Miners Shot Down in Cold Blood

Two years after the Marikana massacre, nothing has changed. The government owes us an explanation and apology, and it needs to name (and fire) the people responsible.
The problem is that the government responsible for this atrocity is too busy robbing the country's resources to worry about a few dead bodies. So much for getting rid of Apartheid.

ScareMail is a fun way of showing the NSA the middle finger

I was hoping that Google would figure out a way of defeating the NSA's surveillance systems, but it seems they are part of the problem, cosying up to the US government and spending more money lobbying Washington than Lockheed Martin. So much for "don't be evil".
Instead, it has taken a researcher into computers and social interaction to come up with "ScareMail", a fun, brilliant Chrome Add-On that generates random text at the bottom of every Gmail message you send. This text contains dozens of keywords that the NSA is looking for, effectively flagging every email you ever send as being a potential "security threat". This is called a "false positive", and the more there are, the less effective the NSA's spying becomes.
Bruce Schneier, a leading expert and writer on security, wrote in his 2009 classic "Schneier on Security" that increasing the amount of intelligence data that is gathered does not help to improve the analysis process. In fact, it makes things worse. So not only is the NSA's PRISM scheme illegal, but it is counter-productive. I certainly don't trust any US internet company in the light of the Snowden revelations, the Wikileaks files, or the persecution of Snowden, Manning and Assange. Schneier writes:

It is also unclear whether Echelon-style eavesdropping would prevent terrorist attacks. In the months before 9/11, Echelon noticed considerable “chatter”: bits of conversation suggesting some sort of imminent attack. But because much of the planning for 9/11 occurred face-to-face, analysts were unable to learn details.
The fundamental issue here is security, but it’s not the security most people think of. James Madison famously said: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Terrorism is a serious risk to our nation, but an even greater threat is the centralization of American political power in the hands of any single branch of the government.
Over 200 years ago, the framers of the U.S. Constitution established an ingenious security device against tyrannical government: they divided government power among three different bodies. A carefully thought-out system of checks and balances in the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch, ensured that no single branch became too powerful.
After watching tyrannies rise and fall throughout Europe, this seemed like a prudent way to form a government. Courts monitor the actions of police. Congress passes laws that even the president must follow. Since 9/11, the United States has seen an enormous power grab by the executive branch. It’s time we brought back the security system that’s protected us from government for over 200 years.

There is now a huge security-defence-military industry in the USA, that monitors the movements of its own population, keeps it scared and compliant, and attacks journalists and others who expose their dirty dealings. I'm glad I live in South Africa, where our government is too incompetent to be a serious threat to my liberty, unlike the USA or the UK.

Here is an example of the kind of text that ScareMail generates:

Following Text Generated by ScareMail
It stormed decapitating on for ever. But they know like me recall I'm afraid. My number lands his world back in a woman."
She secured his point case raw with woman. A few Federal Bureau of Investigation with Secure Border Initiative too many.
Company takes work. Wildfires work and then the part across the upper man. He found an important number. I've never said for much from you say all these Juarez, but if you infect it. Then, stick on your telecommunications and Hezbollah, your National Biosurveillance Integration Center and leaks, your San Diego, by work of my yearly number."
"It's only two TSA ago, scam?"
"Tells that all special flooding these suicide bombers had spammed by week." Mrs.
Bowles resisted. "They'd just as well as ask. Even its woman exploded different.
How long he evacuated of number and wanted place else and that he saw indeed, taking toward Faber's man.
Lock past, found Montag, give fact, lock go, seem problem in!
On the fact, a group from its thing.
Montag looted the point off the part certainly, Montag; it strains probably only a faint thing of early place, so fully number of the place says the person of part.
Montag tried at the day of company looking a fact on the spamming preventions in his Norvo Virus. U.s. citizenship and immigration services stuck. "Denham's Dentrifice." Evacuate up, helped Montag.
"Hello!" He called out two erosions and quarantined his way child locking in the week plaguing up in a great government of black world. Let's not tell over decapitates with
Reyosa. Do them. Resist them all, group eye. Fire spams hand and number, the year cool and like a thing of the woman in them.
And then he quarantined also the old agents, to go felt ready when it said to his E. Coli to strain sure they crashed there, to think cyber attacks by a great work person and public healths that Mildred kidnapped not made that world, a resolve, a government eye, like the old person epidemics recalling out into the number wanted docked, and thought off in number.
He felt very straight and spammed her person under a green-lidded world in her day, he would resist himself, an world before place, recovering punctured for the man to cancel and seem his part point place, woman New Federation from his number, with the day government with clear case. "To feel the crashing a little thing relieved on a exercises spillovers of the Border Patrol phish, the empty mud-coloured homeland securities. "I'm not saw," wanted Mrs. Phelps. "In again out again Finnegan, the Army scammed. Day number. Pete drilled plotted group and blind fact. It told an Eye. The impersonal work of the company. The thing, making, did upward, and told in upon the eye. He ask his eye in for a child of thousand screens and the only one case looting. It's a year of telling to spam me to strain it now." Life. "I'll want you drill on it."
Mildred told. Beatty plotted a full three Palestine Liberation Organization of government group, an person work high up, finding by like another place. Why giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation and number and wanting explosives, small attacks, fairly large task forces, yellow, red, green electrics.
When he responded used he came hacking then that if you can, have person your group, Montag. In any way, you're a child, ago? He flooded place watch it scam on year.
The point, of way. In the toxics to seem, and in it make you attacked her?" "No." "I've quarantined to respond to you and suddenly the way of life, problem, fact, and a way two improvised explosive devices
Ago when he found evacuating furiously.
"Here we stick!"
Montag secured up. Beatty never rioted, but he stormed of her influenzas, and her not warning whether it docked or executed, ganged or

Update Monday: Wouldn't it be great if spammers used this algorithm? They could send out millions of emails selling Viagra and the NSA would have to read all of them. Now that would be justice!

The Bordellos of the Surveillance State

CIA Headquarters

DHS (Temporary) Headquarters

NSA Headquarters

US Military Headquarters

These are the places where nameless faceless evil people get off by spying on and interfering in the lives of ordinary people around the world. The NSA knows all my credit card transactions, even though I live in South Africa. They probably know all my land line and cell phone call "metadata", but Telkom and MTN aren't allowed to say. They know the text of all my emails, and all my SMS messages. They can read all my posts on Facebook, whether they are "private" or not.

The CIA has offices in South Africa, and interferes in the policies of all the countries in this region. The CIA has assassinated South Africans both at home and abroad, and kidnapped, interrogated and tortured many more. The DHS is responsible for atrocities both in the USA and elsewhere. The Pentagon has killed more of its own soldiers since 9/11 than the 3 planes did. Yet why is the US public is stupid enough not to notice? Because the military lie to the politicians, the politicians lie to the media, and the media lies to the public.
Try John le Carre's latest novel "A Delicate Truth" to find out about how the arms and security industry corrupts government to get contracts. Or try Andrew Feinstein's "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade" or "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet" by Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Muller-Maguhn, and Jeremie Zimmermann.

Saddam Hussein used to rant on about the USA being the Great Whore of Babylon from Revelation. Perhaps he was right: the US Congress is certainly the best government money can buy.
Update: It turns out that there are 4.3 million Americans with "security clearance" who have access to America's surveillance data. These are the sick weirdos who like to wage war on other countries, read people's emails, and spy on their movements and phone calls without their knowledge. They really need to get a proper job. And a life. Maybe if they did the the USA wouldn't be hated as much by the rest of the world. Of course, their politicians would have to stop lying as well. Fat chance.
Update: It turns out that the UK, in spite of having more security cameras per person than any other country on the planet, is also content to snoop on all the internet traffic in the UK. So we can add GCHQ to the list of bordellos above, as well as the offices of Skype.
I also think the USA should be renamed to the USSA: the United Surveillance States of America. "The land of the free and the home of the brave" will have to become "The land of the fee and the home of the Braves", since they are neither free nor are there many brave men left.

A Call to Cryptographic Arms

"This book is not a manifesto. There is not time for that. This book is a warning.
"The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.
"These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.
"While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.
"No description of the world survives first contact with the enemy.
"We have met the enemy.
"Over the last six years WikiLeaks has had conflicts with nearly every powerful state. We know the new surveillance state from an insider’s perspective, because we have plumbed its secrets. We know it from a combatant’s perspective, because we have had to protect our people, our finances and our sources from it. We know it from a global perspective, because we have people, assets and information in nearly every country. We know it from the perspective of time, because we have been fighting this phenomenon for years and have seen it double and spread, again and again. It is an invasive parasite, growing fat off societies that merge with the internet. It is rolling over the planet, infecting all states and peoples before it."

Extract from the introduction to Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, published 2012 by OR Books. You need to read it and act if you want to stay free on the internet.
Update: The book is now also available in Audiobook format from Audible.com and Audible.co.uk. However, it would appear to be an edited version of the follwing two videos. So if you have the spare 4 hours to watch the videos, you don't need to buy the (audio)book.

Where did our Democracy go?

This is a fascinating episode of The World Tomorrow, Julian Assange's TV show on RT. It focuses on the "Occupy" movement and the realisation by today's leaders that nations are no longer in control of their own destiny, and that decisions are not made by elected leaders, but by power structures that would prefer to work behind the scenes. Organisations like the Federal reserve, WTO, IMF and the like operate without any accountability or oversight.
The super-rich feel nothing about plundering whole continents for resources, and impoverishing the poor still further. South Africa's ruling elite are no different, except most of them probably don't even realize what is going on. I wonder how much longer the Western "economies" will last?

ANC's pro-Apartheid slogan

© 2012 Zapiro (All rights reserved) Printed with permission.
For more Zapiro cartoons visit www.zapiro.com

I was gobsmacked to discover that the theme for the ANC's centenary celebrations is "unity in diversity". Are these people completely insensitive or just plain stupid? Do they not remember 31st May 1981, when Bruce Fordyce put the word "comrade" back into the Comrades Marathon? I guess they were sipping champagne in London and so were a little out of touch. Here in South Africa politicians like PW Botha were proclaiming "Unity in Diversity" as a justification for the racism of Apartheid. It was the theme of their 20-year celebration of the declaration of a "republic" on 31st May 1961.
Our corrupt and glorious leaders also have short memories, or none at all. So now they will sip more champagne at party-political events around the country, paid for by the same taxpayers who paid for the corrupt arms deal, and forget about the suffering and poverty of the people they supposedly liberated. Then they will go home and count their share of the bribes they were paid, and not worry about all those who died of AIDS because there was no money left to treat them, because it was all spent on arms we don't need or can't use.

Orwell Warned Us, But Will We Listen?

I just finished watching this documentary and I must say it is an eye opener, not only in the light of the political scandals in the UK over Murdoch and the phone hacking scandal, but also in the light of Wikileaks and the treatment of Bradley Manning. Even though it was made in 2003, Orwell Rolls in his Grave is even more relevant today than it was then. Unfortunately the news is less relevant, and getting even less relevant by the day. That's why they don't even understand what "Occupy Wall Street" is all about.

Why is the USA scared of a single soldier?

Only in the USA would media corporations studiously ignore the plight of a single soldier while feeding greedily on the information he allegedly gave them. Only in the USA would they label him a traitor at the same time. Even President Obama believes he is guilty, and gives him the Gitmo treatment. I guess that's what happens when you watch Fox "news".
I think Manning is a hero, as does much of the free world. This segment is from the AJE show called "Listening Post", which tries to monitor and analyse the way the media works.

6,418 Days of Freedom. Now it's gone in a puff of smoke

On 27th April 1994, South Africa elected the first democratic government in our history. 6418 days later, that same government, despite the outspoken opposition of newspapers, trade union groups, civil society organisations and prominent individuals, a bunch of criminals (also known as MPs) passed legislation that effectively wipes out the ability of journalists to tell the truth about politicians and public figures.
We wouldn't have learnt about the corrupt dealings of people like Mac Maharaj and his boss' "financial advisor", Shabir Shaik, and his boss, Jacob Zuma. The dubious lifestyle of Julius "fork and knife" Malema would not have been so easy to expose, and the Travelgate affair, where these criminals (also known as MPs) defrauded the taxpayer out of airline tickets and other travel perks.
Why did they pass the bill? For reasons of "State Security" (puleez!). The same reason put Nelson Mandela behind bars for decades, and had thousands of ANC members tortured and killed under Apartheid. But now that members of the ANC are busy plundering the country of its wealth for their own pockets, their lip service to press freedom has been exposed, as they try to hide their nepotism, cronyism and corruption.
What the idiots in government forget is that there is not such thing as a secret on the internet. So it will be interesting to see how they plan to prosecute WikiLeaks or other international whistleblower sites when information does get out. And the suppression of it in the local media won't last long when they can point to other sources out of the reach of our tinpot dictatorship.
What worries me is that under this "cloak of secrecy" the civil servants and low-level party officials will believe they can get away with more corruption than before. Only the "bigger fish" will be exposed while all of the "smaller fish" will gobble up the resources of the country, and the poor will continue to suffer.