Screenshots

Both Rocky and I told Agencie France Presse (AFP) that we view the defamation suits taken against us with a positive perspective.

We believe there will be more blogs sprouting as a result of our legal suits because it takes merely three minutes to start a blog. That said, we also hasten to remind the budding bloggers to strive to be responsible bloggers.

Retiree-bloggers with powerful English

But what surprised me is that, not only the young, well educated generation takes to blogging like ducks taking it to water, even retirees who command the powerful good old English -- ingredients for articulate communicators -- have started blogging.

Significantly, they are none other than former government servants!

Two good examples are Bernard Khoo ( Zorro Unmasked - zorro-zorro-unmasked.blogspot.com ), and Rajahram Ramalingam ( Rajahram's Journal - http://rajahram.blogspot.com ).

They both started blogging this month, after hearing of our defamation suits.

Bernard, who accompanied Rocky and I to both our hearings recently, is an avid reader and a former teacher. He quit abruptly from the government service to join the corporate sector. He started his blog last night.

Bernard, 67, is a well-known sharp commenter in the blogosphere, including Screenshots, who goes by the handle/nick: Zorro. Hence his blog titled "Zorro Unmasked", which is about "Revealing anything swept under the carpet and unmasking the sweepers".

So get prepared for his large "Z", not to put you to sleep, but to blaze you with three quick cuts.

Rajahram is also a former teacher in government schools. He emailed to tell me that he retired as the principal of a large, modern secondary school in Selangor, a position given to him in the final three years of his 33-year career.

He intends to use his blog to gauge public opinion on "matters that matter the common man". He believes public opinion is an indispensable barometer of any democratic society, which can only be assessed if there is free speech and expression.

Old blog horses, but galloping young

Talk of retirees who blog, I should mention a few old horses who still gallop in the ranggi way. I may miss some names, but the ones I know at close range are Kuda Ranggi, Pak Idrus, and PokKu.

Someone retired but whom I have yet to meet is Major (Rtd) D.Swami of the Seventh Rangers (Mechanised). He blogs at 7rangers.blogspot.com.

Kuda Ranggi is Syed Imran ( kudaranggi.blogspot.com). Born an Arab-Malaysian in Penang, he feels he is someone more Malay than Arab. His grandfather migrated from Makkah to the Malay World while his mother's forefathers migrated from Hadhramaut, Yemen. Syed is a former Bernama journalist (1971-1998) and before he retired, he was former press secretary to Minister in PM's Department.

So, he is someone who knows the media and the system rather well. And his motto says: "Freedom to blog is the right to publish information and opinions without government control!

I really appreciate that Syed afforded his precious time to accompany us to the court on both hearings.

Pak Idrus, 67 and whose real name is Idrus Abu Bakar, is a retired senior officer attached to the then Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, specialising in social engineering. He has been blogging on "In Passing - Malaysian ( idrus.blogspot.com ) since December 2003. He blogs about simple life and good old rustic Malay Culture, and those ulam-inspired Malay cuisines, homecooked-style. I very much share his penchant for the good old Malay numbers. His current tune, as you launch his blog, is Semalam di Malaysia (mine is the version by Indonesian band D'Llyod that Sam sang).

Pokku is how we passionately him, Tengku Mohd Ali Bustaman, who has been blogging since August 2004. His blog is called Di Bawah rang Ikang Kering ( bustamann.blogspot.com ), so that gives away his Terengganu traits.

Pokku reveals little about himself except that he is a retired retainer, what it means. What impresses me is that this man has spun off some chips of the old blog (pardon the pun) among his children: Tengku Amirah ( Tgsherilamirah - www.xanga.com/tgsherilamirah ), Tengku Adlina ( Tulisje - tulisje.blogspot.com ), Tengku Elisa ( Elisa Taufik - elisataufik.efx2.com ), Tengku Elida ( Mokciknab - mokciknab.blogspot.com ), and the younger ones, Firhad & Nina ( Rotidua - rotidua.efx2.com ).

Among the chips of the old blog, I used to work Tengku Elida and appeared several of her TV shows. Recently, she co-opted me into barrister-blogger Nizam Bashir's Poetic Justice -- 50 Posts to Independence project.

Have you defrosted from the chilling effect now?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Malaysiakini CEO and co-founder Premesh Chandran wrote a thought-provoking Op-Ed on possible media behaviour during the coming general election, titled: Blogs and boundaries of responsibility.

Firstly, the government via the powers of the internal security minister (currently the prime minister) has the absolute discretion to grant or deny a license to print a newspaper. He has total immunity from the judicial process and hence malaysiakini’s application in September 2002 to print a weekly newspaper gathers dust on his desk, as he has refused to make a decision either way.

As expected, such power has not been exercised neutrally. [...] Those (media organisations) outside the direct control of political parties, are owned by close allies or subdued by the threat of losing their annual publishing license.

Ownership and control has rewarded the government with reduced level of accountability and a high degree of impunity for their actions. Take for example the hotly contested issue of toll concessions. Such concessions are awarded without open tender. And the legal agreements are kept secret. Toll rates continue to increase and attempts by the public to question the government are met with deafness. The police refused to allow a peaceful public demonstration by the opposition and civil society in Cheras, leading to 21 arrests and four having to seek medical attention. Oil prices have increased but the government has refused to disclose the accounts of national oil company Petronas. Similarly, water prices have escalated with the government refusing to make public key documents.

The ruling coalition is also preparing to contest the next election. The propaganda role of the media in promoting the ruling parties that own them and running down the opposition cannot be underestimated. Propaganda works best when alternative news perspectives are kept from the public eye. Blogs and independent media such as malaysiakini pierce through the veil, and offer a different picture of reality.

Some time, sooner rather than later, you'll have to make a distinction of what Prem had said, though the PM said yesterday he hasn't found the inspiration to call for a general election just yet.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just short of words, here's a photo update of the court hearing this morning... Rocky calls the outcome a ceasefire.

WALK WITH US... Zorro Unmasked will play on Blogspot.com starting tonight

Lawyers already blogging?... 3540 Jalan Sudin demanding confirmation from barrister Edmond Bon

We move forward... Defence counsel Haris Ibrahim giving an update of the case thus far

Malay audience... Jeff giving an interview to AgendaDaily, Harakah and PAStv

Online self-censorship... Dina Zaman interviewing Malaysiakini CEO Premesh Chandran (read: Blogs and boundaries of responsibility) and Jeff for a magazine targetting young urban professionals (yuppy), not necessarily Malays, but true Bangsa Malaysia represented by the three of us under one roof

Beyond rantings... Marina Mahathir giving interview to Singapore Straits Times and AgendaDaily

Press conference in session... Zahrin Yasin (in red) maintains Malaysia's record as the first Umno blogger kicked out from his party

Press Corp... (from l to r) Journalists from theSun, AFP, Singapore Straits Times, AgendaDaily; camera is from PAStv

Newsman to newsmen... Rocky giving an interview to Singapore Straits Times, AgendaDaily and PAStv

Freedom After Speech... Independent TV producer Zan Azlee taking footages for a documentary bound for the free world in Germany

Men in blues... We didn't plan to wear the same colour, just sheer coincidence

Orgasmic puffs... Blog commenter SS Goh (Monsterball) and blogger Sheikh Kickdefella... air pollutant from the cheroot courtesy the elder guy

Attitude?... Dina Zaman's editor calls this the "attitude shot"

Not a sit-in protest... just in queue for our cue

All LensaPress photos by Paul Choo.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Lawyers from both sides of the defamation suit initiated by NSTP et.al against this blogger have agreed to record the following before Justice Malik Ishak in chambers at the High Court of Malaya Kuala Lumpur this morning:

By agreement, all parties henceforth agree not to publish any articles, comments or posts regarding the dispute presently before the High Court in this action that may be regarded as subjudice or that may prejudice the fair trial of the case.

I understand the draft was prepared by the plaintiffs' lawyers, and ours did not object to it.

Prior to this, the plaintiffs had on January 11 obtained an exparte injunction against this blogger, requiring him to remove 12 + 3 alleged defamatory postings posted on Screenshots between February and December last year.

The injunction also restrains this blogger, "whether by himself, or through his employees and agents", from republishing these posting in Screenshots or on the world wide web, until the disposal of the defamation suit.

'Fatally deficient'

I have since instructed my lawyers to apply for the suit to be struck out on the ground that, among others, the Statement of Claims served on me is deemed 'fatally deficient'. As you see, it's the same line of action I took compared to Rocky's.

The Court has fixed March 6 for the hearing of the striking out.

My lawyers have also filed for the exparte injunction to be set aside, besides claiming costs to my favour.

As such, the interparte injunction and the setting aside of the ex parte injunction will be fixed for mention on March 6 when hearing starts for the striking out application.

Haris taking questions at the press conference... LensaPress photo by How Fooyeen

My co-defence lawyer Haris Ibrahim had gone on record by saying that the judge would first deal with the striking out application before hearing other matters when the parties meet in court on March 6. Quote:

“The interparte injunction and the setting aside of the ex parte injunction will be fixed for mention that day. If the striking out application is successful, the defamation suit against Ooi will be dropped and there will be no injunction left to contest,” he said.

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs' lawyers had obtained an ad interim to sustain the exparte injunction until the hearing starts.

Walk With Us

The hearing in chambers this morning was over within minutes. The lawyers were already stepping out of the lift as I was to get into Civil Court 6 on the 11th Floor.

I am grateful that some media friends, bloggers and blog commenters have made time to meet and to lend us moral support this morning.

Blogger Marina Mahathir ( RantingsByMM ) flanked by the defendants

BLOGGERS UNITE... (from left 2 to right 2) Bloggers Shanghai Stephen, Rocky's Bru, Screenshots, RantingsByMM, 3540 Jalan Sudin and Kickdefella. The two on both flanks will start their blogs tonight.
LensaPress photo by How Fooyeen.

Thank you for your time and paying for our breakfast and coffee. I hope you commenters start your blogs soon, and those who are already blogging, stay on course!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 01:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

That's the song I love and seldom sing. But once I sing it, I sing with my heart.

Isn't it a song a perwira fighting the communists who didn't know when he would come home, if at all?

Thank you Sheikh. Walk with us.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

RESPONSIBLE BLOGS. They surfaced the fact. Malaysia indeed has the executive jet.

The news that responsible mainstream media don't carry was first exposed by MyKMU.net, formerly known as Kumpulan Maya Umno, then journo-blogger A Kadir Jasin, Malaysia-Today and Rocky.

Now, national news agency Bernama has to confirm the existence of the jet that blogs and websites talked about. A PM who advocates transparency has to do what he had to do: Explain to the rakyat after the thing blew up:

"The jet is for use of the government, not the prime minister (only)," he told a news conference at the KL International Airport upon his return from London after having attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

Elaborating, Abdullah said: "The aircraft belongs to Penerbangan Malaysia Berhad; it was (bought with) their money. We just leased it like how MAS (Malaysia Airlines) leases aircraft from them."

Now that the fact has been established, the question to ask is this: What's the difference between buying it direct and leasing it from a government-owned company? Who pays the bills for MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operation) ultimately? The Treasury or the taxpayers?

According to blog pioneer Dan Gillmor, a good blog goes to probe the context, not just the bare facts.

RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM. Why didn't the mainstream media, who have cable-strong connections and deep pockets, run the story before blogs and websites did?

How much was the initial cost of the jet again? Now, anybody can fly (that luxury jet)?

Interlude

Dollah Kok Lanas says: What's behind the story? Ask Why! Why! Why!

The Scribe has an update on the Pembesar. So does Rocky, who just rubs it in.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBacks (0)

We are staring at a near monopoly. The mega merger of Chinese Press in Malaysia is now set in motion and the exercise now looks irreversible.

In an exercise termed as a "business combination" involving SinChew Media Corp (SinChew), Nanyang Press Holdings Berhad (Nanyang) and Ming Pao Enterprise Corporation Limited (MingPao), Sarawak timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King will usurp the assets of SinChew Daily and Nanyang Press to morph them into a global media conglomerate.

Tiong's chosen vehicle is the MingPao media group, which was incorporated in Bermuda, listed in Hong Kong, with its newspapers and magazines distributed throughout North America and Greater China.

Under the proposal, the listing status of SinChew will be transfered to MingPao, and thereafter SinChew and Nanyang will be delisted from the Main Board of Bursa Securities.

Upon completion of the proposals, SinChew and Nanyang will become wholly-owned subsidiaries of MingPao, and MingPao will be primarily listed on both Bursa Securities and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited ("HKEx").

The deal was pieced together by CIMB Investment Bank Berhad.

Share exchange

The exercise will involve the proposed share exchange of SinChew and Nanyang for new MingPao shares.

A summary by Bloomberg says SinChew shareholders will get 3.3 new MingPao shares for every SinChew share, and Nanyang shareholders will get 3.47 MingPao shares.

The deal values Sin Chew stock at RM4.00 a share, Nanyang at RM4.20 a share, and MingPao at HK$2.70.

Nevertheless, SinChew also said in a statement to Bursa Malaysia late today that the indicative swap ratios of the proposed share exchange of SinChew and Nanyang will still be subject to change.

The deal is said to be hinged on approval from the Security Commission and the relevant ministries and agencies. The deal is also said to be pending Nanyang's accepting the invitation to participate in the exercise and acceding to the arrangement.

Nanyang, which was bought over by MCA before it slipped into Tiong's hands, owns Malaysia's second largest circulation daily, China Press, and New Life Post stable of magazines.

However, industry sources said Tiong has already obtained all the green-lights to proceed.

In other words, done deal.

More.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Media Prima Bhd, the Umno-linked media giant that controls The NSTP and all non-government free-to-air TV and several radio stations, is interested in taking up a 30% stake in internet service provider TM Net Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned unit of Telekom Malaysia Bhd.

The Edge Weekly via ZoomFinance.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs and the defendant in the defamation suit taken by NSTP et.al. against blogger Rocky have agreed to the following joint undertaking:

That the parties agree to henceforth not publish any article, comment or post regarding the dispute presently before the High Court in this action that may be regarded as subjudice or that may prejudice the fair trial of the action.

The undertaking was arrived at in chambers before Justice Hishamuddin Yunus at the High Court of Malaya Kuala Lumpur this morning.

The joint undertaking aside and pending further hearing of the case, Rocky has not been required to take down the 48 articles cited by the plaintiffs in their Statement of Claims against the blogger, who was formerly a senior editor at NSTP until his VSS last year.

As for the over 400 readers' commentaries that were taken offline, defence counsel Edmond Bon said "it is in no way an admission that any of the content was subjudice". Quote:

“There was no way to remove only selected comments, so we had no alternative but to put it all off-line … We do this to err on the side of caution, to let the judicial process take its due course.”

The Star has an update based on an AP story. And here is Rocky in his own words.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Whoever you are that created a wiki in my name... THANK YOU.

It must be the defamation suit that moved the idea? I only started public blogging on January 2, 2003, not 2000 as stated in the wiki, though.

Happy chronicling.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Wisma Denmark 9.00am today. I did read Nuraina's latest blog. I think I should walk him there.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A graft-fighting icon passed on at a time when Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is still adjusting his steps, and promises, to catch the big fish he tried to catch since November 2003.

Sunday Star bids a fond farewell to Prof. Syed Hussein Alatas, calling him a towering thinker, independent intellectual, passionate activist and prominent academic.

Syed Hussein's pet domains had been Malay studies, progressive Islam and fighting corruption. Read his books if you have the time: The Democracy of Islam, Mental Revolution, Sociology of Corruption, and The Myth of the Lazy Native, among many more.

As an academic, Syed Hussein is remembered as a man with a sense of fairness and integrity. However, Dr Lim Teck Ghee, who was a lecturer at Universiti Malaya when the Prof was VC, said: "His insistence on the principles of excellence, justice and fair play irrespective of race made him unpopular in some circles. For this he paid a heavy price.”

To the young, you should be reminded that Syed Hussein laid the foundation for multi-racial politics, obviously ahead of his time, and was one of the co-founders of Gerakan. However, he left Gerakan in 1972 after disagreeing with Dr Lim Chong Eu and the party’s decision to join the ruling coalition Alliance (now Barisan Nasional).

Just like Onn Jaafar, he died without seeing non-communal politics taking root in Malaysia.

Syed Hussein was a progressive Muslim long before it became fashionable, so said Dr Chandra Muzaffar, who did his PhD under his supervision at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

In an eulogy, Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang calls him, simply, a Towering Malaysian.

For me, I shall remember Syed Hussein for underscoring CORRUPTION as a political phenomenon.

Too bad Syed Hussein didn't have time to catch the blogging phenomenon to join us -- who are like him, the self-called "useless sociologist" who can only talk but "not in a position to influence planning or to execute anything" -- to debate on fighting graft. [ But somehow another scholar, Kassim Ahmad, managed to blog, albeit writing in his own style talking to himself, since June 2005. ]

Meanwhile, Farish A. Noor sends up a touching piece (click 'Continue reading'...) from Germany, confessing that he will remain his student.

By Farish A Noor

For an entire generation of younger Malaysian academics and intellectuals who were born during the postcolonial era, Prof. Syed Hussein Alatas was very much a mentor-figure, a model public intellectual and an example of what the academic world could do if and when academics applied their intellectual faculties to the pressing needs of the times. His name and reputation as an activist-oriented sociologist was not confined to Malaysia alone, but had spread across the world from North America to Europe, the Arab world, Africa and many parts of Asia. Though the pace and tenor of his life was not as hot and racy as his contemporaries elsewhere such as Franz Fanon or Albert Camus, his works and ideas reflected concerns that were common to theirs; namely addressing the historical baggage of the colonial past while also having to face the impending crisis of governance in a post-colonial state rapidly floundering.

I, like many of my generation, came across his works while studying in London in the 1980s. A chance encounter at a book fair landed me with the prize of possessing his work ‘Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer?’ (1972) where the younger Syed Hussein was taking a few well-aimed jabs at bringing down the colonial construct of Stamford Raffles as the ‘benevolent’ colonial functionary who was busily ‘civilising’ the natives of Asia purely for the sake of altruism. A closer reading offered by Syed Hussein showed that the man revered by many as a forward-thinking ‘benevolent colonialist’ was little better than an operator on the make, working often outside the boundaries of the law of the East India Company, and more often than not motivated purely by personal gain and ambitions. I was hooked to the book, and the Professor who wrote it from that day on.

While preparing my own notes for my first teaching course on the history of the decolonisation process in Asia, Alatas’s works were rudimentary and essential. Among his works that remain on my top shelf are ‘The Sociology of Corruption’ (1968), ‘Modernization and Social Change in Asia’ (1972), ‘Intellectuals in Developing Societies’ (1977) and of course, his magnum opus, ‘The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to 20th Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism’ (Frank Cass, 1977).

Among all of these, Prof Syed Hussein Alatas will probably be best remembered for his path-breaking ‘Myth of the Lazy Native’, an analysis of the modalities involved in the construction of stereotypes of the ‘native Other’ seen from the point of view of the colonial metropole, that was designed to epistemically arrest the constructed Other while disabling and disempowering the colonised subject at the same time. Never before had any Malaysian scholar attempted a work such a this, which employed a range of analytical tools from sociology to history to discourse analysis and a critique of racialised capital; and never before with such deconstructive effect. Today younger generation of students and scholars are impressed still by the ideas and writings of luminaries such as the late Edward Said, and critical theorists of the school of Subaltern studies, diaspora studies, cultural studies and the myriad of new disciplines that have sprung forth following the gradual collapse of the old schools. But it has to be noted again here that Syed Hussein Alatas’s work then was not only singularly unique in the Malaysian context, it was truly ahead of its time.

In the ‘Myth of the Lazy Native’ Alatas presses home several important points that should never be forgotten by any scholar working on political history: First, that identity politics and the construction of racial categories and racial stereotypes are never accidental but are processes fundamentally wedded to the working of (racialised) power. Second, that the colonial enterprise required a moral pretext that was granted by the construction of convenient ‘instrumental fictions’ (to borrow Edward Said’s phrase) that helped to justify such an enterprise. Third, that the perpetuation and reproduction of such categories of identity and difference were running parallel to the workings of racialised colonial capitalism and that the two sustained each other, thereby helping to create the highly divisive and uneven ‘plural economies’ so common in many colonial settings. And fourth, that the legacy of colonial capitalism, having embedded itself in the racialised politics of difference and sectarianism in many colonies, would be hard to eradicate even after the departure of the colonial power for the local native elites themselves would have, by then, come to learn that the very same tools of divide-and-rule could be used by them to perpetuate such power differentials in the future.

In the same work Alatas proceeds to illustrate the last point clearly when he critically debunks the racialised stereotypes that were found in Malaysian works such as Mahathir Mohamad’s ‘The Malay Dilemma’ (1970) and ‘Revolusi Mental’, a compilation of essays edited by the then Secretary-General of UMNO. Syed Hussein exposes how in these works, written so late in the post colonial era by a new generation of post colonial leaders, the colonial mindset that saw Malaysian society as being fundamentally divided along racial lines was still sadly prevalent. What is more he lamented the fact that even up to the 1970s the generation of Malay ethno-nationalist leaders in the country could not help but base their appeals for privilege and power based on colonial clichés and stereotypes of the Malays as a ‘backward’ and ‘lazy’ race that had to be protected.

By then Prof Syed was no longer alone in his academic endeavours. Malaysian scholars like Chandra Muzaffar were also taking up his lead, questioning the logic of racialised patronage and the culture of neo-feudalism in Malaysia at the hands of UMNO in his work ‘Protector?’. A younger generation of Malaysian economists like Jomo Kwame Sundaram were also labouring hard to question the working of racialised capitalism that had by then been normalised in the country. But many of us owe a debt of gratitude to Prof Syed himself, who led the way and who maintained an approach that was critical, objective, fundamentally rational, positivist and unencumbered by the accoutrements of false ideology, racialised essentialisms or politically expedient revisionism.

Prof Syed will be remembered by his colleagues and students as one of the pioneers of critical theory in Malaysia, even though the term ‘critical theory’ had not been en vogue during his time. Much of his work and the focus of all of his intellectual energy was towards critically questioning and deconstructing many of the staid comfortable assumptions upon which both the colonial and post-colonial order of knowledge and power were based upon; demonstrating that academic work does not only have social and political relevance, but also that such critical thinking was politically necessary. In the words of Prof. Noraini Othman of the National University of Malaysia:

“His passing marked the end of an era in terms of Malay and Malaysian intellectual culture and scholarly tradition. Prof. Syed Hussein was a globally-known social scientist whose work focused on Malay society, culture and politics. He was a fierce critic of Malay political culture – using the term "bebalism" as a concept to describe the inability of Malay intelligentsia and politicians to cope and engage with the forces and challenges of rapid social transformation, modernization, cultural change, and 'westernization'. Yet it was he who also fiercely defended Malay society and culture against the prejudices of "colonial perception and view of the lazy native".

Prof Syed Hussein Alatas was born on 17 September 1928 in Bogor, Indonesia. He passed away at his home in Damansara Heights, Kuala Lumpur, on the evening of 23 January 2007, after suffering a heart attack. He began his academic career in 1958 as the head of the research department of the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur. Between 1963 to 1967 he taught at the University of Malaya (UM) and from 1967 to 1978 he served as the Head of the Malay Studies Department at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Between the late 1960s to the 1970s, he played an active role in Malaysia’s political environment, helping to form the multi-racial Gerakan Party in 1968. In 1972 he helped to form the Parti Keadilan Masyarakat Malaysia (Malaysian Social Justice Party, Pekemas). In 1988 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya. From the mid-1990s he spent the last decade of his academic life at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology of the National University of Malaysia (UKM), before moving on to serve as Professor and Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Malay World and Civilisation (ATMA) at the same university.

Goodbye and thank you for all that you have taught us, Prof.

We have been, and remain, your students.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 04:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am mulling hard reading in between the lines of what Wong Chun Wai wrote in his Sunday column today:

Journalists and bloggers believe they are committed to making Malaysia a better country. Journalists are certainly not the highest paid professionals in town while bloggers have committed their own money but both believe passionately in what they are doing.

The feuding parties need to stop at some point to re-evaluate what they are doing in order to bring down the political temperature.

"Bring down the political temperature"? Is he hinting that the defamation suits against bloggers -- which are essentially civil suits -- are indeed politically-motivated? He must be knowing something that we Joe Public don't normally know.

Nevetherless, I welcome what Chun Wai had courageously said, that the process of seeking justice and redress to grief work both ways for the mainstream journalists and bloggers.

There must be others who are equally observant. A week ago, Chun Wai's colleague at i-Star, A. Asohan, had said an interesting piece on the same issue:

Yes, the laws on defamation are there to also protect you, the individual. Given that some political leaders want to introduce new laws specifically for the Internet, that websites and their operators have been threatened with the Internal Security Act, that subtle intimidation has allegedly been tried, and that some media organisations have used their own platforms to unfairly vilify selected bloggers before, it's a welcome change to see existing legislature being used this time around.

Now, contrast Asohan's piece with Chun Wai's today. Quote:

But journalists must be ready to face the legal consequences of what they have written. If journalists talk about press freedom, they should also remember the rights of the subjects they write about.

I should know it better, as I have often become the target of vilification made by certain parties since 2004, and my archive of such malicious attacks and character assassination is fast piling up. But I am not in a rush to take action as the Defamation Act guarantees to keep my evidence valid for up to six years.

I became an easy target because I was truthful (but some say foolish) enough to host my server in the nerve centre of MSC, expose my name and picture, reveal my email and phone contacts right from Day One I started blogging in 2003. It was a statement of sorts, and what I am declaring is this: Just like many bloggers in Malaysia, I am not a penembak curi (hit-and-run sniper) that politicians and their servants have largely generalised to demonise the bloggers.

Making sense of Malaysian democracy

That said, I also took note of the advice Chun Wai had for all players in the opinion space, and I humbly have him in quotes:

Some like Jeff Ooi, Ahirudin Atan @ Rocky and Patrick Teoh put their names on their blogs but many others don’t. But that does not mean they cannot be traced.

Jeff Ooi and Rocky have made a name for themselves with their fearless comments and even breaking news. They have a huge following among Malaysians and, in the case of Screenshots, there are even advertisements, which is unprecedented in Malaysian blog journalism.

Their blogging has made Malaysian democracy more meaningful although not everyone agrees with their views. They should not be regarded as dissenters because democracy is about tolerance.

They have been bold enough to bring up issues that mainstream newspapers have not done.

It is unfortunate that many Malaysians only look at the political scene in black and white.

It would be meaningless if Malaysians were to agree to everything our political leaders say. We would be doing a great disservice to the country’s leadership if we do not speak up.

That probably could be the reason why The Star, though very much a politically-partisan newspaper owned by a non-Malay component party in Barisan Nasional, could maintain its stride as ( 1 ) the largest circulation English newspaper in Malaysia with ( 2 ) the largest multiracial readership ( 3 ) securing the largest advertising revenue; and ( 4 ) making it the most profit-making media organisation for, not years, but decades.

God is fair. Advertisers are ROI-smart, And most importantly, news consumers are discerning. They all decide which paper becomes champ, and which ones are fit to feed the dogs.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Again, I was in the company of LensaMalaysia photographers yesterday to do our tiny bit for charity -- taking photos without charging fees. (We are selective with the beneficiaries of our pro-bono work, though.)

It also allows me to take a break from the meetings with the lawyers preparing for my court hearing this Tuesday. As my homework started way back in 2004 when I was at the receiving end of a clear-pattern vilification by certain parties, I am quite relaxed and I found the weekend so soothing, shooting the kids.

It's the usual VIPs come-a-calling, and the kids were hosted to privileges for a day, but the hosts' networking with their counterpart in Singapore and Japan has resulted in a seed fund to start a Budding Artists Foundation.

LensaPress photo by Steven Sum

The fund is meant to nurture the hidden talents among the orphans, who are often victims of broken marriages and child abuse. Several verticals have been identified, like painting, performing arts and photography, to help the kids build their self-esteem, confidence and perhaps career path in their chosen fields. Approached by the hosts, LensaMalaysia has agreed to play a role in the capacity-building of the kids by leveraging an area that crafted our vices in life -- photography.

I am glad to see that former diplomat Razali Ismail was there to give the project a needed push of the sail. He even had to play stand-up comedian to pacify a little kid who cried, intimidated by the dancing lions.

LensaPress photo by Jeff Ooi

There were four of us who covered the launch of the Budding Artists Foundation, while another group of LensaMalaysia photographers went to Putrajaya to cover the Floral Parade, held in conjunction with VMY2007.

Our exclusive pictures on the grand launch of VMY2007 and the fireworks surrounding the Eye On Malaysia have been very well exposed. We even detected some of our photographs being lifted without the authors' consent and floating on commercial websites in the Internet.

Doing our bid to celebrate Malaysia @ 50, we plan to chronicle the cultural colours of Malaysia to shoot Thaipusam this Thursday.

Here are some pictures of the loving kids.

LensaPress photo by Jeff Ooi

LensaPress photo by Steven Sum

Picture courtesy LensaMalaysia photographer Dr ChenWS

BTW, more candid shots of the kids are in LensaMalaysia. Orphans or no, they are all so adorable. You just need to help them touch the future.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I really need to consult on an important matter raised in the Walk With Us blog.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Journo-blogger A Kadir Jasin also blogged about the Pembesar's new luxury jet. But was he cheeky enough to provide a caveat:

Footnote: If this entry is inaccurate in any way, our democratically elected government or its agents are welcomed to respond. I undertake to publish their response in full.

It's a big issue because of the cost. The Scribe says:

Taking the lower figure, the corporate jet will punch a US$50-million hole in our pocket. That’s a big hole. It’s equivalent to about RM175 million, which can build a lot of classrooms, hospital wards and not to mention mosques and rural roads for the rakyat. Or help rehabilitate Johor flood victims.

What pace are we at? From Turkish yacht, to Nasi Kandar Perth and then this one. One controversy after another every fortnight?

BTW, can I talk with someone to help me secure a Fomema-like license over... nasi kandar?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

The Inland Revenue Board’s (IRB) Public Ruling No. 1/2006 on Perquisites from Employment, issued during the present Abdullah Administration on Jan 17, 2006, has come into effect.

Companies have started making deductions on transport and other allowances paid to their employees for income tax purposes, says The Star.

Such allowances are considered perquisites or perks, thus they are subject to Schedular Tax Deduction (STD) in line with the Income Tax Public Ruling.

'Transport & parking are perks, hence taxable'

Meanwhile, Inland Revenue Board Principal Assistant Director Rahimah Abdullah defined perquisites, via The Star, as "benefits in cash or in kind that were convertible into money received in relation to employment".

She added that taxable allowances included "those given for relocation, displacement, transport and parking, clothing, car wash, telephone bills and others".

If I understand her correctly, to the Treasury, these benefits are regarded as part of the gross income from employment, and therefore taxable.

Does it mean that the cash from your company pays you to pay the toll concessionaires, is the same cash that is taxable in your name?

Is the country running on empty? Who has the answer?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

How much is VIP ACJ 319, a derivative of Airbus 320, plus fittings and trimming made to Swiss standards? How much can the Boeing 737-700, Bombardier Global Express and Falcon 900 Executive Jet be traded off at book value?

See Airliners.net for the owner of this ACJ319.

If the news is true, 9M-A13 could be a nice call-sign to replace AAB 13. Admittedly, we are still a long way before Nero sings while Rome burns.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Are we becoming more and more Singapore? Take a walk with us from here to here.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

This is freak! My 'brother' was on official duty, and the vanquished player accidentally hit him hard!

I am talking about AP photog Vincent Thian being accidentally whacked by Andy Roddick during the coverage of the Australian Open in Melbourne yesterday. Call it occupational hazards.

My SMS hasn't been replied. Hope you are OK, Vincent!

Read Louis Pang's blog, who was tipped off by Reuters' Tim Chong. The mishap pictures are here.

UPDATES: Vincent left a message at Louis' blog, saying he is fine..

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Water concessions OSA-ed. Toll concessions OSA-ed.

Wah lan eh!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

There are two critical issues being posed in the Walk With Us blog that made me kepala sakit. It's uncharted waters for me, and by all means, I certainly would want to protect my rights being a citizen and a citizen-blogger, too.

Sorry, no discussion allowed for this topic as I am observing an ex-parte injunction.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATED VERSION. Hearing of the interparte injunction over the defamation suit taken by the NSTP et.al against blogger Rocky did not take place as originally scheduled this morning.

Rocky has instructed his lawyers to apply to the High Court of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, to have the suit struck off. The reason? "The plaintiff's statement of claims against me is fatally deficient," said Rocky in his applications papers.

Justice Hishamudin Mohamed Yunus has since fixed the strike-off hearing on February 22.

In layman's term, it means that should the strike-out application be successful, the defamation suit against Rocky will be dropped.

Incidentally, at the hearing in chamber today, the plaintiff's lawyers did not apply for an ad interim for the injunction pending the strike-off hearing.

The proceedings today were held in chambers.

'Remove readers' comments'

However, a new element has cropped up. Rocky's lawyer Edmund Bon told the press that the plantiffs wanted comments discussing the merits of the case to be removed from Rocky's blog as they risked prejudicing the case. Quote Malaysiakini:

“We were only told about it this morning that they want such comments removed so we will look into these comments and give the plaintiffs an answer on Monday.

“We will decide whether it is indeed sub judice [...] we have not taken a position yet whether we want to leave the comments in the site or remove it,” he told reporters in Wisma Denmark, Kuala Lumpur today.

He stressed the comments were not related to what Ahirudin (Rocky) had written but what his commentators have been saying.

In the event Rocky decides to contest the request by the plaintiffs, the court will then fix a date on Monday, January 29, to hear the legal arguments.

'Fishing expedition'

Rocky's application to strike out the defamation suit was filed through his lawyer Bon, of Chooi & Co., on grounds that include:

• the suit filed did not state clearly which alleged defamatory posts refers to which of the plaintiffs


• the defendant would have trouble defending himself because of such unclear pleadings


• the defendant is placed in a position where he does not know what case he is facing


• some paragraphs refer to posting which are not part of the 48 postings that plaintiffs want removed


• the process of discovery of the trial is akin to a ‘fishing expedition’- the pleadings must first be concrete instead of being revealed during trial

Bon was assisted by Malik Imtiaz Sarwar and Haris Ibrahim -- who are defence counsels for this blogger -- while the plaintiffs were represented by the Shearn Delamore team led by counsel Cecil Abraham.

Expect a 20-second update over Al-Jazeera tonight (ASTRO Channel 20).

TAKE IT EASY...Jeff Ooi chatting with the lawyers (from left) Edmond Bon, Haris Ibrahim, Malik Imtiaz, Nik Mohamed Ikhwan

'RECCEE' FOR JAN 30... Jeff Ooi with Datuk A. Kadir Jasin and Malik Imtiaz

WALK WITH US... Jeff Ooi with the brother whom he walks to Court

The Scribe has a summary of the outcome today's court proceedings; while Susan Loone dissects and digests theSun's editorial yesterday:

All photos courtesy Paul Choo, LensaPress Photo.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Received from a Screenshots reader. The author says you may forward it to as far as you can.

It's a question of you being an on-looker, or to Walk With Us.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Since theSun mentioned nothing about the real threat to the future of journalism as it went to 'define' misused blogs today, I hope someday, there are journalists from Malaysia who are courageous enough to write, or at least chronicle, about responsible journalism, if only just for balance.

* * *

BTW, I just read Rocky's Bru, and took glimpses of A. Kadir Jasin's thoughts, hours before Rocky's interparte injunction is up for hearing at 10am tomorrow.

I understand that, combined, they had served for over four decades in the same old media institution. How are they feeling now?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATED VERSION. I read Azmi Sharom's letter to Malaysiakini yesterday.

Is he the same Dr Azmi Sharom, the young associate professor of the Law Faculty of Universiti Malaya? I remember Prof Azmi wrote an open letter to the Minister in charge of Higher Education in The Star, March 11, 2006. I also remember he was censured for a piece he wrote about student elections

Also, could Jeffrey be John Wise?

UPDATES: Prof Azmi confirmed with me that it was his letter in Malaysiakini. By exposing his real name, he must be classified as a responsible blogger online reader.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Rocky held back the crowd when the press conference was about to end, yesterday. Via Malaysiakini:

He later shared a story where he and Ooi crossed swords several years back when Ahirudin was with The Malay Mail and Ooi was already blogging then.

“There was name calling (by the blog readers), he used his blog space to criticise and I used my column in the Sunday Times to respond. Had it gone on and on it would’ve been a healthy debate.

“One thing I didn’t do is to take any legal action against him,” he added.

'Defamation and Sedition: You can't run away'

And the Prime Minister commented on the defamation suits against bloggers, from London, citing defamation and sedition.

"They cannot hope to cover themselves or hide from the laws,” he said.

Am I a "law-hider"? I thought I had published my picture, my name, my email and my phone number when I first started blogging on January 2, 2003! My server is parked right in the heart of MSC!

Responsible journalism must draw a clear line between someone being incriminated over alleged offence, and someone being persecuted after all avenues for recourse are exhausted. That separates an innocent from a convict.

P/S: How nice if the PM could answer Rocky's questions just as fast.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Slowly, opinions are coming out on a cocktail of issues relating to bloggers, freedom of expression, defamation suits, progressive jurisdiction and bloggers' role in nation building.

There are also experts who are saying that defamation laws are not definite death-knells that give no recourse avenues to the defendants for alleged libel and defamation.

January 21, barrister-blogger Malik Imtiaz Sarwar wrote in his blog, Disquiet:

1. Blogging on the internet is not immune from legal process.


2. Blogging plays a crucial role in socio-political Malaysia and in nation building efforts.


3. Keeping the foregoing in mind, it becomes apparent that where suits are brought against blogs that are recognized as playing a crucial role in nation building, then it is the nation building process itself that is being threatened.

You may notice that Imtiaz holds exactly the same views as I do, that Internet does not operate in a legal vacuum, a message I helped accentuate years ago, in my days drafting the baby-codes for the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, and consistently in this blog.

'Dangers of misusing blogs'

However, while agreeing that the Internet doesn't operate in a legal vacuum, theSun claimed that those who think the NSTP's defamation suit the bloggers is an attempt to curb freedom of expression on the Internet is wrong.

Interestingly, in its editorial today, theSun, holds a different view by classifying the type of bloggers who are a menace, which reflects a somewhat consistent stance of some of its senior editors. theSun had actually zeroed in on the description of bloggers who destroy blogging, albeit innuendos without naming names:

Yes, bloggers should unite, but unite against those who misuse the blogs because they are the real threat to the future of blogging.

Incidentally, theSun did not use the picture that Rocky and I -- a tall Melayu and a typical Chinaman -- posed for its photographer yesterday. We had held our four hands together to signify Bloggers Unite. We had rejected her request for a pose to punch in the air, Reformasi-style.

Progressive jurisdiction

In another story today, theSun quoted Bar Council president Yeo Yang Poh as saying defamation laws apply to all media, including online media, and that they are meant to protect not just individuals but also corporations from being maligned by false allegations.

However, Yeo also stressed the importance of striking a balance between seeking redress for the defamed parties, and allowing room for freedom of expression. Quote:

“We need to look at how other progressive jurisdictions strike this balance. For example, in advanced countries like Canada, there is decreasing emphasis on monetary compensation but increasing emphasis on the rights of response or reply by the individuals who were defamed. “This is not an easy task but we should allow maximum freedom of expression but, at the same time, [we should] not ignore the rights of individuals not to be defamed.”

I am pleased to announce that Lim Guan Eng has arranged for me to speak alongside Yeo at a public forum February 6.

Thus far, in the media reports, only Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia journalism lecturer Prof Dr Mohd Safar Hashim -- he once told me he monitored my blog daily -- has emerged to state that the Defamation Act also gives protection to the accused, through four types of defence, namely truth and justifications, qualified privilege, fair comments, and unintentional mistake.

That was what I roughly told the press conference yesterday, but I am not sure how many reporters managed to help their editors pick it up for today's papers.

Get the story out if mainstream media fail to do so

In contrast, this is what Malaysiakini reported of my opinion expressed at the CIJ Malaysia/WAMI press conference yesterday:

He explained that blogging to him was not about the freedom of expression but for the gathering of discussions and debates.

“We’ll leave it to the experts to define what freedom of expression is but [...] but my focus is to tell a story that the mainstream media is not printing.

“Bloggers come to give it an intellectual definition how we can get this conversation along. But if you use laws to muzzle bloggers, that is another question,” he said.

Though the excerpts do not vividly portrayed what I actually said, that sort of reflects what Imtiaz had meant by the bloggers' role in nation building.

Now you know why this year's World Economy Forum, after strict sieving by an expert committee, only invites a Malaysian online media journalist to sit on the newly-created International Media Council (IMC).

Yes, it's Steven Gan who will speak alongside such greats as New York Times Publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, Washington Post’s Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Google CEO, Eric Schmidt.

The opinion space, and the delivery system for its message, have changed. Don't hit the 'Active Denial' button, will you?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Malaysiakini quoted me as saying that the defamation suit taken against Rocky and I "had brought positive outcomes, including the possibility of setting up a legal fund for bloggers".

The Star also reported about the Bloggers Legal Fund that is being set up by sympathetic parties. Some names have been tossed around as the trustees of the fund, notably two Datuk-grade bloggers, Marina Mahathir, the former Prime Minister’s daughter, and A. Kadir Jasin, former NSTP group editor-in-chief.

The WALK WITH US blog may have some "qualified privilege" information who it hinted on the profile of two other trustees.

I noticed the WWU blog -- walkwithus.wordpress.com -- gas received over 10,000 pageviews since it went live two days ago, without pomp and funfair.

Walk with Us

Rocky and I agreed that we need legal assistance to fight the case taken against us by the financial Goliath, but we also agree that the Blogger Legal Fund should have larger agenda. Quote from Malaysiakini: “We want to have a legal fund instituted, to start a form of investigative journalism or have workshop for bloggers. So if bloggers are under attack, they would have at least have a recourse.”

That, of course, is subject to the approval of the trustees.

Yes, we should turn every crisis into opportunities. That's how Oriental Daily News reported about my views.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Boosting Malaysia's international image? No, I am not talking about the Prime Minister speaking alongside Thomas Friedman.

This week, Malaysiakini editor-in-chief Steven Gan will address the 'Who’s who' of the global media industry at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

He is among 100 ‘most influential and respected media leaders in the world’ picked to join the WEF’s inaugural International Media Council (IMC). Quote:

“It’s a rare honour to be selected as a member of the council,” said Gan.

“Given that the media plays a pivotal role in shaping global events, it’s also a great responsibility. I take this as a unique opportunity for me to discuss issues of great importance with some of the most powerful men and women in the world.”

The IMC is a new body set up by the organisers of the WEF. Over 3,000 journalists around the world were asked to suggest potential members and 900 nominations were received.

The final list was chosen by a special committee of experts. Gan is the only Southeast Asian selected and one of nine Asians.

Other prominent IMC members include New York Times Publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, Washington Post’s Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Google CEO, Eric Schmidt.

I am glad Malaysia is represented by the online media, as Steven will be among those speaking at the opening session themed ‘Old Questions, New Answers’ which will examine the challenges facing the old and new media.

He will also be on a panel session entitled 'Journalism is Dead - Long Live the Journalist' which explores the meaning of journalism in the new media world.

Steven will also participate in a number of informal meetings, including a breakfast meeting hosted by Microsoft's Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, and a lunch meeting with philanthropist George Soros

The world is flat? Or flatter now?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, theSun sent three journalists -- an assistant news editor, a reporter and a photographer -- to cover the press conference jointly organised by CIJ Malaysia and WAMI. Rocky and I were their guests.

The photographer asked us to pose for a picture, and the instruction was to get us punching into the air, Reformasi-style.

Flatly, we both said: "We won't do it."

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Thank you Dr Lim for looking up for us. Cherish it.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Despite my plea to readers not to complicate my defending of the defamation The NST et.al took against me -- where I warned you circa 11.30hr January 18, 2007, to " tread carefully when you leave your comments" -- there was an evil attempt to implicate me and possibly ruin my case.

I was alerted of a comment left by the name of SuperShyteStirrer, time-stamped 23:00hr January 19, 2007, who tried to implicate me for possible contempt of court by posting an offensive remark. However, as I was online throughout the day, in anticipation of such trolls and "professional spin-doctoring commenters" -- be afraid, very very afraid, one such person has just come from Melbourne -- as we broke the news that Rocky and I have been sued, it was taken down swiftly. The commenter has also been banned from making further commentaries in this blog.

The said comment kept for further digital forensic investigations, should there be a dispute.

Low-blow tactics

I ask you again, dear friends and adversaries online, please don't take such a low-blow tactic to ruin my case. Let me fight my case in court.

Despite the precautionary authentication process being put in place, using TypeKey, Screenshots still employs stringent moderation on the posted comments. Any offensive comments would be manually taken down immediately once they are noted. Hence patches of message in the form of [DELETED] can be found on various parts of the commenters’ section. However, Screenshots readers have been pre-warned that this is not meant to stifle freedom of speech but to comply with Malaysian laws.

As you may have noticed, there are also various additional caution on “Internet not operating in legal vacuum” in various pages of the Screenshots blog.

Preliminary Analysis of the Digital Trail - SuperShyteStirrer

It is noted that the commenter has used proxies to mask his digital trail, routing his posting through the network owned by “Safe Host Network Geneva”, Switzerland, via IP address 80.80.228.150.

I have since put in an additional precaution whereby only commenters with a record of over 25 level-headed postings will be allowed to have their comments published on real-time.

This is because the software currently used does not cater to automatic post-moderation posting, but a manual “Trust” ranking system of the commenters has been a viable modification to enable human intervention to the free-flow of online discussions via the commenters’ postings.

I hope you understand.

And I ask you again, dear friends and adversaries online, please don't resort to low-blow tactic to ruin my case. Let me fight my case in court. Not outside.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Gerakan president Dr Lim Keng Yaik said the party found that there was a “lot of misconceptions and rumblings” on the ground that the country's economy is not moving well despite a GDP growth of 6.5% and inflation capped at 3%

He said Gerakan will ask Barisan Nasional chairman Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to hold a special assembly to explain the country’s economic policies to Barisan delegates, according to The Star.

This should be the prequel, not the sequel, to the 'two events to boost Pak Lah's international image'. The country comes first, unless you need to pep up your international approval ratings to secure borrowing more money offshore. FDIs had bypassed us to land in neighbouring countries and they may not come this way anytime soon.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

Thank you Joey (Allarilla), Manuel (Quezon III) and Roby (Alampay) for mentioning the plights of Malaysian bloggers in your blogs and webspaces. I cherish it.

Joey is my fellow blogger at CNet Asia, while Manuel, whose grandfather, incidentally, was the president of the Philippines during World War II, is a TV anchor in ANC cable news, a columnist and an editorial writer for The Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper.

Roby is the executive director for South East Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA) based in Bangkok.

Watch this space!

I would also like to thank the unsung heroes who have so quickly put up a new blog in support of us, though we have no association with it. The blog is aptly named: WALK WITH US ( walkwithus.wordpress.com ).

If the early signs of its content is anything to gauge by, I hope the people behind this WALK WITH US blog will continue to take the high ground by examining the critical issues facing us in the cyberspace, and refrain from triviality that may cloud the Big Picture agenda in this Internet Age, as you guys have said. Tackle the problems, not the people. Read the message, don't kill the messenger.

Know your path well and yes, more blogs should sprout from here.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I am overwhelmed with phonecalls, SMS, emails to both my Gmail and Hushmai accounts, with offers of counsel, moral support, legal representation and even financial assistance. As a somewhat unknown blogger I am touched though I simply can't find time to reply them all.

I was really speechless when I found out that, when the writ of summons was finally delivered to my lawyers on January 16, one of my defence counsels took time to read it from 1 to 6am, and still managed to meet me later in the afternoon, in full zest. I actually gained strength from an inspired lawyer like him -- not for the money, but to fight on the merits of the case that will impact the cyberspace considerably.

I thought nothing could express better my heartfelt gratitude of your showering of kindness while we tread in these unchartered waters than to borrow Rocky's thoughts -- wholesale but not plagiarising him (as I give Rocky full acknowledgement by attributing to him) -- for we are made to walk together in these legal suites The NSTP et.al. instituted against us.

Walk with us. I've been quiet but I haven't been idle. The young men who are going to represent me in court had given me quite a bit of homework for the fight ahead. I am going through the documents that lawyers from the NSTP and its 3 top operatives claimed to have defamed them in their suit against me. I am taking a breather now and dropping a few lines here to say Thank You for all the support that has come my way since Rocky and I posted on our blogs on the legal suit, here and here.

Many of you asked me for my bank account number because you wanted to send money to help finance the legal fees. We have decided that it will serve bloggers well if we set up a fund NOT in our names but in the name of blogger solidarity and Freedom of Expression to defend our rights in the court of law. We should be announcing the formation of the fund this week.

Bloggers Unite should also meet up soon to discuss the future of blogging, the new threat that we face, the steps that we will need to take.

It's going to be a long journey but we'll walk the distance.

Walk with us.

UPDATES: The third story in four days from Associated Press, and carried by The IHT, appeared yesterday: Malaysian bloggers unite against defamation lawsuits.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Got this book from bookaholic-blogger Sharon Bakar's Bibliobibuli.

Author Richard A. Posner is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, who is also a judge at the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Posner specialises in the law and economics of intellectual property, which treat plagiarism as a form of fraud.

I read in the book reviews that, to those who say there is no law against plagiarism itself, Posner dismisses the question of conscious or unconscious "borrowing," and focuses on the legal issues of plagiarism, which have even more serious ramifications in the US legal system: Concealment, fraud, unfair competition, etc.

Reviewing the book, the New York Times says: "The club of people accused of plagiarism gets ever larger." The Seattle Times says: "But with newer plagiarism software on the market, chances that they'll get away with it decrease."

Read I must, it's a little book anyway, only 115 pages. ISBN 037542475X.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Charles Chan, former editor at The Star who is now residing in New Zealand, is now a proud father-in-law.

Yesterday, Sunday 21 January 2007, was a joyous occasion for the Chan family as their daughter, Mei Chan, was married to David Young at The Woolshed, Ohariu Farm; Wellington.

My sifu CY Leow, also residing in Wellington, was an invited guest to the wedding ceremony. Both Charles and CY went back a long way as the former was the News Editor when CY joined The Star as its first Photo Editor, in 1974.

Just like a good photojournalist, CY went to the wedding ceremony with his Canon 30D, with ONE lens, and the super compact Canon G7. CY was stunned by how good the tiny G7 is in shooting wedding!

Proud father Charles with Mei

The happy Chan Family, New Zealand

More pictures, a hundred of them, are available at CY's online albums at Picasaweb.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Wong Chun Wai says two events have been lined up in UK to boost the PM's international image.

The trick is by associating our No. 1 with global iconism -- not Louis Vuitton or Turkish yacht -- but in economics and politics, namely ( 1 ) the London School of Economics (whose alumni range from George Soros to Mick Jagger of Rollingstones); and ( 2 ) International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the world’s leading authority for research on political-military conflict -- an area Razak Baginda used to be an expert in.

The PM is also slated to speak at the World Economic Forum, Davos, an event that Choi Tuck Wo says will focus on several key issues like emerging economies and racial unity.

The Davos golden photo-opp is this... hehehe, Pak Lah may speak alongside Thomas Friedman, the author of The World Is Flat.

Hey Flat World, do appreciate that we are sending our No. 1 to address you, so please bear with us with our Emerging Economies 101 for a moment. This is the man who says his country has money, and his son has money, in a nation where toll rates are pre-programmed to go up for 33 years with no review, and fuel price doesn't come down once it's up.

P/S: While being there at IISS, could Pak Lah please bring this book for me? But Sir, you may forget about getting me Rip Van Winkle, though. Been there, done that.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Just learned from Susan Loone that there is a growing list of blacklisted writers in Malaysia, unearthed by BBC News correspondent Boon Hooi.

Ain't we a democracy with qualified freedom of speech? Ain't we a signatory to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948?

Ain't Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 saying this:

Everyone has the right to opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Niamah! (Patrick, please don't! sue me for copyright infringement as I am too busy with one already!)

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Barrister-blogger Malik Imtiaz Sarwar (MIS) disclosed that he has been informed by "the NST yesterday that it will not be running my column until the case has been brought to an end".

He said he accepted The NST's decision "as it is for the NST to decide who writes for it".

The "case" refers to the defamation suit that The New Straits Times Press (NSTP) and three others had taken against this blogger. Imtiaz is one of my defence counsels.

For the record, Imtiaz was MP Shahrir Abdul Samad's counsel in his defamation suit against NSTP, which had called him an 'unpatriotic' in a 2005 article in New Sunday Times. The NSTP had to retract the article and published an apology on January 7, 2007. Imtiaz was still a columnist for The NST, then.

Read Watch This Space in Disquiet.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 02:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

'Bloggers fight back!'. Read Marina Mahathir at 'Rantings by MM'. She suggests a 4-prong approach facing these unchartered waters.

Journo-blogger A Kadir Jasin announces that a legal fund for bloggers is being set up. Read The Scribe: Blogger Lwn NSTP: Terima Kasih Atas Simpati.

The Centre for Independent Journalists (CIJ) has initiated an endorsed joint action campaign in the run-up to a press conference on January 22.

And there's this effort by the little Davids: Bloggers United.

Dr Mustafa Kamal Anuar and Anil Netto, Coordinators of Charter 2000-Aliran, analysed the potential ramifications of the issue in Blocking bloggers.

Local Press

theSun said the purpose of the suits is to help to promote responsible journalism responsible blogs (Jan 19, last paragraph)

Read A. Asohan's first article after a long hiatus: Defamation suit to test the limits of freedom of speech in cyberspace, especially the last two paragraphs. Asohan is now New Media Editor at i-Star, a subsidiary of The Star.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

According to media reports, Umno Supreme Council members had voted 43-5 to reject the NeST-UM Merger proposal. There are 48 Supreme Council members in Umno.

January 5, S. Jayasankaran reported in Singapore Business Times that "both party president Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his deputy Najib Razak supported the proposal".

Is that a split vote or, as described by a former Group Editor-in-Chief, a vote of no-confidence against the Top 1 and 2 in the party?

The jury is still out.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

PAPER LAMA. A reader sent me this news-clip, dated October 2004:

Déjà vu for some? But Oriental Daily sees it in terms of web traffic, while The Star gets the lawyer's view about options in Malaysia's legal system.

GOLDEN HARVEST. Now that the NeST-UM merger has been aborted, I am gonna look at the counters.

Merger or no merger, ever wonder who have made the best harvest in one month after news of the merger broke last December?

The last one year, share price and volume...

SOURCE: Star Business Online, Jan 19, 2007

The last one month...

SOURCE: Star Business Online, Jan 19, 2007

From RM1.60+ to RM2.90+ for NSTP, and from RM.90+ to RM1.90+ for Utusan, who were laughing all the way to the bank?

I can hear the 70-year-old man chuckling at the back: "There are (only) about a hundred 'thinking Malaysians' out there among a population of 25 milliion..."

NSTP, Utusan down after merger deal off

UPDATES: Via The Edge Daily: NSTP was the top loser with 32 sen or 12.85% to RM2.17 with 1.62 million shares done while Utusan gave up 23 sen or 15.65% to RM1.24 with 1.2 million units traded at 9.33am.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

It was revealed at last night's public forum that Utusan Melayu employees had recently held a sembahyang hajat to pray for their wish-come-true pertaining to the NeST-UM merger.

Today, both NSTP and Utusan Melayu groups informed Bursa Malaysia, here and here, that the merger has been aborted as both parties "were not able to reach a scheme of merger that would be beneficial to both parties and its stakeholders".

Agencie Presse France (AFP) describes it as a major setback for Umno president Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who was advocating for the merger, echoed by his deputy Najib Razak.

But a speaker at last night's forum had likened it as a vote of no confidence on Umno's No. 1 and No. 2 when the majority of the party's Supreme Council members rose to voice against the merger.

The speaker said this clearly showed the existence of a rift between the interest of party members and the leadership.

If you can recall, Rais Yatim was quoted by Utusan Malaysia as saying that he would become "dayus" if he closed an eye and allowed Utusan Melayu to be taken over by another party.

Rocky has explained in his blog that "dayus" is a very strong word to use on any man. Because "a man becomes 'dayus' when he knows, for a fact, that his wife is sleeping with another man and does not or refuses to confront his wife or her lover".

According to AgendaDaily, Senator Dr. Norraesah Mohamad hasd opposed the merger by equating it to marrying a healthy person to another that is HIV infected. The Senator, howeverm didn';t specify which one was the high-risk partner.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

International headlines! This is how the wire agencies look at the law suits against Malaysian bloggers,
with some treating it as a test case for this part of the world:

SOURCE: Associated Press via International Herald Tribune, Jan 18, 2007

SOURCE: Reuters India, Jan 18, 2007

SOURCE: BBC News Chinese, Jan 18, 2007

SOURCE: Al-Jazeera English, Jan 18, 2007

SOURCE: Yahoo!/Kyodo News, Jan 18, 2007

Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang has a take on this that has gone on to become the central piece of the stories filed by AP and Reuters separately, as mentioned above.

Kit says this will result in "expensive litigation that can cripple the ordinary blogger and fail to contribute in defining the legal rights of bloggers and citizen journalists".

And Malaysian bloggers are evaluating the situation earnestly, see Technorati tracking.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

We are living in interesting times, so I am not letting up on any chance.

If you have sensitive information to share with me, please STOP sending it to my Gmail account.

You should, instead, send it to my paid, secure email service at jeffooi @ hushmail.com.

Good Night and Good Luck.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad,
Kalimullah bin Masheerul Hassan, Hishamuddin
bin Aun and Brenden John a/l John Pereira have
jointly taken an order, via an ex-parte injunction
obtained in the High Court of Malaya Kuala
Lumpur (Civil Suit No. S6-23-3-2007) on January
11, 2007, against this blogger.

The abovementioned parties' application for an
injunction has been fixed for a hearing at the
same court on January 30, 2007 at 9.00am.

My lawyers are now taking care of it

Meanwhile, Screenshots was informed that
journo-blogger Ahiruddin Attan (Rocky's Bru)
has been served January 16 a Writ of Summons
and Statement of Claim by the New Straits Times
Press (Malaysia) Berhad and four others, dated
January 11.

The parties' application for an injunction against
Rocky has been fixed for a hearing on January
25, 2007.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (67) | TrackBacks (0)

DKL thinks Malaysia's free-est media was during the time when Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj was the prime minister. This Tan Sri still considers himself a national record being the only Group Editor-in-Chief who was fired in the early days of the Abdullah Administration. He said his sin was criticising Saudi Arabia, not Malaysia.

Last night, at a public forum, I asked him whether YB Zigzag and Tengku Pushy are still in circulation. He said they are, and very much.

DKL concluded his presentation by asking 'thinking Malaysians' to always question this when reading the local mainstream media: "What's behind the story. Ask Why? Why? Why?"

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The blog entry on the Johor Bigfoot has attracted an immediate response from a cryptozoologist from America, who says: "You may not be aware that the Vincent Chow- and Sean Ang-promoted 'photographs' of the 'Johor Hominid' were exposed as hoaxes in August 2006, due to the investigative work of the readers of Cryptomundo."

You have to find out which mainstream newspapers in Malaysia had given ample coverage to highlight the hoaxes that the cryptozoologist just pointed out.

Mailbag

from: Loren Coleman
to: jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com
date: Jan 17, 2007 7:36 PM
subject: Your Johor Bigfoot

Dear Mr. Jeff Ooi

You may not be aware that the Vincent Chow- and Sean Ang-promoted "photographs" of the "Johor Hominid" were exposed as hoaxes in August 2006, due to the investigative work of the readers of Cryptomundo.

We have been investigating and posting on the "Malaysian Bigfoot" for months. Please see:

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoology/malaysian-bigfoot/

But the bigger story is that since November 2005, actual non-hoaxed sightings have occurred, in spite of the Chow-Ang sidetrack. Indeed, the Malaysia situation was one of the Top Ten Bigfoot Stories of 2006.

It was the #1 story:

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/top-10-bf-2006/

1. Johor Bigfoot Seen, Slammed, and Stabilized

Starting in late 2005, and moving right through every month of 2006, reports of sightings, government disputes, footprints, and expeditions in search of the so-called "Johor Bigfoot" issued forth from south Asia and were repeated worldwide. (Cryptomundo was reporting on so many stories we created a "Malaysian Bigfoot" category to file away all the blogs.) Most of the middle of the year¹s "Johor Hominid" distraction was caused by first withheld and then exposed photographs that turned out to be a hoax. Nevertheless, re-surfacing of credible 1970s¹ accounts, for example from Harold Stephens, mixed with a confusing array of 2006 Johor footprints, have left open questions about what is really happening in Malaysia.

===

Hope this assists your reportage on this.

Best wishes
Loren Coleman
Cryptozoologist
Author, The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (Anomalist, 2006)
Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (Simon and Schuster, 2003)

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kit's blog on the matter, which I mentioned earlier, has aroused two contrasting yet significant responses on Malaysiakini: Here and here.

You judgment call and wisdom when reading them is needed, obviously. And I really can't say I am not disturbed hearing and reading all this.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

About last year this time, Johor menteri besar Abdul Ghani Othman, said he was setting up two teams, one of which will scour locations, including the densely forested Endau Rompin National Park, to track Big Foot's big foot-prints in "a proper scientific expedition".

Malaysia was so caught up with Big Foot that Johor has threatened to jail foreigners who venture into its jungles looking for the legendary ape man, aka Hantu Gigi Jarang to the locals, so said BBC News.

With big floods befalling Johor twice over in two months, did Big Foot survive the waters -- if indeed it existed? Or, after a year of frenzied (mainstream) media, has somebody actually stuffed the big foot in his big mouth after news of Big Foot Johor has gone around the world, including USA Today?

Somehow, the website set up by Malaysia's Big Foot fans at johorhominid.org doesn't seem to work. A message on the website says it has been closed down temporarily pending investigation on the "evidence for the existence of a hominid".

Earnestly waiting for Mr Chow to sell another Big Foot story to Jalan Riong.

Or simply, show us the Johor Hominid photos and let the pictures do the talking.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

It would be good if bloggers, like the two of us, could spend some time going over the objectives of the forthcoming conference themed: EXPOSE WAR CRIMES: CRIMINALISE WAR, which will be held from February 5 - 7, 2007, and lend some voice through vox populi that Internet enables..

Bloggers from Rocky's Bru and Screenshots at last year's PGPO Conference, Putrajaya

You could participate as an attendees or blog about the event from wherever you are in the cyberspace.

Walk with us!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

She is the deputy secretary-general (trade) at the International Trade and Industry Ministry (MITI).

Reading The NST, Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang asked: Is she the only showcase for meritocracy in the public service in the past three years?

How about meritocracy in the GLCs' senior management?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

What a hospital, but endure, my friend. You will prevail.

I hope Screenshots readers will drop the wish-you-well messages on David's blog.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This chronological summary is from Malaysiakini, which is related to Kit's blog on the US$50 billion intrigues I mentioned last night:

Let's try to imagine some scenarios arising therein:

( 1 ) WHAT IF Malaysia's No. 1 -- the PM cum Finance Minister -- has authorised the issuance of Government Guarantees to a "company about to wind up" and a foreign shelf-company to raise US$50 billion allegedly to fund infrastructural projects in the 9th Malaysia Plan?

( 2 ) WHAT IF Bank Negara has been officially notified that the Government has no objection to the wheel-dealing of these two private companies, and has to comply?

( 3 ) WHAT IF with these guarantees, the two companies cited, and indeed anyone at all for that matter, can raise funds anywhere, given that no one else knows of this transaction?

( 4 ) WHAT IF funds can then be diverted to personal accounts?

( 5 ) WHAT IF when it's time for repayment, the lenders can have the option of running to the BN government which "had no objection" to their deals in the first place?

( 6 ) WHAT IF the Malaysian government will repay without any of this becoming public -- the caveat may be that the PM/Finance Minister and his political dependents remain in power?

( 7 ) WHAT IF, with all the above, the recipients of the US$50 billion funds will be allowed to enjoy the monies unhindered, and reward some to those who make things happen?

It may be too naive and too late of me to ask WHAT IF. Again, I am just Thinking Allowed, Thinking Aloud. The answers are not with me. Or you. But with him.

And Kit said in his blog yesterday: "If Abdullah is really in the dark about such Internet material, I am prepared to forward to him all relevant information."

I can't say I am not disturbed hearing and reading all this.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (37) | TrackBacks (0)

I strongly suggest you read Kit's blog on the matter. The amount is huge, while the allegations are serious.

According to Kit's blog entry, which quoted Internet sources, the Prime Minister cum Finance Minister is said to have endorsed the raising of US$50 billion project loan for the 9th Malaysia Plan (9MP) though ( 1 ) a local company, based in Permatang Pauh, Seberang Perai, that was allegedly in the process of 'winding up', and ( 2 ) a foreign company allegedly tainted in world-wide frauds.

Among documents sighted was a letter to a deputy Bank Negara Governor, using the letterhead of the political secretary of a senior minister, dated June 15, 2006. Google for details.

"If Abdullah is really in the dark about such Internet material, I am prepared to forward to him all relevant information," says Kit in his blog.

By the way, US$50 billion is roughly about RM180 billion at an exchange rate of RM3.60 to the dollar.

In comparison, the 9MP, which runs from 2006 to 2010, is estimated to cost about RM200 billion. The US$50 billion purported to be raised by the country through the company in question will constitute some 90% of the 9MP budget.

Has Bank Negara, the gatekeeper of money flow, allowed such huge amount of foreign debts seep into our system?

I can't say I am not disturbed hearing and reading all this.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is an invitation from Strategic Information Research & Development Centre (SIRD) to a public forum, themed: "The Implications of Utusan-NST Merger: Challenges for Malaysian Media under Globalisation"

The Speakers & Moderator:

1. Abdullah Ahmad (Former NST's Group Editor-in-Chief, Ambassador to United Nations and Political Secretary to second premier Tun Razak)
2. A. Kadir Jasin (Group Editor-in-Chief of Berita Publishing Sdn. Bhd and former NST's Group Editor-in-Chief)
3. Kou Yok Liong (Veteran Chinese-language media practitioner with Sin Chew and Nanyang Press)
4. Moderator: Fathi Aris Omar (Blogger and Chief Reporter of MStar Online)

The forum will be conducted primarily in Bahasa Malaysia.

When & Where:

Date: 17 Jan 2007 (Wednesday)
Time: 8:00 - 10:00 pm
Venue: Auditorium, Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall (SCAH), No. 1 Jalan Maharajalela

Pointers to ponder:

If the merger of News Straits Times Press (NSTP) and Utusan Melayu Bhd goes as planned, the largest Malay-language newspaper entity will emerge. At the same time, timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King has taken control of three major Chinese-language newspapers, Sin Chew Jit Poh, Nanyang and China Press.

Are these mere business transactions? How will this affect the state of press freedom in this country? How does the issue of media ownership come into play? Why is media ownership becoming a cause of concern?

Hurl your questions at the speakers, will you?

Due to very limited number of seats at the forum, please book your place with the SIRD Office (03-79578342) or Khai Loon (013-3970519). You may also email to: sird@streamyx.com, to confirm your place.

SIRD is an independent publishing and research centre. It has, in the past few years, we organised various talks and seminars on topics ranging from socio-cultural to political issues.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Some Screenshots readers have taken to task a young couple, who participated in the anti-toll protest in Bandar Sunway January 7, for exposing their children to the risks and elements of a demonstration.

Well, the couple appeared again with their two children in yesterday's anti-toll protest in Gombak, a news item which is blackout-ed by most of the mainstream media.

Interviewed by Malaysiakini.tv, the father said: "Duduk kat rumah diam-diam dalam selimut, kalau kena rombak, mati juga. Ini pasal tol, saya sebagai seorang bapak takkanlah nak duk diam-diam?" Or something to that effect.

Have compassion. The couple, Mohamad Affendi Ramli and Raja Rohaisham, are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet with the rising cost of living especially with two special children.

With a gross salary of RM2,000 a month, Affendi doesn’t get any allowances from the government for his two special children, says Malaysiakini.tv.

You understand? Do you really understand?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Despite the demand for immediate retraction, BBC News' November 2 article still stays, till today.

That's quote a statement to beckon.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's worlds apart. Compare here and here. Is wealth paved on misery?

Are our bankers reading the papers if they ain't online? It has been about two weeks since the Government said it would give flood victims RM200 but many victims have yet to receive the aid, according to The Star.

Meanwhile, with about 104,000 people evacuated as of yesterday, in the second wave of massive floods, the DID says Johor is 'sitting in a bowl of water'. Some have been evacuated to relief centres four times in just four weeks.

Malaysian Red Crescent Society (MRCS) wants more volunteers to help flood victims in Johor, and it's not because Minister Shahrizat's 4-wheel drive motorcade was trapped by flood waters in Kluang.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

This is life!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just how much Malaysian researchers know about the flower first identified 180 years ago in Sumatra by Stamford Raffles, which is rarely found elsewhere? Rafflesia's DNA can't be derived from chloroplasts as it doesn't survive on photosynthesis.

Ask Charles Davis of Harvard University Herbaria. It's mentioned in Human Flower Project.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Patrick Teoh and TV Smith have their YM conversation published for your eyes:

Patrick Teoh: I saw on TV the Hishamuddin fler riding in the same boat as the PM
TV Smith: Dunno, can't see from where I stood.
Patrick Teoh: Wonder if they shared the same gondola?
TV Smith: They ought to.
Patrick Teoh: Eh.. why lah?
TV Smith: In case the door jammed, they might need a keris to pry it open mah....

The thread on 'Eye on Malaysia' has reached 17,500 pageviews and 250 entries in LensaMalaysia to date. No politics, just nice pictures.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Malaysian professionals who hold an MBA from any of 50 British-approved institutions will be given preference above all others to work in Britain.

According to Choi Tuck Wo, The Star's bureau chief in London, the qualified MBA-holders will automatically get 75 points – the minimum qualifying mark under the point-based system in the Highly-Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP), which came into force on December 5.

The provision for this MBA-skewed policy was made during the 2004 Budget, where graduates of the top 50 business schools are allowed to work in the UK for up to 12 months on completing their MBA.

The move affects mostly doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers and entrepreneurs, who must score at least 75 points to cross the HSMP hurdle.

Apart from the MBA provision, applicants will also score points based on other qualifications, previous earnings and age However, younger professionals -- especially those 27 years and below -- will chalk up more points, The Star reports.
.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Rip Van Winkle is a short story by Washington Irving published in 1819, the year Thomas Stamford Raffles took over Singapore.

Rip Van Winkle is also the name of the fictional protagonist in the story, whose character depicts a person who sleeps for a long period of time. Or, simply, one who is unaware of current events.

Kit must have been fed-up of reading the book for the past three years, whereas Khoo Kay Peng says we are ailing with a flip-flop man.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Finally, after two years, The NST apologises to Shahrir Abdul Samad for calling the Member of Parliament 'unpatriotic' in a story dated February 6, 2005.

SOURCE: New Sunday Times, January 7, 2007 (Page 19)

It's noted that Shahrir's lawyer was Malik Imtiaz Sarwar (MIS), the barrister-blogger who also writes a column in the newspaper that apologises.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Members of LensaMalaysia have done their patriotic rounds by promoting VMY2007 using their cameras.

Photo by LensaMalaysia member, Leonard Lee

The thread highlighting 'Eye on Malaysia' has received about 15,000 pageviews and 23o entries since January 3, and new pictures -- night scene, laser, fireworks etc -- are still coming in.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The popular Wikipedia revolutionized the internet with community generated content. In a way, it is one of the forerunners of Web 2.0.

Now, Wikileaks.org extends it into transparency and good governance. It's a site for whistle-blowers!

Look at the preamble:

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact; this means our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people. We have received over 1.1 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.

We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. Many governments would benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. Wikileaks will facilitate safety in the ethical leaking movement.

Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide. Wikileaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability. They will be able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. [...]

We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their government honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government. That is why the time has come for an anonymous global avenue for disseminating documents the public should see.

Is Wikileaks concerned about any legal consequences? The promotor says:

Our roots are in dissident communities and our focus is on non-western authoritarian regimes. Consequently we believe a politically motivated legal attack on us would be seen as a grave error in western administrations.

However, we are prepared, structurally and technically, to deal with all legal attacks. We design the software, and promote its human rights agenda, but the servers are run by anonymous volunteers. Because we have no commercial interest in the software, there is no need to restrict its distribution. In the very unlikely event that we were to face coercion to make the software censorship friendly, there are many others who will continue the work in other jurisdictions.

Thanks reader Jee Ming for the heads-up. Font highlights are mine.

Wikileaks needs volunteers. Here's the FAQ. You decide whether Wikileaks is relevant to and applicable in Malaysia.

Or whether it will trounce the Official Secret Act (OSA).

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Toll rate was not the only thing that went up on January 1. So did the advertising rates levied by The Star and The NSTP group of newspapers, which raised the rack rate by 4% to 15%.

Who will fare better in returns this year?

The Oriental Daily News ran a frontpage story on its business section January 9, quoting financial analysts' advisory. It says the big winner will be The Star while The NST will trail behind.

Analysts attributed this to the growing circulation and readership recorded by The Star which are both in a leading position. In terms of cost-per-thousand (CPM), The Star will command a better reach at a lower price.

The Star - 'BUY'

As such, AMMB advised that the hike in advertising rates will bring improved revenue for The Star, and has upgraded the counter from 'HOLD' to 'BUY', Oriental Daily reported.

With the advertising rate adjustment, The Star will be charging RM58 per column cm, equivalent to a growth of 3.6%. However, as the hike is applicable for advertisements inserted for Wednesday through Saturday, the effective average growth will be 3%.

Besides, the new ad rate will only take effect in Q2 2007 as there is a "price protection period" for advertisers' bookings placed before 2007. The protection period will expire in March.

Analysts predicted that The Star will achieve growth of 3% and 4%, respectively, for FY07 and FY08. It's net profit is expected to grow by 0.9% and 2.8%, or RM141 million and RM155 million, respectively.

As such, analysts have quoted RM3.36 as the fair price for the counter, according to Oriental Daily.

NSTP - 'HOLD'

On the other hand, ad rates for The NSTP group of newspapers has been raised ranging from 8% to 15%. The NST, Berita Harian are now charging RM40 per column cm while Harian Metro is charging RM26 per column cm.

Oriental Daily quoted analysts as saying that the hike in ad rate for The NST could not be justified.

For FY07 and FY08, analysts estimated that the group will register a net growth of 3.7% and 4.1%, or RM16.5 million and RM18.1 milliion, respectively.

In addition, analysts also down-rated NSTP's estimated group advertising sales, adjusting from the previous estimate of 3% growth to negative 6.5%.

Analysts attributed this to the substantial discounts and the erosion of market share, benefitting theSun.

Nevertheless, analysts have estimated a fair price of RM2.25 for the counter, with a recommendation for 'HOLD'.

It is interesting to note advertising expenditure (adspend) is closely associated with a nation's economic growth.

Happy investing!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

PAS vice president Husam Musa provides one of the 'coolest reasons' why the Opposition decided to boycott the Batu Talam by-election: To press for poll reform and to stop the gravy train.

Via Malaysiakini:

Malaysiakini: Why was the decision to boycott the Batu Talam by-election taken?

Husam: We are just not entering the by-election this time. We want to send a strong message to the Election Commission (EC) and Umno that they need to rectify some of the practices in the elections including money politics and unfair media coverage.

Umno (election) workers are frustrated with this decision because they will not have the opportunity to make money from this by-election. This normally happens during a by-election, especially in Pahang. In the Pengkalan Pasir by-election (in Kelantan), they (Umno) spent lavishly. All their workers were given a certain amount of money not just to distribute to voters but also for themselves.

EC and Umno need to review some of these election practices immediately. That is the main reason behind our decision.

Besides, Husam also mentioned about the case of a hundred orang asli listed as Indians in the electoral roll for the constituency.

Husam disclosed that the idea to boycott the by-election was mooted by PAS president Ustaz Hadi Awang at the party’s central working committee meeting on January 8. It became an unanimous decision. PKR agreed when the decision was conveyed.

Meanwhile, DAP, Parti Keadilan Rakyat and PAS and 25 non-governmental organisations are to go on a nationwide drive to create awareness among voters on the need to restructure the Election Commission, reports theSun.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (80) | TrackBacks (0)

I was all roving eyes as a photographer at the anti-toll protest last Sunday, and yet I missed this shot. What a shame!

Reader Alan Cheah has the picture that does the talking, here!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (45) | TrackBacks (0)

Equip yourselves with the right answers when you bring Malaysia to the world, and the world to Malaysia, this VMY2007.

This blog has a tutorial for three simpulan bahasa touching on Ali, Ah Chong and Muthu. Foreign tourists may find them intriguing.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

Trademark violation, so says Cisco Systems.

Infinite Loop: Nine things wrong with the iPhone, and why it WON'T be Apple's killer app.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The world is flat and Thomas Friedman is never more correct.

News travels, and news travels leaving digital trails in the Internet Age. With this, it seems PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in the days to come, will be hounded by media reports -- and probably cyber fallouts -- on how he monitored and remote-controlled the country from abroad when the country was in massive floods in December, coded 'Red Alert'.

After making a brief appearance in Johor before he swiftly flew out of country en route to Perth, the PM has been caught by the media something irrelevant to mitigating the woes of floods befallen his primary customers, the rakyat

January 2, on Page 31 of the Metro section of The Western Australian newspaper, there was this story titled: Eatery out to curry favour globally, bylined PT Singam.

Quote:

A Malaysian restaurant has opened in Victoria Park in an ambitious plan to use Perth as a springboard for a global chain of eateries rivalling international food outlets such as McDonald's.

The cafe-style Puteri Nasi Kandar is the brainchild of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who asked Malaysians almost two years ago to look at setting up a global chain of Malaysian curry houses around the world.

"If McDonald's, KFC and Hungry Jack's can go around the world, the PM cannot see why Malaysian food can't do the same," said a co-owner of Puteri, Malaysian tycoon Lim Ewe Jin. "There are curry lovers everywhere."

Mr Abdullah opened the restaurant on Friday night (December 29).

Dr Lim, who heads the Kuala Lumpur-based Lejadi group of companies, has partnered Mr Abdullah's brother, Ibrahim - a food science academic who now heads a group of food industry firms, including one making and supplying curry pastes - to give nasi kandar to the world.

Yesterday, Malaysiakini's Beh Li Yih traced to another story carried by Asia Times Western Australia, a community newspaper in Perth, which tells more of Abdullah's nasi kandar priority over the floods:

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was opening a nasi kandar restaurant in Australia last month, at a time when disastrous floods hit Malaysia’s southern region.

According to a report in the Jan 5 edition of the Perth weekly community free paper, Asia Times, Abdullah was in the city to open the ‘Puteri Nasi Kandar’ restaurant on Dec 29.

The report entitled ‘A meal fit for a princess’was published alongside several photos showing Abdullah opening the restaurant and sampling the food.

A Malaysian reader of the newspaper told malaysiakini: “(At a time when parts of) Johor were under water (resulting in) 17 casualties, I was unable to swallow (the reports and photos).”

The restaurant is substantially owned by Abdullah’s brother, Ibrahim, and a Malaysian corporate figure Lim Ewe Jin, according to the report.

Lim, the founder of Lejadi Group which provides water management and privatisation services, is also co-founder of Powertek Bhd, an independent power producer in Malaysia.

Just how serious was the floods last December?

According to media reports, 17 people died and more than 90,000 were evacuated at the height of the floods triggered by torrential rain, and which engulfed whole towns and villages in five states.

According to Malaysiakini yesterday, Abdullah had made a one-day visit to Johor - the worst-hit state - on December 23 after an official visit to Venezuela. He then reportedly left on the same day for Australia for a one-week holiday.

Amother source told Screenshots that the Consulate-General of Malaysia in Perth had also arranged for the PM to celebrate Hari Raya Aidil Adha (December 31) with Malaysians residing there. The venue? Where else but Puteri Nasi Kandar!

'Anyway, I am back'

Explaining his absence, Abdullah said he had kept in constant contact with his deputy Najib Abdul Razak, who heads the national disaster management and relief committee.

“There was no problem. During the floods, Najib discharged his duties and I monitored the situation from abroad. Anyway, I am back now,” he was quoted as saying in Chinese daily Nanyang Siang Pau January 9.

His statement was only reported by Chinese dailies.

According to the report, the explanation was provided when he was asked to comment about flood victims who had voiced unhappiness that he had continued his holiday abroad despite the ‘red alert’ at home.

There is no need for further introduction for Ibrahim Ahmad Badawi, or Dewina Group, or Brahim's spices. Nor further introduction for Lim Ewe Jin and Powertek the IPP.

However, you may like to know who else are behind Puteri Nasi Kandar, which is owned and operated by Puteri Holdings Pty Ltd (Registrant ROID: C2836962-AR).

Does Nur Fatin Ibrahim ring a bell? See ASIC company extract here (PDF).

Photos sourced from Marilyn Chin, Asia Times Western Australia, via Malaysiakini. Thanks Screenshots reades RodneyL and G for the alert.

For larger context read yesterday's blog: Floods: YBs on remote control.

And while Abdullah was in Perth, did he read The Australian which carried an interview with Dr Mahathir on December 30? Quote:

Now, he says: "I am concerned they (the Malaysian Government) are following the example of Singapore." The Singapore Government, he says, has recently moved to tighten even further its control of the island nation's press.

Meanwhile, the delay in distributing government cash aid to the flood victims has caused a lot of anxiety and frustration. The disappointment was expressed by Pasir Raja assemblyman cum Johor exco member Halimah Mohd Sadique.

How about some Brahim's-spiced nasi kandar for the flood-distressed puteris in Johor?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

It's here. So, no iTV? Or renamed?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

It was described as the worst floods since 1969 for the Johoreans, coded "Red Alert".

And now, as flood water subsides, rakyat's voices sprout.

Here's a batch of pictures which I received from my reader, showing Kota Tinggi, Johor, in deep waters on December 21. The reader said: "Jeff, can you please "plaster" these photos BIG on your website for all to see? Very malu."

The pictures were held back for more than a week as I searched the public domain for the whereabouts of our leaders, from the PM, DPM to their Ministers and down to the local councillors.

Scan the online media and you will hear people asking where their Yang Berhormats had gone to when they were in the deepest end of water.

PM Abdullah Badawi was enroute to Perth hours after he had come back from Turkey and the Mediterranean region on an official trip. He said he monitored the floods from afar.

There are a total of seven federal ministers from Johor. Where have they been? My readers and I could only traced some of them, perhaps you could help if you are in the know.

1. Pagoh MP cum Minister Muhyiddin Yassin only showed up days after floods hit.


2. Kota Tinggi MP cum Minister Syed Hamid Albar was not seen in the papers during the floods.


3. Tanjung Piai MP cum Minister Ong Ka Ting was on holidays overseas and switched on the 'remote control' by releasing press statements via local aides.


4. Sembrong MP cum Minister Hishammuddin Hussein?


5. Pasir Gudang MP cum Minister Khaled Nordin?


6. Labis MP cum Minister Chua Soi Lek?


7. Penggerang MP cum Minister Azalina Othman Said?

How about the state exco members and state assemblymen?

It was also reported that about 40 members of the Kluang Municipal Council were on a trip to Shanghai from December 22, five days after the massive flood hit Johor.

Journalist-blogger James Wong Wing On told Malaysiakini Chinese Edition that the value system of the YBs have changed. They have gone elitist and are not willing to understand people's sorrows, he said.

Meanwhile, DPM is now on leave since January 5, reportedly to manage his children's studies overseas.

Aids to rehabilitation

Meanwhile, Bernama reports that, some 20 days after the floods, all volunteers comprising individuals and representatives from non-governmental organisations and the corporate sector are expected to be deployed to flood-hit areas in Johor at the end of this week.

Screenshots reader Captain (R) Azhar, who organised a relief convoy of 4x4 volunteers to Segamat, Johor, in December, has some updates:

I am organising a second trip down south with more 4x4 volunteers this coming week end. We're planning to deliver personal donations to the families that are still in the flood evacuation centre at Batu Pahat district.

I understand from the MRCS rep at Batu Pahat that the water covering some of the villages around BP has not subsided and there are still thousands living in the evacuation centres.

The first collection point at Puchong:

Norman Extremeworks Sdn Bhd,
No.2, Jln Sri Puchong 2B,
Tmn Sri Puchong, Bt 12,
47100 Puchong, Selangor.
Tel : 0380684044, 0380683044

The second collection point is at Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Kuala Lumpur. I will post the contacts here once I get the permission from the volunteer there to do so.

The first trip down to Parit Pulai, Segamat was done safely and so we are attempting another now, hopefully better prepared.

The second collection point.

Chef On Wheels
Wisma WIM,
7, Jalan Abang Haji Openg,
Taman Tun Dr Ismail,
60000 KUALA LUMPUR
Tel : 0377268907

There are some photos from the first trip at http://redcrescent.org.my

Hmmm, another point.

This time round, the catch phrase is personal donations. The response for last trip was pretty poor, probably attributed to the christmas, new year and hari raya haji holidays.

Please volunteer.

Thanks.

RM600 million Umno handouts vs. RM500 million repayable loan fund

Two days ago, the PM announced that the government is setting ap a RM500 million fund to help businesses affected by the floods, but Minister Khaled Nordin was quick to point out that the fund was not meant for compensating losses.

The RM500 million fund is to be set up by Bank Negara Malaysia, and it's called the Special Relief Guarantee Facility. The loan fund is available from January 8 until March 31 this year, aimed at providing immediate relief to the affected businesses.

No collateral is required to obtain the fund with the banks expected to give approval within two weeks. Its lending rates would be below market rates at 2.5%.

This RM500 repayable loan fund stands in acute contrast to the RM600 million handouts that was passed down to each Umno division, at RM3 million each, during the last Umno general assembly.

Had any bit of this big money, especially those routed to Johor, gone to floods relief and rehabilitation?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

January 8, Election Commission(EC) chairman Ab Rashid Ab Rahman pushed for the setting up of an independent commission to review of the election laws so that it can uphold the democratic process of fair and transparent elections.

He said: "There is a need to update the current system because the old laws are lacking in many things and thus we cannot deliver what the people want today - free and fair elections."

He said the election laws had not been altered for the past 50 years despite the country having undergone tremendous changes in its social order and its development. Among the changes sought by the EC are letting the commission have the authority to decide on the formation of political parties and their freedom to participate in elections.

January 9, PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said: "Let him tell me what he wants."

Meanwhile, Opposition parties and non-governmental organisations welcome EC's suggestion to institute "a more transparent and neutral" election system.

Will change take place before the next General Election?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATED VERSION. Now that former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad has asked highway toll concessionaires to disclose their toll-gate collection, and tp have the toll agreements renegotiated, what's the response from the relevant parties that matter -- the government of the day, the Works Minister who oversees privatised highway projects, and the concessionaires themselves?

Let's put it on record for future referencing by the forgetful Malaysians, in chronological order:

1 ) January 8, 2007: Litrak CEO responding to Malaysiakini in Kuala Lumpur:

Litrak CEO Sazally Saidi told Malaysiakini in a written response that issues raised with the revision of toll rate along the LDP should best be posed to the relevant authorities.

“This is because all those issues had been thoroughly discussed between the company and the authorities, where details were tabled, audited and scrutinised. Thus, the authorities are the best parties to provide answers as this will prevent any misunderstanding or misrepresentation of information with regard to the issues,” he said.

2 ) January 9, 2007: PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi responding to Bernama in Putrajaya :

Abdullah said the decision to allow the recent toll increase was based on representations by the concessionaires on their toll collection.

"And what they proved to us, to the government, was that the toll had to be increased," he said.

Asked whether details of the toll collection to date should be released to the public, he said: "All are public limited companies."

Abdullah said that the projections of future traffic volume were made when the concessions were negotiated and the present-day conditions had to be taken into account.

"We cannot deny them that. And if today, the situation warrants that we take action to raise the toll, we have to do it. Otherwise, we'll have to subsidise some more. How much more can we subsidise, how can we subsidise everything," he said.

3 ) January 9, 2007: PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi responding to theSun in Putrajaya :

Abdullah continued to defend the recent toll increase, however, adding that the government could not continue compensating highway concessionaires with no toll increase.

Abdullah said when negotiations on the concession agreements were going on, a study was done on the traffic volume annually by the respective companies and the findings were presented for discussion and approval.

When told that highway concesssionaire Litrak reported in its 2006 annual report a RM80 million profit and why there was a need for the government to still compensate the company, Abdullah said: "We had a lot of discussion on this. We did what we felt was right. If you (reporter) have more information on what you just said, please let us know."

When asked about Mahathir's statement that the traffic volume on highways had probably increased five-fold and that the government had a share in the excess collection, Abdullah did not offer a reply.

4 ) January 9, 2007: Minister S. Samy Vellu responding to Bernama in New Delhi:

Works Minister S. Samy Vellu said the cabinet has to give the green light for highway concessionaires to reveal details of toll collection and the volume of traffic using their highways.

"I will bring it up to the cabinet on whether we can allow highway concessionaires to release these figures. If the cabinet agrees, then we will ask the companies involved to come out with the details," he said.

5 ) January 9, 2007: Minister S. Samy Vellu was quoted as saying in The Star:

On the calls for a review in the concessionaire agreements, he said the Government would have to pay compensation if the agreements were reviewed.

Do we expect to pass the buck for another 24 years till LDP's concession expires in 2031?

Where does the buck stop, Mr Truman?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

Tony Blair broke his silence on Saddam Hussein's hanging on Tuesday, calling the manner of the execution "unacceptable" and "wrong".

Bush?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

For those who feel the pinch of media black-out on last Sunday's peaceful gathering in protest of toll increase and lop-sided toll agreements, I am glad to announce that our traffic-choked server has been regularised and the exclusive pictures are back online, here.

Former PM Dr Mahathir has also acknowledged flaws in the drafting of the toll agreements and now wants them renegotiated as traffic volume has increased fivefold since the agreements were signed, and no figures of toll collection have been published.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATED VERSION. Screenshots is made to understand that, as at 10.00am today, Telekom Malaysia's node at Bandar Tun Razak (BAK) is badly intermittent, while all minor nodes at Midah (MDH), Sungai Besi (SBG), San Peng (SPE) and Cheras (CRS) are also affected.

As a result, Streamyx, TMDirect and Dial-up customers will face deterioration in Internet connection.

On last check, latency was at 74ms, packet loss at 78%.

UPDATE: It is noted that as at 3.00pm, the BAK node has already been restored. On last check, latency averaged 2 ms.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Shakespeare rules at the end of a seminar organised to praise Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for his 3-year administration as the Prime Minister.

As far as the PM's report card is concerned, the Mark Anthony among the speakers colossally buried him instead, and the countrymen who lent their ears heard them loud and clear.

It's an episode called 'meludah ke langit' in Malay idiomatic expression. You spit into the air and the excretion drops on your face, messed.

In a speech read by Natural Resources and Environment Minister Azmi Khalid, Home Affairs Minister Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said the plans of the prime minister were "First Class", but he was let down by poor implementation in the hands of public servants.

The NST calls these bad implementers in the public service, the mechanism and machinery under the care of the Executive (branch of the democracy), bloopers.

Governance model

Talk about Malaysia's governance model, we tend to describe ourselves as a democracy. A Parliamentary Democracy to be exact.

Democracy, by convention and by practice, is associated with the concept of Separation of Powers, a term coined by French political thinker Montesquieu as a model for the governance of democratic states.

Under this model, the state is divided into branches, and each branch of the state has separate and independent powers and areas of responsibility.

More importantly, each branch is also able to place specified restraints on the powers exerted by the other branches. We call that 'check and balance'.

Over the centuries that democracy has been practised as a model of governance, the normal division of branches is in the form of Legislature (the law-making institution such as Parliament), the Executive (or government of the day), and the Judiciary.

Malaysia, being a constitutionally-erected Parliamentary Democracy, is no different by nature reflecting the Separation of Powers at work.

Now, when the goons come-a-calling the PM for being "First Class" in his policies and plans, and the bloopers messed things up, what's the real story staring at us?

Separation of Powers

Is the PM part of Legislature? Yes, he is first elected a Member of Parliament, then the Prime Minister. He loses the MP status, he loses the PM position. The Federal Constitution sanctions that.

Is the PM part of the Executive? Yes he is. He heads the government of the day, he leads the Executive to interpret bills, acts, laws and broad-stroke policies passed by the Legislature into action policies and plans, and then implement them through the Executive power vested by the Constitution, cascading down the massive machinery called the Public Service.

In Malaysia, public servants pledge their allegiance to the Agong, but they are responsible and answerable to the head of Executive, who oversees their chief, the Chief Secretary of the Government (Ketua Setiausaha Negara).

Is the PM part of Judiciary? No, he is not. The exception may be that, in Malaysia, the attorney-general appears to be a part of Judiciary made answerable to the PM, who is the head of the Executive.

As a footnote, the PM, and our PM is no different, is more the Executive as he is the Legislature, and the former is answerable to the latter.

Democracy in practice

There were many papers presented by the academicians, political analysts and politicians at the "National Seminar on Abdullah Ahmad Badawi: Three Years in Putrajaya: Tracking the Country’s Future", it suffices to quote just one.

Dr Sivamurugan Pandian, a lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, said although the policies were formulated for the betterment of the people, their benefits did not reach the target groups.

"The policymakers, the ones who execute it and the target group are three distinct bodies. What happens is that sometimes the policymakers fail to explain the fundamentals of the policies to the executing agencies.

"Those who are supposed to implement the plans would either take their own time in executing the plans, or because they do not have a clear idea what the policies intend to achieve, carry it out halfway. And this is where the policies fail."

He said three years was too long a time for these plans to be implemented.

"They should be implemented within a year."

Where's the beef?

Now, we have the PM sitting as the head of the Executive. And as Executive, he commands the entire massive machinery of public service to implement government policies and plans.

What gives when the head of the Executive is failed because the body of the Executive, the public service, doesn't function?

I can understand why the PM, according to The Star, is dismayed that while his policies have been described as “first class”, their implementation still leaves much to be desired because of the poor public delivery system.

Pardon the presenters who said ( 1 ) corruption had to be nipped in the bud; ( 2 ) a more effective mechanism to manage the economy has to be put in place; ( 3 ) there should be no easing of the stress on human capital development; and, ( 4 ) national unity should be stressed.

What I saw was a Major Blooper spitting in the air. And the sputum is falling on his face in slow motion, 35 frames per second.

To 'save face', shall we just say it's a First Class seminar failed by lousy posturing of the event organisers? The buck should stop somewhere with a fall-guy in tow.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

What else that the law does not gag when it comes to creative expression?

Do you know that Malaysia is the only country in the world where a film and video maker can be jailed up to TWO YEARS and/or FINED UP TO RM50,000?

Screenshots reader MBP wrote me this:

Look at the notice (picture above) that is habitually sent to producers in the country to renew their production license from Finas. It is now handled by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage.

Why must the ministry criminalize film and video makers in such a way? Is this how they want to encourage the growth of the industry?

The strange part is that only those film companies who are registered with Finas which can be threatened, while those who are not escape the persecution.

And if they go by the ruling to the letter, it also means that anyone who shoots on film or video even using non-professional cameras to produce wedding and birthday and even funeral videos can be persecuted because these are also considered to be video productions, especially if they are edited and put in packs and distribute even amongst family members and friends.

This ruling was introduced by early Finas officials who did not know anything about filmmaking. The only reason one can think of for them to introduce it is to ensure that all producers in the country kow-tow to them by coming to Finas in Hulu Kelang to buy the forms for RM2 and filling them and getting their certificate, every year.

There is no urgency for such a ruling to be imposed on the producers. Even the distributors, too, have to get a distribution license from Finas and pay up RM400 a year. Producers have to pay RM1,000 deposit which is non-returnable and an annual fee of RM100 failing which the deposit will be forfeited.

Finas and now the ministry is wasting a lot of time because there are about 400 film companies in Malaysia. Which means that they can expect to earn only a paltry sum of RM40,000 from the renewal of the production licenses. Yet, to get this they have to engage staff and provide the equipments and spend three or four times than that.

There is no country in the world that imposes such a ruling.

After all, Finas already has another regulation called the SPP which film companies have to fill and pay a certain amount each time they produce a feature film. Isn't this enough? And the question many producers have to ask is the companies that they had dutifully registered with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) allows them to conduct their business of producing films and distribute them. Yet, the ministry now wants them to apply for special licenses before they are allowed to produce any film. I can say that the film producers association of Malaysia (PFM) is dumb. They do not see this as something serious and want the ministry to repeal such an absurd ruling because they think the annual fee of just RM100 is too small considering that they spending more than RM1 million per film. But the real issue is not of the amount of money required, but the principle behind the imposition of this ruling, which does not make any sense whatsoever. It is also wasting the resources of the ministry having to set up a division with staff and equipment to process the applications for the licenses and approve them. It is also a waste of public funds and a joke of the decade.

I hope Dr Rais Yatim is listening well.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

"First-Class" policies and plans derailed by bloopers?

The PM who said 'the perception is that there might be corruption involved' should take heart that there are now two three Malaysians nominated in Corruptlist.com.

The anonymous website -- launched on December 31, 2006 and still in alpha stage -- maintains a world chart for 'Your Country's Most Corrupted Politicians' in all countries.

See the early nominees here and the initiator's remarks.

Is this the bright or dark side of Internet?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Much has been said by commenters in this blog that former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad must bear responsibility for the highway concessions signed during his time and now being followed through by his successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

This afternoon, I had the opportunity of recording his response to this matter, and I am publishing it as a podcast special.

Podcast Special with Dr Mahathir

Click here to listen to the podcast special with Dr Mahathir on toll hike and highway concessions, recorded in Putrajaya this afternoon.

Significantly, Dr Mahathir has called for the highway concession agreements to be reviewed and renegotiated.

'Ministers as stupid as I am'

He said what we had was a Cabinet that was not knowledgeable, all the time.

Instead, the Cabinet comprised politicians, some of whom he said could be "as stupid as he was", and not made up of experts in highway concessions.

As a result, the Cabinet relied on the senior government officers in the relevant ministry who prepared Cabinet papers for approval, minus details in fine print.

Once the papers were presented by the relevant minister, the Cabinet merely approved them in principle.

“We did not have very much experience. We didn’t know about growth and reaction from people. Civil servants don’t think of reaction as much as politicians. They think they see a reasonable agreement and they send it to the cabinet and the cabinet okays it. And now we are stuck,” he said.

"This is something we must correct," he added, saying that during his time, he had ordered for itemised checklist to scrutinise the critical elements contained in the concessions.

Dr Mohamad admitted that some crucial components of the highway concession, for example traffic volume, were not given full consideration.

He admitted that traffic volume has at least increased by fivefold, but there is little information being published about how much these concessionaires are making from the increased traffic volumes, which resulted in increased revenue.

As such, he suggested that information about the revenue collected by the highway concessionaires be revealed.

Renegotiate toll agreements

Asked whether the concession agreements should be reviewed, he gave an affirmative yes.

“I think the companies can be reasonable. Provided that the renegotiation does not result in them losing money," Dr Mahathir said.

He revealed that government agreements were drafted to work in two ways. For example, in defence procurement, if there were a delay, the contractor had to pay penalty to the government. However, should the delay exceed six months years, the company need not have to compensate the government. "And there was a delay of more than two years," Dr Mahathir said.

He also recalled that there were clauses in the highway concession agreements which allow the government to take a share of the revenue if the concessionaires are able to achieve projected traffic and make profits.

“If there is an increase in traffic, and the company collects more than the projected amount, then the government has a share. If the projected traffic does not happen, and the amount collected is less, then the government has to compensate.

“I think the traffic volume has increased quite a lot, but I don’t know. We don’t have the figures. But I see. I drive a lot, as you know, I see the traffic jams also. I know that they must be collecting quite a bit of money,” he said.

“So I think it is best that information on the collection is revealed,” he said.

"The concession companies should make money, and we want them to make more money (so that we could share more revenue)," he said.

"Toll rate can be increased, but not in a manner that is too excessive," he added.

'Allow peaceful demos'

Again, when asked about whether it's OK for road users to stage public protests against toll increase, he said:

"They have (just) staged a peaceful demo, it's OK... We are a democratic country, a little bit of demo is OK."

Click here to listen to the podcast special with Dr Mahathir recorded this afternoon.

Get ready for Round Two

Dr Mahathir, who went on his routine horse-riding for 15km yesterday, is back packing a punch!

This afternoon, he took a potshot at Khairy Jamaluddin's 'rice bowl'; BSA Tahir and the 'bad company' called Scomi; the Turkish yacht; the special seminar on Abdullah's three years helming Putrajaya; the mega merger of Sime Darby and two other plantation groups; the 'Police State' and the abuse of ISA; and why the entire Proton management should be given the boot.

On an another note, Dr Mahathir declined to comment on BN's chances in the Batu Talam state by-election in Pahang. He, however, urged the people to make reports if money is used during the poll.

And for now, Mahathir's main agenda of the day is to criminalise war and war-mongers.

The Perdana Global Peace Organisation is organising a conference cum Exhibition entitled 'EXPOSE WAR CRIMES: CRIMINALISE WAR' from February 5 - 7, 2007 at the Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur.

The Conference will be held at Dewan Merdeka, PWTC while the Exhibition, which will be extended to February 11, 2007, will be held at Dewan Tun Razak Hall 4.

(LensaPress photos by Jeff Ooi)

MORE!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (61) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw mainstream media reporters and photojournalists around me yesterday that I can probably name some. But is there a blackout of the news today?

It's VMY2007, and yesterday's anti-toll protest took place at Sunway Pyramid, a shopping paradise within my neighbourhood.

No untoward incident happened during the protest and I am proud of the police in my Subang Jaya neighbourhood for their professionalism: Quote The Star:

Subang Jaya OCPD Asst Comm Muhammad Fuad Talib said the protest was peaceful, adding that no one was arrested in the gathering that began at 4.30pm.

“We closed several roads leading to Sunway Pyramid to control traffic flow. The crowd dispersed peacefully at 6.10pm,” ACP Muhammad Fuad said.

However, my OCPD also said the police would probe the incident as the protesters did not have a permit to organise a gathering.

This is only something anticipated. VMY or no VMY, the rakyat still have to pay increased toll the way it was planned when the concession agreements were signed. It's anything but ill-timed some ten years ago.

My friend at Fat Bidin Media has loaded up a well-produced video-clip on YouTube. Beware, International Internet traffic is still bad.

I am sorry if you have problems accessing the pictures we have uploaded on LensaMalaysia. The server is slow as the traffic is tremendously heavy right now. Please bear with us as we are off-loading the traffic and you may see the message: "This server is temporarily not available" from time to time. We should crawl back to a palatable speed later tonight.

Meanwhile, also read the online media:
- Malaysiakini: Sunday shoppers denounce toll hikes
- Malaysiakini: 1,000 at toll hike protest
- MerdekaqReview: 逾2500人和平集会约2小时; 警民合作血腥星期天不重演
- MerdekaReview: 政治斗争不解决就要还过路费; 反涨价联盟呼吁出席下周集会

LensaMalaysia's Paul Choo has some powerful images of a silent, lonely woman protester.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (38) | TrackBacks (0)

A peaceful People's gathering to voice their grouses. It happened this afternoon at Bandar Sunway.

LensaPress photos by Leonard Yang, Paul Choo and Jeff Ooi

A banner reads: "It now costs more to be poor!"

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (39) | TrackBacks (0)

Visit Malaysia Year 2007 kicked off last night.

"And in true Malaysian-style; it started late," observes TV Smith, who overheard a conversation, and mentions it vividly in his Dua Sen blog

Go to LensaMalaysia. There is this up-close picture near the podium, away from TV cameras... and Rocky's Bru says: Eye on Abdullah.

Reading the souvenir programme... Picture courtesy LensaMalaysia member ChenWS

Despite the VIP's late show-up and bouts of drizzle, audience at Tasik Titiwangsa, Kuala Lumpur, last night -- who were abundantly non-tourists -- were evidently mesmerised with the colourful and extravagant fireworks display. Even the RM30-million Ferris wheel dwarfed by comparison. Here are some pictures I took over a 5-hour period.

Newer pictures of Eye on Malaysia and the grand launch of VMY2007 have been uploaded by member-photographers of LensaMalaysia. Feast it!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

It's a fast-track record.

The ticketing booths and entrance... LensaPress photo by Jeff Ooi

Yesterday, The Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) approved the safety standards of the 30-metre high ferries wheel, dubbed Eye on Malaysia, after undertaking a three-day intensive inspection, a Tourism Ministry official said.

By 6.30pm when I re-visited the place, workers were seen frantically and literally putting the finishing touches 24 hours before launch.

Join me in this pictorial tribute to the unsung heroes who will put up a great show for Malaysia, tonight. For a moment, I will forget about the VIPs.

After the hard work, the collective outcome is visually awesome.

More pictures of higher resolution have been posted by LensaMalaysia members (this thread, from Page 8 onwards).

Here's to the success of VMY 2007. WE LOVE YOU, Malaysia!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, members from the media will be brought to experience the spectacle of the 60-metre high 'Eye on Malaysia' Ferris wheel in the run-up to the launch of Visit Malaysia Year 2007 at Taman Tasik Titiwangsa, Kuala Lumpur, tomorrow.

LensaPress photos by Jeff Ooi. More higher resolution pictures in LensaMalaysia.

However, it's not sure whether The Eye, built at a cost of RM30 million, will stay on or be disposed when VMY is over.

Earlier, Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said discussions are still ongoing whether the structure would remain a permanent feature after the VMY.

Built over a tight schedule of three weeks, the safety standard of The Eye has caught on as an issue among Malaysian public.

However, Jereon Nijpels, project director of MST AD Suria Sdn Bhd, told Bernama that the 400-tonne Ferris wheel was built using a combination of technologies from Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and that the company would ensure the safety of the public and its staff was given top priority.

Whatever it is, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will meet The Eye tomorrow night and, at a click of a button, will light up the Ferris wheel to start the celebrations. He will then take a slow 45-minute ride on the wheel, alongside dignitaries on the 42 gondolas, to see the breath-taking view of the Kuala Lumpur skyline, an event that will be telecast live.

'Bad Press'

Despite some bad press in the international media, VMY 2007 targets to attract 20.1 million tourists and over RM44 billion in revenue. It is also to pave the way for 24 million tourists by 2010.

Meanwhile, MST AD Suria executive director Widyanty Yusope said they expected to attract 24,000 people per day to ride the giant wheel when it opens to the public this Sunday from 10am to 10pm. Ticket prices for regular gondolas are RM15 for adults and RM8 for children. VIP gondolas will cost more.

BTW, I heard a Niamah on The Eye.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

January 1, The Star 'scooped' with a story that says Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin group, Sir Stelios Haji-loannou of EasyGroup, the parent of EasyJet, and Not-Yet-Sir Tony Fernandes of AirAsia are teaming up to start a long-haul budget airline company based in Malaysia that will offer airfares as low as RM100 for flights between China and Malaysia.

There are now at least 98 stories indexed by Google News that carry Easyjet and Virgin's collective denial.

Go slow, Sai Wan. You have to easy-jet with virgin or else it's only hotair over Asia..

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

An excellent piece on the implications of the swift execution of Saddam Hussein within four days after his failed appeal. No taint of emotions. Just bare facts.

1 ) Why Iraqi court and not The Haque

BEFORE the United States and Iraq could recover from the flaws in Saddam Hussein’s trial, the swift execution erased any remaining credibility the occupation could hope to claim.

Critics preferred the World Court at the Hague for a fairer trial, as Saddam’s transgressions were also international. But it was argued that the former dictator had to be tried by Iraqis to ensure a new democratic Iraq, even when legal infrastructure and expertise were lacking. An international trial might also have exposed the key US and British roles in Saddam’s atrocities.

2 ) Another Saladin

In fast-moving Iraq, Saddam had been removed from power a long time ago. At trial he defended his status as Iraqi president, given the illegitimate invasion and his subsequent displacement. At his execution, he appeared calm and dignified. All of these images may endure longer than anything from Anfal, Dujail or Halabja.

When the executioners created another controversy, it brought the once “yesterday’s man” into the present and future. As a result Saddam Hussein might not even need to be a Gamal Nasser II or another Saladin, which he had tried in vain to be, to have a greater influence in death than he might have had from a prison cell.

The mention of the late Egyptian president Gamal Nasser II (1918-1970), and Kurdish legend Saladin, is significant in the context.

Saladin or Salah ad-Din, or Salahuddin Ayyubi (circa 1138 - March 4, 1193), was a 12th century Kurdish Muslim general and warrior from Tikrit, in present day northern Iraq. Interestingly, Saddam Hussein (full name: Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti) was also born in the town of Al-Awja, near present day Tikrit in the Sunni Triangle.

Saladin founded the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt, Syria, Yemen (except for the Northern Mountains), Iraq, Mecca Hejaz and Diyar Bakr. Saladin is renowned in both the Muslim and Christian worlds for leadership and military prowess, tempered by his chivalry and merciful nature during his war against the Crusaders. (See wikipedia) And MDeC's Creative Mulitimedia Cluster is currently pumping big money to make a Hollywood-grade animated film about him.

By the way, the article is by our own Bunn Nagara in his new column Mid Week: Saddam may have had to die just to have revenge. Don't miss it.

Bunn, who took over from Wong Sulong's inexperienced 'blue-eyed boy' to edit the now better-looking World News in The Star, has a regular Sunday column, Behind the Headlines, which I seldom miss.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

I learned the American lingo years ago and forgot about it. But it's now refreshed when I read media reports about Bush's 5-year budget proposal that he will table soon.

The phrase pork spending, in America, means 'costly pet projects hidden in the government's spending bills'.

Bush said, in context:

"One important message we all should take from the elections is that people want to end the secretive process by which Washington insiders are able to get billions of dollars directed to projects many of them pork-barrel projects that have never been reviewed or voted on by the Congress," the president said.

Keywords: Pork-barrel projects.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

And it now takes just a teenager to discover a Google security hole.

Sixteen-year-old Haochi Chen of Columbus, Ohio, first reported it on his Googlified blog on December 30. Google got it fixed in a day, though.

Or else, my password on Google services would have been fried because of the Gmail cross-site scripting vulnerability.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You must have seen Apple website's 2007 feel-and-look?

The statement: "The first 30 years were just the beginning." What does it promise? A quad-core Mac, a full-speed video iPod and the iTV set-top media hub?

One thing some of us are convinced, though. We can't buy iTune over here, and Apple's Malaysian operation sucks, bigggg time.

Did you also hear of famous kernel bug poster LMH, and his partner Kevin Finisterre, planning for a "Month of Apple Bugs" (MoAB) website starting January 2007?

No kidding. MoAB has released a QuickTime exploit, and it's the WaPo blogger who ran away with the story first!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rent-a-WiFi on Avis?

Impressive try for a wirelessly-linked city like Frisco, though technical and legal bumps lie ahead.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 14, when asked if the government would publicise highway concession agreements for public scrutiny, S. Samy Vellu was quoted by Malaysiakini as saying:

“I don’t think you (journalists) are smarter than (opposition leader) Lim Kit Siang. Are you? I put forward the whole concession (agreement) to Lim Kit Siang for nine hours. (He was) looking at it. There is nothing there to hide.

"The opposition have seen it, everybody has seen it. If you want to see the concession (agreement), you bring your experts and I will seek permission from the government to put it forward to you. If you can’t find any mistake, I will fine you RM50.”

So, did Uncle Sam really open up the toll concession agreements for the Opposition Leader to inspect, and was Kit dumb-folded after looking at them for nine ours?

Today, Kit confirmed with MerdekaReview that he was never shown any of the agreements, let alone reading them, except a North-South Highway tender paper in 1987.

Be that as it may, Parti Keadilan Rakyat will do you a favour by revealing the agreements -- purportedly signed by the highway concessionaires and the government -- in a press conference at 11.00am tomorrow, January 4.

The press conference will be attended by the party’s Treasurer-General, Khalid Ibrahim, former CEO of PNB and Guthrie Group; and Information Chief, Tian Chua.

"We will provide evidence that the government has been misleading the people, and details of the concession agreements will be given out at the press conference," said KeAdilan in a press release.

I reckon Shaw Brothers would be there to check if OSA is breached.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Is The NST still being run by liars? Since The NST prides itself as Malaysia's 'newspaper of record', I might want to ask on its accuracy of historical events. In today's serialisation of TDI's autobiography:

Parti Gerakan was founded in 1968. How could it possibly join the People’s Action Party (PAP), and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), on a function held three years before its time, on May 9, 1965?

Has Ooi Kee Beng anything to say on this?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Like computers, a high-flyer diplomat must have good RAM (Random Access Memory) to prevent his brain from stalling.

UN's new Sec-Gen, Ban Ki-moon, went on his first day of work without a working RAM. Big Gaffe.

Commenting on the execution of Saddam Hussein, Moon said capital punishment should be a decision for individual member states.

His aides had to quickly swing into damage control to clarify that the UN is opposed to the death penalty -- many many moons ago. Pun intended.

The fact is: Global efforts towards abolishing the death penalty are being regulated by the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR).

'Would have done it differently'

Meanwhile, reacting to criticism of the hanging that has embarrassed U.S. officials, moderate Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds, U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said U.S. forces would have handled it differently -- if they had a say.

"Saddam ... was dignified, as always, he was courteous as he always had been to his U.S. military police guards. He thanked them for the way he had been treated and said goodbye to them," Caldwell was quoted by Reuters as saying in a news conference in Baghdad.

That's the benefits of hindsight after a video of Iraqi officials taunting Saddam on the gallows sparked outrage among Sunni Arabs.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

2007... it's the first day at work. I have a new approach to life.

LensaPress photo by Paul Choo

Look at the frets, it's on G.

Let's rock!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

January 1, Screenshots warned of further delay to full-speed Internet until the end of the month.

It looks quite fashionable, yet routine, for MCMC to issue a press statement targetting at the bosses to restrict their employees' Internet usage in the office by limiting, or disallowing totally, all kinds of "non-vital communications". MCMC says:

“Check only office mail and do not open a browser to surf the Internet unless you have to,” advised MCMC head of communications Adelina Iskandar.

Users might also want to consider cutting back on using Skype and other Voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) applications. [...]

The use of chat and instant messaging applications should also be disallowed or restricted at the office, said Adelina.

Two things. Corporate entities who don't use Internet for external and intra-organisational communications, and deployment of services to the public, are as good as dead. Conversely, good companies can't function without Internet. They will lose productivity and, ultimately, customers.

Secondly, Skype, VoIP and IM apps are popular and inexpensive packet-based, interactive Internet substitutes to conventional telephone calls. Corporate work teams rely on these for official, productive work in a borderless environment. SOHO and the self-employed rely on these to cut communication costs.

In short, Skype, VoIP and IM are now daily necessities, they are an integral of our digital lifestyle.

I would say MCMC is misguided with the statement, wrongly placing the cart before the ass.

By right, big corporate entities should usurp the bandwidth of their VPN, leased lines and satellite links for their businesses -- all these are mandatory redundancy backups for business continuity -- and relieve the public internet bankwidth to the general public.

Telekom Malaysia, on theory, has a total of 21Gbps Internet link to the international network. It lost some 7Gbps of bandwidth, or one-third of total capacity, as a result of the December 26 earthquake off Taiwan.

Even without that knock-out impact on APCN2 cables, which is accidental by nature, 2006 has been a bad year for broadband (Read Lee Wei Lian & Karamjit Singh in NetValue2.0).

That's the beef, please tell Halim Shafie.

Better still, get him to listen to the tech podcast on SuiteTalker.com. Our latest upload is on bad broadband and why.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Play Donald Trump, Najib.

Oriental Daily reports what The Star daren't. A 'shake-up' is not an imperative as 'Sack that bugger', and Star editors should know that.

So Najib, listen. Sack that useless DG of yours if you still have faith in the NS programme.

If quota is an issue, get rid of Lee Lam Thye as well if you need to. We are Malaysians, you don't need a Chinese datuk to get the buy-in from the community.

Just get people who are able and willing to get the job done. And Malaysia has plenty of them on stand-by.

What, we are already at the 5th intake and still new at school? And the bus associations says: "Instead of going through contractors and agents of national service (NS) camps to transport trainees, deal directly with us." Smell something?

Sack yourself if you don't.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes, Maggie Steber and she was seen floating at Menara Star for one week last December!

Maggie has traveled to 40 different countries to create visual stories for all those publications. Her first book, Dancing on Fire: Photographs from Haiti, was published in 1991.

Her awards include the Ernst Haas Grant, the World Press Foundation Award, the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Oversees Press Club, the Picture of the Year awards and the Alicia Patterson Grant.

She is now a freelance photojournalist who now advises newspapers worldwide on the use of photography and graphic design. The Star is lucky to get her.

Anyway, that's what theSun, the purported 2nd largest circulation English newspaper, can't afford. Or it wouldn't if it could as can been from its 2006 track records at the graphics department. So The Star can zoom past it in 2007.

To The Star photogs and picture editors, after Romeo Gacad (2005/2006), you now get Maggie. The heat is on you if you can't show us the damn pictures!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

2006 has been a 65nm world for Dual Core microprocessor -- lower clock-speed, but faster in real-life multi-task computing power.

As we enter 2007, ComputerWorld asks the following 5 key questions on how Intel and AMD will slug it out on the CPU battle this year:
1 ) Will AMD be able to continue its market-share dominance in the desktop category?
2 ) How will Intel capitalize upon the success of Core 2?
3 ) Will AMD be able to match the success of Intel's Core 2 processors?
4 ) When will the market see true quad-core and even eight-core processors?
5 ) What surprises do the chipmakers have up their sleeves?

Here are some predictions for multi-core computing:
1 ) In 2007, quad cores and even eight-core CPUs will be available.
2 ) By 2009, there's a good chance that sixteen-core processors will be on the market.

It is also noted that Intel is kicking in on the 45nm microprocessor architecture, code-named Penryn. But I will also be looking at what AMD intends to do with ATI, one of the world's two leading graphics chipmakers, which it bought over in 2006.

Where are you on the curve? CNet seems to say it's OK if you fell behind.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

There are three MP3 tracks on our tech podcast thus far:
1 ) A tech podcast in Malaysia?
2 ) Expectations for 2007
3 ) YouTube Generation

We will talk about broadband problem tomorrow.

Give us your feedback. If you have any stories you want us feature in the podcast, let us know.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First the ferry. Now it's Adam Air on the first day of 2007?

UPDATES: It's confirmed an air-crash, casualties unknown at this point in time. Adam Air released the passenger manifest at 01:48hr local time this morning. The list doesn't seem to carry any Malaysian-sounding names.

MTSAT Imagery: The weather on 01.01.2007 captured Dec 31 23:00hr UTC (07:00hr Malaysia Time)

Some bad track records, narrated by professional pilots, that frequent air commuter should take note of.

1 ) Last year, one of its jetliners lost all communication and navigation systems for four hours during a flight between the Indonesian capital Jakarta and Makassar on Sulawesi Island, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.

2 ) Another had to resort to raw muscle power as Fatmawati Tower (Bengkulu airport) has no pushback truck to assist an Adam Air that has lost its HYD Air-pressure, resulting in no nosewheel steering (see chronicle and pictures in Airliners.net).

Vigilantes monitoring Indonesia's civil aviation reflects that Adam Air's crisis management over today's Flight DHI (KI) 574 (Surabaya-Manado) is plain shocking. According to PK-KAR on Pprune.net:

Relatives in Manado were told flight was cancelled and gave no further details, so they went home.

Relatives in Surabaya went to the airport to check what they saw in the news, and they were told it was delayed, and went home.

IF YOU FLY INDONESIA FREQUENTLY... Here's the history of the ill-fated Adam Air aircraft:

Delivery Date | Operator | Registration | Remark
26/01/1989 Dan-Air London G-BNNL lsd ILFC
07/11/1992 British Airways G-BNNL
19/03/1995 GB Airways G-BNNL lsd ILFC
06/04/2001 National Jets Italy G-BNNL
26/02/2002 WFBN N112TR
04/03/2002 Air One EI-CXH
11/12/2002 JAT YU-AOO ret to ILFC 10/2005
01/12/2005 AdamAir PK-KKW

Here's a rating by pilots, take note if you are flying domestic in Indonesia frequently:

- Safe: Garuda, Merpati (Jet), Sriwijaya, Express, Batavia (A319 only)
- Safe-ish: Mandala, Indonesia Air Asia, Kartika
- Mild Risk: Merpati (prop), Batavia (A319 excluded), Lion Air (MD90 and 734)
- Big Risk: Adam Air, Wings Air, Lion Air (non 734)

And there is a blog about Adam Air's boss, and pictures of the crash-linked press conference on Indoflyer.net.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

December 30, George Bush said: "Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself."

December 31, the number of US servicemen who perished in Iraq reached the somber milestone of at least 3,000 deaths since the March 2003 invasion.

In comparison, there were 2,973 deaths during the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks, and there were American casualties of 2,395 deaths during Pearl Harbour 1941.

Going by history, America's first humiliating defeat was during the Vietnam War (1959 - 1975). Even today, the number of Americans killed, military and civilian, is open to debate and uncertainty. The numbers range between 57,605 to 58,159.

Milestone? Give Bush two more years for his (conditions-based) victory strategy!

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Bad news for South-east Asian Internet users on the first day of 2007.

The schedule for the repair of submarine cables hit by the 7.1-magnitude earthquake off Taiwan December 27 is further delayed because of a "major fault" to one of the ships sent to fix the cables, Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority was quoted as saying by Bloomberg today.

Bad weather is also hampering repairs, but sorry, no elaboration.

"The first of six cables damaged in the earthquake would not be restored until Jan. 16, and work on the remaining cables would not be completed until the end of the month," screams a story in The IHT.

It simply means: Brace yourself for at least 2 more weeks of Internet disruption.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A nagging question beckons on the frontpage lead of Chicago Tribune: "Critics say Hussein's speedy execution casts doubt on Iraq's judicial system and leaves unresolved more grievous alleged crimes."

SOURCE: Chicago Tribune (Dec 31, 2006): Was justice too swift?

Also read:
- New York Times: Rush to Hang Hussein Was Questioned
- The Times: How one mobile phone made Saddam's hanging a very public execution
- Times of India: Did Saddam Hussein get a fair trial?
- Christian Science Monitor: Execution doesn't end Hussein's influence
- Zaman (Turkey): The Lynching of Saddam Hussein
- Guardian: Conveniently forgotten
- LA Times: Europeans denounce Hussein's execution

Here's a Press Statement by Dr Mahathir Mohamad, in his capacity as a Member of the International Committee For the Defence of President Saddam Hussein, pertaining to the execution of former Iraqi president on December 30, 2006.

PRESS STATEMENT
BY TUN DR. MAHATHIR MOHAMAD

The Barbaric Lynching of President Saddam Hussein

On the Holy day of Eid, the world watched in horror at the barbaric lynching of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, allegedly for crimes against humanity. This public murder was sanctioned by the War Criminals, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.

This sadistic act broadcasted to the whole world is a travesty of justice, and was meant to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States and serves as a warning to peace loving peoples that we must either bow to the dictates of the Bush regime or face the consequences of a public lynching.

The lynching was also an insult to all Muslims, as it occurred on the Holy Day of Eid, whereby Muslims devote themselves to prayer and forgiveness. It is all too clear that the war criminal Bush has no sensitivities whatsoever for Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. This barbaric act is a sacrilege!

The entire trial process was a mockery of justice, no less a Kangaroo Court. Defence counsels were brutally murdered, witnesses threatened and judges removed for being impartial and replaced by puppet judges. Yet, we are told that Iraq was invaded to promote democracy, freedom and justice.

A peaceful country has now been turned into a war zone. Over 500,000 children died as a result of the criminal economic sanctions, and the latest findings by the medical journal, Lancet reveals that over 650,000 Iraqis have died since the illegal invasion of 2003.

The War Criminal Bush has killed more Iraqis than President Saddam ever did, if in fact he was guilty of any crime. If President Saddam Hussein is guilty of war crimes, then the world must find Bush, Blair and Howard equally guilty and the International Criminal Court cannot but prosecute these war criminals. The inaction thus far by the International Criminal Court against Bush, Blair and Howard exposes the double standard of the said Court, when it does not hesitate to prosecute war crimes committed in Dalfur, Rwanda and Kosovo.

If we support human rights and justice, we must condemn this barbaric lynching of President Saddam Hussein. There can be no excuse whatsoever for this injustice under any circumstances. War Criminal Bush and the puppet regime in Iraq have made a mockery of the Rule of Law.

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
Member of the International Committee
For the Defence of President Saddam Hussein
30th December 2006

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (48) | TrackBacks (0)

Got this, bloggers?

Microsoft claims that getting its PR agency Edelman to send top of the range notebooks powered by AMD Turion 64×2 dual-core processors and loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate to selected bloggers comes with no strings attached.

New York Times narrates an issue of ethics involved: "Costly Gift From Microsoft Is an Invitation to Blog".

Kuch kuch hota hai over here, Mr Edelman?

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Welcome to SuiteTalker.com.

From Oon Yeoh & Jeff Ooi... recorded live from your neighbourhood kopitiam.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Fifty years as an independent nation. So, what makes Malaysia special for us?

Plenty.

We were once a well-knitted nation. Now, race-based politics and politicians have torn the fabrics and driven us apart.

We used to share the same faith in all religions this human civilisation has endured. Now, religious zealots are segregating us, separating you from we.

We used to be a melting-pot of voluptuous cultures. Now, they only get showcased to the foreigners during Visit Malaysia Year.

We are endowed with God-given wealth and extractive resources. Now, rent-seekers are draining our coffers and are sending the bills, wholly and squarely, to us. What a resource curse!

We used to pride ourselves in good tertiary education, with Cambridge University Examination Board as the benchmark for GCE O and A Levels before the degree-factory gets its raw supply. Now, we easily launch into celebration mode even if ever we enter the botton-rung of the Top 200 global list for best universities.

We used to be forward-looking, with a vision to be America's peer by 2020. Now, we squabble over who should be communists and who should be WWII heroes that had protected Malaya during the Japanese Occupation. Now, we keep our eyes on the rear-view mirror called NEP, and we are oblivious of the train-wrecks that sharp bends of globalisation loom ahead.

We used to be a country revered in the region if not the world over for statesmanship. Now, we are "half-past-six" at best, so said a retired but living statesman.

That makes Malaysia so ever special for all of us. -- Challenges and tribulations that may take another 50 years for us to undo and re-do. With a hefty pricetag, if we went off course yet again.

I remember Chairil Anwar used to say prophetically way back in 1943:

Kalau sampai waktuku
'Ku mau tak seorang 'kan merayu
Tidak juga kau
Tak perlu sedu sedan itu

Aku ini binatang jalang
Dari kumpulannya terbuang

Biar peluru menembus kulitku
Aku tetap meradang menerjang

Luka dan bisa kubawa berlari
Berlari
Hingga hilang pedih peri

Dan aku akan lebih tidak perduli

Aku mau hidup seribu tahun lagi

Translation:

If my time should come
I'd like no one to entice me.
Not even you.
No need for those sobs and cries.

I am but a wild animal
Cut from its kind.

Though bullets should pierce my skin
I shall still strike and march forth.
Wounds and poison shall I take aflee. Aflee
'Til the pain and pang should disappear.

And I should care even less.

I want to live
for another thousand years.

Let's live long enough to cheer for Malaysia. We shall prevail, shan't we? If only we are not drunken with the zest for forms over substance in things we do these days. Is Bangsa Malaysia still a 'dreamable' dream, one may ask as the country moves into its Golden Jubilee?

JEFF OOI says:

Fellow blogger, mokciknab aka Tengku Elida Bustaman, tagged me when she blogged the 37th entry for the Poetic Justice -- 50 Posts to Independence project that Nizam Bashir had initiated.

Mine is the 36th entry to the blogathon, and I am tagging Rocky's Bru to make the 35th entry (on the descending order), and hopefully, the final entry will be on time for August 31, 2007.

This blog was supposed to have been uploaded during the wee hours on December 31, 2007. But it was held over due to the outage at Typekey that prevented me from updating my blog as it had affected my TypeKey Authentication API affixed to the blog engine.

P/S... Aku, here, refers to Malaysia 2007 -- if you hadn't got my drift.

Posted by Jeff Ooi at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)