Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Back to the Dark Ages

Just try to ban me.
I dare you.
Brought to you by yet another harebrained idea of a soon-to-be police nation.
After all, what else haven't we banned? We're becoming less and less of a nation (despite trying to fool ourselves into thinking we're a 'towering society'). Let's see. We've banned:
  • Certain unsuitable names
  • Suicide, kissing and some hugging scenes from films
  • Movies (Daredevil, Austin Powers, Zoolander, Bruce Almighty)
  • Plays (Election Day)
  • Black metal music
  • Even cartoons (Prince of Egypt)
  • Late night karaoke
  • Even tried to ban late night mamak
  • Botox
  • Certain kinds of clothes
  • TV ads (not enough local content)
  • Hugging in public
  • Holding hands
And now they want to police blogs? For cryin' out loud. A blog is simply a 'web log'. Nothing more. I doubt my patients come her for medical advice. It is not meant to be a credible source of news. Some use it as an online diary, some to display their creative writing, while others to share information. The very nature of blogs makes it less than reliable when it comes to facts, and our leaders should know it before they waste their resources on a witch hunt like this. Will my kid sister be arrested if she blogs about how she dislikes her headmaster?
To ban my blog because it may "compel the public to lose faith in the nation's economic policies" borders on communism . If I, as a Malaysian citizen, have doubts in my country's economic policies because of its biased, corrupt or discriminatory practices, it is within my right, my freedom of speech, to say so. The impetus then, would be on the government's part, to prove me wrong by showing us otherwise. Not to ban those who voice real concerns.
Otherwise, we would be no different from China during the era of Chairman Mao, when everyone had to sing only praises of the party.
Wawasan 2020? Wake up; not at this rate. Precisely why other countries are advancing at such an astronomical rate, while we just sit in the dark room trying to convince ourselves how much we 'tower' over others.