They blogged, therefore some of them may not be stupid ?

The above news article appeared in The Star on August 6th 2007.

No insensitivity or disrespect intended, but if we keep putting indirect threats on bloggers because we disagreed with what they wrote, what does that make us ? A patriotic Malaysian ?

Let us all not be so narrow minded. If we do not like or are incapable to accept criticisms from bloggers, let it be, walk away, and move forward with positive actions. Is it too much of an asking to have some basic decency and civility to respect the rights of others to freedom of expressions ? If we are transparent and accountable to our actions, rumours will die a natural death. So, why some ignorant people are still so preoccupied with perceived rumours, lies, and untruths ?

All of us have different perceptions and opinions on certain issues or events. What make us think that we are entitled the moral authority to enforce our views, opinions, and perceptions on others. Gone are the days of apology seeking, grievance seeking, rent seeking, and intolerances. Crying baby will no longer gets the milk, but probably self inflicted sore throat.

During the Qin dynasty, the emperor Qin Shi Huang, confiscated and burnt all books because he want to "standardize human thoughts, and to prevent free thinking" that may erode his authority. Subsequently, he became a ruthless tyrant. Although he ruled less than 15 years, but China was damaged into a period of backwardness for many centuries. Pol pot of Cambodia killed millions of educated Cambodians in order to sustain his stay of power, but eventually he died a pitiful death, and Cambodia is now on the road of recovery. The point here is, freedom of expression is a God given rights, not privileges. It is immoral and against God's wishes to suppress this rights. For peace and harmony, freedom of expression must be nurtured and encouraged to facilitate greater free flow of information for the sake of humanity and the nation.

What benefits does the nation enjoys if bloggers are indirectly threatened to refrain from writing honest opinions or write what the elitists want to read ? Let us not be regressive into an era of "frog hiding in a Well ( 井底蛙 )" or "Frog hiding under the coconut shelf (Katak di bawah tempurung)". Malaysia need to be progressive and move forward to greater wealth and prosperity. All those narrow minded mental retards who oppose freedom of expressions, are merely dead weights, tagging along with their extended shelf lives to hinder the political and social development of Malaysia.

I do sincerely hope bloggers and politicians can appreciate this quote from the Venerable Master Ching Kung " Speak words of fairness whether in anger or in joy. Help them even if they have severed all ties with you. Show concern towards those who are ungrateful towards you. Forgive those who have ill intent. "

May all Malaysians be enlightened with sincerity, purity, righteousness, and equality. Let us all not be so selfish to perpetuate our own rights at the expense of others. Let us also appreciate and respect the rights of others. Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you...... Om Mani Pedme Hum.....

I say, BLOG you !

Thank God, I am given another privilege to wake up to smell the fresh morning air of Saturday and the cheerful greeting of my ever positive spouse. Life is indeed sweet ! What is life? So much more thing to do, but so little time left along this speedway to eternity. But Saturday has always been a day of rest, of doing thing, and of reading things at casual pace. Saturday has always been one of my favorite day of the week.

Reading the past week news materials, I can't help but felt sorry for the state of mentality and ignorances of some of our privileged few Malaysians. Increasingly, bloggers and Internet intellectuals has been ridiculed and subjected to indirect threats in the name of protecting the sensitivity of "religion, race, and cultures". And recently, even the honourable good name of our beloved King are being used as excuse to raise awareness for the need to enforce governance on contents of Internet in general, and blogs in particular. Are Malaysians that thin-skinned to be incapable of taking the slightest humours or unintended insensitivities ? Are Malaysians that brain-dead to be incapable of differentiating and managing truths and lies ?

Does having different perspectives on issues, differing in opinions, expressing differing opinions, voicing criticisms, and raising awareness on subjects of public interests by bloggers justify for the grounds to implement and enforce policing and governance on bloggers ? If we persecute bloggers at the slightest excuse, we are in fact directly impeding freedom of expressions. And we also subject ourselves into greater risk of allowing the control and distribution of information into the hands of selected biased fews. We will eventually transforming ourselves into an ignorance society incapable of articulating and charting our own destiny as a nation.

After 50 years of long and winding road of nationhood, Malaysia is supposed to be a nation blooming out from its growing pains. With ease and accessibility of broadband Internet technology, Malaysians are beginning to enjoy unprecedented freedom of expression. Traditionally, our access to information are governed by traditional delivery system such as newspapers, radio, and television. These traditional mediums are easily regulated through annual licensing, so the contents, whether we like it or not, followed strict guidelines and conformance, otherwise the license to operate will be revoked. So Freedom of Expression tends to be managed. In the past, directly or indirectly, Malaysians are being presented with information based on the premise of "what the Dear Leaders think are right for the masses". But Malaysians are no longer the Malaysians of 50 years ago, they are better educated now and want to be better informed, they want unbiased news and different perspectives of the news, as well as to contribute their varied perceptions and opinions. Malaysians no longer wanted to be only the recipients of managed information.

The Internet delivery system has changed the information landscape of control and distribution. Malaysians can now freely access any on line news. Within minutes, any computer literate person can also set up his "electronic newspaper" or blog to publish his opinions, observations, commentaries, etc. in and from anywhere of the world. The fact of the matter is, bloggers are increasingly enjoying unprecedented followings and indirectly asserted significant influences on all Malaysians. Take the case of "Malaysia Today", a blog which was set-up less than 3 years ago, enjoy approximately 250,000 visits a days, much higher than the readerships of all the major local newspaper combined. The authority feared if bloggers and blogs are not regulated, they may impart "negative influences" on all Malaysians. Increasingly, the authority is seeking to reassert control to reestablished its traditional power of regulating or controlling the free flows of information and to managed freedom of expressions.

Bloggers, both hobbyist and serious bloggers, have recently came under a lot of unnecessary pressures to "toe the line" from the authority. In recent past, four prominent social political bloggers had been summoned to the Police department to be interviewed and their statements recorded. Bloggers had also been told "not to go overboard", "using Internet to only do the proper things", "to be responsible", "observed the sensitivity of religion and culture", "not to conduct insult, slander, and break the law", "not to insult religion and the Rulers", "Not to touch on Constitution", etc. In short, bloggers had been warned that they will have to "pay the price" if the authority decided to interpret the laws on bloggers.

My frank opinion is, the unnecessary imposition of threats, restrictions, and governance are not healthy and impede positive derivatives from freedom of expressions. Any attempt to conduct on line policing will only strike chilling reminders and negative impressions that the authority is afraid of truth being presented. And it may also create fears among Malaysians that the authority may use the policing muscle to suppress expressions or truths that may result in abuse of power, unwarranted persecution, breaches of human rights, and illegitimate limitations on the rights of all Malaysians. When free flow of information is impeded, there will never be any diversities of media and progressive opinions, ultimately the mission of an information society driven by culture of excellence and innovation will be retarded causing irreversible damages to the nation's mental, physical, and financial wellbeing. A country that is incapable to criticize and accept criticisms will be forever under the regressive mentality and unable to be open minded to embrace progress and adaptive lifestyle.

When a nation is progressively regressive, the natural tendency is, its citizen will forever resorting to using the issues of "religion, culture, race, and Rulers" to justify their illegitimate grievances and immoral demand against each other.

Truth hurts. But truth brings accountability. Accountability brings responsibility. Responsibility brings progress. Progress brings innovation. Innovation bring competitiveness. Competitiveness brings excellence and meritocracy. Excellence and meritocracy ensure all Malaysians can continue to enjoy sustainable comfortable lifestyle. Do we want to risk this collective goal simply because there are some morons want to protect their own selfish and obsolete agenda ?

Truth, like a coin, always has two sides, both are always the right side depending on which side you predetermined. Which side are you in ? Freedom of expression is a basic human rights not privilege. I say, let's not be a righteously regressive moron, leave the bloggers alone.

May all sentient being be freed from the attachments of desires to control the freedom of others. Om Namo Amithaba Buddha

Of blogginess and freedom of expressions

Come to think of it, on the positive side, I honestly want to believe that freedom of expressions is still very much ALIVE and KICKING in Malaysia. Of course, I still have my frustrations on perceived unfair treatments, discriminations, and injustices, but comparatively speaking, Malaysia is still much better than a lot of other countries in the world. Otherwise, this Dalai will end up masturbating in his government funded private cell rather than ranting in this cosmic blogginess.

As a blogger, we still have the freedom to blog about national, political, and other daily issues. Say whatever we want about our Prime Minister, but looking at the positive side, at least he is still a very nice and smiley fella going around preaching his brand of social development and religious philosophy. We can still blog about our aspirations, humours, frustrations, angers, and other issues we want in our personal cyber space. The cyber space is still relatively free and there are no attempts yet to block the blogs.

Of course, in the recent past, we have a few obsolete souls desperately championing the cause of censoring the blogs, but these are isolated incidents of ignorant morons venting their frustrations of not being able to control the free flow of information. Gone are the days where monopoly and manipulation of information are the priviledges of select fews. These morons are still hanging on with the hope of instgating misguided rhetorics to protect their agenda. These morons, out of touch with realities, still hanging on with glorifying past misdeeds and and trying to recreate new hindreances to perpectuate their already expired shelf lives. I said, let them be, let these empty vessels make their farting noises in the junkyards.

Casting aside a small group of noisy ignorance mental retards, Malaysians in general are not what they were 20 or 30 years ago. Most Malaysians are now well educated, well informed, liberal, and open minded to embrace new ideology, criticisms, opinions, etc. Gone are days where majority of Malaysians can be easily influenced into accepting the unholy words of DEAR LEADERS and incited into violences and lawlessness. The minds and thoughts of politicians must now move in tandem with this new political realities. Politicians with narrow minded agenda will no longer be able hide behind race, religion, national security, and culture as excuse to launch attacks to inbibit freedom of expressions. Sooner or later, these narrow minded politicians will have to dig their own shallow graves and perished in shames.

Bloggers must always be defended to present their honest alternative and critical view points on national issues without much hindrances and intimidations. To encourage the uninhibited free flow of information and greater participative opinions in the development of our young nationhood, the government should take one step further to provide and encourage all Malaysians to openly express their opinions and criticisms in public forums, printed media, and other form of digital media. Only a government with unholy agenda and inferiority complex will resort to curtail the freedom of expressions.

The blogsphere is just the beginning of a unlimited digital frontiers to empower Malaysia into a secular, meritorious, and competitive nation, and along the process, there will be a lot of other forms of digital platforms to enlighten Malaysians into greater awareness, acceptance, and participation of positive development of human capital indoctrinated with religious acceptance of human rights, democracy, and freedom of expressions. These freedom of expressions will eventually become the greatest catalyst to moralized Malaysians into embracing fair, open, ethical, and transparent way of life regardless of race, culture, and religion.

Honestly, and with all due respect to all, as a minority in this country, at times, I do felt occasional unfair treatments and the blunts of discriminations in politically correct definitions. I do find myself in a difficult position in expressing my dilemma because "others" may deemed my expressions as insensitive to their agenda. I do sincerely hope these "others" can imagine themselves in the shoes of the minority with morality and sense of justice. As a Malaysian, I accept the fact that there are always moronic rent seekers no matter where you go. And, I thank the Almighty for blessing me with the grace and brain to seek out opportunities from all difficulties that seeked me out along my path to greater wealths and material comforts. God is indeed great in delivering the the proven Karma and Vipakka to mankind. At the end of the day, we are all answerable to GOD. In the mean times, I am having the best of my life and enjoying my "so called freedom of blogging".

Hail to the bloggers for championing freedom of expressions in Malaysia, and God saves the Blogdom of Malaysia.