Hacked by Indonesia

From TV Smith's Dua Sen ...

Why did the Indonesian hackers insert a blog onto the afternoon paper's site?

Jawabannya, dan more web-defacing, di sini, bung.

Home Minister kena cow-cow!!

Ah, life's irony. So I'm here awaiting sahur, reading articles on the Internet, including of this pro-Singapore news portal that's giving Hishammuddin Hussein, our Home Minister, a treatment equaled probably only by that which the Shah Alam Seksyen 23 protesters had given the poor cow's head on 28/8. Read, in particular, Hisham needs reality check, an editorial based on a heavily-editorialized Hisham defends cow-head protesters.

The irony? The Malaysian Insider, the said portal that's drubbing Hisham cow-cow (actually it's kow-kow, which makes the drubbing not a mere drubbing but "a really good drubbing"), is powered by an ex-Singapore journo who is a major partner in Fox Communications, which is a Malaysian PR agency run by two PRs (of Singapore and Australia, if I'm not misled) that has a RM1,000-a-day contract to service the Polis Di Raja Malaysia. The PDRM, or the Royal Malaysian Police, comes under the Home Ministry.

And who's the Home Minister again?!

p.s. What's worse is that what Hishammuddin said about the protesters and the cow's head isn't even new; the Malay Mail reported it on Tuesday, here.

PKFZ: Special task force to brief Najib tomorrow

RM1.5 billion for nothing. The special task force set up by the Transport Ministry in June to investigate the fiasco and restore confidence in PKFZ has completed its job and, together with the police and the MACC, will brief the Prime Minister tomorrow of its findings, including fraudulent claims and other irregularities amounting to some RM1.5 billion.

Whose heads will roll?

A Letter from the Home Ministry

Nasihat. Today, I received a letter from the KDN re our 24/8 article MIC battles caste politics which some quarters in the party blamed for a demonstration against the paper in Petaling Jaya the next day by some 100 youths of MIC and over 20 police reports lodged nationwide against the Malay Mail, including by a leader of a newspaper vendor.

The key word in the letter is "nasihat". It's an advice for us NOT to publish similar offending articles in the future. We are also duly reminded of the guidelines issued by the Ministry from time to time.

I can't say I like the tone of the letter, at least not more than the letters from KDN which I used to receive back then. But what I can say is that the KDN under this new Minister has handled the matter quite well: queries were cool and collected, nobody was blowing things out of propertions. Can't say the same thing about some of the MIC leaders, though.

I can also say that despite the letter, The Malay Mail won't ignore issues of caste politics. It's an old issue that has remained relevant till today. [Read the piece in Malaysiakini here to know how old this issue is].

p.s. Earlier this afternoon, the Malay Mail's editor-at-large Frankie d'Cruz and writer Kharleez Zubin spent some time at the PJ police headquarters in relations to this case. Frankie gave his statement after an hour-long Q & A session, while Kharleez was in there for about 90 minutes.