Archive for category IT

The Red Bean Army

by Allan CF Goh

The Red Bean Army is coming,
So claim the top security.
They are so very well hidden,
Full of devils’ ability.

But they cannot be found at all,
Even by closest scrutiny.
Do these dangerous beans exist?
Perhaps in one’s mad agony? Read the rest of this entry »

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“Red Bean Army” – UMNO/BN’s RM350 million fatal obsession!

The Red Bean Army is again in the news in Parliament.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi told Parliament during question time yesterday that “the Red Bean Army and its ilk” will face criminal and civil action for spreading lies through the Internet.

Many questions come to mind.

Firstly, does the Home Minister with his intelligence and background really believe that a “DAP-funded Red Bean Army” of 3,000 cybertroopers really exist, and is this belief backed up by the Police? Will the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar speak up?

Secondly, why the government has not taken any action for the principal lie that the DAP funded the so-called Red Bean Army of 3,000 cybertroopers with a budget of RM100 million to RM1 billion in the past six years, as it should not require much professionalism for the cyber-cops to expose the quackery and buffoonery of this tall tale of fiction, especially as Concorde Hotel, which is the haunt of top UMNO/BN leaders, had been pinpointed as one of the major centres of operation of this mythical cyber-army?

This was why last week I led a team of DAP MPs to visit Concorde Hotel, and all we found was the place crawling with UMNO leaders and operatives and the only discovery was that there was not only no sign of Red Bean Army, but the exorbitant ice-kacang in Concorde Hotel had no red beans at all! Read the rest of this entry »

23 Comments

Another evidence of Utusan Malaysia’s relentless effort to spearhead Najib’s Media Transformation Programme to transform news into lies, truth into falsehood, fact into fiction and information into misinformation

Another evidence of Utusan Malaysia’s relentless effort to spearhead Najib’s Media Transformation Programme to transform news into lies, truth into falsehood, facts into fiction and information into misinformation

The Kuala Lumpur High Court award of RM250,000 in damages and RM30,000 in costs against Utusan Malaysia in favour of former Perak Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Nizar Jamaluddin over the WWW1 car number plate issue is the latest evidence of the UMNO media’s relentless effort to spearhead Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s Media Transformation Programme (MTP) to transform news into lies, truth into falsehoods, facts into fiction and information into misinformation.

In its role to blaze the path towards media transformation programme, Utusan had set a new record for both national and international media, as the media whether inside the country or in the world which is not only the most sued for defamation but for losing the most defamation suits, including:

• Two libel suits by Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng who was awarded RM400,000 in accumulated damages for both suits;

• Judgment of RM50,000 in damages to DAP National Chairman and MP for Bukit Gelugor Karpal Singh in December 2012 for a “mischievous” Utusan article painting him as anti-Islam; and

• In January 2013, the High Court awarded Anwar Ibrahim RM45,000 in damages after a series of Utusan articles deliberately misrepresented his statement in a BBC interview so as to suggest that the opposition leader was pro-LGBT.

Read the rest of this entry »

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No Red Bean Army ‘command centre’ seen in DAP visit

By Jarni Blakkarly | 11:46AM Jul 4, 2013
Malaysiakini

A visit last night to the so-called command centre of the ‘Red Bean Army’ of cybertroopers that Malay daily Utusan Malaysia said are paid at least RM100 million to work for the DAP showed no evidence of such a centre in operation.

The 10pm visit to the centre at a four-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur was organised by DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang, who wanted to put to rest the allegation against the party.

Lim led a team of party leaders and members of the media to the hotel in the heart of Kuala Lumpur and straight away went to the hotel’s restaurant to hold a press conference to rebut the claim made by the Umno-owned daily.

Soon after May 5 general election, BN leaders and Utusan claimed that DAP had spent between RM100 million and RM1 billion to fund a Red Bean Army of cybertroopers to attack the BN and the government in cyberspace, and named Concorde Hotel as one of its bases.

Among the DAP leaders present last night were vice-president and Bandar Kuching MP Chong Chieng Jen, national publicity secretary and Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua and treasurer and Bukit Bintang MP Fong Kui Loon.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Will Shahidan propose in Cabinet the establishment of RCI on Utusan Malaysia’s racist, inflammatory and seditious provocations in the past four years if 1,000 or 2,000 Malaysians sign a memorandum for this purpose?

The whole rigmarole about DAP funding a “Red Bean Army” of 3,000 cybertroopers with a budget ranging from RM100 million to RM1 billion in the past six years to demonise and character-assassinate has completely gone bersek with Barisan Nasional Ministers and Members of Parliament quoting lies as gospel truths in Parliament and outside.

Yesterday, at least two Barisan Nasional MPs spoke about the “Red Bean Army” in Parliament, but their credibility is no higher than that of the Gerakan MP for Simpang Renggam, Liang Teck Meng who made history by turning himself into an instant parliamentary disgrace yesterday.

Teck Meng purportedly quoted from WiliLeaks to allege that Parliamentary Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim “owns 30 foreign bank accounts” worth RM332 million in four countries, including Israel, when such information is not available on WikiLeaks but only concocted on blogs by UMNO cybertroopers.

Like the “Red Bean Army” canard, this is another example of UMNO/BN cybertroopers finally succeeding in misleading their own leaders!

Is Teck Meng prepared to admit that he had told lies in Parliament yesterday and to surrender himself to the Parliamentary Privileges Committee for the proper punishment that should be meted out to an MP who could tell such reckless lies in Parliament? Read the rest of this entry »

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Fictitious tale of DAP-funded “Red Bean Army” of 3,000 cybertroopers being kept alive testimony of power and influence of vested interests who want RM350 million allocation whether from UMNO or public funds to pay UMNO/BN cybertroopers for next five years

I am tickled no end by news report today that the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Shahidan Kassim would raise in the Cabinet on Friday the proposal for a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the allegation that DAP funded the “Red Bean Army” cybertroopers during the 13GE to demonise UMNO/BN leaders and supporters.

Shahidan revealed this at a media conference at the Parliament lobby after receiving a memorandum from 130 Malay-Muslim NGOs on the fictitious DAP-funded “Red Bean Army”, which had purportedly 300 to 3,000 cybertroopers with a budget of RM100 million to RM1 billion in the past six years to demonise and character-assassinate UMNO/BN leaders on the cyberspace, and which is credited as a major cause for the defeat of UMNO/BN in the social media war and their 13GE setbacks.

I do not believe that any UMNO/BN leader of minimum intelligence would believe in the tall tale of the DAP-funded “Red Bean Army” of 3,000 cybertroopers with a budget ranging from RM100 million to RM1 billion.

It is now more evident than ever that the so-called DAP-funded “Red Bean Army” is a concoction of a well-funded UMNO/BN conspiracy to demonise and destroy the DAP (the DDD Brigade) which is controlled from the inner sanctum of the 13GE Umno/BN “War Room”, and the ability to keep alive the fictitious tale of the DAP-funded “Red Bean Army” is testimony of the power and influence of vested interests who want RM350 million allocation whether from UMNO or public funds to pay for UMNO/BN cybertroopers for the next five years. Read the rest of this entry »

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Perceptions and cybertroopers

— conspiracytheor1st
The Malaysian Insider
June 09, 2013

JUNE 9 — “Cybertroopers” is a term I suppose originated from Malaysia. I would rank it as the next best Malaysian invention after err… belacan (did belacan originate from Malaysia?). A short search of “cybertroopers” on Google would yield hundreds of results, all related to Malaysian politics. However, there is no one exact definition of the term from any dictionary or on Wikipedia. Back to the main topic, one might not notice that there is a very inconspicuous but interesting relationship between the term “cybertroopers” and “perception” in Malaysia, both of which have been aggressively propagated by the mainstream media of late.

In Malaysia, everything is due to the problem of perception. The crime rate of the country is low. If you think it is high, then it is the problem of your perception. The police are doing great — so well in fact that our ex-IGP’s KPI score in 2009 was 113.8 per cent, as announced by Koh Tsu Koon in Parliament. A lot of us were wondering how it was possible statistically. Did that mean that the police had solved more cases involving crime than actually existed? Or that they had caught more people compared to the number of times when the law was actually violated like cases of candle vigils (ahem…)? Then again, if you still are scratching your head over how the numbers add up, then it has to be the problem of your perception.

Here, we have the powers-that-be telling us that Malaysia is one of the best governed countries in the world with the best education system that even exceeds the high standards of the US and Germany; the best democratic system; and the cleanest electoral system! The government claimed that corruption in the country is a mere perception and the MACC claimed that their tarnished reputation of being inefficient and inaction against the big shots was also perception. Now, even the EC has jumped onto the perception bandwagon in the midst of the post-election furore. If you still don’t agree with them, heck, you know what again? It is your bloody perception! Read the rest of this entry »

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Edward Snowden identified as source of NSA leaks

By Barton Gellman, Aaron Blake and Greg Miller
Washington Post
Monday, June 10

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former undercover CIA employee, unmasked himself Sunday as the principal source of recent Washington Post and Guardian disclosures about top-secret National Security Agency programs.

Snowden, who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent citizens and said in an interview that “it’s important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.”

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said Saturday that the NSA had initiated a Justice Department investigation into who leaked the information — an investigation supported by intelligence officials in Congress.

Snowden, whose full name is Edward Joseph Snowden, said he understands the risks of disclosing the information but felt it was important to do.

“I’m not going to hide,” Snowden told The Post from Hong Kong, where he has been staying. The Guardian was the first to publicly identify Snowden, at his request. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”

Asked whether he believed his disclosures would change anything, he said: “I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”

Snowden said nobody was aware of his actions, including those closest to him. He said there wasn’t a single event that spurred his decision to leak the information.

“It was more of a slow realization that presidents could openly lie to secure the office and then break public promises without consequence,” he said.

Snowden said President Obama hasn’t lived up to his pledges of transparency. He blamed a lack of accountability in the Bush administration for continued abuses. The White House did not respond to multiple e-mails seeking comment and spokesman Josh Earnest, who was traveling with the president, said the White House would have no comment Sunday.

“It set an example that when powerful figures are suspected of wrongdoing, releasing them from the accountability of law is ‘for our own good,’ ” Snowden said. “That’s corrosive to the basic fairness of society.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Malaysia’s pendrive man denies links to ‘Red Bean Army’ fabrication

By Ida Lim
The Malaysian Insider
Jun 03, 2013

KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — A Malaysian entrepreneur has denied accusations that he is funding or linked to the “Red Bean Army”, a “cybertrooper” group named by Umno’s Utusan Malaysia as being allegedly financed by the DAP to attack the government via social media.

Taiwan-based Pua Khein Seng, whose company Phison Electronics Corp was behind the world’s first single-chip USB pendrive, has rebutted what he described as a fabricated report in Utusan Malaysia last week and has not ruled out legal action against the Umno-owned newspaper.

“Firstly, this is a fabricated, baseless and malicious allegation and I honestly do not know how I should respond since it is an unfounded accusation,” Pua said in a statement that was read out by DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng today.

Pua, who was reportedly campaigning for DAP leaders in Johor during the recent general election, said he is ready to provide co-operation to those probing allegations on the online group of cybertroopers.

“Secondly, I hereby urge the authorities who are investigating this allegation to contact me as soon as possible for the truth to be revealed. I will fully co-operate with the authorities.

“I will not hesitate to take legal action against Utusan Malaysia when the investigations are completed by the authorities,” the Phison chief executive officer wrote in the brief statement. Read the rest of this entry »

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Straits Times: Credibility of Malaysia’s mainstream newspapers at stake

The Malaysian Insider
Jun 02, 2013

KUALA LUMPUR, June 2 — Most of Malaysia’s mainstream newspapers appear to have taken a hit since the May 5 general election for perceived biased reporting, Singapore’s the Straits Times (ST) said today.

The broadsheet cited the examples of Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia and MCA-owned The Star newspaper.

“Star is in a dilemma of trying to be independent and yet pressured to boost BN’s image,” Shaharuddin Badaruddin, a political analyst at Universiti Teknologi Mara, was quoted as saying to the ST.

The Star is the largest English-language daily in Malaysia, averaging audited sales of 290,000 copies daily between January and June last year.

Umno’s network of media outlets is wide, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based Centre for Independent Journalism.

Via proxies, Umno controls Media Prima, which publishes the New Straits Times, Berita Harian and Harian Metro. It also owns the Utusan Group, which publishes Utusan Malaysia and Kosmo!

The ST said Utusan Malaysia has been accused of biased reporting for years, and its circulation has fallen from 213,000 in 2006 to between 170,000 and 180,000 last year. Read the rest of this entry »

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Zahid best example of being “own victim” of UMNO/BN 13GE “war room” lies about DAP spending more than a billion ringgit in past six years to employ 3,000-strong “Red Bean Army” cybertroopers to demonise him and other UMNO/BN leaders

The new Home Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is the best example of being “own victim” of the lies of UMNO/BN 13GE “war room” about DAP spending more than a billion ringgit in past six years to employ a 3,000-strong “Red Bean Army” of cybertroopers to demonise him and other UMNO/BN leaders.

This is again illustrated by today’s Utusan Malaysia, one of the chief instruments of UMNO/BN propangada in the 13GE, which carried a report headlined “Red Bean Army serang kerajaan – Ekoran DAP gagal peroleh kuasa di Putrajaya”, which states:

“Kuala Lumpur 27 Mei – Kecaman serta penghinaan berterusan yang dihamburkan oleh Red Bean Army terhadap kerajaan jelas membuktikan tentera siber DAP itu gagal menutup rasa kecewa kerana tidak berjaya memperoleh ‘kuasa’ di Putrajaya.

“Menteri Dalam Negeri, Datuk Seri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi berkata, walaupun beliau sendiri tidak terlepas daripada serangan tentera siber berkenaan, perkara itu adalah lumrah bagi mereka yang bergelar ahli politik.

“Meskipun tidak menyatakan bentuk tindakan yang akan diambil terhadap pihak terbabit, beliau dengan nada sinis memberitahu, mereka merupakan jenis manusia yang hanya tahu menyalahkan pihak lain berbanding diri sendiri.”

I do not believe Zahid suffers from any hallucination about the DAP spending more than a billion ringgit in the past six years to employ a 3,000-strong “Red Bean Army” of cybertroopers to demonise him and other Umno/BN leaders.

The kindest thing one can say about Zahid is to regard him as an “own victim” of UMNO/BN 13GE “war room” lies about DAP spending more than a billion ringgit in the past six years to employ 3,000-strong “Red Bean Army” cybertroopers to demonise him and other UMNO/BN leaders. Read the rest of this entry »

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Claims that DAP spends RM108 million in past six years to employ a 200-strong Red Bean Army of cybertroopers a total figment of imagination of Utusan Malaysia and failed UMNO/BN propagandists

Yesterday, the UMNO “lies-paper” Utusan Malaysia front-paged “Perangi Red Bean Army – Pelbagai pihak gesa kerajaan pinda Akta Komunikasi dan Multimedia” while today another UMNO mouthpiece New Straits Times headlined “’Anwar using Red Bean Army to incite hatred’”.

Suddenly, the “Red Bean Army” has become the vogue of attack of the gutter press of UMNO/BN.

Even the truculent and belligerent new Home Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was roped into the propaganda “circus” with him declaring that the Home Ministry, via the police, will work together with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) as well as Malaysian CyberSecurityj to check immediately the channelling of contents by certain cybertrooper groups which violate social media laws.

How much I had wished that the police, the MCMC and Malaysian CyberSecurity had identified the culprits and cleaned up the racism and poison spewed by UMNO/Barisan Nasional cybertroopers on the Internet during the 13th general elections, in particular those which had targetted me and the DAP as either having caused the May 13 riots in 1969, or all the lies and falsehoods to paint a picture that I am anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers.

But absolutely nothing had been done. Read the rest of this entry »

19 Comments

Google Glass Is Watching – Now What? .

By AMIR EFRATI and GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Wall Street Journal
May 17, 2013

TECHNOLOGY

As Congress frets about the privacy implications of Google Glass, one thing is clear: The technology that can redefine what is “public” and link the digital and physical worlds is here.

Now the question is what will anyone do about it?

Questions of appearance and privacy arrive for Google Glass wearers.

Owners of wearable Internet-connected devices already face choices about where or when it is appropriate to wear them—while legal experts say there aren’t many protections for people whose activities the technology records. Read the rest of this entry »

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DAP will lodge official complaint to MCMC of violation of MSC Guarantee of “No Internet Censorship” since dissolution of last Parliament last month, causing blockade to several DAP sites

DAP will lodge an official complaint to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) of violation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Guarantee of “No Internet Censorship” since dissolution of the last Parliament last month, causing blockade to several DAP sites.

It is clear that for this period, Malaysian internet users, particularly visitors to Pakatan Rakyat websites and others deemed unfriendly to Barisan Nasional have been put under surveillance, censorship, filtering and blockade without their knowledge – which is a gross violation of the MSC Guarantee of “No Internet Censorship”.

The recent Internet censorship and filtering on Malaysian Internet users are both unprecedented and sinister, as they are designed to filter specific websites, facebook accounts, youtube videos and live video streaming.

The filtering of the specific content and websites are designed to sabotage and cause annoyances to Malaysian Internet users by preventing the sites from loading immediately. And more seriously it denies Malaysians a source of information when the censored site/video could not load.

Independent in-depth technical study of the effects of filtering and censorship, such as that posted on a popular Malaysia’s Internet forum by rizvanrp on May 1 (https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2794929) have been verified by separate independent tests carried out by the DAP IT Manager, Goh Kheng Teong, viz: the MSC guarantee of “No Internet Censorship” had been violated since the dissolution of the previous Parliament in early April.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Pengundi-pengundi perlu berhati-hati dengan kempen fitnah cybertroopers pro-UMNO/BN yang memburukkan DAP dan Pakatan Rakyat

Pengundi-pengundi perlu berhati-hati dengan kempen fitnah cybertroopers pro-UMNO/BN yang memburukkan DAP dan Pakatan Rakyat. Ini adalah kerana kempen rasmi pilihanraya umum ke-13 sudah pun bermula. DAP bersama PAS dan PKR yang membentuk Pakatan Rakyat telah memulakan kempen secara bersih, adil dan telus. Ini adalah prinsip bersama kami ke arah membentuk Malaysia baru yang bebas dari rasuah, salah guna kuasa dan penyelewengan.

Saya sedar ada kempen-kempen kotor yang terus dilakukan oleh pihak-pihak tertentu, terutamanya oleh cybertroopers pro-UMNO/BN, yang menyebarkan fitnah dan pembohongan. Ini adalah kempen yang tidak sihat dan bersifat hasutan.

Namun, walaupun golongan ini terus memfitnah dan menyebarkan berta palsu, saya bersama DAP dan Pakatan Rakyat tidak akan putus asa untuk terus berkempen dengan cara yang baik dan terhormat sebagaimana yang kami telah lakukan sejak beberapa dekad yang lalu.

Saya harap rakyat Malaysia, terutamanya orang Melayu, tidak mudah terpengaruh dengan fitnah dan pembohongan, sama ada yang disebarkan melalui internet atau melalui ceramah. Fitnah amat berbahaya kerana ia boleh menimbulkan ketegangan antara kaum di negara ini.

DAP telah difitnah sebagai perti perkauman, parti cauvinis, parti anti-Islam dan sebagainya. Semua ini tidak benar dan bohong belaka. DAP adalah parti politik yang sah yang menghormati Perlembagaan Persekutuan. DAP menolak segala bentuk politik perkauman dan diskriminasi kaum, agama dan gender.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Malaysian government using spyware against citizens? No, not really.

By Keith Rozario | march 15, 2013
keithrozario.com

I’ve been pretty busy the past few months, and my post count has been pretty low, and although I just returned from a 2 week trip abroad and am now flushed full of work, I decided to burn a bit of the midnight oil today because the Malaysian Insider completely pissed me off.

It all started with an article from Lim Kit Siangs blog, which read “Malaysia uses spyware against citizens, NYT reports“. The post was merely a cut-and-copy reproduction of a Malaysian Insider article that had the same headline. The headline really got my blood churning and it was followed up with an even more mouth watering opening paragraph:
Read the rest of this entry »

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Malaysia uses spyware against own citizens, NYT reports

By Boo Su-Lyn
The Malaysian Insider
Mar 14, 2013

KUALA LUMPUR, March 14 — Malaysia is among 25 countries using off-the-shelf spyware to keep tabs on citizens by secretly grabbing images off computer screens, recording video chats, turning on cameras and microphones, and logging keystrokes, US newspaper the New York Times (NYT) reported yesterday.

Besides Malaysia, researchers at Citizen Lab based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs found that the United States, Singapore, Indonesia and Britain also used the surveillance software known as FinSpy.

“Rather than catching kidnappers and drug dealers, it looks more likely that it is being used for politically motivated surveillance,” security researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire was quoted by NYT as saying.

Martin J. Muench, managing director of Gamma Group — a British company that sells FinSpy — has reportedly said that Gamma Group sold its technology to governments solely to monitor criminals, and that it was most often used against “paedophiles, terrorists, organised crime, kidnapping and human trafficking”.

Marquis-Boire, however, pointed out that the software was open to abuse, saying: “If you look at the list of countries that Gamma is selling to, many do not have a robust rule of law.”

Other countries with servers running FinSpy include Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Qatar, Serbia, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. Read the rest of this entry »

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Dr M, on media and lies

— The Malaysian Insider
Feb 17, 2013

FEB 17 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad wrote today about the media – and how governments were able to exercise control through licensing and laws.

But then came the alternative media, or rather online media, he wrote, ironically, on his blog which is online.

“In the alternative media just about anyone can put anything they like to say on the internet directly, with no managers, editors or sub-editors changing any of the contents. The freedom is almost total. This is the essence of democracy?” he says.

Thank you, Dr Mahathir. Your views are always welcome because thanks to you, we are here. Without your foresight, the internet would have taken its time to come to Malaysia.

But your hindsight is another thing. You speak of the alternative media where anyone can put anything, without checks and balances. Read the rest of this entry »

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Pengiraan Detik 60 Hari ke PRU13 – Bilakah Najib akan membuat kenyataan sama ada Malaysia mampu mengejar Korea Selatan atau sekurang-kurangnya mula merapatkan jurang yang semakin besar antara dua negara?

Pada majlis perembahan Gangnam Style bintang pop Korea Psy di Rumah Terbuka Tahun Baru Cina Perdana Menteri di Pulau Pinang esok, adakah Datuk Seri Najib Razak akan membuat kenyataan sama ada Malaysia mampu mengejar Korea Selatan atau sekurang-kurangnya mula merapatkan jurang yang semakin besar antara dua negara?

Seorang Menteri Kabinet berkata kemunculan Psy akan menjadikan Pulau Pinang terkenal di serata dunia dan yang lebih penting daripada itu adalah Pulau Pinang dan Malaysia menjadi terkenal di serata dunia kerana pencapaiannya sendiri dalam semua bidang usaha.

Enam belas tahun lalu, ketika kita mengisytiharkan Koridor Raya Multimedia sebagai “hadiah buat dunia”, Malaysia dan Korea Selatan pernah pada tahap yang sama memulakan perjalanan dalam dunia IT.

Hari ini, MSC dan Malaysia semakin hilang dari peghetahuan dunia sebagai tempat penting IT antarabangsa, sementara Korea Selatan telah jauh menjadi negara pertama di dunia menjadi masyarakat jalur lebar juga negara yang yang mempunyai internet terpantas di dunia – dengan purata kelajuan internet pada 2012 14.7 Mbps, 650% lebih tinggi daripada purata 2.2 Mbps di Malaysia.

Di dalam tadbir urus yang baik, Malaysia tertinggal di belakang Korea Selatan terutamanya dalam Indeks Persepsi Rasuah Transparency International sejak lima tahun lalu, yang mana Malaysia dilihat lebih korup, antara No. 47 hingga 60 dalam kedudukan dunia berbeza dengan Korea Selatan yang berada di kedudukan 39 hingga 45. Read the rest of this entry »

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60-Day Countdown to 13GE – When will Najib make a statement whether Malaysia can ever catch up with South Korea or at least begin to close the yawning chasm between the two countries?

On the occasion of Korean pop superstar Psy’s Gangnam Style performance at the Prime Minister’s CNY Open House in Penang tomorrow, will Datuk Seri Najib Razak make a statement whether Malaysia can ever catch up with South Korea or at least begin to close the yawning chasm between the two countries?

A Cabinet Minister said Psy’s appearance will make Penang world-famous but it is more important that Penang and Malaysia become world-famous because of our own achievements in all fields of human endeavour.

Sixteen years ago, when we proclaimed the Multimedia Super Corridor as “a gift to the world”, Malaysia and South Korea were on the same level embarking on the IT journey.

Today, MSC and Malaysia have faded away from the world radar screen as an international IT hot spot, while South Korea has powered ahead to become the first country in the world to become a broadband society as well as the land of fastest internet in the world – with an average internet speed in 2012 of 14.7 Mpbs, 650% higher than the average 2.2 Mpbs registered in Malaysia.

In fact, Malaysia is ranked among the world’s worst nations in internet speed – even slower than Thailand’s average internet speed of 2.9 Mpbs for 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

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