28 Aug, 2008
Tell your friends and family that the son of Malaysia Today has taken over the fight of its father. And this son is called mt.harapanmalaysia.com. Also tell them that the fight is going to get fiercer. The son wants to avenge the death of its father.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Government to target blogosphere next
The Malaysian Insider, 26 August 2006
Next up: a crackdown on bloggers. This possibility looms large after the government reached a sober assessment that it could all end in tears for the Barisan Nasional at the next general election if tough action is not taken to counter allegations on the Net and hold owners of blogs accountable.
This conclusion was reached during a meeting last week involving several Cabinet ministers and senior government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
Government officials noted that some 400,000 new voters are registered each year. Assuming that the next polls are in five years, there would be two million new voters the next time the BN seeks a fresh mandate. A large chunk of these two million voters are likely to obtain their news and information from websites and blogs, and not from the mainstream media.
Several ministers noted that if the government followed its current policy of allowing allegations by bloggers to go unchallenged, this would create the perception that the information being posted is accurate.
"There is a growing consensus in government that those who run websites and blogs should be held accountable and this means that laws should be used to take action against those who defame and spread disinformation.
"If not, we are going to have a situation where everyone will be free to make all sorts of allegations with no downside at all. There is a fear that the trust level with BN would be very low if nothing is done, '' said a senior government official familiar with details of the meeting.
The prevailing mood in the government against the alternative media is one of frustration. After decades of being able to control newspapers and television stations through a raft of legislation, government officials and politicians are finding that their tools are useless in setting boundaries for new media.
At last week's meeting, an official of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) explained that the authorities have not come down hard on websites and bloggers because Section 3 of the Communications and Multimedia Act prohibits any form of censorship.
But government officials corrected him and said that the guarantee that the Internet would not be censored did not preclude legal action from being taken against bloggers for defamation and sedition.
Request for action under section 263(2) of the Communication and Multimedia Act 1998
In exercising your duties under section 263 (1) of the CMA98 act in preventing the commission or attempted commission of an offence under any written law of Malaysia or otherwise in enforcing the laws of Malaysia, including, but not limited to, the protection of the public revenue and preservation of national security as provided under section 263(2) of the same act , the commission hereby requests to undertake the actions under section 263(2) of the CMA 98 with respect to the following url/web reference: http//www.malaysia-today.net/2008/content/view/1252/46 .
To request all internet service providers in Malaysia to block access to the website.
The abovementioned url address has been found to be in contravention of section 211 and 233 of the act. (Letter from MCMC to all ISPs, 26 August 2008)
Dear Anil,
Your biased live coverage of the PP buy-election was disgusting to say the least. It seemed like the Barisan Nasional was non-existent in PP. The fact that more than 15,000 people voted for Arif Shah is testimony to BN’s popularity. If it were not for the roughhouse tactics of the PKR goons, more legitimate voters would have made it to the polling stations. You and your ilk ought to be detained under the ISA and the keys thrown away.
You are partisan, unfair, biased, and a false witness to the events in PP. Like the 31,000 odd who voted for Anwar, you are ungrateful for the development and progress wrought by the BN. Honestly ask yourself: Would you even own a laptop or even know how to use the Internet if not for the education that the BN gave you? Just like the other bloggers and commentators on the blogsites, you bite the hand that feeds you. You are despicable and so are Raja Petra and the likes of him.
When the BN government finally wipes out the Opposition from the face of this Earth, we’ll be coming after you and all of your ilk for the lies and ridiculous untrue propaganda that you spread to the innocent rakyat. Unfortunately it seems now that a large minority of the rakyat are stupid enough to pay attention to the lies of the Opposition. The BN will educate them very soon and I assure you it will be a painful lesson indeed.
BN Sakthi!!!
(http://anilnetto.com/democracy/my-biased-live-coverage-was-disgusting/ )
Yeh, yeh, kita menang!
Kita menang when the government decided to ask all Malaysian ISPs to block Malaysia Today. The government has finally admitted it has lost the internet war, a war which started way back in 1998 on the birth of the Reformasi
The first government clampdown was more than seven years ago -- on Hari Raya Haji of March 2001 -- when the police arrested me, raided my house, and confiscated my computer. In that incident, Bakri Zinin, the CID Director, beat me up in the police station in front of more than twenty witnesses, one of them my wife. Cikgu Bard, PKR’s candidate for Rembau in the recent general election (versus Khairy Jamaluddin), was also there. In fact, Cikgu Bard was handcuffed to me -- his left hand attached to my right hand. They then detained me, my wife, Cikgu Bard -- plus five others -- overnight in the police lockup.
The following month, I was detained for two months, also for what I wrote on the internet. Since then, over the last seven years, the police have raided my house five times -- the latest was last Thursday -- and they confiscated my computers and other stuff each time. I was called in to the police station for interrogation (they call it ‘to record your statement’) a half dozen times or so and I currently face four charges as well. Over the next week or so I will again have to report to the police headquarters at Bukit Aman for my ‘statement to be recorded’. I am waiting for them to phone me, which will be over the next few days.
On Monday, the eve of the Permatang Pauh by-election, Malaysia Today saw three times the normal traffic. We anticipated this and beefed up our resources to be able to cater for this heavier traffic. This high traffic continued till Polling Day the following day. Malaysia Today was supposed to flash the early election results from around 6.00pm, ahead of the mainstream media. But, as the results came in, and just before Malaysia Today could flash them, the government blocked access to Malaysia Today.
Why did they do this? Simple, they wanted to make sure that the results remained a ‘secret’ in case it was a close-finish. Assuming Anwar Ibrahim’s majority was very narrow then they would not want anyone knowing about it until they decide what to do. If Anwar won by a mere few hundred votes then something could be done to ‘modify’ the final results. But this would be difficult to pull off if the results have already been flashed on Malaysia Today.
Nevertheless, Anwar won two out of three votes casted (66.6%), so the margin was just too wide to manipulate -- so it did not really matter anyway. But if it were a mere few hundred-vote majority then it would certainly have mattered. For example, they could have suddenly ‘discovered’ missing ballot boxes not yet counted -- as has sometimes happened in the past like when they turned Najib’s 1,800 vote loss into a 200 vote win by ‘injecting’ an additional 2,000 ‘postal votes’ that suddenly and mysteriously surfaced.
Kita menang when they decided to block Malaysia Today on the day of Anwar’s historic win in Permatang Pauh. It is very difficult for the opposition to win a by-election. Even if, by any chance, the opposition does win the by-election, never can that win be greater than the general election before that. This time, however, Anwar not only won, but he won with a greater majority than in the general election before that. And that is the greatest win of all. A win not only for the people of Permatang Pauh but for all Malaysians. Because the message sent to the government is very precise: the people no longer want Umno or Barisan Nasional. Yes, kita menang. It is not just the Permatang Pauh voters or Anwar Ibrahim who menang. It is we, the people, who menang. So kita yang menang.
Kita menang because the Permatang Pauh by-election result is not only about Permatang Pauh, but also about the 8 March 2008 Tsunami. They say that 8 March 2008 was a flash-in-the-pan. They say it was something that came and went and can never be repeated. But the Permatang Pauh by-election proved that the 8 March 2008 Tsunami is still very much alive and has not fizzled out. The message to the government is the people still want you out.
Kita menang because they say that only the Chinese and Indians are with the opposition while the Malays are with Umno and Barisan Nasional. No doubt half the voters voted opposition on 8 March 2008 but then only 49% of the Malays did so. Even then, they say, the Malays voted opposition more out of protest and not because they support the opposition. But the Malays now regret voting opposition because they did not think that five states would fall to the opposition and that Barisan Nasional would lose its two-thirds majority in Parliament, they say.
If the elections were held again, the Malays would swing back to Umno and Barisan Nasional, they say. Sure, the Malays voted opposition on 8 March 2008. But they did so just to send a message to Umno and Barisan Nasional and now that this message has been delivered there is no longer any reason to continue voting opposition.
But the Permatang Pauh by-election proved them wrong. There are 69% Malay voters in Permatang Pauh, only 31% Chinese, Indians and Thais. If the Malays had swung back to Umno, leaving only the non-Malays to vote opposition, then Anwar would not have won 66.6% or two out of every three of the votes. It needed a Malay swing to achieve this.
So, kita menang. The Malays did not swing back to Umno and Barisan Nasional. The 8 March 2008 Tsunami has not fizzled out. They now need to block Malaysia Today because they acknowledge that the internet has done a lot of damage to Umno and Barisan Nasional. Umno and Barisan Nasional have admitted they have lost the internet war and the only way they can stop Malaysia Today is to block it.
Yeh, yeh, kita menang! Umno and Barisan Nasional dah kalah! Malaysia Today may be ‘dead’. But the son of Malaysia Today is not dead. It is alive. It is not only alive but it is also fucking mad. And the son of Malaysia Today is going to continue the fight just as Malaysia Today continued the fight on 13 August 2004, which was started by the Reformasi movement in September 1998.
Raja Petra Kamarudin no longer owns Malaysia Today. Raja Petra may have started the original Malaysia Today. But he does not own it any more. Malaysia Today has been replaced by the son of Malaysia Today. And the son of Malaysia Today is owned by the people of Malaysia. The people of Malaysia are keeping the son of Malaysia Today going. It is now called MT Harapan Malaysia and you can access it at mt.harapanmalaysia.com .
Spread this message far and wide. Tell all your friends and family that Malaysia Today has died. It died at 6.00pm on 26 August 2008, the time and day that Anwar Ibrahim won the Permatang Pauh by-election with historic results and which has now triggered his march to Putrajaya. But also tell your friends and family that the son of Malaysia Today has taken over the fight of its father. And this son is called mt.harapanmalaysia.com. Also tell them that the fight is going to get fiercer. The son wants to avenge the death of its father. And don’t forget to also gloat to your friends and family: yeh, yeh, kita menang! movement.
Ooh, does this cigar taste good!
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