Publishing this one now because I'm profoundly off-pissed by pretty much everything.
Unless you've been living under a bit of a rock, you'll know who Edward Snowden is and what he's done, so I won't rehash it in great detail. He effectively blew the whistle on the NSA and the GCHQ, who have been merrily spying on everyone's online activity. NSA is American, and GCHQ is British.
That's my country, yo.
What these charming institutions have been doing is, of course, mass-monitoring global transmissions. The NSA were using the Prism scheme to spy on people - in Hong Kong, China, their own country, and who knows where else. The GCHQ has been accused of being involved with Prism too, and circumventing UK law to spy on people including the Germans, and God knows who else. If America wasn't spying on us, GCHQ probably was.
The thing that makes me laugh is that the US expected Hong Kong to hand Snowden back to them, after its spying activities on the people of Hong Kong were revealed.
You're not used to having people say no to you, are you, America? If I'd found out someone was spying me, no way would I ever hand the person who warned me about it back to them! Now America is accusing Hong Kong of supporting a fugitive when actually, it acted in accordance to international law. What do you mean, America isn't the world?
And I'm so, so angry that Britain's been getting its fingers in the pie too. Why do we always do this? Our country is a goddamn lapdog. I think this just about sums up our Government's relationship with the US.
USA: IRAQ HAS OIL. WANT TO GO TO WAR?
UK: Oh, such fun! Jolly good, tally-ho! America's doing it so we definitely ought to! Leeroy Jenkins!!!
USA: HAND OVER THIS UK CITIZEN TO US IMMEDIATELY.
UK: Sure, have this one on us. It's not like the supposed crime they've committed isn't a crime in the UK, and this person has never set foot in the US before! Take the plebian away!
USA: WE'VE JUST DEVELOPED A SPY SYSTEM THAT MEANS WE CAN SPY ON ANYONE EVER!
UK: Oh, do please let us join in! It's not like this is 100% unethical and will backfire badly as soon as anyone finds out! We're the good guys, everyone! Boo, hiss, China and Russia and everyone else the US doesn't like and accuses of doing exactly the same thing!
(To be fair, they probably do.)
But that's why I cannot stand this country. We're wet blankets. We're pansies. When we aren't happily going along with what America says, we're whinging about how stupid their Government and foreign policy is. Hate to break it to you, fellow Brits, but WE DO EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEM. We are just as bad, and I actually think we're worse because from the amount of people complaining about 'stupid America' we clearly think we know better, but we don't do better.
We even have drones now, which is something I staunchly stand against. I was disgusted by the Obama administration continuing to use them, and I'm even more disgusted that the UK has decided to start using them on Pakistan too.
And yet the poor old Pakistanis are the terrorists. Want to tell that to the innocent civilians and their children who keep getting blown sky-high by drone strikes that they cannot control, predict and don't have the chance to escape, just because they happen to live sort-of-near someone who's cross with the USA? Oh, I forgot, they're collateral damage. They don't count because they aren't American.
It disgusts me that our country adopts the same attitude.
Then, we complain about a rise in insurgency in these countries we attack. I don't know about you, but if someone had drones primed to kill hovering above my country and kept blowing up hundreds of random civilians 'by mistake', just to get to a handful of meanies, I'd start feeling pretty sympathetic to those meanies. I'd probably start feeling pretty fanatical about things myself.
But, I digress. Edward Snowden. Prism.
NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO INVADE INNOCENT PEOPLE'S PRIVACY. America & Britain, you don't get the right to spy on the populace of other countries while complaining that they might be spying on you. You also do not get to spy on the activities of your OWN countries' populace. Big brother is watching us, and we were stupid enough to vote him in. George Orwell saw the future, and he was basically right. Every day I find new articles about truly horrible things that are being created - adverts for in cities that lock onto you and follow you and track where you're going. A TV box with a camera in it that watches what you are doing (the official spiel is that this is so that ads can be tailored to what you're doing - say, a romance ad if you're cuddling with someone, toy ads if children are playing, but anyone with a brain can see how bad an idea that is and how easily it could go wrong.)
Even the good old XBoner was going to have a camera in the kinect that couldn't be turned off or disconnected from the internet - because if you didn't connect to the internet once per 24 hours you could no longer play games. I think that's been changed now though, which is good. Thought it was some horrific joke.
Do none of these people read? Do they not read anything at all?
1984 was NOT an instruction manual.
Run, Snowden, run.
I personally feel as though there's only one thing to do to make them stop watching us. It's been rumoured for a long while that governments filter through everyone's emails, search for keywords such as bombs and terrorists and allahu akbar and when they find them, put these people on a nifty little to-watch list so they can see if they're terrorists. This practice is definitely not islamophobic, what are you saying??
They want to watch us, put us on lists? Fine. I say that everyone in this country - no, everyone in the world - should send a bunch of emails to themselves and everyone they know containing nothing but buzzwords in them - guns ak-47 attack terrorists fanaticism al-qaeda how2makebombs hi David Cameron! They wanted to spy on us, under the guise of protecting us? They can have their cake, and eat it too. Good luck sorting through the rubbish to get to the good stuff. That'll learn ya.
Oh, and for the record, Snowden's not a traitor. He's a hero, and he'll be remembered as standing on the right side of history. I said this blog would get political.
Reckon they watch blogger, too? Am I on their list? Hi in advance, NSA. Pinky-promise that I'm not a terrorist.
This is why I write the genre I do. Because it's true.
This is a character from my series, the Light Age, and it's the first concept art I have of her. She's one of the less pleasant characters, but just about my favourite regardless. ♥‿♥ In the early books she appears as a straight-up antagonist, but in the later books the lines are going to blur somewhat. She's got her own agenda, wants power and recognition as well as revenge, and isn't fond of people trying to be heroes and getting in her way.
The resolution of it isn't that great uploaded to this blog, it's a little blurry, but in real life it's huge, and all the lines are crisp. I swear! And it now actually looks rather good on a Kindle!
