Three Questions for Entrepreneurs

The other day I was meeting with the leadership team of a startup company brimming with transformational potential. The team had made tremendous progress in a year, going from an idea on a piece of paper to a fully functioning business earning real revenue.

Of course, any new venture is fragile. While revenues are growing, the company hasn't yet hit breakeven. Its current projections suggest that point is still at least six months away. The company has some cash in the bank, but recently began looking for further external investment to help ensure it remains solvent.

Our discussion went something like this:

Me: "So, how important is it that you get external funding?"

Team: "It's important, but not critical because we have cash in the bank."

Scott: "How much?"

Team: "A few hundred thousand dollars"

Scott: "What are your current spending projections?"
(I hear a shuffling of paper...)

Team: "30 to 50 thousand a month."

Scott: "Well, that seems pretty urgent to me. You have about six months of life left."

One of the first lessons taught to me by my Harvard Business School finance professor sticks with me to this day: The only reason a business fails is that it runs out of cash. As such, the first question every entrepreneur should be able to answer in a second is, "How many days do I have to live?" That helps the entrepreneur think about how to manage their costs and their funding strategy.

The second question I look for an immediate response to is, "Why are you doing this?" Starting up new businesses is incredibly hard. Most fail. The ones that succeed require hard work and constant attention. An entrepreneur who doesn't have a good answer to this question is unlikely to succeed — and is certainly unlikely to raise external capital.

Fortunately, the team I was guiding could answer this question easily. They believed their approach could fundamentally change the category and dramatically improve the lives of their consumers. The early data supported their view.

Finally, I always want an entrepreneur to tell me the two critical things they are working on at any given time. Of course, any new venture will have dozens of areas that need attention on a daily basis. But a good entrepreneur can step back and highlight the two things they are really hoping to learn during a set time period. These aren't always the fires burning brightest. Ideally, they relate to the biggest unknowns in the hypothesized business model.

Time will tell if the team I was working with will succeed. But by focusing on how long they have to live, why the hard work is worth it, and what the most critical issues are, I know they will maximize their odds of success.

IS ISRAEL WIRETAPPING AMERICA?

IS ISRAEL WIRETAPPING AMERICA?

20 Apr 10

The surveillance industry in America got its start in 1994 with passage of CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act). The law mandated that telecom companies configure their networks to supply the government with intercepts authorized by a court-issued warrant. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush enacted a secret executive order for massive, warrantless wiretapping. Only eight members of Congress and one FISA judge were privy to this information. Today, the FBI is also authorized to eavesdrop and a warrant is no longer needed to tap telecommunications of United States’ citizens.

It’s bad enough that the government can listen to you whenever they want. There is an even more troubling side to this Orwellian reality. Israeli companies are wiretapping America. Authorized by our government, they are doing the actual work of listening to and recording the phone, email, and internet communications of at least 100 nations, including America.

Mass surveillance business and competition grew exponentially after 9/11. Each company wanted to build bigger and better mass surveillance systems which were then sold to whomever would pay the price, “including some of the most repressive and authoritarian governments on the planet,” says journalist James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

Bamford reveals that America’s largest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have outsourced the job of eavesdropping through their networks, which carry billions of American communications daily, in cooperation with the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance program. The spy job for these major companies was outsourced “to two mysterious companies with very troubling foreign connections.”

AT&T uses a company called Narus to keep records of everything said on their systems. Narus was founded by an Israeli entrepreneur in Israel with ties to Unit 800 (the NSA of Israel). Verizon’s spy system also relies on an Israeli company named Verint. The founder of Verint is an FBI fugitive who remains so. Congress granted retroactive immunity to these companies (AT&T and Verizon) for allowing their systems to be used to spy on American citizens. Stated plainly, American consumers are subject to warrantless surveillance by Israeli-founded companies without Congressional oversight or public knowledge!

Bamford details how an “Israeli spin-off” of Verint is able to do “advanced voice-mining” that finds one person’s voice in a mountain of intercepted calls.

'With remote access to the internal and international voice and data communications of over one hundred countries around the world, including the United States, Verint’s headquarters in Tel Aviv has a capacity rivaled only by NSA’s, if not greater, especially when coupled with PerSay’s voice-mining capability.

'PerSay is an example of how close and interconnected these companies are with Israel’s intelligence community—a factor of great concern considering how much of their bugging equipment is now secretly hardwired into the American telecommunications system.'

A former senior official in Shin Bet— Israel’s secret intelligence—is on PerSay’s board of directors. The advisory board for the company that backs PerSay includes a former chief of Israeli Mossad! Bamford says the “greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America’s increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel’s intelligence agencies.”

In 2004, a former intelligence official told LA Times reporters,

'There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli [intelligence] activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States. They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. The denials are laughable.'

Last year, a judge dismissed charges against two top AIPAC lobbyists accused of leaking classified information to Israel. US Justice Dept. prosecutors said the case should be dropped because it would require exposing sensitive military intelligence—obvious evidence the lobbyists had been spying!

Most Americans might not even be startled to learn about Israeli espionage because they are so firmly convinced that Israel is our ally and has American interests at heart. This is not true. In their now famous paper, The Israel Lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt write bluntly that Israel

'does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.'

Israel : Part of Every Phone Call?

It is naïve to expect Narus and Verint to remain independent of control by the government of Israel.

Which Americans might be most threatened by telephone, email, and internet spying from Israel? Answer: critics of Israel and Israel's PR representative, the Anti-Defamation League. In every way that matters, ADL is Israel. Israel/ADL is particularly troubled by widespread criticism of Israel and matters Jewish from both the intellectual left and the populist right. Their “conspiracy theories” have a way of always leading back to the Jews. ADL and Jewish-dominated media in America are very apprehensive of Tea Party and right-wing efforts to overthrow liberal Democrat power in Congress (See, “Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish”). Victory for the right would, among other things, curb ADL's ability to pass more of its anti-Christian hate crime legislation.

Can these movements of the left or right, potentially threatening Zionist interests, create lasting—even revolutionary—change if Israel/ADL can listen to their every conversation? Of course not.

Already, ADL boasts of monitoring all Christian/conservative media to discover any hint of criticism of Israel or Jewish control. Are they also listening as you plan your next Tea Party rally, militia training exercise or protest of Israeli oppression in Gaza? No one can answer that outside the US Government, AT&T and Verizon, Israel – and probably ADL. One thing we know: There may be little to prevent them.

What can be done? Until there is widespread awareness of Israel's fundamental disloyalty to America and continuing spy operations against us, Americans can do little to protect our most intimate phone and internet communications.

Unfortunately, Christian/conservative America continues to believe Jews and Israel are especially good and trustworthy, being unconditionally blessed by God. This superstition must give way to a truly biblical (and accurate) knowledge that Israel, founded on the Christ-hating Talmud and set up largely by Marxists, is especially disloyal to our Christian/capitalist society. (This is why Israel had no qualms about attempting to sink the USS Liberty during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.) We must become suspicious of dual-loyalty Jews in the highest levels of our government (read Rahm Emanuel), as well as those who control mass media and telecommunications.

This includes Verizon head Ivan Seidenburg, who fraternizes with Jewish internationalists intent on corrupting society and establishing world government. Seidenburg is a Jewish liberal whose internet bio claims he "champions diversity both within and outside” Verizon. What kind of "diversity" is Seidenburg advocating? He serves on the board of directors of Jewish-owned Viacom, the world’s largest communication empire, which also promotes a cable network called "Gay TV." In 2003, he was feted at a fundraiser dinner for the UJA-Federation, helping raise $1.2 million for this Jewish charity. He received the Stephen J. Ross Award in honor of the deceased Jewish owner of Warner Bros. Communications. Warner Music, a division of Ross's company, is now corrupting the minds of tens of millions of young people worldwide with “gangsta” rap. This “music” utterly degrades women, encouraging teenage boys to rape "bitches." Filled with unspeakable profanity, it encourages violence against whites and even murder of police.

Among the "good old boys” of the Jewish mega media attending this benefit were Edgar Bronfman, Jr., heir of the Seagram’s liquor empire. Bronfman owns Vivendi Universal which, merged with NBC, produced "The Book of Daniel" TV series denigrating Jesus and the Christian family. (See, " Was the Talmud Behind NBC's 'Book of Daniel'?") Bronfman also owns Interscope Records, the largest producer of ‘gangsta’ rap in the world today.

Howard Stringer, Jewish CEO of Sony of America, also attended. Sony helped NBC create "The Book of Daniel." Even more assaulting to Christianity, Sony created The Da Vinci Code movie, portraying Christ as having had sex with Mary Magdalene. (See " The Jews Behind Da Vinci Code")

Also conspicuous at the UJA dinner was Viacom head Sumner Redstone (Murray Rothstein). Viacom, owner of CBS, produced the "The Mystery of Christmas" special several years ago which speculated that Jesus was a bastard. Viacom, a cable TV giant, also owns MTV which pumps acid rock and rap music into 210,000,000 homes. MTV’s blatant degeneracy is the dominant influence on youth between 12 and 24 in the world today, encouraging teenage rebellion, gratuitous sex, degradation of women and occultry.

Yet the US Government considers Seidenburg of such irreproachable character that he is trusted to monitor every American's conversations and emails. He may also be trusted to outsource his eavesdropping to those he trusts in Israel.

The time must come, and soon, that Americans realize that the "bonds of loyalty" between America and Israel should long ago have stretched to breaking. Such bonds, now causing us to naively place our most sensitive and important information gathering in the hands of Israelis, could actually become the chains of our destruction.

Civil rights activist Dorothy Height passes at 98

Dorothy Height, a leading civil rights pioneer of the 1960s, died Tuesday at age 98, Howard University Hospital confirmed.

Height died at 3:41 a.m., said hospital spokesman Ron Harris. No cause of death was given.

Height, who had been chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, worked in the 1960s alongside civil rights pioneers, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., future U.S. Rep. John Lewis and A. Philip Randolph. She was on the platform when King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington.

President Obama called her the "godmother" of the movement, noting she "served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement -- witnessing every march and milestone along the way."

"And even in the final weeks of her life -- a time when anyone else would have enjoyed their well-earned rest, Dr. Height continued her fight to make our nation a more open and inclusive place for people of every race, gender, background and faith."

Friend and former U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman said she was "deeply saddened" by Height's death.

"She was a dynamic woman with a resilient spirit, who was a role model for women and men of all faiths, races and perspectives," Herman said. "For her, it wasn't about the many years of her life, but what she did with them."

Height's years of service span from Roosevelt to the Obama administration, the council said in a statement announcing her death and listing the highlights of her career.

Height was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 by President Clinton and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. She was among a handful of key African-American leaders to meet with Obama at the White House recently for a summit on race and the economy.

Her name is synonymous with the National Council of Negro Women, a group she led from 1957 to 1988, when she became the group's chair and president emerita. She was also a key figure in the YWCA beginning in the 1930s.

Height was born in Richmond, Virginia, and grew up in Rankin, Pennsylvania. Her civil rights work began in 1933 when she became a leader of the United Christian Youth Movement of North America. Among the issues she tackled were fighting to stop lynchings and working to desegregate the armed forces.

She experienced discrimination and wrote in her memoir about being turned down for admittance to Barnard College in New York.

"Although I had been accepted, they could not admit me," she wrote in "Open Wide the Freedom Gates."

"It took me a while to realize that their decision was a racial matter: Barnard had a quota of two Negro students per year, and two others had already taken the spots."

At its 1980 commencement ceremonies, Barnard awarded Height its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.

Under Height's leadership, the National Council of Negro Women dealt with the "unmet needs of women and their families by combating hunger and establishing decent housing and home ownership programs through the federal government for low-income families."

The organization spearheaded voter registration drives and started "Wednesdays in Mississippi" in which female interracial groups helped at Freedom Schools, institutions meant to empower African-Americans and address inequalities in how the races were educated.

Last month, a flurry of rumors that Height had died appeared on the internet, particularly on the social networking site Twitter, where her name was a trending topic. Wikipedia also briefly reported Height's death at that time.

Bombers dressed in burkas kill 41 in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Two suicide bombers dressed in burqas blew themselves up Saturday in a camp for refugees fleeing military offensives in northwestern Pakistan, killing 41 people and wounding 62, officials said.

The blasts occurred at a food distribution point, but there were conflicting reports whether the victims were lining up for food or being registered. The camp is sometimes used by foreign humanitarian groups, including the World Food Program, to deliver aid.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani army admitted that civilians were killed in an airstrike last Saturday in the northwest that supposedly targeted militants. It did not say how many had died, but apologized in a rare acknowledgment of an error that could help reduce anger among local tribes, whose support it needs to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida.
The two suicide bombers struck six minutes apart at a camp in the Kacha Pukka area of Kohat, a tribally administered region close to the Afghan border. They were dressed in burqas, the all-encompassing veil worn by conservative Muslim women in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, local police official Abdullah Khan said.

Government official Dilawar Khan Bangash said 41 people were killed and 62 were wounded in the attack.

Pakistan has been hit by near-daily explosions over the last 18 months blamed on al-Qaida and Taliban militants. Most have been directed at security or government installations, but civilians have also been targeted, sometimes to punish those seen as cooperating with the government.

The camp was for people who fled from the Orakzai district, where the army has been fighting militants since the end of last year. The tempo of the operations has picked since March, with frequent aerial bombardment. The camp housed between 1,000 and 2,000 people.

There was no claim of responsibility, but that is not unusual when bomb attacks kill ordinary Pakistani citizens.

About 210,000 civilians have fled from Orakzai since the end of last year, including nearly 50,000 people who have left in the last month when ground forces moved into the area to flush out insurgents.

There have been fewer bombings in major cities outside of the northwest during the first three months of this year compared to late last year. The slowdown follows a major offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, where many militants had been based.

The army's apology was for air strikes in the Khyber region last Saturday that villagers said killed about 70 people.

The army spokesman had insisted the dead were militants, even when members of the local administration said they were compensating the families of dead civilians.

In a brief statement Saturday, army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said he had ordered measures be taken to avoid such "unfortunate incidents" in the future. It mentioned the name of the tribe which lost members in the air strike.

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The Pakistan army relies on the support — or at least the neutrality of — of tribes in the northwest to carry out its operations there.

Khanan Gul Khan, who lost four relatives in the attack, said he accepted the apology.

"The dead cannot come back, but we are happy that it has been acknowledged on the highest level that we are not terrorists," he said.

The Pakistani military regularly claims to have killed many militants in airstrikes, shellings and ground operations in the northwest, but rarely mentions civilian deaths. It is unclear whether few such deaths occur, or if the army simply does not report them.

Independent accounts of army operations in the tribal regions are extremely rare. Much of the area is still controlled by militants and is out of bounds for reporters.

America's downfall and divine warning

America's downfall and divine warning

Muhammad on the Move®

Muhammad on the Move®

White Politician, Black Activist Nearly Come To Blows On South African TV (VIDEO)

African leaders call for peaceful elections in Sudan

NAIROBI (IPS/GIN) - With less than a month to the historic multi-party poll in Africa's largest country, Sudan, eminent African leaders are calling for a peaceful and calm election process.

Observers from the Carter Center, a non-governmental organization founded by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter which aims to further democracy and human rights, have already raised concerns about the elections.

The center said in a statement that “with a series of delays and changes in polling procedures, a minor delay in polling for operational purposes may be required.”

Former African Union envoy for Darfur and former Organization of African Union head, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim, said he hoped the elections “will give the people of Sudan the right to decide who they want to have in power.”

This is a view shared by former Mozambican President and African Union envoy for Madagascar, Joachim Chissano.

“The message to the Sudanese people is that peace comes first, permanent dialogue is an instrument to build peace and development in the country,” said Mr. Chissano during a sideline event at the Pan African Media Conference in Kenya.

Mr. Chissano, Mr. Salim and head of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Dr. Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim, were speaking in Nairobi on the Sudanese election and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

“Whatever the difficulties, the dialogue for peace must continue,” said Mr. Chissano.

Mr. Ibrahim was hoping for much more: “I hope a miracle happens so that people can see beyond their noses and beyond their immediate interests.”

Almost 16 million Sudanese have registered for the April 11 election that will take place over three days. The elections were promised in the 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war.
Concerns about the process

But there are concerns about the process leading up to the poll. Carter Center officials have issued a report saying Sudan's April presidential and legislative elections remain “at risk on multiple fronts” and urged the country to lift harsh restrictions on rallies.

The center stated that it “strongly recommends that the NEC (National Elections Committee) and other Sudanese authorities take steps to ensure that the campaign period is both peaceful and fair to all candidates and to quickly address any violations that arise.” They said that failure to do so will erode confidence in the election process and put the elections and its success at risk.

Several political parties have called for a postponement of the elections. But it has been reported from the capital, Khartoum, that the country's NEC has downplayed any fears of postponing the elections. The NEC said a series of meetings involving all political parties will be organized to address any concerns before the elections.
‘Voting for a Southern president?'

Sudanese born British mobile tycoon, Mr. Ibrahim suggested that North Sudan vote for a president from the South. This, he says, will convince the South to vote for unity in the 2011 referendum, when voters will decide whether to secede from the North.

“I always say one way to the miracle of solving the country's problems, is why don't we have a president from Southern Sudan? Why don't all the candidates say ok, let us have a president from the south? It does not matter whether (it is a) he or she as long as it is someone from the South who is fit to run the country.”

There are 12 candidates running for the presidential position. There are two main contenders in the South: Salva Kiir, from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and Lam Akol, from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-Democratic Change.

Mr. Ibrahim said that the north should give the south a chance to lead the entire country.

2011 and beyond?

Mr. Salim said the 2011 referendum for South Sudan remains a thorny and emotive issue. “My own view is that whether the South opts for secession, it's their right to do so, but the situation must be handled with care,” he said.

Mr. Salim says the north has to make unity attractive to South Sudan and admits that this has not been done. “My preference is to keep one country, a united Sudan,” Mr. Salim said.

He added that “Africa will prefer one Sudan.” But Africa will respect the will of the Southerners if they vote in favor of a split, Mr. Salim added.

Acting president consolidates power in Nigeria

In March, acting Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan dissolved his cabinet, further securing his tenuous hold on the country's top post amidst rising unrest in the Niger Delta and flaring religious tensions in the central region of the country.

On March 17, President Goodluck dismissed all of ailing President Umaru Yar'Adua's ministers, effectively allowing the acting president to appoint ministers of his choosing.

President Yar'Adua, who had been receiving medical treatment in Saudi Arabia for three months, returned to Nigeria on Feb. 24 amidst a heavy military presence at the airport, but hasn't been seen since.

“(Mr. Jonathan) did not give us any reason for the dissolution of the cabinet,” said Dora Akunyili, the information minister, in a short statement released March 17.

On Feb. 10, Nigeria's National Assembly voted to make Mr. Goodluck the acting president. Since then, Mr. Goodluck's aggressive power consolidation has furthered the hopes of many Nigerians that reform is imminent.

“(Mr. Jonathan's dissolution of the cabinet) is a signal for many that Goodluck Jonathan is perhaps about to put in place his own men, his own women, his own team,” said Al Jazeera's Nigeria correspondent, Yvonne Ndege, on March 18.

“It was felt by many Nigerians that the cabinet was basically packed to the rafters with Yar'Adua loyalists who weren't doing the job they were supposed to be doing, or rather doing a good enough job,” said Ms. Ndege.

Questions still remain over who will take on the post of vice president, as well as who will gain the support of the military. With elections due in less than one year, the clock is ticking for Goodluck Jonathan to present a viable path forward.

The military, which holds considerable sway in Nigerian politics, appears to be at odds about the current leadership crisis. John Campbell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Nigeria between 2004 and 2007, wrote in a recent op-ed in the Huffington Post that “the Nigerian military appears as splintered as the rest of the federal government.”

Mr. Campbell went on to surmise that some elements within the army are staying loyal to Yar'Adua, as neither President Jonathan nor the chief of defense staff—the most senior officer in the military—were notified about Yar'Adua's return.

A large number of military personnel greeted Yar'Adua's plane and escorted his ambulance to the presidential palace upon his return from Saudi Arabia.

It is not clear who wields power in the country at this point, or if Mr. Yar'Adua's absence becomes permanent, who will take over.

A new vice president must be approved by majority vote in both houses of the National Assembly and with the absence of a potential candidate who commands enough support in both houses, many are unsure of how to proceed.

The accession of President Jonathan—who is Christian—also threatens to derail an informal power-sharing arrangement, in effect since 1999, which rests upon a rotation of the presidency every two terms between the largely Muslim north and the mostly Christian south.

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, since 1999, approximately 13,500 people have died in religious violence that has persisted throughout Plateau State, a region located in the centre of the country, which separates the Muslim north from the Christian south.

Goodluck Jonathan is of the Ijaw, an ethnic group indigenous to the Delta region. Many hope he will take a more pro-active stance between multinational oil corporations, the Nigerian state and the people who live there.

Washington's interest in Nigeria has grown as its importance as a source of imported oil has increased in recent years.

White supremacist killed in S. Africa; hate speech blamed

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — A South African white supremacist leader was bludgeoned to death by two of his farm workers in an apparent wage dispute, police said, and his followers on Sunday blamed a fiery youth leader for spreading hate speech that led to his killing.

Eugene Terreblanche's violent death on Saturday came amid growing racial tensions in the once white-led country and underscores an ongoing controversy over African National Congress Youth Leader Julius Malema's performance last month of an apartheid-era song that advocates killing white farmers. Malema denied responsibility for Terreblanche's death.

Terreblanche, 69, was leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, that wanted to create three all-white republics within South Africa in which blacks would be allowed only as guest workers.

Group spokesman Andre Visagie vowed revenge but gave no details.

"They attacked him in such a way it was difficult to recognize the face of Eugene Terreblanche," he said. "We will avenge his death."

Andre Nienaber, a group member and a relative of Terreblanche, said he believed his death was "as a result of Julius Malema's hate speech and direct orders in the media to 'shoot the Boers dead."'

Boer means white farmers in Afrikaans, the language of descendants of early Dutch settlers, or Afrikaners.

Malema is often in the news for his fiery rhetoric. Last month, he led college students in belting out a song that includes the lyrics "shoot the Boer." Malema did not mention Terreblanche or any other person in his performance.

The song has sparked a legal battle in which the ruling ANC party has challenged a high court that ruled the lyrics as unconstitutional. The ANC insists the song is a valuable part of its cultural heritage and that the lyrics — which also refer to the farmers as thieves and rapists — are not intended literally and are therefore not hate speech.

Terreblanche's killing comes amid growing disenchantment among blacks for whom the right to vote has not translated into jobs and better housing and education.

Some consider themselves betrayed by leaders governing the richest country on the continent and pursuing a policy of black empowerment that has made millionaires of a tiny black elite while millions remain trapped in poverty, even as whites continue to enjoy a privileged lifestyle.

But an unknown number of white farmers have been killed since the end of apartheid in 1994, many of them in land disputes. Some critics blame the government's badly organized land reform program and allege that corruption is a problem. A leading Afrikaner lobby group, AfriForum, claimed that since Malema sang the song in public, there has been a spike in killings of white farmers, with four killed in the previous week. The group could not prove a connection between the song and the killings.

Malema on Sunday denied responsibility, during an official visit to neighboring Zimbabwe.

"ANC will respond to that issue," he said "On a personal capacity, I'm not going to respond to what people are saying. I'm in Zimbabwe now, I'm not linked to this."

But on Saturday, at a youth rally in the capital of Harare, he defended the song.

"We are not being allowed to sing liberation songs in South Africa, but we are not going to stop," he said. "We are prepared to go jail and get arrested again. This is the court ruling of the white men in South Africa, but we are not going to obey it."

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa appealed for calm and asked the public to not make assumptions about the crime.

"We call on all South Africans, across whatever divide ... to desist from making any inflammatory statements which are not going to help in any way on the case we are dealing with," said Mthethwa, who visited the crime scene. "Nobody should obstruct us by what he or she says pertaining to this case. We want to get to the bottom of this case and we want nobody to obstruct the police in getting justice."

Relatives and friends of Terreblanche gathered near his homestead Sunday morning to pay their respects. Terreblanche's family and the AWB invited the press into one of their homes to hear a brief statement. But later, as journalists outside the house tried to interview people who came to commiserate with the family, several AWB members carrying pistols in hip holsters, threatened the press and ordered them to leave.

The opposition Democratic Alliance party blamed increasing racial tensions for the killing.

"This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fueled by irresponsible racist utterances" by two members of the governing African National Congress, said the Democratic Alliance legislator for that constituency, Juanita Terblanche.

Terblanche, no relative of the far-right leader, said her party did not share his political convictions but warned that the attack on him could be seen as an attack on the diverse components of South Africa's democracy.

President Jacob Zuma appealed for calm following "this terrible deed." In a statement, he asked "South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fueling racial hatred."

The killing comes 10 weeks before South Africa prepares to host the first World Cup soccer tournament on African soil, with massive expenditures on infrastructure being questioned as hundreds of thousands of tickets and hotel rooms remain unsold.

The South African Press Association quoted police spokeswoman Adele Myburgh as saying that Terreblanche was attacked by a 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy who worked for him on his farm outside Ventersdorp, about 110 kilometers (68 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

Myburgh said the alleged attackers have been arrested and charged with murder. She said the two, whom she did not identify by name, told the police they were not paid for work they had done on the farm.

"Mr. Terreblanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries." She said a machete was found on his body and a knobkerrie — a wooden staff with a rounded head — next to his bed.

Terreblanche's brother Andries Terreblanche urged reporters on Sunday to appear at the suspects' first court appearance, scheduled for Tuesday.

"Everyone must come to court to hear what is the truth," he said. "It isn't about wages."

Terreblanche had threatened war on South Africa's white minority government in the 1980s when it began to make what he considered dangerous concessions to blacks that endangered the survival of South Africa's white race.

A symbol of white resistance to democratic black majority rule, he had lived in relative obscurity in recent years but had not changed his views.

He revived the AWB in 2008 and had rallies that drew growing crowds whom he wooed with his declaration that white South Africans are entitled to create their own country, a fight he declared he would take to the International Court at The Hague.

An AWB member who said his name was Commandant Pieter Steyn noted the coincidence of Terreblanche's name, which in French translates to "white land." Steyn said the name is a common name among South African descendants of Dutch Huguenot settlers, and that Terreblanche was born with the name.

Steyn wore a khaki uniform which read "100 (percent) Boer." The uniform also had a patch of South Africa's apartheid-era flag.

Terreblanche launched his political career in 1973 amid growing opposition to the white minority government and its racist policies, forming the AWB with six other "patriots" of the Afrikaans-speaking whites descended from Dutch immigrants.

The AWB was a semisecret organization for years. When it "came out" in 1979, the movement displayed Nazi-like insignia and declared opposition to any parliamentary democracy.

Terreblanche would arrive at meetings on horseback flanked by masked bodyguards dressed in khaki or black and became a charismatic leader for a small minority that could not envision a South Africa under the democratic rule of a black majority.

At one rally his guards who terrorized blacks and were dubbed "storm troopers" after the Nazis, brandished guns, police batons and knives, prompting the government to announce it was "looking into" the actions and attitudes of the movement.

In 1983, Terreblanche was sentenced to a two-year suspended jail sentence for illegal arms possession, though he said the arms were planted by black opponents. The same year, two AWB militants were jailed for 15 years for conspiring to overthrow the government and assassinate black leaders.

Terreblanche finally was jailed in 1997, sentenced to six years for the attempted murder of a black security guard and assaulting a black gas station worker.

He became a born-again Christian in prison, and declared on his release in 2004 that his experience had convinced him that "the real hour to revive the resistance had arrived."

Terreblanche threatened to take the country by force if the white government capitulated to the ANC. After the white government conceded, the ANC overwhelmingly won 1994 elections and has won every election since with more than 60% of votes.