What you need to know: China tricking Africa? (Dvorak)
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John C Dvorak has a great blog post about a how a new ‘win-win’ deal the Chinese have done with the Democratic Republic of Congo could cause untold problems for the country. The deal (originally reported by the BBC) is to swap the Congo’s resources (needed by China) for much needed infrastructure. The deal, however, has numerous loopholes, such as the fact that the Chinese don’t have to pay any taxes until they complete the building work, and as Dvorak says “Any bets that they get started on the mining before the 32 hospitals?”
For more, check out the must read article here and the original BBC article and report here, please decide for yourself.
Dvorak will be discussing it on his podcast with Adam Curry ‘No Agenda’ later today, you can download that from here or on iTunes here (both free).
Earth Day: Dove’s Deforestation Dedication
Unilever make many a product that you or I know, like Dove toiletries, Flora and Becal butters, Pot Noodle and Persil laundry detergent. But did you know that all these products contain palm oil? Palm oil is widely blamed for the deforestation occuring in third world countries, devastating our environment and lining the pockets of big business who as you can see, use it in almost any and all products. As it’s earth day I thought I’d bring this to the attention of my many readers, please watch the video below.
Will Smith: I am Scientologist
Apologies for my Apple Display rumour mongering, it did turn out nobody much cared, even when I tried to push it on some forums, so I’ll have to try harder to find a better story next time… anyway I thought it was important to inform you of some news concerning one of a lot of people’s favourite actors…
Yep, you got it, Will Smith is now a Scientologist, I found this out to my shock on the Colbert Report…
All I can say is everything I’ve heard about scientology is bad, so this can’t be good. As a bonus, here’s South Park’s summary of what Scientologists actually believe.
By the way, I did the poster, and I’m not so keen on Will Smith anymore.
Every time you buy a Dell, a baby seal dies.
![jitcrunch[1]](http://darrangange.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/windowslivewritereverytimeyoubuyadellababysealdies-124a2jitcrunch1-23.jpg)
That was a T-Shirt design by Fake Steve Jobs, (AKA Dan Lyons). I’m a great fan of his, and the past week he stole Christmas. Well, Christmas headlines at least, when he went out of character to show just how Apple isn’t always the goody two shoes company most fans take it for.
Apple recently paid Think Secret (an old Apple rumour site) good money to shut up and shut down, nobody much cared because (to quote RoughlyDrafted magazine) "ThinkSecret’s RSS feed has served as essentially a time delayed version of AppleInsider". Lyons, a wouldbe full time fiction author, only in journalism for the money, thought this would be a prime opportunity for him to jump out of character, and write a little drama for himself. Apple was going to shut him down.
Each of these were told as out of character, and fooled many news sites, or at least were covered, here are the posts in order of posting.
I’m weighing an offer from Apple
So now Apple is all pissed off
God bless you for your support and later…
I’m feeling a little bit better now
Breakfast with an Apple Lawyer
Still the finest Christmas song ever
The first six of these are the story, and it’s refreshing to see someone take an entirely different point of view on the crisis, away from the usual comedy of FSJ, a heart tugging tale reminding us all that Apple, lawyers and Steve Jobs, can be pure evil sometimes too.
Dan Lyons, obviously as architect of the tale, comes out heroic, blasting Apple for using Ghandi when shutting down people’s freedom to speak, just isn’t what Ghandi would do.
Still it’s worth a read, and anything that caused the real Steve Jobs to email back to whining users, and me to make an image mocking it, has got to be worth it, right?
Unfortunately, as Dan wrote in his latest post. It’s not really a joke, is it?
I hate to say it but…
Hitler got it right.
No I’m not advocating the holocaust, but it is a little known fact but Hitler was a vegetarian, from the age of 22 to when he died he was a vegetarian, he made a few slip ups by the sound of it, but Hitler is known to have been against the killing of animals and wanted “a continent without slaughterhouses.” – bare in mind that statement means he would have to take over Europe first (which is bad), but well you get the picture.
Hitler said, “One may regret living at a period when it’s impossible to form an idea of the shape the world of the future will assume. But there’s one thing I can predict to eaters of meat: the world of the future will be vegetarian.” - I actually agree with this.
Food writer Bee Wilson writes that Hitler’s diet was “free of flesh,” describing that his strict vegetarian regime and notes, “It amused him to spoil carnivorous guests’ appetites… As they put their forks down in disgust, he would harangue them for hypocrisy. ‘That shows how cowardly people are,’ he would say. ‘They can’t face doing certain horrible things themselves, but they enjoy the benefits without a pang of conscience.’”
Now of course, Hitler is the hypocrite here with all the terrible things he eventually did, but he himself is the eternal enigma, I mean did he really agree with everything he was doing? Perhaps he was surrounded by people who made him believe the way he eventually believed… maybe the explanation is simple that Hitler was insane, but I must say, when it came to his moral stance on food, I agree. I don’t plan on using him as the example I use to sell people on vegetarianism though.
To read more of the stuff I quoted, go to Wikipedia – Vegetariansm of Adolf Hitler
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America Reshuffled
Well well well, finally some moves on the American frontier, a move to democratic government, that’s good. Donald Rumsfeld resigned, that’s also good, hopefully this means war in Iran is very unlikely, Syria too, fingers crossed. I don’t think Fox News will be happy but do they really matter? Not really. George Bush resigned, that’s excellent, oop, not quite oh well.
Back to home, my mate got his license about 4 weeks ago, and his mini 2 weeks ago, and well, 1 week ago he crashed his mini on a corner, “d’oh!” well he’s fine, but the mini it’s touch and go, we all sencerly hope “Daisy” will make a full recovery, but we’ll have to wait and see. Updates will be provided here as always on Darran24.
Heck thats a good name for a blog, don’t you think?
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