Local TV has decided to screen a BBC ‘conspiracies’ series, finally introducing the idea that the world is a lot sneakier than the Idol‘s-watchers previously thought. So here’s a few more conspiracy things.
Starting way back in time, try this interesting page from the 1960’s, of a journalist’s escape from the National Party’s Secret Police, shortly after Sharpeville:
Then switching to now, have a good taste of why the ANC has pushed through fascist legislation to control the Internet, by reading through this top-secret government report compiled by local spies for Thabo Mbeki. Don’t worry – these sites are outside the borders of this country, so legally there’s nothing that can be done to you for reading them. Muslim Militants
Or perhaps you’d prefer to read a transcript of an in-camera session at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, when they questioned a current Major General about ANC Detention Camps.
Even more fun reading, especially for the spy-watchers and history scholars, is this secret transcript of an in-camera TRC hearing, where Gabriel Mthembu – then Director of Surveillance in the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) was being questioned about ANC Camps.
Or you might want to get an idea of what our paranoid President gets to read, such as this collection of documents drawn up by the NIA detailing an attempt to destabilize the elections.
Here’s a brief look at our Intelligence Services and ‘Special Weapons’ Programs.
Then for information that would have got you jailed forever, just a few years back, take a look at data and wonderfully clear satellite pix, about a former SA nuclear weapons site that sits between Pretoria and Johannesburg – at Pelindaba.
Of course, you could always ask who got the money from all that weapons-grade uranium, and why no one is talking about The ANC and The Atom Bomb.
Sticking with the ‘Oh let’s drink beer and screw things’ meme. You’re in public full of alcohol or just good old-fashioned high spirits – and you have the urge to hump something – like a car, a building or a statue, and then grin like an idiot and have your picture taken while it’s happening.
At last there’s a site online just for you. (It would be nice if some local readers took pix of themselves humping some of the various statues we have here, which generally look like they could use it). Go to ‘I Hump Things’!
Then for a nostalgia blast from the past – back to the good old days when white people either looked like refugees from the Brady Bunch or Alice Cooper. Browse through the charts, articles and info of The Super Seventies.
If like me, you’re also quietly hooked on the eastern form of animation, known loosely as ‘anime’ or ‘manga’ – then for a crash course in the genre that goes from children’s TV shows on the one side, all the way through to curious fetish territory best left undetailed in a public forum, go study at ‘Understanding Anime’
Or for more regular cartoons, browse through the often quirky and quietly surreal territory of ‘Cat and Girl’
So you’re thumping up and down the poop deck going ‘Arrrr’, with the parrot trying to stay on your shoulder, wondering where the cabin boy is because it’s time for your special ‘rub down’.
Sounds like you need to get away from all the landlubbers and into the territory of PIRATES!! (The real pirates, not the 16-year-old CD copiers.) Yes folks, its a pirate movie, and it’s rated ‘Arrrr!’ Go to ‘Arrrr!’
Then you could always take a look at the oddness of art vandalism – an online collection of info about various artworks that assorted people have tried to destroy. Grab your bucket of paint and no running with the scissors as you leap towards ‘Art Crime’
And staying with art crime, the hard drinking leotard-wearing folks at local short story site ‘Literate Gymnast’ say a whole bunch of you descended there after my last plug. Well, a very short story I submitted, is on their site now – why not go read it, and get inspired to write a much better one, and rub my nose in it, at ‘The Literate Gymnast’
I’m happy knowing absolutely nothing about sport, except for sumo wrestling – which appeals to my sense of the ridiculous. (Two 400 pound fat guys trying to push each other outside of a circle? Now THATS entertainment!) This spurious lead-in is towards the strange joys of looking at pictures of not only wives of footballers, and ugly football fans – but also ‘Ugly Footballers!’.
Finally, some Geek stuff. Want to test your online security? Take the three-minute test at ‘PC Flank’
For lots of useful freeware tools, try ‘Toni Arts’. (For instance, need to clean out your registry and remove the dead links slowing your PC down? Try the freebie tool ‘Easy Cleaner’).
Want to grab an entire website for offline storage? Try this tiny free application which equals or betters most of the commercial equivalents. I’ve used it, it works nicely – HHTrack Website Copier.
For all you folks with firewalls and a sense of security, think again – these two links are to utilities that demonstrate how easy it is to have data flowing out without your firewall spotting it. Look at ‘Backstealth’ and ‘Firehole’.
And if you need to convert audio or video files from one format to another? Go browse the appz at ‘Converters’.
Until the next time if pirates, police and politicians don’t get me.
Websurfing supplied by Megawan
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.