So Rais is warning bloggers, according to this Malaysiakini headline:
Rais to bloggers: Self-regulate or else...
Information Minister Rais Yatim reminded the blogging community that self-regulation was necessary to avoid being exposed to law suits and government actions.
What is Rais afraid of, if there is no truth in what the bloggers post in their sites?
What about the spin by your propaganda machinery in the mainstream media? While we cannot do anything, you can take action against us …clearly an act of a bully indeed.
Many bloggers, especially those retired ones, are into blogging because they are tired of the government’s charade, and they have reached an age where they feel they must do something to counter the falsehood as well as to prevent further misuse of power for personal benefit, at the expense of the country.
Dr. Azly Rahman's article seems relevant in this context (excerpts):
Fight the demons
In cyberspace, bloggers are playing the art of making others aware of issues and in the process hopefully imparting wisdom. Bloggers are artists practising the art of harmonizing truth, realism, and activism.Truth and falsehood multiply endlessly in cyberspace. At the center of the personhood of the blogger lie awareness and the Zen-ness of the master's craft. It is the awareness of what to do with truth and falsehood and the subjectivities and reflectivities in between that determine whether the blogger is fighting the Maras the Buddha fought, or has become one of the Maras.
Truth and falsehood multiply endlessly in cyberspace. At the center of the personhood of the blogger lie awareness and the Zen-ness of the master's craft. It is the awareness of what to do with truth and falsehood and the subjectivities and reflectivities in between that determine whether the blogger is fighting the Maras the Buddha fought, or has become one of the Maras.In cyberspace, bloggers are educating, whether it is education for peace or for war. The more popular the blogger, the greater the impact of the message. The blogger is a weapon itself - in the whole enterprise of waging war or waging peace.In the political scene, Malaysia is being deconstructed by bloggers. It is a natural progression of the anarchic nature of the Internet. No politician is safe. You can neither run nor hide in cyberspace. It is a Matrix of the Maya world we inhabit; a world of the Maras that attacked Buddha and of the masses that stormed the Bastille.
Malaysia will continue to be destabilized by bloggers - for the better - in her evolution towards the establishment of a just republic or a republic of virtue as the French ideologues of the 18th century would say.Politicians and pirates of the Malaysian Caribbean, ones who stole from the poor to give to the rich, are in constant fear of bloggers - especially of the Zen bloggers. The Zen blogger, like the messiah on twitter is one who does not speak ill of others in cyberspace but makes people ill by invading the inner spaces of those who abuse power and by oppressing others.Like a Rumi poem, the Zen blogger takes the middle path in spreading a message of peace through deconstructionism. But deconstruct, the blogger must. Through right thought, right action, right conduct, and right blogging, the blogger must make others aware of what life ought to be. In Malaysia, what ought to be has become what we are wrought to be. This means we have evolved from a nation of tolerance in the 1970s to a nation of totalitarianism in the 21st century.
Only when blogging is an art and science of educating for peace and not a dance of death in Dante's Inferno - not when bloggers can be bought and sold for millions of ringgit by owners of the production of falsehood - we can see the Zen and the art of blogging at play.
Information Minister Rais Yatim reminded the blogging community that self-regulation was necessary to avoid being exposed to law suits and government actions.
What is Rais afraid of, if there is no truth in what the bloggers post in their sites?
What about the spin by your propaganda machinery in the mainstream media? While we cannot do anything, you can take action against us …clearly an act of a bully indeed.
Many bloggers, especially those retired ones, are into blogging because they are tired of the government’s charade, and they have reached an age where they feel they must do something to counter the falsehood as well as to prevent further misuse of power for personal benefit, at the expense of the country.
Dr. Azly Rahman's article seems relevant in this context (excerpts):
Fight the demons
In cyberspace, bloggers are playing the art of making others aware of issues and in the process hopefully imparting wisdom. Bloggers are artists practising the art of harmonizing truth, realism, and activism.Truth and falsehood multiply endlessly in cyberspace. At the center of the personhood of the blogger lie awareness and the Zen-ness of the master's craft. It is the awareness of what to do with truth and falsehood and the subjectivities and reflectivities in between that determine whether the blogger is fighting the Maras the Buddha fought, or has become one of the Maras.
Truth and falsehood multiply endlessly in cyberspace. At the center of the personhood of the blogger lie awareness and the Zen-ness of the master's craft. It is the awareness of what to do with truth and falsehood and the subjectivities and reflectivities in between that determine whether the blogger is fighting the Maras the Buddha fought, or has become one of the Maras.In cyberspace, bloggers are educating, whether it is education for peace or for war. The more popular the blogger, the greater the impact of the message. The blogger is a weapon itself - in the whole enterprise of waging war or waging peace.In the political scene, Malaysia is being deconstructed by bloggers. It is a natural progression of the anarchic nature of the Internet. No politician is safe. You can neither run nor hide in cyberspace. It is a Matrix of the Maya world we inhabit; a world of the Maras that attacked Buddha and of the masses that stormed the Bastille.
Malaysia will continue to be destabilized by bloggers - for the better - in her evolution towards the establishment of a just republic or a republic of virtue as the French ideologues of the 18th century would say.Politicians and pirates of the Malaysian Caribbean, ones who stole from the poor to give to the rich, are in constant fear of bloggers - especially of the Zen bloggers. The Zen blogger, like the messiah on twitter is one who does not speak ill of others in cyberspace but makes people ill by invading the inner spaces of those who abuse power and by oppressing others.Like a Rumi poem, the Zen blogger takes the middle path in spreading a message of peace through deconstructionism. But deconstruct, the blogger must. Through right thought, right action, right conduct, and right blogging, the blogger must make others aware of what life ought to be. In Malaysia, what ought to be has become what we are wrought to be. This means we have evolved from a nation of tolerance in the 1970s to a nation of totalitarianism in the 21st century.
Only when blogging is an art and science of educating for peace and not a dance of death in Dante's Inferno - not when bloggers can be bought and sold for millions of ringgit by owners of the production of falsehood - we can see the Zen and the art of blogging at play.
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