/ 12 February 2004

Educating the masses

There’s an awful lot of rubbish in the media about ‘pirates’ of software, films and music. The old line about any lie will be believed as long as it’s repeated for long enough seems to be true in the case of anti-piracy advocates. We’ve all seen and read the PR releases and watched bulldozers crunching confiscated movies and games on TV news, as companies desperately try to make the pirating of products appear to be akin to real-world crime.

Remember the laughable campaigns about home taping killing local music? Yeah, right. The truth is something else entirely. I ran across this great article on Warez (pirated software) which put across the actual reality of pirating in a way that ought to open your eyes and change your thinking. Read Got warez? 20 Years of file sharing

Other media is starting to pick up on previous week’s item about the rapid change in climate which spells the end for the UK. Have a read of The Ice Age Cometh.

So you’re a chemistry student writing an exam, and you decide the hell with it: Time to put the sort of answers you’d like to see, as opposed to ‘the right ones’. Take a close look at this genuine chemistry exam paper where cats, penguins and other things play an increasingly surreal role. The Chemistry Exam Paper.

‘Stuff your science teacher will get irritated at’ time. Apropos of absolutely nothing, except perhaps my own urge to be a digital version of Charles Fort (look him up if you don’t know the name), here’s a rather strange event which happened over in China recently. Birds falling from the sky.

Now let’s stay with education for a moment, (seeing as the Minister for Education has committed statistical, ethical and intellectual fraud). As any statician can tell you, the idea that entire schools and provinces pass-rates can ‘improve’ by huge percentage points in four years or less is statistically impossible. What this means is that now there’s an entire generation of essentially uneducated school-leavers, shortly to begin a life of crime or begging at traffic lights for change, or ruining the economy by being slid into jobs they’re completely unequipped for. So here’s a link showing my thoughts on the Education Department and the ‘Minister’ responsible for this fraud which is going to impact on our society — and can someone show this to them, to teach them all something. Five Fellatio Tips. (Yes I am calling them that)

A while back, you may recall, there were submissions for the post of the head of the SABC. I thought briefly of suggesting myself, given that I’ve actually made some money over the years from applied creativity. But naturally the candidates for the job turned into a long list of boring academics and otherwise unqualified people who happened to throw a rock or two during the Apartheid years – hardly a reason for letting them loose on our national broadcaster. (Yes, if I’d applied and got the job, suddenly there’d be no religious programmes, TV soaps, Idols competitions or tacky talk shows — just a steady stream of Hong Kong action flicks, horror movies, documentaries, and of course daily late night hardcore pornography, not the offensive soft-core ‘hairy-man-butt-action’ which only e-TV might think is erotic. That rant aside, now that the Blair government has shown its fascist roots by attacking the BBC, the post for head of the BBC is up for grabs. Have a look at one very tongue-in-cheek but hopeful man’s webpage, putting himself forward as a candidate for the job of the head of the BBC: Brian For The Beeb!.

To get a sense of what has been happening in the UK and why the whole Hutton Inquiry is important, take a thoughtful read through The destruction of the BBC.

Then to see the blatant lying and rewriting of history that both Bush and Blair are now using to convince the majority of people that what they said is purely the result of ‘bad intelligence’, read Blair’s WMD statements.

The rogue terrorist state known as Zimbabwe, which we’re propping up, supporting and thus destroying our remaining credibility in the process with, is beginning to be covered accurately in mainstream media. Take a read of this opinion from The Telegraph UK, indicating why the ANC needs to pull the rug out from beneath Zimbabawe now. Read We must stop Mugabe.

The White House continues in damage control mode, desperately trying to avoid the clear pointing finger of responsibility for 911, as well as the fake ‘war on terror’ which has killed more US soldiers thus far than in the first three years of Vietnam. So the PR spin on multiple fronts is as desperate as the last months of Nixon, but without Tricky Dicky’s drawing up of Enemies lists and assigning ‘plumbers’ to ransack and bug critics homes and offices (at least, that we know of). Read Bush to 911 families: ‘Enough already’.

Condaleeza Rice, who lied on the record about no one knowing that airplanes might ever be used in a terrorist attack is running scared. The 911 Commission has been fighting nonstop with the current White House who have been deliberately hiding, blocking and delaying the release of crucial documents since the Commission finally began. Condi Rice (who once had an oil tanker named after her), whom you might have seen on a recent Oprah show trying to sell herself as a ‘woman of the people’, has been wriggling around trying to avoid any public and under oath cross-questioning by the 911 Commission. Read this report from The Observer.

And to demonstrate the wriggling in action at the moment – read WMD Commission’s report due 5 months after election.

Then, Esquire magazine looked to do a piece on the White House, and someone must have thought it would be a nice fluffy, non-reality based interview, and allowed it. They were wrong. First read the background to the story which Esquire ran, at The background to the article. For the fascinating look behind the scenes at the current White House, read Mrs Hughes takes her leave.

Here’s a story which the US media didn’t cover it all. The US military as apologized for targeting and launching a rocket attack on a family who were out having a picnic, killing a child in the process. You’d think US media would notice this story, but they didn’t. Read US apologizes for picnic death.

Here’s another glimpse of the ongoing descent by the US into some kind of Orwellian police state. A new bill is about to authorize the ’embedding’ of CIA agents into local US police departments, countrywide. Embedded CIA agents.

Gear change. There’s a new film coming directed by Mel Gibson called The Passion about this Jesus Christ person (who apparently has something of a following), and it’s been causing layer upon layer of upset. Mostly by Zionist lobby groups and front organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) who have been instrumental in having Gibson remove a line which is a direct quote from the Bible. You may recall the line about Ciaphas saying to the Roman authorities “Let his blood be on us and on our children”.

Well, yes, this has been used to justify anti-semitism in the past, but it’s still incredibly funny and totally surreal that Zionist pressure groups have managed to make history and cause the censoring of the Bible (and thus alter the accurate, precise Word Of God, assuming you buy into this religion thing in the first place) The whole ongoing propping-up of occupied Palestine and demonizing Arabs in general by US media and Hollywood is an uneasy task for the Americans at times, and this little spat casts an interesting spotlight on the forces dedicated to making sure the money keeps rolling into the only country in the Middle East with genuine WMD, acting in contravention of various UN resolutions.

For what it’s worth, the film is apparently really good. Start by reading this review by a Christains support Mel Gibson. And read this review from the Radio Daily News: Nothing in my existence could have prepared me. Then watch or download the trailer of The Passion. And read The Observer‘s Who killed Christ?.

Finally, just to provide lots of interesting bits of history that mostly aren’t in the books you used at school, take a look at this excellent BBC site where those who survived WW2 can write about their experiences. Go to World War 2 — People’s War.

Until the next time, if teachers or Israeli settlers don’t get me.