Bloggers, please stop blogging

This is the plea of Abdullah Badawai for all bloggers to stop blogging. He is putting it squarely on the shoulders of bloggers and those who SMS for creating a climate of fear in Malaysia. The atmosphere is now full of anxiety, tension and cynicism. Even the credibility of his govt and all the national leaders are now in question. Thanks or no thanks to the bloggers. The TOM is non consequential. When the national media is no longer credible or believeable, it is only natural that the people desert them and seek news from where they think is reliable. The TOM is not only telling and repeating stale and unsatisfactory news, it is no longer worth listening to. That is how bad Malaysian media industry has become. What next? After the plea, if unheeded, there may be sanctions and clamping down. Blogging could be banned in Malaysia and bloggers persecuted, arrested and jailed. Their fingers will be chopped off. A new witchhunt will begin and a new enemy of the state will be declared. Yes, bloggers will be the new enemy. The pen is mightier than the sword. The fingers are mightier than the pen. All the bloggers will run into hiding, into the jungle for fear of persecution and had their fingers chopped. Long live the revolution! Long live the bloggers. These will be the new war cry.

We feel safe with our men in uniform

What is happening in Malaysia is frightening. Just over a few years, the state of safety and security has gone to such a low that one has to run away from the people who are supposed to protect you. Balasubramaniam, the PI who signed a Statutory Declaration that Najib Razak knew the murdered Mongolian model is now on the run. He must have feared for his life and the lives of his family. The police has made a public assurance to guarantee his safety, just like Anwar's wife asking Abdullah to guarantee his safety. There is now a manhunt going on for him and his family on a scale no lesser than Mas Selamat. Would it be a hunt in vain, that he no longer exists? Silencing becomes pertinent and seems like an acceptable option in Malaysian politics today. And several candidates are ripe to be silenced. Who will be next? Balasubramaniam, Anwar Ibrahim, the Razak Baginda in prison are so perilous. When a country reaches such a state when the citizens fear the law enforcing officers for their lives, it is very serious.

Find your own truth

This marketing manager Murray Lim must be quite pissed off to the extend that he took his own camera, his car and time, and went about collecting evidence on the road conditions to prove that it was not that bad. He definitely disagreed with the findings of the LTA to justify more ERPs and higher toll rates. He took 9 days and presented his evidence to LTA. Of course his evidence was not accepted. What he thought was good traffic flow may not be what LTA thought was good. It is like a parent demanding 100 marks from his child when the child thought 99 is good enough. When both parties work on different terms of reference, of course the one in authority is right. It is their terms of reference that will be used to decide what the policy should be. Good try.

The law is the law

To keep Singaporeans from committing crimes abroad, some of our laws have been amended, if I am not wrong, to charge Singaporeans who went overseas for child sex. These Singaporeans would not escape punishment on their return as committing such an offence overseas or locally is still an offence. TOM reported that there were at least 350 Singaporeans who had kidney transplants overseas. And now that our law forbids such acts and regarded them as an offence, will the long arm of the law go searching to haul all these offenders to courts? The law is the law, so they said.

Today acknowledges cyberspace

Today is changing its presentation and one of the reasons is that there is a new reader in cyberspace. According to Today, this new reader is 'one who is more tech savvy, who is plugged into real time news, impatient and who moves through information fast. We need to keep pace with you.' The cyberspace has arrived. No one is going to wait for the newsboy to deliver the paper the next morning. The news is here 24/7, non stop and unstoppable. We are living with news and creating news and demanding news at all times. Today will try to keep pace, that is only in its online version. But with paid professionals who work on regular or regimented hours, it will have a hard time keeping up with the readers who will be in and out of the internet or be there all the time. Today's news is fast and furious. Time waits for no one. So is the news today.