Look! Who's Talking -Sense and Non-sense ?

Hantu Laut

Like everything else, you have the good and the bad.This world is not perfect, you can't have it all good.We should be happy if there are more good than bad.

Should a few rotten eggs make the whole basket of eggs inedible.Should we upset the applecart because we feel slighted by some idiotic remarks made by some equally idiotic people.

The government have always been known for not knowing what the left hand is doing when the right hand is busy.Two of a kind saying two different kinds.One to the left, one to the right.

See who is talking sense and who is talking nonsense.

Candle Light Vigils With A Flaw

Hantu Laut

The group against the ISA organise regular show of their anti ISA stand by having what they called candle light vigil in various locations in Peninsula Malaysia.

What they intend to achieve by this regular maniacal show of solidarity against the ISA is hard to tell.It's almost like banging your head against a brick wall trying to push an issue against a government that only aren't listening but reacted with negative responses.

I am not against the anti ISA vigils.That's not really the issue I am concerned with.It's fine if they confine the vigils only to adults.It's the children. I can see in many of those vigils the presence of children as young as 3-4 years old.Both organisers and parents should be taken to task for exposing their children to this kind of dangerous culture. They knew fully well they are breaking the law and knowing our police force who do not take kindly to illegal assembly those children could get hurt or got lost in a melee.

If those parents brought their children to use them as instruments of compassion so the police wouldn't arrest them because of the children than there is something seriously wrong with them.Those children should be at home in bed not out in the streets late at night to participate in political activities of their parents.

Those in Hindraf had also shown similar irresponsible behaviour by using children to write letters,messages and sent flowers to meet the Prime Minister to appeal for the release of the Hindraf detainees.Aren't those children too young to be used in a political struggle.

Those who organised the candle light vigils and those parents actively involved should open their conscience and think hard whether those children should be there in the first place and whether they should ignore the potential dangers they are putting those children into.

Paying for Eight Years of Bush’s Delusions

He should be tried by the World Court under the Geneva Convention after he stepped down as President.He has done more harm to world peace and the global economy than any other President or leader of any nation.He has killed more Muslims out of revenge and put Islamic nations in turmoil than any other President before him.He deserved to be locked up...... Hantu Laut.

By Robert Fisk

American lawyers defending six Algerians before a habeas corpus hearing in Washington this week learned some very odd things about U.S. intelligence after 9/11. From among the millions of “raw” reports from American spies and their “assets” around the world came a CIA Middle East warning about a possible kamikaze-style air attack on a U.S. navy base at a south Pacific island location. The only problem was that no such navy base existed on the island and no U.S. Seventh Fleet warship had ever been there. In all seriousness, a U.S. military investigation earlier reported that Osama bin Laden had been spotted shopping at a post office on a U.S. military base in east Asia.

That this nonsense was disseminated around the world by those tasked to defend the United States in the “war on terror” shows the fantasy environment in which the Bush regime has existed these past eight years. If you can believe that bin Laden drops by a shopping mall on an American military base, then you can believe that everyone you arrest is a “terrorist”, that Arabs are “terrorists”, that they can be executed, that living “terrorists” must be tortured, that everything a tortured man says can be believed, that it is legitimate to invade sovereign states, to grab the telephone records of everyone in America. As Bob Herbert put it in The New York Times a couple of years ago, the Bush administration wanted these records “which contain crucial documentation of calls for a Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Indiana, and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Alabama, to help in the search for Osama bin Laden”. There was no stopping Bush when it came to trampling on the US Constitution. All that was new was that he was now applying the same disrespect for liberty in America that he had shown in the rest of the world.

But how is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the U.S. itself? John F Kennedy once said that “the United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.” After Bush’s fear-mongering and Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and secret renditions, how does Obama pedal his country all the way back to Camelot? Our own dear Gordon Brown’s enthusiasm to Hoover up the emails of the British people is another example of how Lord Blair’s sick relationship with Bush still infects our own body politic. Only days before the wretched president finally departs from us, new U.S. legislation will ensure that citizens of his lickspittle British ally will no longer be able to visit America without special security clearance. Does Bush have any more surprises for us before 20 January? Indeed, could anything surprise us any more?

Obama has got to close Guantanamo. He’s got to find a way of apologising to the world for the crimes of his predecessor, not an easy task for a man who must show pride in his country; but saying sorry is what – internationally – he will have to do if the “change” he has been promoting at home is to have any meaning outside America’s borders. He will have to re-think – and deconstruct – the whole “war on terror”. He will have to get out of Iraq. He will have to call a halt to America’s massive airbases in Iraq, its $600m embassy. He will have to end the blood-caked air strikes we are perpetrating in southern Afghanistan – why, oh, why do we keep slaughtering wedding parties? – and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths: that America can no longer remain uncritical in the face of Israeli army brutality and the colonisation for Jews and Jews only on Arab land. Obama will have to stand up at last to the Israeli lobby (it is, in fact, an Israeli Likud party lobby) and withdraw Bush’s 2004 acceptance of Israel’s claim to a significant portion of the West Bank. U.S. officials will have to talk to Iranian officials – and Hamas officials, for that matter. Obama will have to end U.S. strikes into Pakistan – and Syria.

Indeed, there’s a growing concern among America’s allies in the Middle East that the U.S. military has to be brought back under control – indeed, that the real reason for General David Petraeus’ original appointment in Iraq was less to organise the “surge” than it was to bring discipline back to the 150,000 soldiers and marines whose mission – and morals – had become so warped by Bush’s policies. There is some evidence, for example, that the four-helicopter strike into Syria last month, which killed eight people, was – if not a rogue operation – certainly not sanctioned by Washington or indeed by US commanders in Baghdad.Read more.........

Bloggers' Code Of Ethics,Why Not ?

Hantu Laut

Although I hate to admit that Minister of Home Affairs Syed Hamid Albar would be the last person I would agree with, I wouldn't put aside his proposal of code of ethics for bloggers.It depends on how we go about doing it.

Self-censoring one own writing is not too difficult if we can use the same principle as when we need to use our self-restraint from doing something that can harm us.The problem with some writers they lose self-control when they are reproachful and start using malicious rumours, lies and God's forsaken language against those they are not politically aligned with or those they have an axe to grind with, throwing caution to the wind, without an care and consideration for the sensitivities of others.

Public figures are subject to scrutiny and criticism but such reproach should be within the bounds of acceptable social behaviour.

If you write like this not only you need code of ethics you seriously need code of conduct.If yours is a political blog than I think you should stay within the confine of the subject and conduct your language accordingly.If your are running a smut site than such smutty materials are acceptable and nobody should complain because you target specific audience.

As Rocky Bru said it is not easy to initiate let alone accomplish which I completely agree with.It's the same with any other rules there are bound to be people who don't give a damn and break it.So to pass a general consensus code of ethics among bloggers wouldn't work, it would be just academic, an exercise in futility.

Laws are made to deter but they are also meant to be broken.That's why you still have people committing murders and other crimes.What we need is a little bit of education in self-censorship or in another word self-restraint and a self-imposed code of ethics.Bloggers associations can play a part in bringing awareness and to educating bloggers on the proper ethics.

Unlike mainstream media in blogging you are reporter,editor and publisher rolled into one.There is no one to edit, accept or reject your material.

You are the boss.