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Malaysia Uses Anti-Terrorism Laws To Stop Bloggers
Academiphiliac writes to mention the BBC reported in an article this morning that the Malaysian government may start using tough anti-terror laws to censor bloggers who insult either Islam or the country's king. "The move comes as one of Malaysia's leading online commentators has been questioned by police following a complaint by the main governing party. The new rules would allow a suspect to be detained indefinitely, without being charged or put on trial. But officials insist the law is not intended to strangle internet freedom."
According to his latest blog entry, he has been released after 8 hrs, and the reason for his temp detention was comments made on the website
if I post a cartoon of me fucking Mohammed up the arse, that makes me a terrorist?
No, that makes you gay.
In case you were confused about that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Lesson (which should have already been) learned: It doesn't matter what the law was intended to do, but rather what the law can be twisted to imply. If a law can be interpreted in a manner, it will be interpreted manner. That's the most important thing to understand from this article.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Religion deserves to be made fun of. Too many people take it too seriously and want to force it on people.
I'm sure any sane person would rather vote for a new government than take up arms and shoot people (and get shot at) to achieve a new government. It's just a matter of when "enough is enough", and enough people have decided it's time for the latter.
In western countries with representative democracies, we still have the faint hope that we can vote our way to a better government. As bad as Bush is, unless he decides to unilaterally declare himself dictator, or call off elections and declare himself President until he decides to step down, he's going to be out in 18 months.
And we still have things like freedom of speech, for the most part. There's some bad things, like the government being able to see which books I check out from the library without a warrant, but that's really nothing like being jailed indefinitely just for insulting a stupid religion.
In these other countries, things aren't like this. Not only can they be jailed for insulting a stupid religion, their government is a monarchy, so they can't ever change it.
Huh? Sure we do, at least a lot more than most other countries.
First, there's the other branches of government. They don't have to go along with the President, especially since they control the purse-strings. That's how we finally got out of Vietnam, remember.
Second, there's the military. The President can't stay in power, in contravention of the Constitution, without support from the military. Most countries are this way, since the military usually has all the guns.
Lastly, there's the citizens. Many of us are armed, unlike in many other countries. The military may be powerful, but it's nowhere near as large as the citizenry. And Iraq is showing us every day exactly how effective guerrilla insurgents with improvised explosives and small arms can be against the world's most powerful military force. Besides, it's not likely most of the military would voluntarily go against their own countrymen.