The pcblues Show Transcripts

pcblues.com

This page contains transcripts of The pcblues Show.

Episode 1 - VideoBlog #1

Good evening. This video blog is brought to you by VB. Video Blog, or Victoria Bitter. You can get it making a movie. Carlton and United Brewery, if you're watching this, this is going to be a really, really famous show, and your beer is on it...

Maintaining continuity in a movie or a video clip is quite difficult. For example, you may have noticed a lapse in continuity already, namely, that the cooler has gone from this can of Victoria Bitter. So, I wanted to talk about a few different ideas that I've had over the years, and it's probably worth starting off with abortion... no, no, this is supposed to be humourous... terrorism... politics - though that's pretty boring... science... sport...

Do you ever wonder whether every living thing is connected to every other living thing? Do you ever wonder if there's a single source of life, and from it has come all other life. And, somehow, each person has become cut off from the source, and because of that, we think we are alone. We fight other people, we argue, we hate, we love, we like, we have relationships with other people around us as if we are individuals - as if we are islands - when, it might be possible that we're actually all connected to each other. And if that was true - if everybody believed that - would you kill another person because you disagreed with them? Would you hurt another person because you were hurting? Or, would you share everything that you had... help other people... It comes down as well to whether you consider the life that's in animals and plants is the same life that's in humans, because then you have the [ethical] question of killing animals for food... or if you want to get really extreme, [the ethics of] eating vegetables... I'm not sure about that one...

VB - the choice of the video blogger.

I was reading Plato the other day, and, Socrates talks about the ideal state - what constitutes an ideal republic where people would be most happy? And he talks for hours and hours and hours about building it up... that it should have... it should be run by people who are kind of kept like animals, but that's not really the point. But an interesting point was that he was an honest person to the point where he annoyed people with what he thought, to the point where he was put to death. He stood by what he believed, but he also said that it's important in the ideal state - and by state, he meant a republic - to... (what did he say?)... he said that an important part of the best possible state, is that the people believe in a mythology. And, then he went on to expound on the mythology about life and death and reincarnation.

And I thought that if you had to believe in something, then the best thing to believe in - and by belief I mean something that you can't actually prove scientifically, but something that gives hope, and purpose, and a sense of direction, and a moral compass... if you had to believe in something, it would be better to believe that all humans are connected, and not that there's infidels, and others that are not you, because that leads to trouble. And, we blame a lot of conflict in the world, at the moment, on religion, but it's not really that. It's really that most of the conflicts in the world are based on political differences and power struggles among the leaderships of different people. And, the leaders like to use religious beliefs as a way to encourage their followers to kill themselves in the name of their religion - but all they are really doing is furthering the political ends of the leaders.

But it would be really nice if a religion based on compassion, unity, maybe healthiness, [and] inclusion, was encouraged and allowed to [flourish] among all of the world's populations. But that religion would be Falun Gong, and for some reason, that seems to be incredibly threatening as a belief system. Unless people in Falun Gong are taking up arms and killing people, I find it unusual that from all accounts it looks like the Chinese Government is harvesting body parts from political dissidents including people in Falun Gong - to the point where the number of available transplant kidneys and livers from China per year has gone up since 1998 - depending on the body part - by anywhere up to 1000% or 2000%. So, where maybe 500 kidneys were sourced from China in 1998, something like 4000 kidneys were harvested last year.

The question is: Where did they come from? I suppose the infrastructure... the miracle of the Chinese economy... probably means that there [are] more hospitals that enable people to make these organs available. The concern is that the organs are being sourced from prisoners rather than from people that are passing away naturally. And of course, you know, this isn't proven, so I suppose, you know, we shouldn't really make any accusations of draw any conclusions about it.

If you need to get a liver transplant, it takes two years to find the right one in Australia, and about four weeks to get the right one from China, but by the same token, there are a lot of people in China, and therefore there would be a better chance of finding the correct match for your organs. So... it's in the news... well actually, it's not in the news. It's in the streets. People are handing out pamphlets about it, and a Canadian guy has done a report on it. But, we're probably still waiting for the definitive proof, and sometimes that kind of thing is hard to get from a country that doesn't allow much freedom of expression, particularly in the media. And also, because they are a rich and powerful country, it's in the interests of other countries to... not really accuse them of anything, unless the other country doesn't have a choice.

That's a quite often repeated policy for countries, for example, Australia and Indonesia... Australia doesn't really want to hassle Indonesia about human rights violations, especially since we're not very good at that ourselves, at the moment. Imprisoning people indefinitely who are trying to come into the country is not really an option morally for our country, but we do that. By "we," I mean our leadership.

You, see, in a democracy you vote every four years for, basically, a group of people that are going to be able to do what they want - if they have control of both the senate and the lower house - for the next four years. So it's not really a democracy in the sense that the people choose what happens in the country, or decides policy for the country. So when I say, "We are guilty of destroying the lives of refugees" - and I say refugees because these people have fled here from somewhere else -  I think that Australians shouldn't feel guilty about it. I mean, is the onus on us, as a people, to physically stop the government from doing inhumane things to fellow citizens of the world? And should a government have the right to stop it's people from forcing it to change it's policy?

The government is meant to be voted in by the people, for the people...

Anyway, that's enough for one night. This has been brought to you by VB, the video blogger's beer.

If you have any comments and suggestions... if you would like to get in touch with me to discuss any of the things we have talked about, to talk about your own ideas, or to just say "G'day!" you can log on to pcblues.com,  and there will be information on that page about how to get in touch with me. See ya!

Episode 2 - MetaShow

Welcome to the second episode of The pcblues Show. I was going to script it, and then I decided not to [in order] to try and keep it a little bit natural. Anyway, this time we're shooting inside the home. We're going for a colour of screen that is traditionally more useful for the purposes of possibly blue-screening, as opposed to "orange-screening" as we did in the last episode. Some viewer criticism - constructive criticism- from the last episode was that I rambled a little, and consequently the show was a little bit boring. I was told that I should have edited the last show so that it went a little bit quicker, and [that] that the pacing was better. I believe that that is not [being] true to expressing yourself properly in this format. So this show, even though I wanted to edit it (and I wanted to script it,) hasn't been "eithered."

So, here we go, episode 2, I hope you enjoy it, and I think this time, we might be able to get more explosions...

The things I want to talk about this time are ethereal beings. Are aliens the same as angels, [and] the same as ghosts, [and] the same as the things you see in the corner of your eye that might be previous relatives or ancestors or people that are helping you out - spiritual guides, or... what else are they... demons. All right.

I suppose the bigger question is: Is the beer talking? I don't know... maybe.

Something that you can use this video show for, is to google the terms that appear in it. For example, Andrew Denton's Enough Rope . That program was on television tonight. There was an interview with John Butler, of the John Butler Trio - a great musician, a man that consistently puts himself in scary situations in order to be true to himself. A real role model. It's a really good show. And there are books available of previous interviews that Andrew Denton has done with people. And, from the ones that I've read, I mean, the one's that I've seen, they're exciting. I mean, they're exciting from the viewpoint [that] it's really good to see the humanity of the people that he interviews. And he's very good at getting the human side of the people that he interviews to come out, and I really appreciate it when I see it. I've shed a few tears watching the show.

It's quite easy to shed tears watching good television. That might be worth exploring at a later time.

So, do a google search for John Hewson, who was an opposition leader in Australia. In case you hadn't realised that we're in Australia, that [a Victoria Bitter beer] might have been a giveaway... my accent might have been a giveaway. Anyway...

John Hewson was raised a baptist very strongly. He was taught to work really hard - to do the right thing at the expense of ... well, you know...
if your family perhaps were not as important as what you were doing... then perhaps it was OK to neglect them...

So he entered Australian politics and wasn't welcome in it, basically because he wasn't a junkyard dog and everybody knew it. So they all took a hit at him to try to destroy him because, I believe, that  the appearance of honesty in the Australian political scene is very threatening to the junkyard dogs who are there. And as a result of that, they do everything they can to destroy that person, just in case they become popular, because the Australian public actually really gets off on truth in politics. Anyway, he was demolished, on the basis of trying to introduce the GST - that got introduced about five years later, anyway. It was a good interview.

This is going to be a very brief show, basically because the point of this show - other than saying the things I wanted to say - is that I wanted to see if this bluescreen thing works, and if it does, I'll set aside a lot more time later for episode three to flesh out a few more ideas I want to flesh out. I'm still not sure if I should go the script way, or just ad-lib it again. Maybe you can let me know that, at pcblues.com . You'll find my email address there, in which case you can email me and tell me whether you think I should script the next show so that it's a little more structured and a little more interesting... or whether I should just ad-lib it. My personal feeling is that I should ad-lib it, and if you're prepared to sit through it, I'll get to the ideas that I find really important, and expound on them as time goes on. But it might be a little bit less structured that it would be otherwise. Ok. that's probably enough for tonight.

VB, thank you very much. How do they fit so much flavour in a can that's not internationally recognised?


Episode 3 - Lebanowned

Hello and welcome to episode three of The pcblues Show. Tonight I'm going talk a little bit about the Israel and Lebanon conflict, that's on at the moment- mostly because an aspect of it that was quite interesting was on Radio National recently - which is 621 on the AM dial for people who live in Australia, but if you go to www.abc.net.a/rn you will be able to find an incredible number of downloadable radio shows that I think are fantastic. Australian taxpayers pay for it, [and] the Australia Government complains about it being biased against the government which probably means it's fulfulling it's role as an independent broadcaster.

Anyway, there was a show on the other night, and it was about a Palestinian Christian, who had been involved in religious exchanges on the border of Israel and Gaza - or Israel and the West Bank... one of the two -  and Jews and Christians and Muslims are living together peacefully with tolerance and comprise, and not trying to kill each other. And I just thought that was really important to know, because there are people out there, regardless of what the leadership of countries say, that really are more interested in getting along and not killing each other. It's really important that a political solution is found to problems where more than one country feels that it owns the land that everybody's living on.

Blowing people's bodies apart with weapons is pretty "old-school" in terms of finding solutions to political problems. It would be really really good if one day political problems - which are basically the sovereign rights of nations to exploit the people around them, and to exist without people trying to destroy them or their people... it would be really good if political solutions could be found over a table, perhaps over food, or some music...

I had this idea few years ago that there should be religious exchanges where somebody from one religion gets invited into the home of somebody from another religion (and vice versa.) I think they might have unsuccessfully tried to do it on Fox television with "Wife-Swap." But that aside, if a particular religion say that they are the only religion and they are the only truth, and another religion says that they are the only religion and they're the only truth, and never the twain shall meet, then it's probably more important to find a political solution to that kind of problem than a religious one. Anyway that's all I'm saying...

So have a good night, and I'll see you again soon. And pcblues.com is the website if you want to find out how to get in touch with me. Drop me a line and say, "Hi."

Episode 4 - Disengagement

Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of The pcblues Show. The pcblues Show can be found at pcblues.com on the internet. Or you can find it... no, it's just on the internet for now. It may one day become a printed magazine. It may become a book. Or, it may even become letters written with a stone on the walls inside a cell, depending on how our country goes with protecting its citizens freedoms.

Tonight, I'd like to talk about disengagement of people from their communities, from their families, from their friends, and in particular from politics and the general running of their communities, their cities, their states, their countries, and the worlds that they live in.

Some people complain about people becoming disengaged from the process of politics, and by that they mean no longer contributing to the decision making processes, be that making a meaningful vote or presenting their desires to their political representative, whether that's at local government level, the state government level, or the federal government level. They're the different government levels in Australia, but likewise there's probably a similar heirarchy of places in the country that you live in that you can make representations [to] for the purposes of getting policies [implemented] that are in your interests. For example, if you think that your country shouldn't have a free trade agreement with another country, when the name of the agreement is complete b******* - when you actually look at the outcome of the agreement. Or, consider that [a] free trade agreement between two countries is really just like special favouring between two countries, so that the idea of global free trade is being undermined by the people who are epousing it in the first place.

You can actually do something about that other than b**** about it. You can get in touch with your representatives, you can write letters, you can join a group, you can let people know what you think, perhaps by putting a show on the internet, or spruiking you values down at the pub. Anyway, there's a lot of different things you can do to become "engaged" with people who are in positions to actually make things happen in the world around you.

Without actually getting really involved with the process of government, you can support groups that already do that. In a country like Australia where a lot of people have a lot of disposable income, a small portion of your income could be set aside to be a member of, say,  Amnesty International . Amnesty International work really hard to secure the freedom of people who are imprisoned or tortured for political reasons. So that basically means that [the political prisoners] are organising or trying to form an organisation that's in opposition to a regime that's in power over a particular country. Or, [the political prisoners] are trying to raise awareness about indecent acts that a particular government is conducting, and in doing so, the government has unfairly imprisoned them, tortured them, or just made the "disappear,"  which has become a verb that's used in the human rights movements to describe a person that has just gone missing, because they were considered a threat to the power of a particular party or government.

Amnesty Internation are pretty good in terms of [being] an organisation that tries to achieve political ends with non-violent means. That's something I'm quite interested in, and that's why I'm a member of them. You can also make a monthly contribution, and they will use that money as best they can to help that sort of thing.

Another group is someone like Greenpeace, or there might be an environmental conservation group that may have aims that match - that are aligned - with your beliefs and the things that you would like to see happen in the world. [Donating money] is just a way of making a difference with very little effort.

Another thing that made me think about [donating money] was that I wonder how much of my tax money is collected by the government and spent on projects and things that I really strongly disagree with. I understand that in a democracy you vote once every few years to put people in power, and those people then consider themselves to have a mandate to whatever the f*** they like, because they've been voted in. Not everybody agrees with everything that they do, but when 70% of the country's people is disagreeing with something that the government is suggesting they do, then there's a possibility that it might not be in the "interests of the people." It might actually be a good time to listen to the "people's will," instead of lying your way to the next election victory. Anyway, that's by the by...

I wonder how much my tax is spent on fighting in Iraq, using violence to achieve a political end, spending money on killing and imprisoning people instead of helping them, and perhaps finding out the causes of their grievances. I wonder how much of my money is being spent on that compared to the amount of my money that I spend voluntarily on helping other people. Or how much of my [tax] money is spent on policies that I like - that I agree with. It would be good to be able to measure that.

I'm reading a book by John Pilger called "Freedom Next Time." John Pilger is a journalist who exposed a lot of what has happened in Cambodia and Vietnam. This book is partly about what happened to the Chagosians. [Chagos] was a British colony in the Indian Ocean. You may have heard of Diego Garcia, an "uninhabited" island which has a US armed forces base on it. It used to have two thousand people living on it who had been there for a couple of centuries, but they got moved off and the British government kind of lied to the United Nations, and top the world about it, because they had actually secretly sold the island to the US to use as a base so that they could maintain greater control over the Indian Ocean.

That's one story that's in the book. I'm just reading a chapter at the moment about what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. It's such a good example of how violence breeds violence. The techniques that they are using against Palestinians now are little different to what was used against them in the Second World War. And any criticism of the policies and humanitarian crimes, and disgusting acts against innocent people - punishing entire communities for the crimes of one person - state-sponsored terrorism, essentially. This kind of thing really upsets me, I suppose, and motivates me to do something about it. I'm not exactly sure what, yet.

The book's really good, but I've never read a book like it, that has made me feel this way about some of the issues.

Talking on this sort of [issue,] the whole "Us versus Them" attitude that is portrayed in the media, [and] by government - like when our prime minister says, "We'll decide who comes into the country and who doesn't"...  I think this whole idea of "Us versus Them" - Christians and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and whoever, and the racism that goes along with that - it's just something that we need to get past. I mean, for you not to believe that a person living in Palestine under abominable conditions in a refugee camp - destitute and not allowed past checkpoints to get medical attention (military Israeli checkpoints)... you know that's another human, that's another person. And a person in a detention centre in Nauru or in Baxter or Villawood or anywhere around Australia - regardless of the country the come from - they're humans as well.

People get described with words. We've been taught to treat people as less than human - to think about people as less than human - who our government is at war with, and who our government wants to do bad things to, in the national interest. The only way that soldiers can kill other people is to think of them as something less than human - as, you know, "g****" or "sand n******." But they're humans, and killing people to acheive peace - unless you're defending yourself from attack - is actually an international crime. I don't know how governments get away with it.

Anyway, these things will be written about in the future. They are currently being written about already. You may want to have a look at "Iraq Aflame" which was a book which somebody talked about on Late Night Live one time.

Acts, government acts, that are shameful, shouldn't be brushed under the carpet. And a people shouldn't feel guilty for acts that their government has done to people, unless they just stood by and watched it happen. And if they were powerless to do anything about it, then fine. But if you could do something about it, then  - I don't know - in some way you may be complicit. But, other than that, I'm not sure if you should really be [held] responsible.

Either way, stories of national shame should not be brushed aside, they should be remembered. And they should be remembered regularly, and the government should be reminded that they can't do bad things, knowing that [their acts are] just going to disappear, and that [their acts are] just going to go away.

Quoting  a countries shameful history is not incitement to violence. It's a decent act aimed at protecting a country's people - or the world's people - from having these kinds of atrocities visited on them again. That's not inciting people to be violent- that's trying to protect people from government.

There's a certain amount of personal responsibility that should be taken, I think, but of course it's up to anybody exactly what they want to do, or how much they want to get involved. One thing I feel a little responsible for is how the fumes from my exhaust affect the environment, so something I can do about that is - aside from driving less and using a bike more - there is a group called GreenFleet  and what they do is, if you make an annual donation, they will plant enough trees [to offset your car's exhaust for one year.] It's a bit symbolic, but if enough people do things like this, the world will become a better place, for the future. They plant enough trees to offset the amount of carbon dioxide that your car produces, and it's one way of achieving balance.

A couple of other ideas I wanted to talk about are [firstly] whether providing for your family is a legitimate excuse for selling your soul to the devil - by "selling your soul to the devil" I mean doing things in the course of your work that are morally corrupt, but you do it because you have to put food on the table. And it's easy to justify it by saying that you are doing it for your family, but would you still do it if you were on your own? I'll have plenty of time to deal with that moral dilemma since I'm engaged now.

The other question is, "Does a man need a tribe of men to feel like a man, or to be a man?" This was something told to me a while back, but I'm not 100% sure I want to be part of a tribe that isn't all inclusive of everyone on the face of the earth.

Anyway, on that, I hope you enjoyed the show. Wake up if you have fallen asleep, but you probably just turned it off. There will be more information and contact information on pcblues.com . Drop into the website, drop me a line, and let me know what you think. And until next time, peace be with you, everybody. Bye.