WHY do some “offensive” social media posts invite police action while others don’t? It would seem that it depends on who posts it, and who or what the post is about. Are double standards at play in the policing of digital freedom of expression?
Guest Column
From BN, with love
IF you use a mobile phone, chances are you’ve received political text messages for festive seasons, birthday greetings, and now, to vote a certain coalition. What can you do about annoying SMSes? And are they even considered a breach of privacy in the first place?
Untangling PPSMI
DURING the first weekend of November 2011, the PPSMI (the Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics in English) policy trended on Twitter. This evidence of PPSMI’s importance to large numbers of tech-savvy Malaysians came shortly after Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s back-to-back statements on the policy. Muhyiddin first reiterated that PPSMI would […]
Lessons in social media from Bersih 2.0
IN the days before and after the Bersih 2.0 rally for electoral reform, Malaysian social networks were buzzing like never before. Internet chatter was centred around the biggest campaign in town: the street march in the heart of Kuala Lumpur on 9 July 2011. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, users had a platform to […]
The need for access to environmental information
GIVEN the public opposition against Lynas Corporation‘s proposed rare earth processing plant in Pahang, it is timely to revisit the due process that is supposed to govern the inception of such projects. How did the public come to know about the project so late after federal approval had already been given for it? Can public […]
Osama’s death: Nothing to celebrate
THE world was taken by surprise on 2 May 2011 with the announcement that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed. Some mourned, whilst others cheered. And to a few, the death brought closure to the 11 Sept 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre. But what was the thinking behind US President […]
The impossibility of policing the web
The endless distractions on Facebook are the bane of my working life. As a freelance consultant, I need discipline and a strict schedule to meet tight deadlines. But then a friend from university announces his baby is having problems feeding, and so I stop my work to suggest strategies for feeding babies. Or to respond […]
The hypocrisy surrounding Interlok
THE debate about the novel Interlok by Malaysian national laureate Abdullah Hussein continues to rage, but among a select few. The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) wants the book to be withdrawn from the Form Five syllabus for Malay literature on the grounds that the novel contains “offensive” words and depictions of Indian Malaysians. The MIC […]
Meeting our meat
DO you unnecessarily kill animals? Do you eat meat? We often consider these to be two different questions. I don’t believe they are. Many upstanding citizens who would not hurt a fly eat deli meats or Big Macs quite comfortably. They would never kill a living thing but have no trouble enjoying a chunk of […]
A Ramadan reflection: Who do we fast for?
IT so happened that this Ramadan I had to take an 18-hour flight to Vancouver to attend the wedding of a close friend’s only daughter. I wouldn’t normally choose to travel during Ramadan but it was a rare opportunity to see my friend’s happiness as she saw her daughter married off. I did tell a […]
