Wouldn't it be nice if news reporting is totally objective and impartial? Wouldn't that be the day? Unfortunately that happens almost nowhere. Even in bastions of democracy like the USA and the UK, most news papers, blogs, even TV and radio stations are normally biased one way or the other.
In Malaysia, there are many complaints about 'Utusan Malaysia' a Malay language newspaper affiliated to Umno and fully in the camp of the current government. To be honest, the paper is a collection of cheap propaganda and rubbish stories and furthermore very racist at times promoting Malay supremacy. Not something a well informed person would read. Most of the official press and news organizations in Malaysia are under firm control of the government and the only way the opposition can send out some news is through their party periodicals ore through friendly portals (Malaysian Chronicle) or blogs. The thing that bothers me is that the opposition through their limited news channels does the same thing, less extremely, as Utusan Malaysia.
Sure, Utusan is very extreme in its bias towards Umno and everyone who reads that piece of trash, should be aware of that. But in the same way Malaysian Chronicle and its contributors are firmly set into the folds of the opposition. I have never seen any article here that is even slightly favorable to the ruling coalition. And if someone does (like RPK) then suddenly everyone deems in it necessary to call him a traitor, enemy, frog or worse.
Moral of the story: If you yourself can't write objectively, how do you expect the other side to?
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Malaysian Politics part 2
The last few days I have been following (with certain amazement) the attempted character assassination of blogger RPK by other bloggers and by some of the PR affiliated news portals. Reason? In recent times RPK has become more openly critical of PKR, PR and Anwar Ibrahim and of course that does not fit into the greater schemes of the opposition and its horde of faithful bloggers. An example of these bloggers is YL Chong who blogs at http://desiderata2000.blogspot.com/.
Recently a war of words has broken out between the two bloggers after YL Chong wrote a few pieces in his blog and subsequently in Malaysian Chronicle accusing RPK and fellow MCLM'r Harris Ibrahim of losing their integrity and becoming UMNO stooges. Besides making unsubstantiated claims about UMNO cybertroopers and shady funding of the MCLM, there was nothing really new under the sun in any of YL Chong's fiction. Just the usual PKR approved dribble. Don't they start to look like UMNO more and more everyday? Cronyism, disinformation, rigged elections, family dynasties. Does it all sound familiar?
Of course the blindly faithful do not really care about all of that. Anything is allowed as long as PR wins the next election. Well firstly, the rakyat is starting to recognize that it might be better to stick with the devil you know than switch to the devil you don't so winning the election might not be as easy as the PR loyalist think. And secondly, what good is winning the elections if you have given up all your principles and lost your integrity in the process?
And just so that we are all clear. No. I am not an UMNO stooge. Cannot even vote in the election if I wanted to.
Recently a war of words has broken out between the two bloggers after YL Chong wrote a few pieces in his blog and subsequently in Malaysian Chronicle accusing RPK and fellow MCLM'r Harris Ibrahim of losing their integrity and becoming UMNO stooges. Besides making unsubstantiated claims about UMNO cybertroopers and shady funding of the MCLM, there was nothing really new under the sun in any of YL Chong's fiction. Just the usual PKR approved dribble. Don't they start to look like UMNO more and more everyday? Cronyism, disinformation, rigged elections, family dynasties. Does it all sound familiar?
Of course the blindly faithful do not really care about all of that. Anything is allowed as long as PR wins the next election. Well firstly, the rakyat is starting to recognize that it might be better to stick with the devil you know than switch to the devil you don't so winning the election might not be as easy as the PR loyalist think. And secondly, what good is winning the elections if you have given up all your principles and lost your integrity in the process?
And just so that we are all clear. No. I am not an UMNO stooge. Cannot even vote in the election if I wanted to.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Malaysian politics part 1
Another sad day today for Malaysian Politics!
Parliament suspended opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for 6 months because of his remarks around the APCO saga. Also 3 other opposition MPs were suspended for criticizing the committee that recommended Anwar's suspension.
(For people who are unaware of APCO. This is the PR agancy that was/is being used by the government and Anwar came up with the story that APCO was also working for Israel and that the 1Malaysia concept the government put together was a direct copy of something that Israel did years earlier.)
As it looks more and more probable that early next year there will be a snap election, the move to suspend Anwar and his colleagues can only be seen as a stupid and arrogant move by the ruling BN coalition. Because of events of the last few months (disastrous PKR elections, PAS statements on Islamic State and Wikileaks on Anwar's sodomy) the opposition was on the defensive and was seen to be weakening. So why giving them all the fuel they need to cry injustice? These suspensions will give the opposition the martyrdom they need to rally the people behind them.
Truly the BN strategists must have seen that too.Don't they care or are they still living in the past where BN felt it was untouchable and could do anything they like? They should have learned from the last election in 2008 that those days are over.
Bad and stupid move BN!
Parliament suspended opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for 6 months because of his remarks around the APCO saga. Also 3 other opposition MPs were suspended for criticizing the committee that recommended Anwar's suspension.
(For people who are unaware of APCO. This is the PR agancy that was/is being used by the government and Anwar came up with the story that APCO was also working for Israel and that the 1Malaysia concept the government put together was a direct copy of something that Israel did years earlier.)
As it looks more and more probable that early next year there will be a snap election, the move to suspend Anwar and his colleagues can only be seen as a stupid and arrogant move by the ruling BN coalition. Because of events of the last few months (disastrous PKR elections, PAS statements on Islamic State and Wikileaks on Anwar's sodomy) the opposition was on the defensive and was seen to be weakening. So why giving them all the fuel they need to cry injustice? These suspensions will give the opposition the martyrdom they need to rally the people behind them.
Truly the BN strategists must have seen that too.Don't they care or are they still living in the past where BN felt it was untouchable and could do anything they like? They should have learned from the last election in 2008 that those days are over.
Bad and stupid move BN!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Islamophobia part 1
Recently the Prime minister of Malaysia made a speech in connection with the opening of the first Islamic TV station here. The key element of the speech was that muslims should use the media more to improve the image of Islam throughout the world. Obviously as with everything being said in Malaysia, he received a lot of criticism from opposition supporters, bringing in all kinds of issues into the fray that have nothing to do with Islam.
Fact of the matter is that the image of Islam outside of the islamic world is extremely negative. Ignorance, misinformation and bad publicity makes billions of good people look like raving violent lunatics. But the thing is that the Islamic world does it mainly to itself.
A few days ago in Malaysia a 14 year old girl was married to a 23 year old man. Even though it is legal in accordance with Syariah law, most of the muslims here are just as shocked as the rest of the world, but of course this story travels faster than the speed of light and just confirms people's perception of Islam. Other stories about stoning a woman in Iran or a woan convicted for being gang raped also don't really help.
Is Islam a bad and violent religion? OF COURSE NOT!! In its essence Islam is one of the most tolerant and accepting religions around, but as always it is the people professing the religion that turn it into something foul.
The Syariah court here that approved the girl's marriage, the conservative judge in Saudi Arabia who convicts a woman for being gang raped, the judge in Iran who convicts a woman to be stoned to death. They are the ones that give Islam a bad name! And the rest of the islamic world should use all the channels available to them to counteract such acts of idiocy.
The majority of muslims is moderate and does not act violently. In the same way that most Christians do not bomb abortion clinics and most hindus do not burn sikh temples.
There are billions of moderate, intelligent muslims all over the world and now it is time for them to show the world that being a muslim is something that u can be proud of. New media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. should be used to correct the distorted image that a lot of people have of one of the world's great religions
Fact of the matter is that the image of Islam outside of the islamic world is extremely negative. Ignorance, misinformation and bad publicity makes billions of good people look like raving violent lunatics. But the thing is that the Islamic world does it mainly to itself.
A few days ago in Malaysia a 14 year old girl was married to a 23 year old man. Even though it is legal in accordance with Syariah law, most of the muslims here are just as shocked as the rest of the world, but of course this story travels faster than the speed of light and just confirms people's perception of Islam. Other stories about stoning a woman in Iran or a woan convicted for being gang raped also don't really help.
Is Islam a bad and violent religion? OF COURSE NOT!! In its essence Islam is one of the most tolerant and accepting religions around, but as always it is the people professing the religion that turn it into something foul.
The Syariah court here that approved the girl's marriage, the conservative judge in Saudi Arabia who convicts a woman for being gang raped, the judge in Iran who convicts a woman to be stoned to death. They are the ones that give Islam a bad name! And the rest of the islamic world should use all the channels available to them to counteract such acts of idiocy.
The majority of muslims is moderate and does not act violently. In the same way that most Christians do not bomb abortion clinics and most hindus do not burn sikh temples.
There are billions of moderate, intelligent muslims all over the world and now it is time for them to show the world that being a muslim is something that u can be proud of. New media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. should be used to correct the distorted image that a lot of people have of one of the world's great religions
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