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A week ago, Google returned 255,000 results in 0.42 seconds on “1MDB” search – today it returned 4.41 million searches in just 0.32 seconds!

I wish to report that in the first 24 hours from 12 noon yesterday till 12 noon today, neither MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai nor the Gerakan President Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong had contacted me in response to my public offer yesterday that I am prepared to meet with them, individually or collectively, any place any time in the ensuing 72 hours to discuss how we can co-operate in the larger national interests to purge and cleanse Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy of being regarded world-wide as a global kleptocracy.

I had asked whether Liow and Mah would have to get UMNO approval before responding. We will wait and see what happens in the rest of the 72-hour offer.

Already, there is a strange political phenomenon. In yesterday’s press, I was the target of massive attacks from all the top MCA and Gerakan leaders for offering during my “Jelajah Desa” at Sungai Gelugor in Penang on Sunday to co-operate with PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang to save Malaysia from becoming a global kleptocracy and a failed and rogue state.
Continue reading “A week ago, Google returned 255,000 results in 0.42 seconds on “1MDB” search – today it returned 4.41 million searches in just 0.32 seconds!”

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Guardian ranked second most secure online news site

Alex Hern
Guardian
16 December 2016

The listing, produced by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, was topped by the US site The Intercept

The Guardian has been listed as the second most secure news publication on the web, according to a ranking produced by the American non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Points were awarded for supporting technologies which protect the privacy and security of visitors, with a focus on using HTTPS, a web protocol that allows for encrypted connections.

The ranking was topped by the US news site The Intercept, created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. It gained the highest score of A+.

The Guardian, rated as A- along with TechCrunch and ProPublica, scored highly for having a valid HTTPS version of its website, and for defaulting to that connection for all visitors. Continue reading “Guardian ranked second most secure online news site”

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Pokemon Go Turned One Couple’s Life Into ‘A Nightmare.’ Now They’re Suing.

Lauren C. Williams
ThinkProgress
August 16, 2016

A Michigan couple is suing the game’s co-creators Nintendo, Niantic, and Pokemon Co. for turning their street into “a nightmare.”

Scott Dodich and Jayme Gotts-Dodich live on what used to be a “peaceful, quiet, and safe” suburban street directly across a small public park in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. But since Pokémon Go was released July 6, the couple’s quaint neighborhood located outside of Detroit, has turned into “a nightmare,” according to court documents.

The Dodiches filed a class-action lawsuit with the U.S. District Court of Northern California alleging that the augmented reality mobile game’s co-creators— the developer, Niantic software company, Nintendo, the owner, and Pokémon Co., which licenses the game—are responsible for player trespassing private property and threatening homeowners in pursuit of catching Pokemon.

The residents of Revere Street had their lawns trampled. They were yelled at for calling the police, according to the complaint, and were threatened by players visiting the popular Pokéstop and Pokégym or hangout in nearby Wahby Park. Players also peered into the windows of residents’ homes, hiding in bushes after dark to wait out the police.

Pokémon Go players “are on our lawns . . . looking right into our windows to catch a Pokémon,” the Dodiches said in the complaint. As residents “[we] don’t feel safe sitting on our porch.” Continue reading “Pokemon Go Turned One Couple’s Life Into ‘A Nightmare.’ Now They’re Suing.”

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The dangers of Pokémon Go: Kids’ brains are vulnerable to virtual and augmented reality

NICHOLAS KARDARAS
Salon
AUG 12, 2016

Immersive and interactive games that are fine for adults can cause a blurring of reality in younger users

A few weeks back I was sent a link to an article about Pokémon Go—the latest craze that has been sweeping not only our native Manhattan, but seemingly the entire country. The person who had sent me the article thought I’d be interested in this latest tech development because of my work: I’m a psychologist and professor who specializes in treating addiction and working with adolescents; and I had just written a book called “Glow Kids,” which explores some of the uncomfortable clinical realities of too much screen time.

Two days later I was sent yet another link. This latest article from a major national newspaper waxed poetic about kids and the new Pokémon craze. According to that article, Pokémon Go is a parent’s dream, a video game holy grail: a game that actually got kids up off the couch and outside exploring and interacting with the real world—albeit while staring at a screen and pursuing an illusory augmented reality hologram.

That small detail aside, I had to ask myself: well, is this the game that finally proves the screen alarmists wrong? After all, kids are going outside to play the game and collaborating with others to find clues in their digital scavenger hunts. Aren’t those good things? In that same pro Pokémon Go article, a child and adolescent psychologist interviewed for the piece, was quoted saying “it gets kids out in the world and promotes socialization. It seems that kids are using it as a tool to connect to each other and the world around them.”

All that sounds perfectly reasonable, but my research and clinical work indicates otherwise. If you’re a child or pre-teen, there may be a price to pay. To be clear: If you’re an adult, have at it! Pokémon Go to your heart’s content; wander the streets looking for the little augmented reality buggers. Just be careful you don’t walk into oncoming traffic or light posts, but Pokémon your days away if you like.

But children have additional vulnerabilities when they interact with interactive and immersive screens; their brains and what psychologists call “reality testing”—the ability to discern what’s real and what isn’t—are not fully developed yet. That’s why researchers who study the effects of immersive and interactive video game experiences have coined the term “Game Transfer Phenomenon” (GTP)— a reality-blurring psychotic-like feature that young people who are chronic gamers experience. Continue reading “The dangers of Pokémon Go: Kids’ brains are vulnerable to virtual and augmented reality”

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The future of Pokémon Go: more human interaction or advertisers’ top target?

Toby Barnes
Guardian
14 August 2016

The game has built its success on a largely single-player experience – but to really leave a mark on players, developers should focus on the interpersonal angle

A location game overlaying the city, with players able to hunt monsters, capture stations, battle each other, build guilds. A virtual imagined world connected to the physical one by a database of locations and human “check-ins”.

It’s not Pokémon Go. It’s Chromaroma, from the UK games company Mudlark. And it’s not from this year. It was released in 2010.

Augmented reality games have been in development for the last 15 years, and I ran Mudlark from 2005 to 2011. Our biggest success was Chromaroma, which overlaid London and connected with players’ Oyster cards, letting people battle with fantastical weapons and armor. It was part Risk, part Monopoly, part Foursquare. But we made games and experiences – we called them mixed reality and transmedia – that, honestly, we struggled to explain to people.

Fast forward and the global hit Pokémon Go hits the “transmedia” sweet spot perfectly: a license that combines 90s game nostalgia, Japanese color palettes, full spectrum imagination and friendly competitiveness.

I asked my young son why he thinks the game has struck such a chord and he replied that he considered it the manifestation of every Pokémon player’s dreams. Perhaps not realizing what he was saying also applied to the game designers, he added: “The game is basically letting us all do the things we have been imagining for years.” Continue reading “The future of Pokémon Go: more human interaction or advertisers’ top target?”

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The Pokémon Go influence on new tech

Dr. Roger Smith
Crunch Network
14.8.2016

Pokémon Go has changed the trajectory of the world on a scale just slightly smaller than Google Search and Facebook, but still to a magnitude that will be felt through all industries in the coming years. To many, it looks like a very simple game that incorporates a few unique and compelling features. But this game has taken technologies from niche research and gaming communities and thrust them into the world’s consciousness.

Suddenly everyone understands what “augmented reality” means and how an artificial digital world can be mapped onto the real physical world. Neither of these is new, but they garnered little attention until they appeared in a concrete, compelling and simple free game for every cell phone in the country.

Augmented reality is a technique for layering data from one or more virtual worlds onto the real physical world. It has been demonstrated and used in military situation awareness and aircraft maintenance applications for years. But it has barely escaped these kinds of niche communities.

Overlaying virtual and physical worlds seemed like a plaything for nerds until it was coupled with the ubiquitous cell phone. Then it became a way of enhancing how we interact with everything on the planet, from entertainment and emergency response to education and healthcare, to name but a few. Continue reading “The Pokémon Go influence on new tech”

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The story that is dividing Malaysia’s media

Listening Post | 19 Apr 2016
Al Jazeera

For much of the past year, the biggest news story in Malaysia has been the so-called ‘1MDB’ corruption scandal – a story of millions of dollars of public money allegedly funnelled into the bank accounts of Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The online investigative magazine Sarawak Report broke the story last June and many in the mainstream media, who have links to the government, were slow to follow up.

Only a small number of online outlets, such as Malaysiakini, followed the corruption investigation closely. But the government is keen to keep this story out of the public eye. The Listening Post spoke to Malaysiakini editor Steven Gan about the 1MDB scandal, the limitations of Malaysia’s mainstream media and the growing threat to online freedom of the press.

Steven Gan, editor-in-chief of the Malaysiakini website, speaks about the 1MDB scandal, and the growing threat to online freedom press [Will Yong/ Al Jazeera]

The Listening Post: The corruption scandal swirling around the prime minister has been a huge news story in Malaysia. What is the significance of this story? How much has it dominated the news and what impact is it having?
Continue reading “The story that is dividing Malaysia’s media”

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The Panama Papers’ Sprawling Web of Corruption

by The Editorial Board
New York Times
APRIL 5, 2016

The first reaction to the leaked documents dubbed the Panama Papers is simply awe at the scope of the trove and the ingenuity of the anonymous source who provided the press with 11.5 million documents — 2.6 terabytes of data — revealing in extraordinary detail how offshore bank accounts and tax havens are used by the world’s rich and powerful to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes.

Then comes the disgust. With more than 14,000 clients around the world and more than 214,000 offshore entities involved, Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm whose internal documents were exposed, piously insists it violated no laws or ethics. But the questions remain: How did all these politicians, dictators, criminals, billionaires and celebrities amass vast wealth and then benefit from elaborate webs of shell companies to disguise their identities and their assets? Would there have been no reckoning had the leak not occurred?

And then the core question: After these revelations, will anything change? Many formal denials and pledges of official investigations have been made. But to what degree do the law and public shaming still have dominion over this global elite? A public scarred by repeated revelations of corruption in government, sports and finance will demand to know. Continue reading “The Panama Papers’ Sprawling Web of Corruption”

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Inside Cyberjaya, Malaysia’s failed Silicon Valley

by NICOLE KOBIE
Wired
05 APRIL 16

It’s past three in the morning, and our cab driver is lost – not only had he never heard of the city of Cyberjaya, but he also couldn’t find our hotel at its centre, the wonderfully named Cyberview Lodge Resort, built twenty years ago when ground was first struck at this would-be Malaysian Silicon Valley.

As we swung around yet another empty roundabout in the middle of the jungle, naked of any buildings or road signs, it was hard to fault the driver.

Ask government officials and developers, and Cyberjaya is a success, the heart of its knowledge-based economy: 85,000 people live there, they say, and dozens of multinationals have offices – and in a few years the train lines will reach out here, too. But ask a taxi driver in capital city Kuala Lumpur, only thirty minutes’ drive away, and they haven’t a clue what you’re on about.

Even those embedded in the tech industry might not be aware of Malaysia’s early attempt to jump on the digital bandwagon; I first heard of it via a now obscure story by Canadian journalist Chris Turner, who visited Cyberjaya in 2000, three years after its press launch. Continue reading “Inside Cyberjaya, Malaysia’s failed Silicon Valley”

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The Panama Papers: Here’s What We Know

by Liam Stack
New York Times
APRIL 4, 2016

A group of global news organizations published articles this week based on a trove of leaked confidential documents from a law firm in Panama. They exposed how some of the world’s most powerful people were said to have used offshore bank accounts to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes.

The documents, known as the “Panama Papers,” named international politicians, business leaders and celebrities in a web of unseemly financial transactions, according to the articles, and raised questions about corruption in the global financial system. Many of the figures named in the leak have denied in the strongest terms that they had broken any laws.

This explainer has been tracking significant developments resulting from the disclosures. Among them:

• The prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned Tuesday.

• Gonzalo Delaveau Swett, the president of Transparency Chile, a branch of a global anti-corruption group, stepped down on Monday. Continue reading “The Panama Papers: Here’s What We Know”

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How a Cryptic Message, ‘Interested in Data?,’ Led to the Panama Papers

by Nicola Clark
New York Times
APRIL 5, 2016

PARIS — The leak of millions of private financial documents linking scores of the world’s rich and powerful to a secretive Panamanian law firm peddling in shell companies and offshore bank accounts began more than a year ago with a cryptic message to a German newspaper from an anonymous whistle-blower.

“Hello, this is John Doe,” the source wrote to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a Munich-based newspaper that had worked on several investigations into tax evasion and money-laundering scandals. “Interested in data?”

“We’re very interested,” replied Bastian Obermayer, a veteran of several investigations into financial scandals. Continue reading “How a Cryptic Message, ‘Interested in Data?,’ Led to the Panama Papers”

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Silencing the media in Malaysia

by Sonia Randhawa
New Mandala
16 MARCH 2016

Malaysia has a long history of cracking down on freedom of expression, writes Sonia Randhawa. But that won’t stop Malaysians from fighting back.

Over the past few weeks, the number of websites blocked in Malaysia has more than doubled, from 149 to 339, leaving the promises made about the country’s Multimedia Super Corridor lying in tatters.

Banned websites include The Malaysian Insider and the blogging platform Medium.com — apparently because of one article published on the 1MDB scandal. It’s akin to blocking YouTube because of one video.

It’s a long way from the attempts to foster a knowledge-based economy and modern state by 2020. If technology was meant to send Malaysians sprinting down the information superhighway, these recent moves represent dangerous obstacles to oncoming traffic. Continue reading “Silencing the media in Malaysia”

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Najib making fatal mistake of underestimating the intelligence of Internet users in Malaysia to be able to differentiate truth from falsehoods in 14GE just as Pak Lah made the fatal mistake in 12GE in 2008 in underestimating the impact of Internet

Let me preface my speech with some observations about what the distinguished panelists have said this evening.

Firstly, the special appearance of the founder of Sarawak Report, Claire Brown from United Kingdom on Skype including a question-and-answer session with the audience in this hall highlights the futility of those in power to censor or control the flow of information in the Internet era.

Secondly, thanks to the government ban on The Malaysian Insider, more Malaysians have acquired the very simple skills of circumventing the Internet walls erected by Putrajaya to block access to The Malaysian Insider and other websites, with The Malaysian Insider becoming The Malaysian Outsider, getting acquainted with Unblocking sites and the “wide wide wide” world of Internet devoted to fighting all forms of Internet censorship. This is because all the secrets of overcoming Internet censorship can be mastered in a few minutes by searching the solutions on the Internet.

The CEO of Malaysiakini, Premesh Chandran had rightly cited the “tsunami” loss of UMNO/Barisan Nasional in the 12th General Election in 2008 to the Internet as the Prime Minister at the time, Tun Abdullah had subsequently admitted his “serious misjudgment” in underestimating the power of the Internet, losing the cyberwar to the Opposition. Continue reading “Najib making fatal mistake of underestimating the intelligence of Internet users in Malaysia to be able to differentiate truth from falsehoods in 14GE just as Pak Lah made the fatal mistake in 12GE in 2008 in underestimating the impact of Internet”

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DAP’s most important and challenging tests are not in the past 50 years but in next 20, 30 years

It was exactly 30 years ago that I moved from Kota Melaka parliamentary seat to Penang to contest in Tanjong constituency – the Battle of Tanjong of 1986 – against the incumbent Dr. Koh Tsu Koon who was to become the Penang Chief Minister for four terms spanning 18 years from 1990 to 2008.

DAP comrades in Penang had in fact suggested in early seventies that I move to Penang to lead the DAP charge to make Penang the “engine head” for political change in Malaysia, and although this suggestion was made at every subsequent general election, I had not agreed to the move from “south to north” until the 1986 general election.

Although the subsequent “Battles of Tanjong 2 and Tanjong 3” in 1990 and 1995 did not succeed in DAP capturing the Penang State Government, this objective was finally achieved in the 2008 and 2013 General Elections, and it is my hope that Penang will not only continue to be the seat of DAP-led Penang State Government, but the base for the achievement of federal change of government in Putrajaya in the next 14th General Election.

Although the DAP is now celebrating our 50th anniversary, I believe that the DAP’s most important and challenging tests are not in the past 50 years, but in the next 20 to 30 years.
We want the DAP message of justice, freedom, good governance and national unity not just to ring loud and clear in Penang but throughout Malaysia, in Peninsula Malaysia as well as in Sarawak and Sabah.
DAP is in the throes of an important transition, and we must be guided by two challenging objectives and principles. Continue reading “DAP’s most important and challenging tests are not in the past 50 years but in next 20, 30 years”

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Has Guan Eng rocketed from a jailbird to become Malaysia’s 22nd richest person worth RM2.87 billion – in the league of Robert Kuok and Ananda Krishnan?

What a coincidence!

The same day that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak lumped news portals with “keyboard warriors and cybertroopers” for “unhealthy practice of journalism” in an attempt to justify the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) blockade of the news portal The Malaysian Insider, there was another blast of lies against the DAP.

This was in the form of an alleged list of the “richest” persons in Malaysia (below) circulated on the Internet, with the DAP Secretary-General and Penang Chief Minister listed as the No. 22 “richest” person in Malaysia, worth RM2.87 billion – preceded by 21 “richest” in Malaysia, ranging from Robert Kuok (RM42.2b), Ananda Krishnan (RM31.2b), Quek Leng Chan (22.3b) Teh Hong Piow (19.6b), Lee Shin Cheng (RM19.4), Lim Kok Thay (19.2b), Yeoh Tiong Lay (RM9.5b), Lao Cho Kun (RM6.5b), Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary (RM6.1b), Surin Upatkoon (RM4.8b), Kuan Kam Hon (RM4.6b), Tiong Hiew King (RM4.2b), Danny Tan Chee Sing (RM4.1b), G. Gnanalingam (RM4.06b), Lee Oi Hian & Lee Hau Hian (RM3.86b), Desmond Lim Siew Choon (RM3.82b), Vincent Tan (RM3.8b), Jeffrey Cheah (RM3.65b), Yaw Teck Seng & Yaw Chee Ming (RM3.16b), Goh Peng Ooi (RM3.06b), Tan Heng Chew, Eng Soon & Eng Hwa (RM2.9b) – and richer than others like Chen Lip Keong (RM2.61b), Ahmadyuddin Ahmad (RM2.42b),Lim Kuang Sia (RM2.4b), Lim Kang Hoo (RM2.32b), Shahril & Shahriman Shamsuddin (RM2.04b), Mokhzani Mahathir (RM2.02b), Ngau Boon Keat (RM2b), Ninian Mogan Lourdenadin RM1.98b),Azman Hashim (RM1.96b), Lim Teck Meng (RM1.48b), Chong Chook Yew (RM1.43b), Kong Hon Kong (RM1.37b), Leong Hoy Kum (RM1.24b), etc.

Has Guan Eng rocketed from a jailbird to become Malaysia’s 22nd richest person worth RM2.87 billion – in the league of Robert Kuok and Ananda Krishnan?

I did a quick search and found that it was Forbe’s 2016 Ranking of Malaysia’s 50 Richest, and the list was as correct except for Guan Eng’s listing as No. 22’s Richest, when it should be Lim Wee Chai. Continue reading “Has Guan Eng rocketed from a jailbird to become Malaysia’s 22nd richest person worth RM2.87 billion – in the league of Robert Kuok and Ananda Krishnan?”

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Banning The Malaysian Insider is like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly – what is the Najib government trying to hide?

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, seems to be fulfilling his vow made during the recent commemoration of his 40 years of involvement of politics – with reams and reams of congratulatory advertorials finally paid for by the taxpayers – that he would strive to take Malaysia to “greater heights”.

Malaysia had never achieved “greater heights” in corruption than under the Najib premiership – being named third in the world’s “worst corruption scandals in 2015” and dropping four places in Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2015.

Now, Najib has brought Malaysia to a new “greater height” of being the first Prime Minister in Malaysia to violate the 20-year Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Bill of Guarantees of “No Censorship of the Internet”, a guarantee made by Tun Dr. Mahathir when he was Prime Minister “as a gift to the world”, with the ban yesterday on the news portal, The Malaysian Insider.

Described world-wide as the latest in a series of clampdowns on media organisations that have published reports critical of the government and the Prime Minister, particularly over Najib’s RM55 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion “donation” twin mega scandals, Malaysians and international opinion can only ask Najib what is he trying to hide and suppress when he has to use a sledgehammer to try to kill a fly and cannot rely anymore on the plain truth and nothing but the truth to win in the world of ideas? Continue reading “Banning The Malaysian Insider is like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly – what is the Najib government trying to hide?”

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Islamic State Eludes Southeast Asian Authorities With Telegram App

By NEWLEY PURNELL and RESTY WORO YUNIAR
Wall Street Journal
Jan. 19, 2016

Terrorist group using encrypted messaging app to recruit members in Malaysia, Indonesia

Communications app Telegram Messenger is in the spotlight after the deadly terrorist attacks in Jakarta last week, with experts in Indonesia and Malaysia saying Islamic State radicals in Syria have used the platform to recruit members from Southeast Asia.

The revelations underscore both the apparent popularity of the Berlin-based app among members of the terror organization and the challenges it poses to authorities in tracking its private, encrypted chats.

Malaysian police on Saturday said its counterterrorism unit last week arrested four suspects, three of whom were recruited to join Islamic State in Syria by a Malaysian national via Telegram and Facebook Inc.’s social-networking platform.

Telegram, which in November said it blocked 78 of its public channels across 12 languages related to Islamic State, was one of the first apps to explicitly cater to privacy enthusiasts after reports in 2013 alleging widespread surveillance by U.S. intelligence.

Islamic State has used Telegram, a free platform that can be accessed via mobile devices and desktop computers, to disseminate public statements, such as its claim of responsibility for the November attacks in Paris. Continue reading “Islamic State Eludes Southeast Asian Authorities With Telegram App”

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What Twitter really means for Islamic State supporters

Amanath Amarasingam
War on the Rocks
December 30, 2015

Abu Ahmad, one of Islamic State’s most active supporters online says he has had over 90 Twitter accounts suspended, but is not planning to slow down. He is a trusted member of what has come to be called the Baqiya family, a loose network of Islamic State supporters from around the world who share news, develop close friendships, and help each other when members get arrested or come under law enforcement surveillance. Abu Ahmad, as with all Baqiya members, agreed to talk to me on the condition that his real name and location not be published.

While Islamic State social media accounts used to flourish, Twitter has now been suspending the accounts of fighters and supporters alike. Scholars and analysts continue to debate whether this is effective and worthwhile.

For over two years now, I have co-directed a study of Western foreign fighters based at the University of Waterloo and have been interviewing — on Skype and various text messaging platforms — several dozen fighters and members of this Baqiya family. A few things are clear: First, while Twitter suspensions certainly disrupt their ability to seamlessly spread information, they have developed innovative and effective ways of coming back online. Second, these youth receive an enormous amount of emotional and social benefits from participating in their online “family.” Continue reading “What Twitter really means for Islamic State supporters”

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Reality check on Malaysia’s lofty S&T achievement, goals

Natalie Heng
SciDev.Net
23/10/15

If one were to take the press release issued by the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT) on 28 September at face value, one could be forgiven for assuming its lead announcement about Malaysia’s GDP per capita exceeding for the first time the average of all nations was somehow connected to developments in the country’s science, technology and innovation scene.

The press release notes down the role of the Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council (GSIAC), run jointly by MIGHT and the New York Academy of Sciences, in advising how science and innovation should be incorporated into Malaysia’s ambitious goal of upping its GDP per capita to reach the threshold of developed country status by 2020.

The press release alludes to a variety of collaborations and initiatives to reach this goal, featuring selective quotations from the Global Innovation Index (GII) report crediting Malaysia as an innovation achiever in the last four years.

Despite all this talk, there are long-standing challenges that form a bottleneck to Malaysia’s success when it comes to fulfilling our S&T potential. Continue reading “Reality check on Malaysia’s lofty S&T achievement, goals”

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Salleh should not be a spineless Minister who dare not own up and apologise for his mistakes but want his innocent subordinates to eat “dead cat”

The Communications and Multimedia Minister, Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak should not be a spineless Minister who dare not own up and apologise for his mistakes but want his innocent subordinates to eat “dead cat”!

Salleh yesterday started the blame-game in Kuching and claimed that it was the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) which provided him with the information that 71 per cent of Malaysian Internet users preferred the slower Streamyx, even as slow as 384 kilobyte per second (kpbs), instead of the faster broadband of multi-megabyte per second.

Let me tell Salleh to stop talking rubbish, and I want to reiterate that there is no country in the world which would prefer slower Internet unless it is peopled by cretins and idiots.

I do not believe anyone in MCMC would be so dense and unprofessional as to tell Salleh that 71 per cent of Malaysian Internet users preferred the slower Streamyx to faster multi-megabyte broadband.

Can he produce black-and-white to establish that he had been advised by MCMC that 71 per cent of Malaysian Internet users preferred the slower Steamyx to faster broadband, and I would agree that such a MCMC officer should be disciplined.

But if Salleh could not produce black-and-white to prove that he had been so advised by the MCMC, would he tender a double apology, one for making a most stupid and senile statement and secondly, for the cowardice and spinelessness of trying to pass the buck of his mistake to MCMC? Continue reading “Salleh should not be a spineless Minister who dare not own up and apologise for his mistakes but want his innocent subordinates to eat “dead cat””