Thank you Google

While visiting my cousins in Toronto back in 1995, they informed me that while they thought they had the best government in the world, they did not like the fact that their socialist democratic leaders had so much (collected) information on their citizens.

I remember thinking at the time that this was a good problem to have if your government was well, good. I actually did not see or experience anything during my lengthy stay there, which gave me any indication that the Canadian government was anything but good.

Fast forward 20 years, this is a kind of problem very few people in South Africa would like to have, considering that our current government is nowhere near good. In fact they’re leaning toward despotism. But I digress…

Google released their latest Transparency Report recently which shows that the South African government requested user data from them on 18 different occasions over a one and a half-year period, and they (Google) refused every single one. The requests also include the removal of content (presumably of a politically embarrassing or compromising nature) uploaded by users (citizens), from Google platforms.

Google 1, South African Government 0, Citizens WIN.

It’s extremely reassuring that Google upholds the values of freedom of speech, but whenever this government gets shown the finger, I find it personally satisfying.

So there you go, you prying kleptocratic fucks. I hope Google continues to give you what you deserve. Nothing!

Victory for Irreverence

The Charlie Hebdo weekly normally has a print run of around 60 000 copies. This week they planned to publish 3 million copies following the brutal slaying of 12 of its staff by religious fundamentalists. Instead, such was the demand, 5 million copies will be distributed.

If these idiots thought they were appeasing their God by wanting people who value free speech to be eliminated, they sure didn’t count on how badly such bigoted ideology would blow up in their faces. Spectacularly so. Indeed, instead of 60 000 people having access to some irreverence, now 5 million and certainly more will be laughing their heads off to the silliness of religious narrow-mindedness and intolerance.

Fundamentalists of all stripes need to know that those who wish to free their minds from mental slavery will not be swayed by random shootings, bombing of buildings, suicide bombings using ten-year old girls, kidnapping of young women and children, hacking to death of villagers, imprisoning and whipping of atheist bloggers, issuing of fatwas, killing pro-abortion doctors, demonstrating against and demonizing homosexuality, destruction of ancient monuments, banning women from driving, forbidding snowmen from being built, removing “erotic” cosmetics from shelves, beheading of journalists, banning of medication, building of creationist museums and subjecting young minds to creationist rubbish in schools, and the delusional rants of clerics, priests and holy men.

The list of atrocities, depravity and irrationality perpetrated in the name of religious and other ideology is far too numerous to mention. What is more abundant however, is the sheer will to carry on the fight against this evil by far too many people – people who recognize that the desire for freedom is much stronger than the desire for servitude to Gods and Devils.

Mankind will triumph, because we are more powerful than Gods and Devils. We created them after all.

Zuma’s zizi

I’m pretty certain that news of the well hung painting in the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg by artist Brett Murray of President Jacob Zuma, is spreading like wildfire and causing great consternation and anger in certain circles.

Well that’s to be expected, but beyond the issue of freedom of speech which this whole episode has evoked [yet again], is the deep-seated anger that resides in an artist who was inspired to depict the President in a manner that is shocking, but yet speaks of an alarming truth about the political nature and moral character of the man, that many South Africans share.

Art is meant to elicit strong emotional responses; shock being a prized reaction. This particular work titled The Spear very effectively portrays the foreboding that is playing on the minds of many disgruntled South Africans at the moment.

Opinion is divided on this issue, with liberals generally agreeing that it should stay hung, citing freedom of speech as the determinant, to genuine Zuma-haters buzzing with absolute glee [and who could blame them] and the conservative types expressing shock and disgust. I imagine that there are some who are unsure about this one, but nobody takes fence-sitters seriously. By and large freedom of speech is winning.

However one of government’s spin doctors waxed disingenuously about rights and dignity and other claptrap, saying that the painting:

…perpetuates a shocking new culture by some sections of the artistic world, of using vulgar methods of communicating about leading figures in the country, including especially the president.

But Mac Maharaj, who’s been known to lose his foot in his mouth on more than a few occasions, is clearly forgetting the shocking culture of rampant corruption, incompetence, arrogance and bigotry that his government, represented by Jacob Zuma, perpetuates with gay abandon since coming into power.

Yes Mac, we hear you, but please go hang yourself next to the painting of your master.

zizi, French for penis.

Red Bull gives you… “wingnuts”

Image via Wikipedia

They’re at it again. Will these wingnuts never learn that the parochial views of a minority of the population cannot be used to hold the majority to ransom?

In the most recent in a long list of attacks on the freedom of speech, Red Bull has been forced to pull an advert from television which supposedly mocks their faith. In a population in excess of 20 million adults, less than 1000 complaints seemed to do the trick. Go figure!

Errol Naidoo, director of the Family Policy Institute (otherwise known as the Self-appointed Guardians of Morality), offered up a typical response* from that side of the fence:

The advert is meant to offend as it depicts the Jesus character in the cartoon using the name of Jesus as a curse word

Red Bull wouldn’t dream of mocking religious figures of other religions. Christianity and Jesus in particular are singled out for mockery by secular humanists and other anti-Christian bigots

FPI is launching a nationwide boycott of Red Bull products in response to this blasphemous attack on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh please Errol, fly off that high horse of yours, drink some Red Bull and learn to laugh. It’s called satire.The advert was designed to sell a product, not mock your religion. Your religion does a bang-up job of attracting derision all by itself; Red Bull couldn’t hope to compete with that.

Every time these bigots try to draw attention to their imagined plight by forcing banning and censorship, they actually wind up creating more publicity for that which they attack. Here is the advert which has been uploaded to YouTube, for the more broad-minded people out there:

* Another response from Chantell in the comments column of the article: “I have told many people that did not even see the ad about the mockery, they immediatly said they wont buy red bull again!” Sound familiar? Yes, that’s typically what the religious do – believe what they’re told.

Apartheid Resurrected

Apartheid is dead! Long live apartheid!

 

 

Sounds corny, right? But if you’re living in South Africa in these turbulent times, that

prospect is very real, very terrifying. Who could have imagined apartheid being resurrected by the very people who took it down less than twenty years ago.

It took less than two decades for the liberators to figure out that apartheid was perhaps not so bad after all. It could in fact be quite useful if:

1. Almost every member of your political organization has his or her hands in the nation’s cooky jar and you needed to make sure when caught, that they’re free from prosecution
2. Those same members have a pathological tendency to be arrogant, and habitually, if hysterically, shoot themselves in the foot when caught out
3. You need to silence the press who have this rather annoying habit of exposing the rampant corruption, laziness, incompetence, arrogance, nepotism, and sheer stupidity of the members of your political organization on a daily, even hourly basis
4. You need to satiate your unbelievable greed and love of bling, by either raiding the treasury or setting up elaborate kick-back schemes that are designed to enrich friends, family, sycophants and possible back-stabbers
5. You have a repressed hatred of White people who you still blame for the original apartheid
6. You want to rule until Jesus returns

That’s half a dozen reasons I can think of, off the top of my head.

But here’s the events that are unfolding right now in South Africa which lends credence to the need to revive apartheid:

1. The Protection of Information Bill [POIB] introduced by this organization is to be put to the vote before Parliament tomorrow, 21 November. Its passing in the National Assembly is assured because this organization makes up the majority in government. This Bill seeks to muzzle the press and the citizens of this country by ensuring that government’s sordid activities can be blanketed in a shroud of secrecy. This Bill seeks to kill free speech.
2. The Presidential spokesperson has just laid criminal charges against a major newspaper and two of its reporters for having the temerity to expose some of his dodgy dealings in the arms scandal that occurred some years ago. If anything raises alarm bells about POIB, this one act will make your ears ring.
3. The so-called youth wing [ANCYL] of this organization, a morose bunch of unemployable, arrogant, disrespectful misfits, seem hell-bent on turning the country into an economic dung-heap by demanding that businesses that keep the economy going, be nationalised and handed over to them to be sucked dry and land be expropriated Zimbabwe style to realise the revolutionary’s dream of being a landowner. These same morons idolize the fallen dictator Gaddafi, very publicly.
4. Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, a stalwart of the anti-apartheid movement speaks out strongly against the direction being adopted by this organization: “The corrupt practices and nepotism that they [politicians] allow themselves is exposed if we have freedom of expression. When we all voted together, which was a great moment in my life, [we thought] everything would be alright. That was a childish idea.”
5. Meanwhile, the President of this organization and the country, has very little to say about these matters, but seems to be pre-occupied building an extravagant Hitler-style bunker on his estate.

Yes folks, apartheid is once again all the rage in South Africa.

The truth is not out there…

People of South Africa,

Your President wants you to believe the following:

The executive, as elected officials, have the sole discretion to decide policies for government.
This means that once government has decided on appropriate policies, the judiciary cannot, when striking down legislation or parts thereof on the basis of illegality, raise that as an opportunity to change the policies.

Do not believe him or his rotten political party. They are pressing ahead to enforce a despicable piece of legislation known as the Protection of Information Bill (POIB) which coupled with the Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT), will make wholesale theft from you the people legal, and a crime for you to complain about it. And they don’t want the judiciary to interfere by throwing the constitution at them.

That’s what it boils down to in its most basic form.

Do not allow them to continue to steal from you with impunity as they are doing right now.

Fight them with everything you have. It’s your right…

A week after the elections…

The Times Online, February 02, 2010

Politics in South Africa is back to normal. We’re going to miss the run-up to the elections when the assholes in the contending political parties tried to be nice to us for a few weeks.

Now that the vote has been secured, it’s back to the same petty squabbling, deceit and plain stupidity one has come to expect routinely from the swine of the earth – our glorious self-serving politicians.

Admittedly I haven’t heard too much from the Democratic Alliance (DA), but they’re no doubt busy behind the scenes savouring the gains they have made and plottting their next moves. No so however with the African National Congress (ANC).

They’ve been quite vocal. From the idiot former mayor in the Eastern Cape who urged his followers to burn down a local newspaper and drive opposition voters into the sea for allegedly supporting the DA, to  ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe disingenuously claiming that the leader of their Youth League, Julius Malema lost them some votes. Then we had President Jacob Zuma calling for an enquiry into the running of a Municipality by the DA prior to the elections and which they had retained control of after the elections. Off course the DA cried foul, calling it a political stunt, and perhaps they have a point because it’s practically unheard off for the ANC to call for investigations into anything, particularly since the ANC are alleged to be involved in major financial irregularities in practically every local council they have under their control.

Meanwhile minor political parties and independents who won a few seats, began the rather unsavory job of prostituting themselves by getting into the bed of the heavy-weights, mainly the ANC. The ANC off course lost no time in securing these liaisons because they’ve become quite adept at sleeping with anybody and anything that furthers their self-serving nature.

But all of these events pale in comparison to the ANC’s threat to stymie further debate on the Secrecy Bill, more formally known as the Protection of Information Bill (POIB), and hasten it through Parliament. Their intent is obviously to use their majority to pass the Bill, thus stifling freedom of speech which they hope will accord them the protections to continue with the raiding of the treasury among other more dastardly deeds.

Now that the sweet smiles from government that greeted us during the elections have turned into ugly fangs, it’s time to resume our vigilance and bring out the anti-venom.

Right 2 Know

The campaign to prevent the South African government from trampling on our basic freedoms through the imposition of odious legislation, is gaining momentum.

Make your opposition to the Protection of Information Bill and the Media Appeals Tribunal, known. Join the Right 2 Know campaign here.

These are just some of the individual signatories:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nadine Gordimer, Prof Kader Asmal, Zakes Mda, Prof. Max Price, Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Zackie Achmat, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Mary Burton, Mazibuko K Jara, Prof Hoosen Coovadia, Max Du Preez, Andre Brink, Pippa Green, Breyten Breytenbach, Cathi Albertyn, Rhoda Khadalie and Andrew Feinstein

For more international and local Organizations who have added their voice to Right 2 Know, click here. Add your signature not because they have; add it because it’s the right thing to do.

A note to the eedyerts in power

Recently I’ve heard South Africa’s political form of government being referred to as a kleptocracy and even an idiocracy. But as the treasury is being raided to enrich a small minority who hold the reins of power, while proposing idiotic laws which are meant to curtail freedom of speech, these two terms will remain pertinent.

It’s therefore time to remind the klepto-idiots in power what DEMOCRACY really means. The simplest definition I can find is as follows:

government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system

However it goes beyond that.  A few other characteristics of democracy are:

• All citizens are equal before the law [those who are politically connected are not more equal than others, as is currently the case]
• The freedom of all citizens are protected by a constitution [whatever happened to ours which was described as a model constitution?]
• The use of checks and balances through legislation ensures that there is no accumulation of power [why are those in power not satisfied with even a two-thirds majority?]
• Freedom of political expression, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press are essential so that everyone is informed [why are those in power proposing laws that will curtail these freedoms?]
• It goes without saying that civil liberties and human rights are sacrosanct [is this really the case in South Africa where certain individuals in power, not only are more right than others, but enjoy more rights than others]

It’s really simple; you just have to go back to the basics, which you seem to have abandoned in the mad rush to pig out at the trough. Try it; it will be good to feel human again.

While putting this piece together, I stumbled upon a marvellous blog called By The People at America.gov. Please take the time to watch some short videos  by young people from countries such as Nepal, Ethiopia, Spain, Indonesia and Colombia, which convey their idea of democracy, on the blog post titled What Do You Think Democracy Is? The one from Farbod Khoshtinat from Iran is particularly good and relevent to my message above.

Religious and Political Tyranny Against Press Freedom

I wonder how many people realized that today, 03 May 2010 was World Press Freedom Day. I remember catching a glance at an article about it in an online journal, over the weekend, but did not bother to investigate, until tonight.

The article that caught my attention referred to an organization which champions press freedom, known as Reporters Without Borders; an organization I had not heard of before. As an ardent advocate of free speech and freedom of the press, I consider myself suitably chastised for my ignorance.

Today they released a list of 40 predators of the press; people and organizations that routinely stifle press freedom by means of censorship, harassment, imprisonment, and even kidnapping, torture and murder of journalists. The most startling feature of this list is that it is made up almost entirely of political and religious leaders. More disturbing however is that one religion in particular features very strongly; in fact almost exclusively.

There are also some interesting demographics, with the Middle East (near and far) having by far the most number of freedom-hating dirt-bags on the list, followed closely behind by Africa. Then comes the Far East and China, Central America, Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Here is the full list, filtered from the Reporters Sans Frontieres website in no order of significance:

Middle Eastern (including former Soviet Union)

1. Afghanistan – Mullah Mohammad Omar
2. Saudi Arabia – Abdallah ibn Al-Saud
3. Azerbaijan – Ilham Aliev
4. Iran – Ali Khamenei
5. Iran – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
6. Israel – Israel Defence Forces
7. Kazakhstan – Nursultan Nazarbayev
8. Uzbekistan – Islam Karimov
9. Palestinian territories – Armed wing of Hamas
10. Palestinian territories – The Palestinian Authority’s security forces
11. Turkmenistan – Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov
12. Yemen – Ali Abdallah Saleh
13. Syria – Bashar Al-Assad

Africa

1. Swaziland – King Mswati III
2. Zimbabwe – Robert Mugabe
3. Rwanda – Paul Kagame
4. Equatorial Guinea – Teodoro Obiang Nguema
5. Nigeria – Ogbonna Onovo
6. Gambia – Yahya Jammeh
7. Somalia – Al-Shabaab and Hizb-Al-Islam
8. Eritrea – Issaias Afeworki
9. Libya – Muammar Gaddafi
10. Tunisia – Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali

Far East, China and Sub Continent

1. Burma – Than Shwe
2. China – Hu Jintao
3. North Korea – Kim Jong-il
4. Laos – Choummaly Sayasone
5. Nepal – Nepalese armed groups
6. Philippines – Private militias
7. Sri Lanka – Gotabhaya Rajapakse
8. Vietnam – Nong Duc Manh

Central America, Mexico and Caribbean

1. Colombia – FARC
2. Colombia – “Black Eagles”
3. Cuba – Raúl Castro
4. Mexico – Sinaloa, Gulf and Juárez cartels

Europe

1. Belarus – Alexander Lukashenko
2. Spain – ETA
3. Italy – Organized crime
4. Russia – Ramzan Kadyrov
5. Russia – Vladimir Putin

So, there you have a collection of truly despicable human beings and organizations. The Reporters Sans Frontieres website has a write-up on each of these stains on humanity, and I advise reading about each one of them.

On a slightly less depressing note, South Africa has tried valiantly to produce a press-fiend in the shape of Julius Malema, but I think he does have some way to go to match this infamous list. He’s more a source of comedy than villainy.