It looks like the moderators at Wikipedia aren’t sure whether or not the #Occupy protests are significant enough to allow into its hallowed halls.

I would imagine that if the protests are getting mainstream media coverage (as even the smallish Brisbane protest received yesterday) then it would be significant enough for Wikipedia.

Australia’s most impressive media entrepreneur, Julian Assange, explains how Wikileaks works and provides some insight into recent events, in this recent interview with Wired’s Chris Anderson at TED.

Assange is trying to use the internet to change the world. He is what Peter Ellyard would call a “Future Maker”. I’m constantly motived and inspired by Julian’s quietly bold approach to tackle world governments and corporations. He’s spot on in this interview when he says a good approach to figuring out what the most important news is, is to discover what corporations and governments are spending a lot of effort and money to keep secret.

Recently I’ve been reading ridiculous suggestions that Wikileaks is a “honey trap” for whistleblowers. The idea seems to be that Wikileaks gets potential whistleblowers to come forward, and then they are arrested, Manning’s recent arrest is taken as being a sign that something is rotten in Denmark. The only problem with this scenario is that stuff is being leaked. It would be seem a bit of a stretch to think the establishment are allowing their dirty laundry to get exposed in an effort to create a temptation for potential whistleblowers to come forwards. As Julian says at the beginning of the video, Wikileaks has released more leaks in the last couple of years than the rest of the world media COMBINED.

Why? Because you don’t need all that shit. Really. You don’t.

(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.

A few days ago I had a chance to chat with Jon Dee, founder of Planet Ark and the new Do Something! initiative, about his life and goals. We talked about everything from his involvement in Rock Aid Armenia (where he pulled together a list of top Brit Rockers to perform a charity concert and record a new version of Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” to raise funds for earthquake victims in Armenia) to deciding, with friend Aussie tennis pro Pat Cash, to start Planet Ark, and his new venture Do Something!, which aims to create positive social and environmental change.

Here’s the version of Smoke On The Water that Jon produced back in 1992!

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Dr Philip Nitschke, PhD, MBBS, BSc (Hons) is the Founder and Director of Exit International, the world’s leading Voluntary Euthanasia and end-of-life choices information and advocacy organisation.

A few days after recording this interview, Philip and his wife were detained at London’s Heathrow airport for nine hours and denied access to a lawyer. During the interview he mentioned spending more time in the UK – after this week’s experience, he is reconsidering.

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:

My guest today is Mara Bun, CEO of Green Cross Australia. According to their site:

Green Cross Australia is a new national NGO that works on the frontline of climate change: the human dimension. We anticipate and resolve conflicts over natural resources that put our environment at risk, and we foster sustainable partnerships between business, government and the community. We prepare communities for environmental impacts in Australia and overseas. This ranges from the impact of fires, floods and environmental disasters on Australian cities to the mass displacement of populations due to rising sea levels.

Pretty topical, with the floods in QLD and the fires in VIC. Mara talks about her background (which is an interesting story) and the vision of Green Cross.

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Today is my 2nd last day in Seattle. I’ve had an awesome time. I’ll have to tell you about it sometime. There’s a few podcasts I’ve shot while I’m here that I’ll get out asap. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a couple of thoughts about fund raising.

Obviously the USA is crazy about their Presidential elections at the moment and most, if not all, of the people I’ve met in Seattle are rooting for Obama. When I ask them who is funding Obama they tell me the same thing – he’s raised his money over the Internet from ordinary Americans!! It’s amazing!! The triumph of the little people over the politics!!

When I ask them how they know this to be true, they give me a strange look at tell me OBAMA SAYS IT’S TRUE! Oh well, of course.

My next question is usually “so how much did you give him?” and they usually answer “ummm nothing”. So who are these people who are funding Obama?

According to Kenneth Timmerman, who writes for the ultra-right-wing site Newsmax, Obama doesn’t need to disclose the names of people who donate less than $200.

Timmerman writes:

Campaigns are not required to disclose contributors who donate less than $200 — and Obama’s campaign refuses to release their names, addresses, and donation amounts. Obama has collected a staggering $603.2 million. Most of the money — $543.3 million — has come from individual contributors, half of it from “small” donors Obama won’t disclose.

So who are these people? How do we know that they aren’t big corporations – or non-US governments – who are making millions of small donations via credit cards over the internet?

Timmerman claims there is some strangeness about Obama’s donations. since Oct 14, the following people have donated:

OJ Simpson
Daffy Duck
Bart Simpson
Family Guy
King Kong
and
jkbkj Hbkjb

Timmerman’s source claims he made donations using several of these names and a disposable credit card. If Obama’s team aren’t picking up and rejecting fake names to ensure that 1) the person is real and 2) the person hasn’t donated more than the maximum amount of $2,300, then the system is open to fraud and manipulation.

Yet most Americans I talk to believe the Hollywood answer, that Obama is getting his funding from millions of small donations from believers.

Don’t get me wrong – I hope they are right and I am wrong. I hope I’m just being cynical. But there are questions here which the Obama campaign should be forced to answer.

The other great fund raising story I’ve heard lately is The Atheist Bus Campaign which launched Tuesday October 21 2008 in the UK. They hoped to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across London for four weeks with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” They overshot their goal. They have currently raised over £111,000!

For some months now I’ve been planning to move TPN over to a donation-based system. We’ll be asking out audience to contribute some funds to help cover our running costs. Wouldn’t you rather have media that doesn’t rely on corporate sponsorship or government funding? I guess we’ll see over the next few months how much people value TPN’s content.

From the Center for Media and Democracy:

Today, we struck a blow against propaganda, and for transparency and accountability.

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.

Today my guests is Donnie Maclurcan, Executive Director of Project Australia, a national organisation helping people launch ideas that seek to create positive social change within communities.

Donnie tells me how the idea came together, how it all works, and what they are trying to do. He’s a terrific example of someone who has taken the bit between his teeth and is putting action behind the dream of a better country.

If you’re wondering about the new intro music, it’s Dies Irae from Mozart’s REQUIEM, a favourite of mine. The lyrics actually come from an old Catholic hymn which starts off:

Dies iræ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla!

Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets’ warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!

I love the piece of music (one of my dreams has always been to put together an annual live performance of it) and the lyrics are kind of fitting, don’t you think?

A list of all G’Day World episodes here!

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I did a show yesterday on China’s censorship and human rights record. A few people have told me that in Australia, we can say what we like and do what we like. Really?

Why is KRUDD spending $60 million on Internet censorship?

Why did a Gold Coast teenager get arrested and charged for wearing a “blasphemous” t-shirt?

Why was Haneef held without charge for 12 days?

Why was Dr Phillip Nitschke’s book on assisted suicide banned?

Why were two Islamic books banned?

China has censorship. Australia has censorship. Ours may be less strict and more sophisticated, but if you want to argue against the principle of censorship, let’s fight it at home first. I’ll be there with you. Let’s just avoid the mass hysteria and hypocrisy of criticizing easy targets when we have similar laws at home. That’s just the way the mass media and governments deflect attention from what is happening in our own backyards.

Australia has laws about what and can’t be said. So does China. And China isn’t going to change until the people of China was it to and do something about it en masse.

If Australia REALLY wants to protest China’s human rights record, let’s boycott the Olympics. We could also stop selling them coal but I suspect economic sanctions hurt innocent civilians more than the people in power. However let’s stop censorship at home first, then perhaps we’ll be in a position to critique other countries.

No guest today, just a bit of a chat about:

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.

If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!

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The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.

I was just preparing to record a show on Ezra Pound, perhaps the most influential poet of the 20th century, when I came across this site, which used to carry copies of some of Pound’s best works.

On the site, you can read this recent announcement:

Canto I
by: Ezra Pound

Copyright law was designed to be a temporary monopoly on ideas granted to artists because we felt it would encourage them to enrich our lives with their creations.

This page used to have a very nice poem. However, we just received the email reproduced below from the agents of the estate of Ezra Pound. It seems that the poem is still in copyright, and they would prefer that it remain a salable commodity item, instead of becoming part of our culture. Sometime in the middle of the century, if Ezra Pound is still relevant to your life, you can make “Canto I” part of it.

If however, you think that copyright law has been hijacked by dirt bag lawyers and no longer serves the public interest, you might throw a few dollars at the EFF and let them know that you support their efforts to bring it back under control. But frankly, the lawyers of the copyright barons are much better funded, and will probably just keep turning the screws until “intellectual property” monopolies last forever, and your kids just assume that ideas have always been owned.

Pound died in 1972. Apparently his poems are now dead also. A shame. And to think he was once imprisoned and thrown into an asylum in the U.S. for being a fascist. Oh the irony. The poem I was going to read was written in 1920.

Read the lawyer’s letter here.

On November 24 I went down to the Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne to capture some video of “Buy Nothing Day”.

Download for iPod / iTunes / Quicktime.

Watch as the protesters get harassed by street cleaners in the employ of THE MAN!

Soundtrack is NEW MUSIC by the one and only PUBLIC ENEMY

from “Rebirth Of A Nation”
by Public Enemy Featuring Paris
Guerrilla Funk Recordings

• Download “Pump The Music, Pump The Sound” (mp3)
  Download “Can’t Hold Us Back” (mp3)

Some quotes to think about…

So by the end, they (MSNBC) were ordering us, if we booked one guest that was anti-war, we had to book two that were pro-war. If we booked two guests on the left, we had to have three on the right. At one meeting a producer suggested booking Michael Moore and she was told for ideological balance she would need three right-wingers. It became more of a nightmare, as the war got closer; and then we all got terminated three weeks before the invasion was launched, and it was purely political.

- Jeff Cohen, noted US TV media critic

“You can educate the people about what is happening in the world, but you can’t ever go to impose a will which is not their own,”

- Venezuelan-U.S. Attorney, Eva Golinger, author of new book, Bush vs. Chavez: Washington’s War Against Venezuela (Monte Avila Editores, 2006, Caracas).

Q. How has Microsoft Australia demonstrated that it is innovative?

A. Microsoft Australia values innovation very highly both internally and also in terms of our engagement in the local economy. ….. ……..
Another good example has been the joint venture that Microsoft sponsored with PBL to create the start-up company NineMSN which has been an innovative and successful new company in Australia.

.. Microsoft Australia CEO Steve Vamos. My spies at Microsoft Australia don’t agree with that statement. I keep getting told that most of the innovative people have left the company in the last few years and that the company is getting more and more like IBM every day. NineMSN is an example of innovation? Jamming together Australia’s biggest media giant with the world’s largest software company nine years ago?

Steve also mentioned Victoria.Net which (I believe) was the idea of one of my old managers, David Sajfar. Great idea for bringing together Microsoft’s developers in the local market but… cmon… it’s a portal. Those two things were Steve’s top examples of local Microsoft innovation? A nine-year old JV with Packer and a portal? Sheesh. Buy Google stock.

To celebrate the TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF G’DAY WORLD this month I’m introducing the new new format. Helping me out today is my good good buddy Shane Williamson and his crapola microphone.

Shownotes:

Male chimps like a bit of MILF. – link

The concept of the “jolt” from Kalle Lasn’s book “Culture Jam”. – link

“Most Iraqis wish Saddam would be back in power now that they lived out the hardships of the occupation. The Americans did nothing but loot our oil and kill our people.” – link

fringâ„¢ uses your existing mobile internet data plan to make peer-to-peer VoIP calls, send instant messages and communicate with PC based VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk, at no extra cost. – link

BACKGROUND TRACK:

Download “Somptin Happnin’” (mp3)
from “Polymorphic Convolutions”
by Various Artists
Electronic Soundscapes

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Buy at eMusic
• Buy at Napster

MUSIC TRACK:

Download “Keep It To The Side” (mp3)
from “Hall of Justus: Soldiers of Fortune”
by Hall Of Justus
Hall Of Justus/ABB Records

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Buy at eMusic
• Buy at Napster
• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody

For those of you in Melbourne town, I’ll be taking my video camera down to the Bourke Street Mall on Nov 24 to cover “Buy Nothing Day“. Why not come along and join in the merriment?

According to Wikipedia:
Buy Nothing Day is an informal day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by the Canadian Adbusters magazine. Participants refrain from purchasing anything for 24 hours in a concentrated display of consumer power. The event is intended to raise awareness of what some see as the wasteful consumption habits of First World countries.

There’s a detailed explanation of the idea from our friends across the Tasman. Here’s an excerpt:
Why don’t you want people to shop?
We are saying we want people to think about what they buy, and whether consuming ever-more actually does increase quality of life. The effects of over-consumption on the environment (such as toxic pollution and climate change) are widely known. These mean we need to reduce consumption, especially in many Western countries like New Zealand that are consuming much more than their fair share of resources. We are also concerned with the role of advertising, the effects of global trade liberalisation and inequities between the developing and developed worlds.

Events:
The Melbourne Culture Jammers will be back in the Bourke Street Mall, cutting up credit cards. Join us. 11am-2pm, Friday November 24th.

Kalle Lasn talks about using TV commercials to disrupt the propaganda of corporations who are propagating dangerous memes. This famous TV commercial featuring Yul Brynner helped change the attitudes people had towards smoking cigarettes.

Accordng to Wikipedia:

Brynner died on October 10, 1985 (the same day as Orson Welles and my 15th birthday) in New York City at the age of 65. The cause of death was lung cancer brought on by smoking. Throughout his life, Brynner was always seen with a cigarette in his hand. In January 1985, nine months before his death, he gave an interview on Good Morning America, expressing his desire to make an anti-smoking commercial. A clip from that interview was made into just such a commercial by the American Cancer Society, and released after his death, which includes the warning “Now that I’m gone, I tell you, don’t smoke.”