Picture this.   A man with a megaphone.

(tap tap) .. (screeeeoooo-eeeee-000-iiiii)

“Comrades…”

The folks jostle for position.

“Comrades.. leesin…  comrades…”

(screeeooooo-eeeeiii-wggghhhehe)

“…deeesah-plin..  dees-ah-plin!”

There are now an average of two protests a day registered in South Africa.

There are hundreds taking place right now in the USA, although for some reason,  Fox Tv doesn’t seem to know about them.  Anyway, moving along.

We are in the new age of the next revolution, apparently.   What next?   Here are a dozen likely events in a dozen unkind months.

1) Greek fire

Yup, uprising.

2) Italian kiss-off?

Bye bye Ruby the groin-tamer’s boyfriend.

3) Swazi Gold

Mswati’s hemp moustache synged – goes “Syrian” as opposed to Greek.

4) Slow trade boat from China

US job search ends at Beijing’s yuan.  Big bang.

5) Zoom Zuma

SA pres is “Thabo-ed” in 2012. Motlanthe as the third option triumphs.  Second option still facing discipline charge #54321/gone.

(read as forward slash .. gone)

6) UBS pops

Too much talk, too little action.

7) Damascus trends

Assad and Ahmadinejad get pointy sticks where it hurts

9) Vodka Vlad

Putin throws the bottle top at Medvedev

10) USS Washington shudders

The Big Ship America feels the effect of worsening protests

11) Oil spills in Nigeria

Because no-one can stop demand

12) Taxes go up in SA

Well someone has to pay

But don’t phone me.  I’ll be living on a yacht in the Seychelles.  My Somalian friends have asked me to join a new syndicate based in the Gulf of Oman.

You have been warned.  Facebook is now working with law enforcement agencies and handing over wads of your data including all those weird friends at Venezuela Drug Trade,  Mexico Marijuana PTY ltd,   Blonde-Swap CC in Moscow, and Biggus-Dickus Sex Aid corporation.

Reuters has dug out information in the US showing that since 2008, judges have given various cops the right to scrutinize Facebook’s database at least 24 times.  And these include personal messages, status updates, links to video and photographs, calenders of all events, wall postings,  and all friend requests.

So imagine your surprise,  sipping a nice rooibos one sunny morn’ when absailing through your venster comes Mr Anderson from the Matrix.

Eina ! Forgot this was the real world ....

What happens in Syria or in a future dictatorship-run one-party socialist warlord-feudal independent state of Az-anus?

I’ve looked at this in various ways over the past year and found that online users are extraordinarily naive.   They provide a vast swamp of detail for the critters that reside within the murky depths to wade in and pluck.

From bank details to exact description of your location.

That’s not wise.   Think of it like this.   You have a house and a car and cash.   And you’re telling people where you are 24 hours a day.  That means you’re not somewhere.  Which makes it easier for house breakers to target your property.

That’s not being paranoid.  That’s just common sense.  Don’t talk to strangers,  don’t let on all your confidences – a basic human tendency for self-survival.

Yet there we are,  letting it all hang out  so that our friendly digital mugger can creep up and cosh us while we meander along Facebook paths poking around in the pretty friend-flower requests.  We are all online lemmings, running together towards the digital privacy cliff.

I was wrong.

The social networking world may yet fundamentally alter the universe.   So too YouTube.   Ask the Syrians,  who’re posting images and videos of a dictatorship in crisis.    Sometimes it takes a while for images to ebb and flow into consciousness.

Possibly the most shocking of these is the 12 year-old Syrian boy who was tortured to death by adult soldiers.  Then his body was dumped at his family’s front door.  The most severe torture possible was carried out on this child.  Human Rights Watch have more details.   Are we shocked that Assad and his sycophants like various dictators around the world and even folks who were tortured themselves – like Jacob Zuma – find it in their hearts to actually support the Damascus regime?

Zuma and Medvedev having fun trying to save comrade Gaddafi's neck.

But here’s the news.  In China there was a rumour today that former President Jiang Zemin had kicked the Beijing bucket.  But no, he hadn’t.  Still, that didn’t stop the funny little uniformed trolls from ordering internet companies to stop any use of the words Jiang Zemin.

So web-savvy Internet users merely leap-frogged the slow pedantic (should we say doltish) Chinese state and are doing what all good people do when facing nazi’s and fascists.  They merely created a second group of words if you want to search for Jiang.

Go to any site in China now and type  “Jiang Zemin” and what you get is a blocked zone or extremely slow connection that just times out.  However… using the human capacity for creativity,   users are typing  “Uncle Jiang,” ”super-sovereign backstage ruler,”  “former emperor,”.

You see, Chinese has a problem.  IT has 4 words which can mean a verb, or a noun, or a proper noun,  or just anything.   “Jiang” also means “River”.  So lets debate about the river then ..

“Chang Jiang” is the Yangtze river.  So Beijing can hardly block that from search engines.  Do you begin to see the problems this centralized state has with digital information?

And why Assad is doomed?  Despite Zuma rushing around like a second-hand errand clerk trying to help his pal who gave him dosh,  old Muammar “kill them all” Gaddafi,   I’m pretty sure ease of access to information is eventually going to lead them angry Libyans straight into Muammar’s back yard,  then into his parlour, and finally,  his bed chamber.  Where,  like with Osama,  a few well aimed rounds will stop a civil war and then – we can all tweet in China that Gaddafi  ”appears to have departed this mortal coil”.

The grey little minions of Beijing won’t get it …

Syria.

Damascas.

Plot.

Facebook.

Game theory.

End Game.

Tanks.

Snipers.

600 dead.

Uprising.

Friday.

al-Assad.

All sad.

Protesters with pieces of bread shout slogans during a demonstration to show their solidarity with the protesters in Deraa