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Malaysian Candidates Required to Have Blogs
Pioneer Woman writes "Abdul Rahman Dahlan, secretary general of the United Malays National Organization party's youth wing, said all those vying for national youth posts must have blogs to introduce themselves and their programs ahead of party elections in December. The decision appeared aimed at countering heavy losses that the ruling National Front coalition suffered in last month's general elections. In a country where mainstream media is tightly controlled by the government they underestimated the power of online campaigning. In the past, party politicians have said bloggers spread lies and rumors but now even youth deputy Khairy Jamaluddin — who once compared bloggers to monkeys living by the law of the jungle — has a blog."
When, by law and threat of prison or death, you require someone to do something - it is not freedom.
They forgot hi5 and myspace, all full and loaded!!
You've finally made a monkey,
(Yes, we've finally made a monkey,)
Yes, you've finally made a monkey
Out of meeeee!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
From the article:
...
"All candidates must have blogs," Abdul Rahman told The Associated Press. "If not, they are not qualified to be leaders."
"He said help will be available for party members who do not know how to create a blog."
I was almost able to read that with a straight face.
This is like saying that everyone that wants a driver's license must have a cell phone. If not, they are not qualified to drive a vehicle.
I understand that the party believes the internet to be a key factor in their elections, but what does one have to do with the other?
George Bush doesn't have a bl . . . oh wait.
Khairy Jamaluddin might have a point about bloggers living in the jungle but not in the way he intended. Just change the song title to Youth of Malaysia.
Politician's new enemy = ScreamyX (Malaysian ISP a Comcast wanabe)
by constructing some idiot link to him and this article, let alone the opportunities to claim he is too stupid to have a blog or his having one proves this requirement false for Malaysia...
the abundance of free points in your karma is incredible! All these opportunities to bash Bush makes any store relevant to US politics
I think that this is just a case where the term blog doesn't mean what it used to. In the past, a blog used to be a personal, fairly frequent journal. Now it just means any sort of at least semi-regular postings.
/. is a blog.
I mean these days a company can take what they used to call their press release archive and call it a blog. Heck, by the current definition of the term,
So all this Malaysian thing has nothing to do with blogging (in the original sense of the word) gaining any mindshare. All that is is really saying is that Malaysian politicians are required to put their position papers and general propaganda online. Unfortunately, no serious politician, Malaysian or otherwise, is really going to put their unedited musings online.
Don't think for a minute that any of the candidates will actually ever sign-on and write content themselves - unless of course it's in the context of an on-line chat "ooooh, how trendy!". Even then they will have a full complement of spin-doctors examining every keystroke for nuance, mis-comprehension and sub-text.
The basic problem all over the world is that people under 30 don't really care about politics. I'm not talking about individuals - I mean en masse, as a demographic. This sounds like a means of engaging them - let's see if it will work
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This site is and pretty much has always been a personal blog with a particularly active comments section. There are many stories that are posted in categories they are at best tangentially related to. Who can forget kdawson's past love affair with putting virtually everything in the Enlightenment category, even though that category was intended for news about the Enlightenment window manager?
The Politics section was originally designed to drive page hits by taking advantage of the hot topic of the day, that being the 2004 elections. It has since morphed into a holding ground for basically any vaguely political story, and serves as a way to get controversial (and therefore high page view generating) stories on Slashdot that aren't necessarily directly tech related. The FAQ itself is so rarely updated that you could hardly expect it to contain up to date information on what individual sections of the site are currently used for, or even provide a good list of what sections currently exist.
In short, take a deep breath, relax, and learn to let these things slide.
All the candidates need to do is set up a cron task that will post at the following times:
0800: Woke up and brush teeth
0830: Eat breakfast
1200: Eat lunch
1800: Eat dinner
2200: Sleep
This way, they actually do have a blog entry!!!
Every geek has some sort of website, programming or computer project. Here's mine: www.youtasteit.com . What's yours?
We should follow this example, but rather than give politicians yet another outlet for the same tired talking points, we should require them all to post lolcats. Two a day, per candidate, or they're not qualified to be leaders.
This is quite a funny blog by a Scottish local government councillor called Terry Kelly. http://councillorterrykelly.blogspot.com/ There are a few regular posters to his blog who bait him and he goes mental. The problem is he doesn't know when to stop and makes a complete fool of himself. There has been a counter blog about him setup called Terry Watch which 'organises' the baiting against him. http://terrywatch.blogspot.com/ Funny but sad that somebody so daft is in a position of authority.
This is actually a big step forward for the ruling coalition's big wigs. Until very recently, no one dares to openly criticise the Prime Minister or the high ranking ministers in the mainstream media or even in real life. The mainstream media, even the privately owned ones spew propaganda ala North Korea. During the previous Prime Ministers tenure, it even got to the level of Stalinisque personal cult. I once attended a university gathering in 1999 where a minister was openly criticised by a student. As a result, he flew into a rage in front of 1000 people and demanded that the Vice Chancellor expel the student. Now, they finally realise that cocooning themselves from criticism is self defeating. The Blogs will provide the people with a way to directly vent their frustations to the politicians. Whether the politicians will take heed remains to be seen. Malaysia is now at an important stage of political growth. Press freedoms are slowly increasing, with the mainstream newspapers starting to give equal coverage to Opposition views. People are starting to realise that they have the right to freedom of speech and should no longer be afraid to use it.
I'm from Malaysia. What the article doesn't say is that Jeff Ooi, a man known primarily for his political/social blogging, was elected into parliament. Numerous other newly-elected politicians from the opposition had blogs. The outcome of the elections was simply unprecendented in Malaysian history. Of course, the ruling party fails to grasp that it is not simply the fact that the opposition had blogs - it was mainly because the mainstream media were reduced to little more than government newsletters. Everyone just so fed up with having propaganda shoved down their throats that they went online for alternative news. The opposition took full advantage of this, while the mainstream published survey results - commissioned by themselves - claiming that the majority of Malaysians did not believe what they read on the Internet. They believed their own spin! Nevertheless, misguided as the intentions might be, I'd hope that through the blogs, even government politicians will begin to light up and get some individuality instead of simply parroting the party line.