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170,000 'like' Facebook page urging Malaysia PM to go
by Staff Writers
Kuala Lumpur (AFP) July 13, 2011

A Facebook petition has seen more than 170,000 people back a call for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to quit, days after an electoral reform rally was broken up by police firing tear gas.

The page titled "100,000 People Request Najib Tun Razak Resignation" was set up on Saturday, the same day police arrested more than 1,600 people during the mass protest in the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Backed by opposition parties, electoral reform group Bersih 2.0 mobilised thousands of people to hit the streets in the biggest rally in four years, piling the pressure on Najib with elections widely expected next year.

Following the demonstration, the page attracted around 300 "likes" per minute, hitting its 100,000 target early Monday and the number has been steadily increasing with the page showing 172,868 "likes" on Wednesday morning.

"I don't understand why the harshness, the beatings (by police) and the tear gas," according to a post by supporter Sofie Muhammad on the page.

"The crowd didn't even throw stones at the shops, why is the government afraid? All we want is free elections."

Others felt the prime minister was too far removed from what was happening on the ground.

"Najib is out of touch. He cannot understand pain of tear gas, irritation of chemical water, pain of being kicked and beaten up by (police)," said Longyao Phang in another posting.

Bersih activists on Tuesday called for a royal probe into the electoral system, which the opposition says favours Najib's Barisan Nasional coalition, which has ruled Malaysia for half a century but saw its majority slashed in the previous general election, in 2008.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said the push by concerned democracy activists "augurs well for the future of this country."

"I would appeal to them to continue to monitor developments, exercise their right, have the courage of conviction to stand for what is right," he added.

Najib, who is in Britain on an official visit, has accused Anwar of masterminding the rally and manipulating its organisers to beef up support for his ambition to become the next prime minister.

The premier and his administration have faced previous online attacks with a Facebook petition in October calling for a million Malaysians to reject plans for a 100-storey megatower in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysians are avid users of social network and micro-blogging sites.

A study by global research firm TNS last year showed Malaysians to be the most popular people on the Internet, with an average of 233 friends in their social networks compared with 68 in China and just 29 in Japan.




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Chinese websites fall victim to new controls: study
Beijing (AFP) July 13, 2011 - The number of Chinese websites fell dramatically last year after the government tightened controls on the Internet, according to a new study by a leading state-run research institute.

China has the world's biggest online population with 457 million Internet users and the web has become a forum to express opinions in a way rarely seen in the official media.

But Beijing also operates some of the world's toughest web censorship, with a system known as the "Great Firewall of China" blocking access to any content deemed unacceptable.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said there were 1.91 million websites operating in China at the end of 2010, 41 percent fewer than a year earlier, attributing the change to stronger regulation.

"Although the Internet is posing some problems for new media, our regulation is becoming stronger, we have taken a very big step in this area," CASS media expert Liu Ruisheng was quoted as saying on the organisation's website.

Liu said China had "a very high level of freedom of online speech" and there had been few cases in recent years of sites being closed purely to control speech.

He said a crackdown launched by the government in 2009 under which thousands of sites were shut down was mainly aimed at putting a stop to online pornography, although critics have said other sites were also closed.

But while the number of websites dropped, Liu said Chinese webpages increased in 2010 by 60 billion, an increase of 78.6 percent over 2009.

"This means our content is getting stronger, while our supervision is getting more strict and more regulated," he said.

Earlier this year, Chinese web police censored Internet calls for Arab-style uprisings in China.

This month, the government also censored all postings on China's Twitter-like microblog Weibo that referred to former president Jiang Zemin, who is reported to be seriously ill.

The government has long viewed the health of the nation's top leaders as a state secret, due to concerns illness might affect the political stability in the ruling Communist Party.

Numerous overseas Chinese websites, including sites run by exiled political dissidents and rights groups, are blocked inside China, as are popular Internet portals such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.





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Company networks confront rising video tide
San Francisco (AFP) July 12, 2011
Companies are struggling to manage a rising tide of video use in workplaces, with employees expecting business networks to adapt to whatever mobile gadgets they prefer to use. "We see video being used more and more because they are very high impact and are such effective ways to convey company messages," said Melissa Webster, an analyst at International Data Corporation (IDC), a market intel ... read more


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