Censoring Rais.

Rais Yatim wanted to impose censorship of the internet. He used the argument of protecting the public's morality as his main reasoning. In doing so, he comes out from a position of believing his is of higher scruples. He says he is targeting child pornography and porno in general.

PM Najib immediately came out with a statement that the government does not intend to do anything of that sort. Rais's plan was short-circuited.

What has Rais done? By saying what he did, he has shown to us, despite his cultivated cosmopolitanism, he is conservative in thoughts and falls back on the easy route- when in doubt, use force. Using coercion in the age of reason seems a discordant position to take. He therefore places himself at odds with the libertarianism of the PM. That makes him, an oddball in the emerging leadership thinking of the PM. I wouldn't be surprised come the next cabinet reshuffle, Rais will ride into the sunshine.

I shall not dwell into the arguments on whether the internet ought to be censored or not. I do hope it is sufficient for me to state at this juncture that the internet is the last frontier, where the ordinary man can exercise almost complete democracy. Rais yatim plans to take that away, first by imposing state morality on us.

The way Rais Yatim conducts himself would have qualified him as a cabinet member during President Roosevelt's New Deal days in the 1930's. His answer to all ills is to the blame it on the free market competitive capitalism. That justifies further and enlarged role of the government. Can the government become our father and mother? Can it replace the family unit as the incubator of desirable values?

The language may have changed but the main idea hasn't. The main idea is the government has to intervene in the cause of public interest. This contradicts the declaration of the PM that the age where government knows best is over. The government decides what is good and what isn't for society. The welfare of society depends on benevolent do-gooders like himself of course.

Rai's yatim's intended action over the internet mirrors policy maker's response to economic depression. During the depression of 1930's for example, the recession was blamed on the greed of rapacious and evil businessmen. To overcome that, the answer is for more direct government involvement, more command and control over economic direction. The whole thing is blamed on the failure of the capitalist system. This can be overcome, it was insisted by central planning and command centre control economics.

Although we see the crude way of controlling the economy through central planning commissars and nationalising industries have been largely discredited, the tentacles of command centre control economics are still evident. They take the form of regulations, quota, licenses and a list of sanctions here and there.

The same tactics are employed in areas other than economics. In the media industry for example. Yellow culture and whatever the term incorporates is the result of the free market system. Freedom of ideas and speech must be curtailed. Nowadays the language has changed but the desire to control others remained lurking behind even within the minds of supposed liberals and intellectuals. Rais blames the evils of the internet on the climate of permissiveness. That too is a product of the free market system. To overcome this, Rais says, the government must censor the internet.

Rais yatim will do anything to upstage anyone to impress the boss. As lord over what news reaches the masses, he says, the government is considering filtering the net. That means censorship of the internet. This of course means we intend to use more taxpayer's money to do something which the people themselves can do.

There is a more insidious plan here. Rais may be aware or oblivious to this. Any enlargement of the powers of the government that it already has a lot of will mean the monopolisation of news media. Censorship of the internet must be opposed because of one fundamental principle and reason. It is the last free frontier for alternative viewpoints.

We already have much curtailment on news. The defence minister recently stated that the only news which is ethically written is done by the MSM. Students overseas are encouraged to distance themselves from what are written in the blogs. They should instead concentrate on reading the MSM papers.

In this country, media is dominated by the people operating from Jalan Riong or Jalan Chan Sow Lin and wherever the TV stations operate from. There is already a sufficiently large collection of 'ethical' media producers able to churn our sanitised information to be lapped up by anyone who cares to read or listen and watch. We already have a situation where most of the media is owned by a small number of corporations. There is massive control on what we are able to see in mainstream media, and particularly in terms of the diversity of news viewpoints available to us.

The internet is the last free frontier. At present the internet actually affects news stories by providing dissonant information and infinite viewpoints. Once you censor the internet there's nowhere left to get information. It's all owned and then what we know of the world is controlled by its owners.

Once it gets started, there may be no stopping it.

Rais Yatim may prove to be just a lazy thinker. Defending the freedom of the internet requires indirect and subtle reasoning. It's easier to rule with an iron fist imposing 'our' morality on others. Indeed, there are some things that definitely SHOULD be censured, but that should not be an excuse justifying people to stop Thinking - least of all government-related organizations. For example, where is the desirable process of sorting the wheat from the chaff? Why must it become an "all or nothing" proposition? They either open the flood-gates all the way or leave them sealed shut. There is no such thing anymore as calculating the right amount of water to let out and then carefully measuring it.

As someone said, once it is accepted, it can and will be the basis for further incursions. First, we censure sexually explicit material as Rais has said. Then, the mosques exert pressure to censure anything about non-Muslim spirituality Of course, the medical and pharmaceutical mega-monopolies will want to censure anything about alternative medicine and cures then, we will probably see any and every kind of minority wanting to censure anything that is not "politically correct". The parade of special interests with their special agendas for censorship will parade across the internet like a swarm of army ants on the march through the Amazon jungles - and will leave the internet just about as bare, in its wake, too!

We are facing the contradictory nature of society's twin attitudes to the Internet; On the one hand it is seen as the cure to all of societies problems - not only is it expected to provide new jobs and solve economic problems but also we are told that it can provide solutions to social exclusion and now the digital divide; On the other hand it is seen as highly problematic - it is commonly supposed to be awash with pornography and to provide a home for racists and pedophiles and recently fears have been flamed that it is the place best suited for terrorist to ply their trade.

Should we censor the Internet? Before the internet age, I thought all these things were already in existent. Linda Lovelace was infamous or famous long before the internet age. She deep-throated herself into the pubescent minds of the public, censor or no censor. The industry, in which she was famous for, thrived despite censor.