Dogs In Camouflage

From: GeNS@gtbank.com
Subject: Customer Security Alert...
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:13:12 -0800


Dear Guaranty Trust Bank Customer,

Your access to Online Service has been suspended due to a mis-match of access code between your Security details. To enable you continue accessing your online account, it will only take you few minutes to re-activate your account. Click on the guide-link below and follow the directions to instant activation of your account and Security information
https://gtbplc.com/customer.ibc?WT.svl=ibcplogon
*Important*

NOTE: FAILURE CAN RESULT TO PERMANENT ACCOUNT SUSPENSION.

P. R. JOHN
Security Advisor
Guaranty Trust Bank © 2010.



Can you spot all that is wrong with this fraudulent notice?

I post this not to brandish some sort of superior skills in technical writing but to point out flaws that should alert you, if you ever get one of these messages asking you to follow a link somewhere to update your information.

1. "NOTE: FAILURE CAN RESULT TO PERMANENT ACCOUNT SUSPENSION" – This does not make any sense even in Afghanistan. Why would your failure to respond to an online notice result in permanent suspension of your account?

2. "Your access to Online Service has been suspended due to a mis-match of access code between your Security details." – A. The grammar is wrong, B. The supposed error is technically impossible.

3. "To enable you continue accessing your online account, it will only take you few minutes to re-activate your account."– The first part of the sentence has nothing to do with the second part. The writer started out thinking one thing and then jumped to something else, without completing the first thought. Plus, If there is a mismatch (note: not mis-match), then what are they comparing it against? The bad code or the wrong data?

4. Click on the guide-link below and follow the directions to instant activation of your account and Security information - I bet they meant to say "instantly reactivate" and would it not be reactivate since your account was "active" before?

Edu Nnadi

Haiti

Pictures Of The Devastation In Haiti

What is one supposed to make of these pictures of broken bodies and wretched space? Sometimes carnage of this scale is hard to grasp. The immediacy of the suffering and pain is diluted by distance and the lens of a camera. I feel helpless, paralyze be the sheer scale of the devastation, the sad look in the face of the children juxtaposed besides the forlorn stare of the adults. All the pictures show bodies, bodies everywhere, under cars, buildings, all kinds of boulders, everybody is wearing a coat of white dust. Catastrophic events always serve to demonstrate the smallness of man in the universe of things, they serve to show the uselessness of our everyday pursuits in the face of true events of unimaginable proportions. The dead lie there, with their dreams intact, progress broken forever by the harsh faith of the unlucky, but in times like this you are best served by saving your tears and prayers for the living. They must continue to try and make sense of the hopelessness around them, they must continue the journey, they must pick up the completely shattered threads of their former lives and go on living. The hundreds of millions of dollars you are sending will hopefully buy clothes and provisions but it I will not bring back friends and families, these lives are forever scarred, changed forever in mere minutes. Say a prayer for the dead, spare a coin for the living. Last week those bodies on the floor had plans and today…….,

Is There Anything We Will Not Do For Money?

Via Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952335,00.html

For a South African victim of human trafficking, this was the endgame. On a freezing night last July, Sindiswa, 17, lay curled in a fetal position in bed No. 7 of a state-run hospice in central Bloemfontein. Well-used fly strips hung between fluorescent lights, pale blue paint flaked off the walls, and fresh blood stained her sheets, the rusty bedpost and the linoleum floor. Sindiswa had full-blown AIDS and tuberculosis, and she was three months pregnant. Sweat poured from her forehead as she whispered her story through parched lips covered with sores. A few blocks away, the roars of rugby fans erupted from Free State Stadium. In June the roars will be from fans of the World Cup.

Sindiswa's family was one of the poorest families in Indwe, the poorest district in Eastern Cape, one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. Ninety-five percent of the residents of her township fall below the poverty line, more than a quarter have HIV, and most survive by clinging to government grants. Orphaned at 16, she had to leave school to support herself. Last February, a woman from a neighboring town offered to find work for her and her 15-year-old best friend, Elizabeth, who, like Sindiswa, was poor but was also desperate to escape her violent older sister. (I have changed Elizabeth's name to protect her identity.)

After driving them eight hours north to Bloemfontein, the recruiter sold them to a Nigerian drug and human-trafficking syndicate in exchange for $120 and crack cocaine. "[The recruiter] said we could find a job," Sindiswa recalled, "but as soon as we got here, she told us, 'No. You have to go into the streets and sell yourselves.'" The buyer, Jude, forced them into prostitution on the streets of central Bloemfontein for 12 straight hours every night. Each morning, he collected their earnings — Sindiswa averaged $40 per night; Elizabeth, $65. Elizabeth tried to escape three times, once absconding for several weeks. Jude always found her or used Sindiswa as a hostage to lure her back, then enlisted an enforcer named Rasta to beat her.

It is unclear if Sindiswa contracted HIV before or after she was sold, but some of her clients didn't use condoms. She was diagnosed with the virus only a week before I met her. When she was too sick to stand and thus useless as a slave, Jude had thrown her onto the street. Nurses expected her to die within days.

Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence. While most are held in debt bondage in the poorest regions of South Asia, some are trafficked in the midst of thriving development. Such is the case here in Africa's wealthiest country, the host of this year's World Cup. While South Africa invests billions to prepare its infrastructure for the half-million visitors expected to attend, tens of thousands of children have become ensnared in sexual slavery, and those who profit from their abuse are also preparing for the tournament. During a three-week investigation into human-trafficking syndicates operating near two stadiums, I found a lucrative trade in child sex. The children, sold for as little as $45, can earn more than $600 per night for their captors. "I'm really looking forward to doing more business during the World Cup," said a trafficker. We were speaking at his base overlooking Port Elizabeth's new Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium. Already, he had done brisk business among the stadium's construction workers.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952335,00.html#ixzz0cFkEnxPm

Spoken But Never Written

So you wake up in the morning. Look in the mirror, you are disgust with what you have become. What happened to that good looking person you used to be? “How did these tires get to the back of my head?” You ask no one in particular. “Oh my God, I have developed choppers!”, you think. Despite or to spite the ugliness in the mirror, you start your day with ten big balls of akra, a bowl of akamu with powdered milk and sugar. You are very unhappy with Mama Theresa, “dis woman wan carry food kill me”, “ wich kin mountain of food be dis?” But as you get up to leave the table nothing is left, your stomach is very happy but your mind is upset. As oga you leave the plate on the table, somebody will clear it, it gives you a small measure of satisfaction that it will piss off Mama Theresa when she comes around to clear the table and do the dishes. Serves her right, always serving you heavy food in the morning. By the way where is that boy? “LEVINUS!, SIR! He yells back, “Can’t you see that I running late, it is more of a statement than a question, he knows better than to respond to that. Oya, go warm the car and bring me my briefcase. You hear keys jiggling as he starts flying down the stairs, Levy loves to warm the car, you suspect that he even drives it from time to time, you make a mental note to set a trap for the rascal. Speaking of which, where in Ejebu is Mama Theresa? Chei, you have suffered in this house, I guess they now expect you to lie out your own clothes. Ehhh… wonders shall never end.

MAMA THESERA, MAMA THERESA! IF I CALL YOU AGAIN, THIS HOUSE WILL NOT CONTAIN THE TWO OF US O! you yell. “Gbaborun!, “why you dey shout”,” why you dey shout” she repeats,” abi you think sey na slave you buy put for house?”” I bin dey downstairs dey fetch water,” “Na wetin you want?” Immediately you can tell she is in a bad mood, if you want to go to work this morning, it might be a good idea to thread softly. In a much softer tone, you ask if she has laid out your  Agbada for you already? She murmurs something under her breathe and spins around on her heels, heading for the bedroom. As you watch her walk away, your eyes are drawn to the violent side to side motion of her yansh, Almost without warning you feel blood surging through your kini,  you are aroused. Feigning anger, you storm after her into the bedroom,you pretend to slam the door shut in anger. You reach out to her with you left hand while with your right, you start to loosen your wrapper “wetin dey worry you sef?” “everytime na so so harassment for this house”. “Oya, come siddon near me for this bed I wan talk to you”……………