I converted to the new Blogger Beta yesterday. Eagle eyed observers might have noticed that the last post had a tag.
The new blogger seems quite promising. It's faster than the old blogger and so far I've not had any difficulties editing or creating new entries.
Today's entry is once again, not about anything much.
Actually if I were to really get into it, there are quite a number of subjects to blog about.
Things like this for example. You'd expect that in the year 2006 in the 21st century, men would finally stop accusing victims of sexual crimes or harassment that they somehow "asked for it".
Alas no.
It's crazy. I wonder if these types of people realize that by saying the above, they are implying that men can't control their urges and have no self control? I'm thinking this is probably the by-product of lame ass piece of shit conservative bullshit culture that is quite entrenched in this country of ours. Perpetrators and purveyors of said culture are usually old fogies with little education, narrow minds, and an unhealthy obsession with appearances.
Never mind if their thoughts are gutter fodder, as long as they LOOK respectable and responsible everything is alright. Never mind if issues don't get resolved, as long as they can be covered up and hidden away from the sight of joe public (and more importantly, tourists) everything is a-okay.
Ok, I may have digressed slightly. Anyway, there you go. I really can't stand conservativism.
Anyway getting back on topic, it's quite annoying that in this day and age the concept of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY is not known by some people. I marvel at the kind of convulated thought process that could make someone think that they can do something to someone and blame that someone for making them do it.
The question I want to ask now is that why are there still people who are so stupidly narrow minded even with all the information and the exposure that we get from many different points of views and from many different cultures? What's with the medieval mentality?
The other issue that's kind of hot these days is the recent publication of the banned books list. I mentioned this in an earlier post but this time I have a link for reference and further reading. As can be expected, many bloggers in Malaysia are quite unhappy about this.
Me? As I mentioned before, the thing that pisses me most of all is still the Interior's Ministry stony silence on the issue, as is usually the case when the Ministry is involved. So far as I know, there has been NO explanation as to why those books were banned. I don't mean a general "these are banned because they are bad" stock answer either. I'm talking about explanations regarding EACH book. I'm quite sure that those books were not banned for just one reason.
Some might ask, why not write to the government? I'm sure it's been done by people who have more balls (and motivation) than me. And my cynical side tends to think,"why bother?" That's not the best way to deal with it, but seriously when it comes to the Federal government actions, why bother?
Anyway, one may wonder why books are still being banned. Is the Malaysian public's psyche so fragile that it needs to be protected from the big bad world? Is our society still so "kampung" and so primitive that people will riot in the streets if they read a book that they don't agree with? Or is it fear? Is the government afraid that the people of this country might read something in some book that will make them less "loyal"? Are they afraid that the public might find out about "something" that they don't want them to find out about?
Many interesting questions no?
The banning of books (and censorship for that matter) is futile. Why? Because whatever gets banned can be gotten from the internet. The government can't regulate internet access because that would be contrary to the policies that it set during the time the MSC was started. Internet control equals loss of business and that is a huge deal.
So yeah, banning books is a waste of time. There are other ways to get those books just like there are ways to find and download animal porn for example, which is also banned in Malaysia.
Instead of banning and censoring books and media, a rating system (which is already in place actually albeit very poorly used) will work better I think. That way, joe public has an idea of what he's getting into before deciding to read a book or watch a movie.
I don't see this happening anytime soon though, if ever.
PS. A newspaper column about the ban is here.
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