Think you have the right to speak freely via cellphones, websites and social media? Well, the companies that provide you with access to the Internet don’t. May 13, now that’s a date that keeps cropping up although the racial clashes on that date happened in 1969, 43 years ago.Can we ever let it rest? Can we ever move on? Can we ever get politicians to stop saying they don’t want it repeated, yet bring it up every now and then?May 13 keeps popping up as a scaremongering tactic to keep various demographics united to support political parties facing an election, especially Umno.There used to be some reverence and remorse for the darkest day in Malaysian history when blood spilled on the ground among us.Now it is used with utmost disrespect by Umno strategists who believe that fear of trouble will persuade them to support the status quo – keeping Barisan Nasional (BN) in control of Putrajaya.Here’s the rub. BN can keep Putrajaya as long as it fulfils its promises. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has toured the country countless times, fixing problems and issues with his grand programme under the New Economic Model (NEM), Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) and Government Transformation Programme (GTP).So, why do we still hear about May 13?Veteran DAP leader Lim Kit Siang commented on the latest May 13 reference made by Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin yesterday, asking the Umno deputy president if he had meant to assure Malaysians that a similar clash would not repeat or warn them otherwise.“I confess I am concerned at the way Muhyiddin raised the spectre of May 13, which had been used in the past decades to create fear among voters as part of the scare tactics to force voters to vote for Umno and BN,” the Ipoh Timor MP said last night.According to news reports yesterday, Muhyiddin asked the country’s youths to stand united to avoid a another bloody racial clash like the 1969 riots, which is said to have claimed the lives of nearly 2,000 Malaysians.“We don’t want May 13 repeated,” the deputy prime minister had said.But Lim said Malaysia’s political and social landscape have changed significantly since the clash, pointing to the birth of Pakatan Rakyat (PR), a coalition of three parties – DAP, PKR and PAS – which he said promotes multiracialism.
“So could there be another May 13 in the next general election? My answer would be a strong ‘No’,” he said.That is something that all Malaysians should believe. That there will not be another May 13 ever. And shame the politicians who keep bringing it up.Some of us have moved on to be the Bangsa Malaysia that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad dreamt. We just have to make sure the laggards who want to cause mischief are not allowed to do so.
The framers drafted the First Amendment as a check on government authority — not corporate power. But whether we’re texting friends, sharing photos on Facebook, or posting updates on Twitter, we’re connecting with each other and the Internet via privately controlled networks.
And the owners of these networks are now twisting the intent of the First Amendment to claim the right to control everyone’s online information.
The Internet is many things. It’s a Kurzweilian Eden, a vast yet accessible universe that requires only a keyboard, some curiosity and a finger (or something) to push lettered keys in order to happily traverse its breadth.
But along with functioning mostly as a delivery system for commercial enterprise and as a virtual, multi-dimensional Mobious loop of instantly accessible porn, it is also a bottomless trove of history and art and once-thought-lost ephemera that rounds out the education of even the most negligent student.
It’s also, it seems, a repository for all the vitriol and bad manners inherent in the human character, a deep-seated nastiness that the common rules of social interplay would normally regulate. And it doesn’t reside in mere criticism, rather the tone of observation has become as far from constructive as is possible aided in part by the anonymity of the Internet giving formerly restrained individuals license to behave in ways their moral upbringings traditionally prohibit.
Social media has created a legion of social delinquents, billions of people speaking not their minds but their spleens, venting everything from the gum-cracking snark befitting a hair-twisting mallrat to the froth-flecked rage of a bell tower marksman. It is a recently discovered wellspring that is far more plentiful and combustible than any containing oily crude.
What’s more, it’s positively de rigueur to dis, cool to ridicule. Not that there isn’t an endless supply of things to deride, but instead of merely pointing and laughing why not add an attempt to correct the subject of mockery?
It’s just too much damn fun, is why. But it’s more than fun — it’s empowering. And power (as that hunk-a-doodle-do Henry Kissinger told us) is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
And it seems to be majorly addictive. These social hubs are more like massive cuspidors of bile, wells of that same gunk that flowed under New York City in Ghostbusters, except that it courses through our TVs and computer screens and car radios, coating the rapt citizenry in itchy goo. The only advantage assholery seems to have over heroin, cigarettes and alcohol is that you don’t have to show your ID to obtain it.
America hasn’t been building many things lately, whether it’s infrastructure or good will. The Rise of the Low would be an incredibly clever way to describe it, don’t you think?
NO, I DON’T THINK! YOU ARE A THESAURUS-SUCKING LIBERAL! YOU’RE JUST SOME ACTOR WHO LIVES IN A HOLLYWOOD FANTASY AND KNOWS NOTHING OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO LIVE AS A NORMAL HARD WORKING AMERICAN! AND YOU HAVE MINISCULE GENITALIA! AND YOU’RE OLD! HA! AND YOU SMELL OF PEAT AND BOURBON AND WET CORDOUROY! HA AND HA, AGAIN!
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