Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar FREEDOM OVER FEAR

 

 High Court will decide on Aug 10 on committal proceedings filed by Information, Communications and Culture Minister Dr Rais Yatim against a blogger for breaching a court order prohibiting him from continuing to publish defamatory articles on Rais in his blogsite. 

PARDON ME, I AM JUST A BLOGGER, NOT A JOURNALIST!

I am no journalist, endowed with the license to spin. I am just an unsalaried blogger who gives it straight to you and from the heart.

I will tell you that the Harmony Act is some utopia conjured by the fuckheads in Putrajaya. That utopia is distorted harmony.

I will tell you that the Government’s twin ass-wipes the MACC and the Royal Commission concurred that Teoh Beng Hock “flew out of the window” because of enhanced interrogation. "Enhanced interrogation" sounds like a questioner who just shouts at you a little louder under the bright lights, or the threesome who conveniently opened a window of opportunity and assisted you in your flight. I heard somewhere that it was the Nazis who first invented the term.

I will tell you that Custom Officer Ahmad Sarbini Mohd also was alleged to have lost his balanceand“fallen” to his death from enhanced interrogation from the new MACC building in Jalan Cochrane, after bothersome truthfinding auditswhilst the RCI on TBH was in progress.

I WILL TELL YOU THAT SINCE INTIMIDATING COAXING AND INTENSIFIED PHYSICAL TECHNIQUES FAILED KUGAN SUCCUMBED TO POSSIBLE HEIGHTENED BODY RECONFIGURATION ULTIMATE AND RIGOROUS PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXERCISES!

I will tell you that Putrajaya will swear that they will not lie but instead will use euphemism like the boy who told the mother that since he had some time to spare, he did some creative economics and boosted his energy level for a while. I will tell you that the kid meant that he ponteng classes, stole some money and blew it on cigarettes.

I will tell you that more euphemisms will come out from the Transformation Department because“chocking” the chicken or “porking” the pig is better spoken/written than seen.

But I will also tell you that the Peaceful Assembly Act and the Evidence Act and whatever invasive imploration analysis forthcoming from the jackasses in Putridjaya will garner more votes for Pakatan.

This much I can tell you

as a Barisan Rakyat Blogger

with scant resources.

Well now U know why press freedom is not always applicable everywhere including a country like Great Britain. So why should U be surprised that the same freedom is not available in Malaysia? Guess our Umno/BN Govt must have the British balls in their hands and are squeezing it so tight so much so they have to OBEY the Umnoputras. So pls do not worship the mat sallehs and talk about their press feedom. They are not much different from Malaysia .

Nurul Izzah’s application comes in the wake of the Home Ministry’s recent decision not to renew the permit of Suara Keadilan, a PKR news organ, after the permit expired on June 30.

The ministry had sent a show-cause letter seeking explanation over several articles, including the one entitled “Felda Bangkrap”(Felda bankrupt). Felda has since filed a suit against the paper over the “bankruptcy” allegation.

Asked if “Utusan Rakyat” was a revival or a spin-off from Suara Keadilan, Nurul Izzah said: “This is going to be different, it is not a party organ. We are going to be non-partisan. We will be free and independent.”

She said the paper would focus on national issues alongside with another PKR-linked Malay weekly “Mingguan Era”, which focuses on local issues in the Klang Valley. She also welcomed funds or contributions from writers.

Nurul Izzah, who will act as the editor-in-chief, said she was applying for a permit in her personal capacity as a citizen of Malaysia and not as an MP or politician.

She said the paper would be funded by several business individuals and activists.

Constructive engagement

Nurul Izzah said that her application form, which requires a mock-up of the first issue for the ministry, will be sent in by Sept 16.

“I hope the minister would grant us the licence,” she said.

“After Umno leaders had alleged that I am a traitor and that I had jeopardised national security, I realised that we needed to have constructive engagement on policy issues,” Nurul said, adding that the submarine issue was based on official information in Parliament.

Hishammuddin had said Nurul Izzah had bad-mouthed the country abroad when commenting on an interview she gave to an Indonesian newspaper recently.

In the interview, she was alleged to have belittled the capabilityof the country’s submarines.

Nurul Izzah said the aim of starting the newspaper was to create a platform for constructive engagement of all parties to better develop the country.

“Also, our prime minister recently said that we now have better media freedom today, and I would like to challenge and put his statement to the test,” she said.

She added that she would like to prove that freedom of speech really exists after 53 years of independence.

“The paper aims to raise the country’s image by proving that Malaysia is truly democratic and also to increase the confidence of Malaysians as well as foreign investors,” she said.

“This is also to fulfil my wish to not only speak out on foreign soil but also in our beloved Malaysia,” she said.

Politicians and activists constantly propose new rights — the right to work, to education, and now to food. The word “rights” is being twisted to mean entitlements, and there is a big difference.

Rights are freedoms from oppression by the state or by society (through ethnicity, religion and gender). These rights do not entail government handouts. Entitlements, however, are welfare measures entailing government handouts. Rights are not limited by budget constraints, but entitlements are. So, rights are universal but entitlements are not.

Historically,Malaysia has provided only limited welfare. It can certainly afford to provide more as it grows richer. Yet fiscal crises in the West warn us that entitlements can grow so rapidly as to threaten even rich governments with bankruptcy. Because of budget constraints, entitlements must be limited. But rights should not be limited. So, don’t confuse rights with entitlements.

US economists calculate that three welfare measures — social security (for the aged), Medicare (for the aged) and Medicaid (for the poor)—will triple from 7% of GDP to 20% in the next decade, swallowing up virtually all federal tax revenue. Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute calculates that, including social security, the US is headed for a national debt that’s 500% of GDP, and Europe of 434%. Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University says welfare measures have become a Ponzi scheme, which work by constantly shifting burdens to future generations.

Greece, which prides itself on socialist entitlements, looks certain to default on its public debt despite a recent rescue by the European Union. Spain, Britain, Portugal and Ireland are seeking to cut entitlements to stave off a future debt crisis. Entitlements need to be narrower and better targeted.

Welfarism was once touted as the great Marxist vision, but is actually intrinsic to all democracies and capitalist systems. Britain’s Poor Laws dating from the 16th century provided workfare to the destitute through workhouses, at very low wages. This was not called a right to work or to doles. It was seen as Christian charity, and as a way of stopping desperate people from taking to crime.

The British Bill of Rights in 1689 created a constitutional monarchy. The rights included freedom from royal interference with the law, from taxation without parliamentary approval and from martial law in times of peace; and free elections and free speech. These were all rights, not entitlements.

In 1776, the US Declaration of Independence said all men were equal with a fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The US Bill of Rights in 1789 provided for freedom of religion and speech; for the right to due process of law and peaceful assembly; for freedom against military confiscation in peacetime, unlawful seizure and arrest, excessive bail, torture, self-incrimination and excessive or cruel punishment; for the right to bear arms in a militia, to public trial by a jury, and to legal counsel.

The French Revolution produced its own Rights of Man. This declared that men are born free and equal, and have inalienable rights to liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression. It provided for equal civil participation by all, due process of law, freedom of speech and religion.

These three countries spearheaded the concept of fundamental rights. In all three, rights were about freedoms, not entitlements.

In subsequent centuries, people said this was not enough, and proposed entitlements — which some called second-generation rights. Marxists declared that rights to free speech, elections and personal freedom were bourgeois illusions that did not empower the poor. So Lenin proposed a dictatorship of the proletariat that took away all basic freedoms, and instead offered the right to food, shelter and work. Mind you, nobody could sue Lenin for poor provision. Nobody could throw out Mao for the Great Leap Forward that killed 30 million people. Nobody could topple Stalin for murdering four to six million peasants in the Ukraine.

The communist experience shows that giving welfare rights priority over basic freedoms is the road to serfdom. And the capitalist welfare state now shows that entitlements, although desirable and inevitable in democracies, must be limited and targeted at the needy, so that they do not hog all spending or bankrupt governments.

What lessons follow for MALAYSIA’s welfare reforms? Some changes — like the right to information — are true rights, requiring no budgetary outlays. Others, like the employment guarantee scheme or right to food, are entitlements. These must be restricted to the needy, not made universal, as some activists want. Ibrahim katak wants the malay right , but why on earth should he be entitled to million of shares that are rightfully entitlements, marinalised Malays?