pywong
27th October 2008, 03:47 PM
In case anyone doubts this, he posts the comments, by the dozens and
hundreds, page after page, day after day. It turns out he has a lot of fans
out there.
"Amazingly brilliant!" reads one comment. "I can't stop laughing... you made
my day Sir!"
"HAHAHAHA :) ...This is your BEST posting so far, my dear Tun!!" reads
another, referring to Mahathir by an honorific.
"Dearest Tun," reads another, "You are sooooo right.. spot on.. bulls eye.."
And just to clear up any possible misunderstanding, another writes: "You,
sir, are the most brilliant politician Malaysia has ever been blessed with."
If one is dumb, arrogant or deluded enough, he will believe any rubbish his sycophants lavish on him.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/26/asia/blogger.php
Ex-leader uses blog to needle Malaysian government
By Seth Mydans Sunday, October 26, 2008
KUALA LUMPUR: In a vast office at the top of one of the world's tallest
buildings, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sits at a broad,
glass-topped desk, scribbling his thoughts on a pad of unlined paper.
For 22 years Mahathir was the most powerful person in this land, and his
thoughts were commands as he reshaped the country in his own grand image.
But he has become an irritant and a spoiler five years after stepping down,
turning against his handpicked successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and he has
fallen victim to the press controls he perfected as prime minister.
It is mainly a system of self-censorship in an atmosphere of pressure and
intimidation that produces an obedient press and has seen the closure or
banning of many publications.
"Where is the press freedom?" he exclaimed two years ago, apparently
surprised to be suddenly ignored. "Broadcast what I have to say! What I say
is not even accurately published in the press!"
Earlier this year, like many other inconvenient critics, he joined what
seems to be a political wave of the future, creating his own acerbic blog -
www.chedet.com - an online journal where he vents in both English and Malay
several times a week.
Around the region, bloggers like him are becoming a fifth estate,
challenging the government's monopoly on information in Singapore, evading
censors in Vietnam and influencing events in places like Thailand, Cambodia
and China.
In March, political experts say, Malaysia's bloggers helped tip the balance,
contributing to the biggest upset the governing party, the United Malays
National Organization, had suffered since independence in 1957. For the
first time in decades, it fell below two-thirds of the seats in Parliament,
and it lost control of 5 of 13 states.
Two months after that, in May, Mahathir went digital, cutting and thrusting
with elan.
"It is time the so-called intellectuals realize they were being duped by the
Master of Spin," he wrote on Aug. 21, referring to his bitter enemy, Anwar
Ibrahim, who was his deputy prime minister and now leads the opposition.
"The pious Muslim, who is also the bosom pal of Paul Wolfowitz, the neo-con
Jew, the killer of Muslims," he said, referring to the former U.S. deputy
secretary of defense.
Blogging on Sept. 3, he offered a sort of mission statement.
Many people are with him as he harasses the government, he asserted. "But
they are not prepared to say it openly. That was why I started my blog.
About six million had visited my blog site and tens of thousands have
commented and supported me."
In case anyone doubts this, he posts the comments, by the dozens and
hundreds, page after page, day after day. It turns out he has a lot of fans
out there.
"Amazingly brilliant!" reads one comment. "I can't stop laughing... you made
my day Sir!"
"HAHAHAHA :) ...This is your BEST posting so far, my dear Tun!!" reads
another, referring to Mahathir by an honorific.
"Dearest Tun," reads another, "You are sooooo right.. spot on.. bulls eye.."
And just to clear up any possible misunderstanding, another writes: "You,
sir, are the most brilliant politician Malaysia has ever been blessed with."
In the upheaval of the March election, several bloggers, following an
opposite trajectory from that of Mahathir, used their online popularity to
win seats in the national or state parliaments.
The most prominent was Jeff Ooi, 52, a former advertising copywriter who was
one of Malaysia's first political bloggers, in 2003, at www.jeffooi.com.
"The government doesn't have a clue how to handle bloggers," he said in an
interview. "If I were a dictator I would be despairing. What do you do
against this?"
The government's assault on Ooi - "very hostile," he said - included threats
of imprisonment without trial, attacks in the government-friendly press and
defamation lawsuits, which are popular among leaders in Southeast Asia.
But that only seemed to make him a hero, and when he decided to run for
Parliament with the opposition Democratic Action Party, he already had a big
head start.
"As a person that has consistently faced threats as a blogger, I had a kind
of iconism and imagery that this is someone you can trust, someone the
government fears, someone you need to put into Parliament," he said.
But he said it is much harder to blog from the inside. "The trade-off is
that I have to write with measured words," he said. "I am no longer my old
self. I thought I had to take it to a higher level, and a lot of readers are
getting disappointed. It isn't the same blogger that they used to know."
Earlier this year, Ooi said, he attended a public forum with Mahathir, and
he claims that he is the one who persuaded the old war horse to get
blogging.
"I threw him a challenge," Ooi said. "A blogger shares a few prerequisites.
One, he is strongly opinionated. Two, he could be controversial. And,
thirdly, he is an agent provocateur on issues.
"I thought Mahathir fulfilled all three."
The result, Ooi said, was "a miracle, he scored about 10 million visitors
within months."
Now, a convert to free speech, Mahathir is using his blog to champion the
most recent victim of government censorship, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, the
country's highest-profile blogger, who posts his slash-and-burn commentary
on his site, www.malaysia-today.net. The site has been blocked, but readers
are redirected to another address, which continues to be updated.
The government has fallen back on the kind of tactics that Ooi said it
threatened against him, charging Raja Petra with sedition and locking him up
for two years without trial for comments he has posted.
Mahathir, the country's former strongman, sounded almost like Che Guevara
when he said in his blog that the arrest showed "a degree of oppressive
arrogance worthy of a totalitarian state."
Furthermore, locking people up is futile, he said in an interview in his
sky-high office. There is no way the government can arrest all the bloggers,
even if it wants to.
At least, he said, "I hope so. Otherwise I'll be in, too."
hundreds, page after page, day after day. It turns out he has a lot of fans
out there.
"Amazingly brilliant!" reads one comment. "I can't stop laughing... you made
my day Sir!"
"HAHAHAHA :) ...This is your BEST posting so far, my dear Tun!!" reads
another, referring to Mahathir by an honorific.
"Dearest Tun," reads another, "You are sooooo right.. spot on.. bulls eye.."
And just to clear up any possible misunderstanding, another writes: "You,
sir, are the most brilliant politician Malaysia has ever been blessed with."
If one is dumb, arrogant or deluded enough, he will believe any rubbish his sycophants lavish on him.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/26/asia/blogger.php
Ex-leader uses blog to needle Malaysian government
By Seth Mydans Sunday, October 26, 2008
KUALA LUMPUR: In a vast office at the top of one of the world's tallest
buildings, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sits at a broad,
glass-topped desk, scribbling his thoughts on a pad of unlined paper.
For 22 years Mahathir was the most powerful person in this land, and his
thoughts were commands as he reshaped the country in his own grand image.
But he has become an irritant and a spoiler five years after stepping down,
turning against his handpicked successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and he has
fallen victim to the press controls he perfected as prime minister.
It is mainly a system of self-censorship in an atmosphere of pressure and
intimidation that produces an obedient press and has seen the closure or
banning of many publications.
"Where is the press freedom?" he exclaimed two years ago, apparently
surprised to be suddenly ignored. "Broadcast what I have to say! What I say
is not even accurately published in the press!"
Earlier this year, like many other inconvenient critics, he joined what
seems to be a political wave of the future, creating his own acerbic blog -
www.chedet.com - an online journal where he vents in both English and Malay
several times a week.
Around the region, bloggers like him are becoming a fifth estate,
challenging the government's monopoly on information in Singapore, evading
censors in Vietnam and influencing events in places like Thailand, Cambodia
and China.
In March, political experts say, Malaysia's bloggers helped tip the balance,
contributing to the biggest upset the governing party, the United Malays
National Organization, had suffered since independence in 1957. For the
first time in decades, it fell below two-thirds of the seats in Parliament,
and it lost control of 5 of 13 states.
Two months after that, in May, Mahathir went digital, cutting and thrusting
with elan.
"It is time the so-called intellectuals realize they were being duped by the
Master of Spin," he wrote on Aug. 21, referring to his bitter enemy, Anwar
Ibrahim, who was his deputy prime minister and now leads the opposition.
"The pious Muslim, who is also the bosom pal of Paul Wolfowitz, the neo-con
Jew, the killer of Muslims," he said, referring to the former U.S. deputy
secretary of defense.
Blogging on Sept. 3, he offered a sort of mission statement.
Many people are with him as he harasses the government, he asserted. "But
they are not prepared to say it openly. That was why I started my blog.
About six million had visited my blog site and tens of thousands have
commented and supported me."
In case anyone doubts this, he posts the comments, by the dozens and
hundreds, page after page, day after day. It turns out he has a lot of fans
out there.
"Amazingly brilliant!" reads one comment. "I can't stop laughing... you made
my day Sir!"
"HAHAHAHA :) ...This is your BEST posting so far, my dear Tun!!" reads
another, referring to Mahathir by an honorific.
"Dearest Tun," reads another, "You are sooooo right.. spot on.. bulls eye.."
And just to clear up any possible misunderstanding, another writes: "You,
sir, are the most brilliant politician Malaysia has ever been blessed with."
In the upheaval of the March election, several bloggers, following an
opposite trajectory from that of Mahathir, used their online popularity to
win seats in the national or state parliaments.
The most prominent was Jeff Ooi, 52, a former advertising copywriter who was
one of Malaysia's first political bloggers, in 2003, at www.jeffooi.com.
"The government doesn't have a clue how to handle bloggers," he said in an
interview. "If I were a dictator I would be despairing. What do you do
against this?"
The government's assault on Ooi - "very hostile," he said - included threats
of imprisonment without trial, attacks in the government-friendly press and
defamation lawsuits, which are popular among leaders in Southeast Asia.
But that only seemed to make him a hero, and when he decided to run for
Parliament with the opposition Democratic Action Party, he already had a big
head start.
"As a person that has consistently faced threats as a blogger, I had a kind
of iconism and imagery that this is someone you can trust, someone the
government fears, someone you need to put into Parliament," he said.
But he said it is much harder to blog from the inside. "The trade-off is
that I have to write with measured words," he said. "I am no longer my old
self. I thought I had to take it to a higher level, and a lot of readers are
getting disappointed. It isn't the same blogger that they used to know."
Earlier this year, Ooi said, he attended a public forum with Mahathir, and
he claims that he is the one who persuaded the old war horse to get
blogging.
"I threw him a challenge," Ooi said. "A blogger shares a few prerequisites.
One, he is strongly opinionated. Two, he could be controversial. And,
thirdly, he is an agent provocateur on issues.
"I thought Mahathir fulfilled all three."
The result, Ooi said, was "a miracle, he scored about 10 million visitors
within months."
Now, a convert to free speech, Mahathir is using his blog to champion the
most recent victim of government censorship, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, the
country's highest-profile blogger, who posts his slash-and-burn commentary
on his site, www.malaysia-today.net. The site has been blocked, but readers
are redirected to another address, which continues to be updated.
The government has fallen back on the kind of tactics that Ooi said it
threatened against him, charging Raja Petra with sedition and locking him up
for two years without trial for comments he has posted.
Mahathir, the country's former strongman, sounded almost like Che Guevara
when he said in his blog that the arrest showed "a degree of oppressive
arrogance worthy of a totalitarian state."
Furthermore, locking people up is futile, he said in an interview in his
sky-high office. There is no way the government can arrest all the bloggers,
even if it wants to.
At least, he said, "I hope so. Otherwise I'll be in, too."