Achim

Life is what happens while you are making other plans. Enjoy the ride!

[Achim @MihcaW]

@MTNza Why are you deducting more airtime value than the advertised price when purchasing data bundles using USSD based self service?

[Nick Hudson @NickHudsonCT]

You may have heard that Vietnam is closing millions of bank accounts. This is tightly connected to its new (2024) chip-embedded digital ID and to biometric recognition compliance. Although accounts are being “erased”, there do seem to be some protections for residual balances.

Vietnam has quite weak protections over privacy and prevention of state intervention in purchase decisions. It can be characterized as being potentially closer to the very restrictive model of China than to, say, the EU or South Africa, for the time being.

In South Africa, moves towards a Central Bank Digital Currency have gone quite far and with scant media coverage. There is plenty of vagueness in the “Digital Payments Roadmap” that really shouldn’t be there in light of our constitution. How intrusive it might be in terms of state or South African Reserve Bank (SARB) access to private information and control over expenditure is vague enough to be of major concern, in particular given the murky control structure of the SARB and the extent to which our banking system complies with “soft regulation”—impositions of the opaquely controlled Bank of International Settlements, for example.

What is also concerning is that the public comment window closed in April and there is no sign of it re-opening.

Key design decisions that have immense bearing on citizens’ rights are being evaluated as part of “Project Khokha”.

Awareness is key, and I hope that people will scratch enough to satisfy themselves that what I say is accurate and put this information into the mix with influencers, politicians and journalists who might not be up to speed on it.

Keep an eye out for that comment window opening too. I see a Constitutional Court challenge coming, and you can be sure that opposition to it will be well funded by “interested parties” who are neither domestic nor at all aligned with the interests of citizens.

https://t.co/ZZYN2dstu3

[Gary Conway @gazcon]

Five minutes ago we were told that shutting down the entire country and locking everyone in their home was worth it if it saved just one life.

Now, in one week, the same people have said it's progress for women to kill late term babies and for Doctors to kill the inconvenient.

[Dr Pran Yoganathan @pran_dr]

America, dear America, you make me weep. You are the richest nation in the world, yet your people are some of the poorest. They suffer the worst health outcomes despite your overblown two tiered health system. You speak of innovations to help disease, but you lie don’t you? You are innovating balms to soothe an open would that festers. When it heals, you plunge a dagger back into that very wound. America, you exported your farming didn’t you? You irrevocable changed the systems of food. America, why do you allow the rise of diseases that you created? America, you also exported your version of love, through the medium of Hollywood, a mere shadow of true love. Many of the homeless that lie in your streets at night with fentanyl in their veins are some of your bravest souls that went to war for your imperial government. Your monetary system is the tentacles of the Kraken, it grips all our countries tightly. You didn’t start off like this, the ideals of some of your forefathers had promise. You had the potential to create utopia, you still do…..

[Mattias Desmet @DesmetMattias]

Dear friends,
A so-called 'false flag' operation is coming to light at a record pace. The media initially wanted us to believe that 'the Russians' blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Anyone with any ability to critically distance themselves raised an eyebrow. The Russians blow up that pipeline to prevent themselves from transporting their own gas to Europe?
Besides the many other strange creases and twists in the story, the next question immediately arose: why don’t the Russians simply turn off their gas tap instead of blowing up a pipeline at the bottom of the sea?
And the same goes for a whole range of other elements in the Ukraine story. You don’t have to be a genius to also raise an eyebrow at the story about the blown-up dam over the Dnipro River.
It is not because a line of thought is completely absurd that people will not blindly follow it. Propagandists know this all too well. All you need is a horde of unprincipled journalists, an army of thoughtless fact-checkers, and a lonely, exhausted population.
As Steve Aernouts wrote on my Facebook page: ‘When top journalist and former Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh argued a few months after the incident, through a CIA insider, that Russia was not to blame, the man was dismissed as some kind of idiot by all the media.’ Regardless of how solid both the logic and the relationship to the facts of Hersh’s story were, society chose to go along with the completely absurd story spread through the mainstream media.
To quote Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject for a totalitarian regime is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but someone for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exists.”
Propaganda works, stunningly well. And we can only conclude: the media apparatus, once conceived as the societal organ that must continually give birth to the Truth in society, has largely been absorbed by the propaganda apparatus.
***
A few days ago, the media story about the Nord Stream pipeline began to slowly unravel. First, it appeared in the media that ‘a Ukrainian’ had blown up the pipeline, then the pointing finger identified a Ukrainian diving school, and now it is added that Zelensky himself approved the operation.
So, try to imagine it clearly: To turn European public opinion against Putin, Zelensky had a team of divers blow up the Nord Stream pipeline. The great monster Putin would thus be responsible for a winter without gas in Europe. One thing is clear: Zelensky is truly capable of anything.
We can ask ourselves: is there a reason why Zelensky is being thrown under the bus here and now? But besides that—and I may be naïve—I still see it as a good sign that the media are still capable of breaking their own story. So I say sincerely: thank you to the media.
And do the same with the COVID story and all other forms of fake news that have been spread in recent years. Let the truth break through. Nietzsche said: “In the light of every truly great person, thousands of secrets of history crawl out from under their stone.” To all journalists: try to be such a ‘truly great person.’ ‘Become who you are.’ Feel the pride you deserve when you remain true to the ethics of true journalism. Ensure that we can once again truly respect journalism. Stop allowing yourselves to be used, stop reducing yourselves to a propaganda tool. You can be so much more than that.
***
A century and a half ago, some began to realize: the possibilities of propaganda are virtually unlimited. Among other things, it sends thousands of young people into the trenches to fight against other young people who have done them absolutely no harm. To understand the history of the last 150 years, one must primarily study the practice of propaganda.
The way the mass media are centrally controlled according to the principles of Walter Lippmann, the way information flows are directed on the internet, the way tens of thousands of so-called ‘digital first responders’ constantly ridicule, criminalize, and pathologize every dissident voice—the better you understand the phenomenon of ‘propaganda,’ the more you realize: the world is truly ruled by lies.
To everyone whose heart aches when they think of all those Russian and Ukrainian people dying on the battlefield, I ask: please watch Tucker Carlson’s interview with the American top diplomat Jeffrey Sachs (see this link). These are the kinds of interviews we need: calm, nuanced, and with immense knowledge of the facts.
Listen to that interview, and you’ll quickly stop thinking in black and white. Putin is no saint, we know that. But I fear that in this case, we must say: the most sinister role in the story is certainly not being played by Putin.
Make some effort to explore some of the historical context of this 'unprovoked war.' You will see that there is no question of 'unprovoked' at all. And when you begin to see that, stand up and say: not in my name.
Mattias

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

Sums it up perfectly! 😂

[Action Society @ActionSocietySA]

The #BlueLightMafia eight are back at work at the South African Police Service.

"It seems the Minister of Police, the Police Commissioner, the Deputy President, as well as the President, condone criminality within SAPS." - @IanCameron23.

https://t.co/LRDaI6dh0y

[llehctim leihcim @MlCHlELMlTCHELL]

@ValaAfshar Ironically, that will slow down the air for the entire column of movement on the road (negating the slipstream effect)... increasing fuel consumption for the road user. "There is no free lunch!"

[Kate @katewand]

“Imagine that you’ve got the political spectrum on a string. Left & right. You take the string, and you pull it up, so that the ends of the strings come down in a circle; almost touching. Then, you draw an imaginary line through the middle.” @PardyBruce

https://t.co/LuDCi9JcnJ

[Achim @MihcaW]

@SAgovnews Freudian slip?

[Swank Sinatra, Legendary Lover @SwankierSinatra]

@KevinBardosh @CasuallyGreg A few years ago, I would have rolled my eyes at the mere suggestion of this. Today, I can’t believe what those same eyes are watching happening all over the world.

[Letshela Mofokeng @SirLetshela]

Cyril Ramaphosa is corrupt to the core!

The leaked recording the President is heard saying he's prepared to fall on his sword instead of SA knowing how public funds were used.

#CR17BankStatements

[ZNeveri @ZNeveri]

⁣Nuremberg Code Violations is making mainstream airways in the UK!

👏👏👏

[UNN @UnityNewsNet]

🆘BREAKING NEWS🆘 Representatives of the Aboriginal Community in Australia issue International Plea for help over tyrannical Australian coercion & control.

How much longer can the world just sit back and let this happen?

[Achim @MihcaW]

Amazon on the Liesbeek: A tale of two rivers https://t.co/H7l4SntWX9 via @Change

[Achim @MihcaW]

@PaulaSlier_RT Fuel tanks do not explode like that.

[Dr Shawn Baker 🥩 @SBakerMD]

“If only everyone would wear masks, we’d have this pandemic finished in no time, is it so inconvenient to wear one?”

If only people would stop shoving twinkies in their face we’d not have so many susceptible people , is it so fucking inconvenient to stop eating bullshit?

[Bulelani Phillip @BulelaniPhillip]

In a normal country, you can give a R30m grant. And when R25m of that R30m dissappears, the Mayor, MAYCO, Municipal Manager and CFO must not go home until the money is found. In fact, they must sleep in the nearest police until the money is found.