Malaysiakini
The denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on the Malaysiakini and Sarawak Report sites in the week of the recent Sarawak election demonstrated not only how desperate Malaysia's BN regime is to cling to power at all costs, but how much trouble it's in.
Let's face it, any government that can 'win' an election only by silencing the few free voices of truth on top of gerry-mandering the electoral boundaries, manipulating postal voting, employing the police and other civil services to browbeat the opposition and intimidate its supporters, exposing the people to the massive propaganda power of the pro-regime mainstream media, and bribing voters hand-over-fist with public money, has to be running very scared indeed.
BN certainly has lots to be scared of. Like growing public resentment of its massive and systematic corruption, as symbolised by the obscene wealth of freshly re-elected Sarawak Chief Minister, Abdul 'The Termite' Taib Mahmud and his family.
It also has good cause to be running scared of the scornful public backlash against recent attempts by the 'Datuk Trio' to implicate Anwar Ibrahim in yet another sex scandal on top of the government's second try to nail him on trumped-up sodomy charges.
Even more scary for BN are the increasingly seething public suspicions surrounding an endless series of scandals, from the murder of Altantuya Shariibuu to all the dodgy deaths in police and MACC custody and the strange inability of anti-corruption 'efforts' to net any big fish in these and all the massive financial scams like, to mention just a random few, the PKFZ, Bakun Dam and Scorpene submarines rip-offs.
And now BN has even more reason than ever to be very, very nervous as it witnesses the downfall of similar regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and the bringing of top-level malefactors in these countries to justice.
Long-running BN-style regimes are in terrible trouble in Libya and Yemen too, and even in Syria the supremely arrogant President Assad has been reduced to frantically promising reforms like ending 40 years of 'emergency' law, instigating a two-party political system and permitting press freedom.
BN has been promising reforms for donkey's years too, of course, but has delivered nothing but pretence and propaganda. For example, despite claiming to be in favour of a press "that the nation can be proud of," Najib Razak continues to preside over a complex of completely BN-biased mainstream 'news' media.
Even the Internet in Malaysia, which former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad promised would never be censored, has recently been ranked by the UN's Freedom House way down the list, in the likes of the situation in Pakistan, Russia, Zimbabwe and Mubarak's Egypt, and as at best only "partly free".
And as a result of the recent DOS attacks on Malaysiakini and Sarawak Report, Malaysia will doubtless sink even lower in next year's rankings.
Not to mention even lower, if possible, in the estimation of the more than two million unique visitors to Malaysiakini and countless more to other pro-democracy sites every month.
But DOS attacks on truth-telling Internet sites, as dire as they may be, are just part of a much bigger, uglier picture. This is because BN has, over the decades, mounted and maintained DOS attacks on virtually every institution in Malaysia.
Mahathir staged a massive DOS attack on the judiciary back in 1988 with his sacking of the then Lord President of the (then) Federal Court, Salleh Abas, and simultaneously mounted a deadly DOS attack on civil society by having dozens of opponents arrested and detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) in his notorious Operasi Lalang.
The Malaysian police force has also staged a long-running series of DOS attacks on the populace by the series of home ministers and inspector-generals of police who took charge, all dedicated to serving the interests of the BN regime, rather than the people of Malaysia in general.
And denial of service (DOS), or denial of the sort of honest, efficient, straightforward service Malaysian citizens have the right to expect, is also the name of the game in the other civil services, such as the Malaysian Customs, for example, whose corrupt officers have cost Malaysia billions of ringgit by helping themselves to duit kopi instead of doing their job of collecting duties.
Across the entire government and civil service, there's no telling how much the BN denial-of-service (DOS) system has stolen from the Malaysian economy over the years, let alone cost the Malaysian people in lost income, opportunities, amenities and benefits.
So it's high time for Malaysians to follow the shining examples of their fellows in Tunisia, Egypt and other former fascist kleptocracies, and get rid of the criminal scum whose DOS attacks rob them of not just basic human rights to speak, write, read and hear the truth, but of proper protection against perversions of justice, predatory police and plunder by politicians and public servants.
It's high time that Malaysians fought back against BN. Starting by avenging denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on pro-democracy websites and bloggers by staging denial-of-purchase (DOP) attacks on the BN regime's lying newspapers, and denial-of-viewing (DOV) and denial-of-listening (DOL) assaults on BN's mendacious air media.
Simultaneously, every citizen can wage his or her personal denial-of-bribes (DOB) campaign against corrupt police and other functionaries.
But such DOS, DOP, DOV, DOL and DOB attacks, as satisfying as they would be to an extent, would be only preliminaries to the forthcoming mother of all opportunities to repay BN for decades of denial-of-service (DOS): an overwhelming denial-of-votes (DOV) at the forthcoming general election.
In other words, there's only one way to deal for once and for all with BN's perennial denial-of-honesty (DOH), denial-of-justice (DOJ), denial-of-accountability (DOA) and denial-of-service (DOS) to Malaysia, and that's for all Malaysians to unite in treating this rotten regime to a killer denial-of-government (DOG) attack.
Let's face it, any government that can 'win' an election only by silencing the few free voices of truth on top of gerry-mandering the electoral boundaries, manipulating postal voting, employing the police and other civil services to browbeat the opposition and intimidate its supporters, exposing the people to the massive propaganda power of the pro-regime mainstream media, and bribing voters hand-over-fist with public money, has to be running very scared indeed.
BN certainly has lots to be scared of. Like growing public resentment of its massive and systematic corruption, as symbolised by the obscene wealth of freshly re-elected Sarawak Chief Minister, Abdul 'The Termite' Taib Mahmud and his family.
It also has good cause to be running scared of the scornful public backlash against recent attempts by the 'Datuk Trio' to implicate Anwar Ibrahim in yet another sex scandal on top of the government's second try to nail him on trumped-up sodomy charges.
Even more scary for BN are the increasingly seething public suspicions surrounding an endless series of scandals, from the murder of Altantuya Shariibuu to all the dodgy deaths in police and MACC custody and the strange inability of anti-corruption 'efforts' to net any big fish in these and all the massive financial scams like, to mention just a random few, the PKFZ, Bakun Dam and Scorpene submarines rip-offs.
And now BN has even more reason than ever to be very, very nervous as it witnesses the downfall of similar regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and the bringing of top-level malefactors in these countries to justice.
Long-running BN-style regimes are in terrible trouble in Libya and Yemen too, and even in Syria the supremely arrogant President Assad has been reduced to frantically promising reforms like ending 40 years of 'emergency' law, instigating a two-party political system and permitting press freedom.BN has been promising reforms for donkey's years too, of course, but has delivered nothing but pretence and propaganda. For example, despite claiming to be in favour of a press "that the nation can be proud of," Najib Razak continues to preside over a complex of completely BN-biased mainstream 'news' media.
Even the Internet in Malaysia, which former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad promised would never be censored, has recently been ranked by the UN's Freedom House way down the list, in the likes of the situation in Pakistan, Russia, Zimbabwe and Mubarak's Egypt, and as at best only "partly free".
And as a result of the recent DOS attacks on Malaysiakini and Sarawak Report, Malaysia will doubtless sink even lower in next year's rankings.
Not to mention even lower, if possible, in the estimation of the more than two million unique visitors to Malaysiakini and countless more to other pro-democracy sites every month.But DOS attacks on truth-telling Internet sites, as dire as they may be, are just part of a much bigger, uglier picture. This is because BN has, over the decades, mounted and maintained DOS attacks on virtually every institution in Malaysia.
Mahathir staged a massive DOS attack on the judiciary back in 1988 with his sacking of the then Lord President of the (then) Federal Court, Salleh Abas, and simultaneously mounted a deadly DOS attack on civil society by having dozens of opponents arrested and detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) in his notorious Operasi Lalang.
The Malaysian police force has also staged a long-running series of DOS attacks on the populace by the series of home ministers and inspector-generals of police who took charge, all dedicated to serving the interests of the BN regime, rather than the people of Malaysia in general.
And denial of service (DOS), or denial of the sort of honest, efficient, straightforward service Malaysian citizens have the right to expect, is also the name of the game in the other civil services, such as the Malaysian Customs, for example, whose corrupt officers have cost Malaysia billions of ringgit by helping themselves to duit kopi instead of doing their job of collecting duties.
Across the entire government and civil service, there's no telling how much the BN denial-of-service (DOS) system has stolen from the Malaysian economy over the years, let alone cost the Malaysian people in lost income, opportunities, amenities and benefits.
So it's high time for Malaysians to follow the shining examples of their fellows in Tunisia, Egypt and other former fascist kleptocracies, and get rid of the criminal scum whose DOS attacks rob them of not just basic human rights to speak, write, read and hear the truth, but of proper protection against perversions of justice, predatory police and plunder by politicians and public servants.
It's high time that Malaysians fought back against BN. Starting by avenging denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on pro-democracy websites and bloggers by staging denial-of-purchase (DOP) attacks on the BN regime's lying newspapers, and denial-of-viewing (DOV) and denial-of-listening (DOL) assaults on BN's mendacious air media.Simultaneously, every citizen can wage his or her personal denial-of-bribes (DOB) campaign against corrupt police and other functionaries.
But such DOS, DOP, DOV, DOL and DOB attacks, as satisfying as they would be to an extent, would be only preliminaries to the forthcoming mother of all opportunities to repay BN for decades of denial-of-service (DOS): an overwhelming denial-of-votes (DOV) at the forthcoming general election.
In other words, there's only one way to deal for once and for all with BN's perennial denial-of-honesty (DOH), denial-of-justice (DOJ), denial-of-accountability (DOA) and denial-of-service (DOS) to Malaysia, and that's for all Malaysians to unite in treating this rotten regime to a killer denial-of-government (DOG) attack.
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