I’ve added Jon Lee Anderson’s "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life" to my book recommendations.

I dare anyone to read that book, along with Che’s diaries, and still think this man was a violent, bloodthirsty dictator.

I’ve read them both (along with a few other books about Che) and it just doesn’t add up in my mind. Violent dictators rarely talk endlessly about social justice. Che (and Fidel too, for that matter) spent his life arguing eloquently for the need to equal rights for all people. He put his life on the line to fight for the rights of the poor people in Cuba and Bolivia.

If all he wanted was power (which is usually what motivates dictators), why leave Cuba at the height of his success to go into the jungles of Bolivia? It doesn’t make sense.

Compare Che’s words to the speeches and writing of Hitler or Stalin or even the last half dozen American Presidents and you’ll spot the difference.

And, if you can, watch Steven Soderbergh’s recent film about Che. I don’t think it’s out on DVD yet but I’ve seen Part One and it’s terrific.

We hate banks. (see my recent poll) It’s true. You know it. I know it. The only people who don’t seem to know it are the banks themselves. Although, I suspect they DO know it - they just don’t care. They’ve had an effective oligopoly for so long they think they can just say and do whatever they want and we’ll just sit here and take it.

Well I’m not taking it anymore. I’m going to do a series of shows exploring why we hate banks so much and what the alternatives are. We have a voice. Let’s use it to change things.

Today on the show I interview three people - Jen Storey from Online Banking Review, Mike Jarocki from Credit Card Finder, and Owen Davies, Group Manager, Corporate Affairs, Bendigo Bank, the bank that Aussies seem to actually like a bit.

Show sponsor:

People keep sending me links to articles about how time is an illusion and not a quality of the universe. Apparently that is the common view of physicists. Scientists prefer concepts such as warped space-time and whatnot. I won’t pretend to understand any of that. The point is that science doesn’t recognize time — in the way we understand it — as a quality of the universe.

Given that science can’t find evidence for either God or time, it takes a leap of faith to assume either one exists. Therefore, anything in our daily life that depends on either God or time is built on a foundation of faith and not science.

I’ve often thought that time is a property of memory. If you damaged the part of your brain that manages memory, to the hippocampus or surrounding cortices - say a combination of retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia - what would your experience of time likely be? If you couldn’t remember what happened five minutes ago - and you couldn’t use your memories to predict the future - wouldn’t your experience be just what’s happening right now? Strangely enough, this is what gurus have been telling us for a long, long time: "What’s wrong with right now?"

True for most marketing / PR /corporate people. Trent is quitting Twitter. Good. I hate celebrity twitterers anyway. I’ll be happy if they all follow Trent’s example.

I’m interviewing a range of people about banks, independent commentators as well as bank representatives.

This all started with a twtpoll I started last night about which bank is the least evil.

We all know that banks are one of the major causes of the Global Financial Crisis. It’s time we did something about them.

Here’s a list of information and twitter comments I’ve gathered while preparing for the show:

All of the major banks in Australia have MAJOR negative customer satisfaction scores.

Bank fees rose by 8% last year to nearly $12 billion

There is absolutely no reason for bank fees of any kind to exist. Banks borrow our money and charge us for the privilege. Banks already make a metric fuckton of money just by HAVING our hard earned savings in their possession. (@ryanbooker)

without the govt guarantee, i would not be depositing w bendigobank. Nice guys, crap risk management. (@bernardk)

Have found St George to be best bank I have used in AU but I still get best service from UK banks despite being here 15 yrs (@marksmithers)

all banks are evil! $12 billion made from penalty fees in 2008 (@jeremycabral)

In 1992, Melbourne businesswoman Yvonne Bornstein and her husband Daniel went to Russia on a business trip. They were kidnapped at the airport and tortured for 11 days in captivity while their captors held them for random. They were finally rescued in a joint operation by the FBI and the KGB. Yvonne joined me on G’Day World Live tonight to tell her story - what they went through and how she has dealt with it in the years since.

links:
Yvonne’ website.
Yvonne is on Twitter!
NYTimes article from 1992.
Melbourne Herald Sun article from 1992.
“Burned”, the novelization of her story, just released.

“Eleven Days Of Hell”, Yvonne’s book.

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Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in a cafe here in Brisbane, reading, thinking about how unlikely it was that Chrissy and I were both in Ajaccio at the same time last year. How, statistically, we should never have met. And then I started thinking about what lead me there… about all of the little events that happened over my life that put me in Ajaccio in July 2008. So I started to jot down this mindmap, tracing each event back in time to the event that had to happen, HAD TO HAPPEN, in order for me to end up in Ajaccio.

Listen to the podcast if you want to know more.

Are you a member of the TPN500?

 The Commission was set up in 2000 to conduct an inquiry into abuse of children in religious institutions in Ireland from 1936 - 1970.

According to one blog, the Catholic church is getting away almost entirely off the hook as a result of a Church-State deal:

In the closing days of the last Fianna Fail adminstration, a deal was rushed through which ‘indemnified’ the religious orders from any further financial responsibility than that agreed in the deal. This notorious Church-State deal, capped the contribution of the religious orders at €128 million (and only a fraction of that in hard cash), the religious orders claimed there had been no cover-up of abuse and no protection of abusers. We now discover from the Ryan report that this was a lie, and that several religious orders not only knew all about the abusers in their midst but concealed that knowledge from the rest of us.
It was a fantastic deal for the religious orders, and an absolute stinker for the people of Ireland, and most importantly of all a retrospectively studied insult to the victims .
The religious establishment here in Ireland , were in effect left well and truly off the hook, for a relatively small financial pay-out, most of which took the form of properties, which were in effect for various legal, and now, economic reasons unsaleable assets in any case.

Among the Commission’s conclusions:

• Sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions.

• It is impossible to determine the full extent of sexual abuse committed in boys’ schools. The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence. Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions.

• Cases of sexual abuse were managed with a view to minimising the risk of public disclosure and consequent damage to the institution and the Congregation. This policy resulted in the protection of the perpetrator. When lay people were discovered to have sexually abused, they were generally reported to the Gardai. When a member of a Congregation was found to be abusing, it was dealt with internally and was not reported to the Gardaí.

• The recidivist nature of sexual abuse was known to religious authorities.

• When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again. Permitting an offender to obtain dispensation from vows often enabled him to continue working as a lay teacher.

• Sexual abuse was known to religious authorities to be a persistent problem in male religious organisations throughout the relevant period.

• In general, male religious Congregations were not prepared to accept their responsibility for the sexual abuse that their members perpetrated.

• Older boys sexually abused younger boys and the system did not offer protection from bullying of this kind.

• Sexual abuse by members of religious Orders was seldom brought to the attention of the Department of Education by religious authorities because of a culture of silence about the issue.

And that’s just the sexual abuse. There was plenty of physical, psychological and emotional abuse as well.

According to the ABC, many of the Irish catholic priests who were the abusers were moved overseas to countries such as Australia.

When are the authorities going to do something serious about the Catholic Church and hold it accountable for its actions? I still maintain that in Australia it should be SHUT DOWN pending an independent commission into it’s crimes. It’s ridiculous to suggest this was something that only happened in Ireland. It is probable that the same conditions that lead to this kind of abuse in Ireland also existed in other countries, such as Australia. It has everything to do, I suspect, with the insanity inherent in  Catholicism itself.

Anyway, I was impressed with Obama’s speech… until… I watched it again the next day and I started to think about it from the perspective of the citizens of the Middle East and what THEY want to hear Obama say.

Anyone who has read anything about the history of USA - Middle East relations, knows that the reason people in the Middle East are angry about the USA has nothing to do with religious differences or even George Bush specifically. They are angry because for 60 years the USA has been interfering in their countries, overthrowing their governments and taking their natural resources and wealth at the point of a gun. The USA have supported Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the oppression of the Palestinian people. The USA have supported oppressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, and various African countries (eg Uganda) in return for access to the natural wealth of those countries while the citizens have remained in poverty.

None of this is news to people living in the Middle East. This is their history. This is their reality.

So if Obama genuinely wanted to "change" relations between the United States and the people living in the Middle East, he would have talked less about religious differences and said something more like:

"For the last 60 years, America has terrorized your countries, murdered your citizens and stolen your natural wealth. I am here to promise you that will never happen again and you no longer need to fear us."

Until the USA admits their past crimes and pays compensation to the victims, everything else is just blowing smoke.

It seems to me that Obama’s speech was targeted, not at the citizens of the Middle East, but at Americans who, after feeling ashamed (understandably) by Bush’s warmongering rhetoric, are just relieved not to be portrayed on the international stage as a bunch of neocons. Is this enough, though? I mean, I understand it, but if Americans want to be taken seriously on the international stage again, surely they need to be seen to be talking about the REAL ISSUES, not cosmetics?

Of course, most Americans haven’t read Chomsky or Pilger or Zinn or Monbiot or anything else written by critics of American policy (and I’m not talking about Democrat vs Republican which is just theatre distracting people from the real issues) so they don’t even understand what the real issues are. Most of them still don’t understand that the 9/11 attacks were RETRIBUTION and not terrorism. They were REVENGE for atrocities committed by Americans for decades against the people of the Middle East.

And, of course, most Americans have spent their entire lives being conditioned 24×7 by the American media, being told that they are the good guys, that even when they do wrong it’s an honest mistake made for the right reasons, that Americans are the saviours of the worlds (no wonder they think they’ve elected the messiah).

So few Americans can even begin to comprehend that their Presidential elections are a farce and that Obama is just another in a long line of candidates specially designed by PR professionals to appeal to a certain demographic. As I heard Bill Maher say on a recent show: "You don’t get to be President when you are 46 and black unless you have powerful friends in very high places who believe you will look after their interests. And so far all he’s done is look after the interests of his buddies he went to Harvard with, the American elite."

Obama is a Hollywood President. He looks good, sounds good, has a good backstory, he’s obviously smart, smooth, and can sell the sizzle. And after the Bush years, most Americans can’t get past the joy of the sizzle and ask "where’s the sausage?" They can’t even stand to hear criticism of Obama. Even Bill Maher gets booed on his show when he criticizes Obama.

Anywayyyy…. regarding the Cairo speech, apparently Noam Chomsky has the same concerns.

(via Geeky Gadgets)