Malaysia's Former Prime Minister A Fan Of Blogs As Alternative News Source
from the nice-of-him-to-say-that-now... dept
It's been interesting to see how various governments around the world deal with the freedom of speech issues that the internet has been creating. We've seen Thailand, Turkey and Brazil all block sites at one point or another, after some were upset about some user-created content. However, it appears that at least some are recognizing that you can't make everyone shut up when every computer is its own printing press. Earlier this month, we wrote about how some Malaysian politicians were so upset with some blogs criticizing local policies that there was talk of forcing bloggers to register with the government along with a few poorly thought out statements about how bloggers were liars. While other politicians rejected the idea of forcing bloggers to register, it's interesting to see the country's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohmad quoted as saying that he believes blogs are a valuable source of news -- especially given the "tightly controlled" media. Of course, as the article notes that Mahathir was criticized during his own administration for suppressing the media -- so the praise rings a bit hollow. As one person in the story notes: "I just wished that he would have said the same thing when he was prime minister."Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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hmmm...
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The Power of Ignorance
If every computer is a printing press, then every computer can also become a factory of lies.
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Re: The Power of Ignorance
As opposed to countries that are not like Malaysia, where everything written in blogs is the utter, unadulterated truth?
Translation: "People can lie." Gee, really? Welcome to the real world, dorpus. Where have you been living up until now?
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Re: Re: The Power of Ignorance
http://blog.livedoor.jp/tonchamon/
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so this means
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the power of ignorance
On dorpus' worries about the spreading of lies - believe me, that's the essence of free speech; normally a media house that is identified as having told a lie is blacklisted as unreliable and won't be listened to - same as would happen to blogs such as the one you sent me to (in Japanese or something!)
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Re: the power of ignorance
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Typical
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Re: Typical
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Idea.
Sorry, I had to. :-/
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He has in the past uttered some undoubtedly anti-Semitic statements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahathir_bin_Mohamad
"On October 16, 2003 (shortly before he stepped down as prime minister), Mahathir said at the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Putrajaya, "We Muslims are actually very strong, 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." He also named Israel as "the enemy allied with most powerful nations." Israel strongly criticized the remarks. "The speech was also condemned by the European Union and Germany in particular, as well as by the United States, Australia and other Western states. Germany summoned Malaysia's charge d'affaires in Berlin to protest at the 'totally unacceptable' comments. Speaking for the EU, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that Dr Mahathir had employed 'expressions that were gravely offensive, very strongly anti-Semitic and... strongly counter to principles of tolerance, dialogue and understanding'."
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PURE WISDOM & ENLIGHTENMENT
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