Najib Tun Razak will in his first year of premiership undo what his predecessor Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has earnestly built up as a key component of the Multimedia Super Corridor for the last half of his 22-year PMship tenure-- guarantee of NON-CENSORSHIP of the Internet. I hope now leading Blogger-cum-common citizen 1Malaysian will strike back, with knowldege that most Bloggers of BUM will be solidly behind him, for those rare occasions when our vibrations overlap cheerfully, and smilingly in tandem.:)
Quoting those clouds from
UMNO clowns led by chief-jester-cum-prime minister of about five months:
"BUMmers Unite as Cloud-seeders,
another reason WHY MALAYSIANS MUST MARCH,< /strong> to another climax surpassing March 8, 2008!" ~~ another CSM from BUMmer Desiderata:)
From The Malaysian Insider:
Rais confirms ‘green dam’, says to shut out ‘blue sites’ UPDATED
By Lee Wei Lian
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 7 — Datuk Seri Rais Yatim today confirmed the Najib administration is looking at putting an Internet filter to stop access to undesirable websites particularly pornography, but will leave bloggers to existing laws.
The information, communication and culture minister also took a swipe at "liberals" and told them to look at countries that had become "victims" of pornography.
"We cannot compromise on the protection of Malaysian children from pornography," Rais said when questioned about the Internet filter as reported by The Malaysian Insider yesterday.
"Those who refer to themselves as liberals or liberalism should look to those countries that have become victims where child sex has happened, the moral of pornography has become widespread. So the government will look at ways to overcome this problem," he added.
The minister appeared flustered and annoyed when members of the media posed questions on the proposed plan to filter the Internet as he wanted to keep the focus of the press conference on National Day celebrations.
When one reporter was half-way through a question on whether the government was in the process of tendering the Internet filter project, Rais abruptly cut in with a question on the journalist's background and media affiliation.
The interest in the topic of Internet filtering was not limited to local media as several international media were also present and keen to learn of the government's intentions.
A proposed Internet filter would appear to go against the government's commitment not to censor the Internet as part of the Bill of Guarantees under the national ICT initiative MSC Malaysia.
Most countries that attempt to censor the Internet, such as Iran and China, have come under heavy criticism as it is perceived as an attempt to clamp down on political dissent.
But Rais denied that the proposed Internet filtering was to stop bloggers from inflaming racial sentiments as mentioned by other media organisations.
"Bloggers will face the normal laws of the land (if they breach the laws)," said Rais, who has been at the forefront to curb bloggers, most of whom were seen as a catalyst for the ruling Barisan Nasional's dismal performance in Election 2008.
He added that he has directed the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission to look into how to overcome the problem of Internet pornography.
The veteran minister, who has been in government since Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's father's time as premier, said the government was still studying the filtering process, adding that it would only be implemented once every aspect of it was fully considered.
It is understood that four companies have sent in proposals for the Internet filter with a decision expected to be made in December by the National Security Council led by Najib. ~~ (UMNO clowns led by chief-jester-cum-prime minister of about five months:(
UPDATEd @4.26PM:
Young&Articulate johnleemk, Malaysian third year economics student in the US, has his thoughts, so mature that he puts the minister apparently a phD in law to shame in terms of progressive thinking, and keeping up with the Times -- They're A-Changing... One of Desi's favourites of the Hippies era of the 960s, I believe Rais Yatim's era too. But so also Rip wan Wrinkled's... and we know how disastrous his five-year premiership has been! And the Internet Age changes at easily ten times that idyllic Flower Children's times!
Maybe Najib wants to go into deeper slumber than his immediate predecessor.
I remember another song of another era:
Oh it was sad, it was sad
The great ship went down...
From the MI2:
Friday August 07 2009
John Lee is a third-year student of economics at Dartmouth College in the United States. He has been thinking aloud since 2005 at infernalramblings.com.
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Do not filter out democracy
AUG 7 — It’s really funny how unremarkably the announcement came. The government yesterday put out a tender for companies to help filter the Internet. Now, in places like China and Iran, this happens quite regularly. But in Malaysia — well, there’s a first that should go into the Malaysia Book of Records.
In this day and age, it’s a rare regime that pretends to be democratic and yet maintains a law that allows the government to throw anyone it likes into jail for as long as it likes, without any accountability at all.
Rarer still are regimes who do this and who, rather than slowly loosening the chains of their people, only tighten them further. The people of Malaysia have spoken quite clearly: they want more freedom, not less.
The government dismisses calls for the abolition — and sometimes even amendment — of the Internal Security Act as unfounded, because the ISA is necessary to preserve national harmony. If people were to be able to do as they please, and speak their minds, this logic goes, then the country would collapse. Riots would break out and terrorists would have free rein.
Curiously, virtually every democracy with preventive detention laws has controls over how long someone can be held for. Often, after a certain period has passed, the government must either charge the detainee with a crime, or let them free.
In Malaysia, even though in theory someone can only be held for two years, the government has complete freedom to renew the detention order — and it is accountable to nobody.
The government pretends we are democratic in spite of this law; it is our own kind of democracy, they say. But democracy is about more than voting. They had elections in Soviet Russia; they have elections in North Korea. Hardly anybody pretends these countries, which have stripped the electoral process of all the freedoms it requires to work, constitute democracies.
Democracy needs information to work. The people who vote need to be able to understand the issues that concern the government, and to hear different points of view about how to tackle these issues. If you know nothing about who you are voting for, why bother voting?
It is true that letting people talk and listen has its risks. We must bring to justice people who spread a message of hate, and who plot against our country. But we must also accord those we suspect of these crimes their right to due process.
If the government can toss any terrorist it likes into the lockup for as long as it pleases, it will slowly and surely expand the definition of terrorism to encompass those who merely disagree with the ruling regime.
We have already seen this happen; how many ISA detainees have truly posed a threat to our country? Many of these supposed terrorists at this very moment sit in Parliament, on both sides of the benches, helping govern this country!
Anyone who has properly considered the issue of the ISA will view it as an untenable law. At the very least, it needs amendment so it complies with the same preventive detention laws used by real democracies. But I believe we would be better off abolishing the ISA, and compel the government to properly charge people in court for their crimes, instead of allowing the government to do whatever it likes to suspected criminals; no government should act as judge and jury.
But rather than begin repairing our broken democracy, the government is intent on destroying it altogether. The people are tired of sham democracy and rigged elections, and they have used the internet over the last ten years to make this known. Nothing has done more for our democracy in living memory than the development of the internet.
And now the government is set on censoring the Internet, to ensure only the opinions it likes will be available online. In name, the government merely wants to block access to pornography and websites which promote hate speech.
While I am sceptical about the feasibility of censoring pornography, I can at least see why a democratic government might want to regulate adult content. But there is no justification for censoring views and opinions — none.
For years, some of the most racist material has been available online; long before that, it was available from the podiums at most of the ruling parties’ annual general meetings. It is a testament to the wisdom of the Malaysian people that literally zero violence has resulted from these things in the last four decades. Malaysians are mature enough to reject calls for violence.
The government is carefully treading down the path of full censorship. When we restrict the spread of information and opinions, we restrict our democracy — and to what end? To protect the interests of those in power, who would rather not hear nasty things about themselves?
That is the primary reason the government wants to censor any and all avenues of information in this country. If we want to preserve the democracy our founding fathers fought for, we must put a stop to this nonsense, and vote out those who clearly put their own interests ahead of their country’s.
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