Critical Thoughts

Following some trends over the weekend, I notice that some people are initiating a “boycott” against PPS simply because I now own it through my company, VCTech Network. Some have even been touting that a particular, relatively new blog aggregator will be a potential “challenger” to PPS. I did my homework and I can tell them right now that they are wasting their time in trying to boycott a local giant. You can see the PPS statistics if you don’t believe me.

But one of the reasons given for this “boycott” is because of their unwarranted fear that I would ban anyone who disagrees with me publicly on PPS, on the premise that I banned one uncivilised lout from it. Unfortunately this notion is simply mistaken, because that thug was the only person I have banned from the system thus far. I did unban several blogs from the system and of them was Sze Hau’s blog, who was banned (unfairly, in my opinion) for a technical glitch which was not his fault. Its good to see that someone appreciates my efforts to improving PPS. Its not like I am getting any monetary benefit from unbanning him or anyone else who was previously banned by PPS.

If banning an anonymous, uncivilised bastard who was born from the gutter is going to eclipse the fact that I unbanned a decent person, so be it. If this is going cause me to be labelled as an “extremist”, so be it. I really do not care. So be it.

Digging through the (now defunct) Project Petaling Street Blog, I came across a mention of yours truly. When the statement was first made, it garnered such unwarranted controversy that I decided to remove it. Not because I did not want to stand by what I had said, but because I find that Malaysians’ reaction to the statement silly, emotionally hamstrung and bordered on immaturity. The fact that Pak Lah was at the height of his popularity did not help my cause either.

Four years later, the batik/nyonya kebaya/songket fiasco is long dead and buried and Pak Lah has resigned retired in disgrace. Nobody talks or cares about Endon anymore either. So much for the flak that I received back in 2005. Poetic justice?

I was actually on her side when she was unfairly slapped with a police report for “insulting royalty”, simply for translating an article into English from Tulang Besi’s blog. Now I wonder whether this person deserves any real sympathy, considering her declared open war against me and asking everyone to ban PPS. Why? Because I exercised my administrative right to ban an uncivilised lout and I made a civic duty by lodging a police report for a slander against me (i.e., tattoos and “Maria Ozawa” lies). Are doing these a crime in Malaysia, I ask?

Sadly, Jed Yoong, an Asia Sentinel reporter, felt fit to repeat those lies without making contact with me or checking out the story first (that is a basic journalistic ethic which she purposely ignored since it involves me). This was what I said on her blog before she decided to “ban” me, and frankly, I really don’t care. If I were a vicious, mean-spirited, 40-something expired medicine spinster who has no life ahead of me, I would probably do a tit-for-tat and just ban her blog from PPS, but that is just so callous and low-spirited. I will not do that because banning someone just for disagreeing with me is wrong. “ShadowFox” was banned for promoting slander against me, being an outright racist and posting inflammatory content and hatred towards Muslims as stated in the police report and for no other reason.

As for Dr. Dzulkifli Razak’s purported “statement”, they probably made it up out of thin air too. I doubt that I am so important (I am a life member of PAS but do not hold any position in the party) that it warrants the attention of an Executive Council member of PAS and even if it is true, so what? Perhaps the good Doctor was misinformed by these people about the situation. Besides, this issue is not about PAS in the first place. Talk about the classic straw man argument and poisoning the well. Even if I were from PKR or UMNO, it would not make a single difference. Which political party I am from does not factor in the malicious slander and lies that this “ShadowFox” coward and now, Jed Yoong, is repeating and promulgating against me.

Shame on them, really.

P.S. For all your talk about free speech, Jed Yoong, your declaration to ban me from your blog just further shows the hypocrisy of your actions. Shame on you, again. I didn’t really care for visiting your low-class blog before and I am not going to start now.

P.P.S. Ever since I took over administration of PPS, I can confirm that there are 11 new signups for the blog aggregator. If some extremist sections of Malaysian society want to ban it simply because they don’t like my face, hey, by all means you can boycott it. Its going to be their loss however, once PPS has a new design and I pull in more traffic to the site.

Updated June 02.2010: Successfully took over her domain and turned it into a web directory, kah kah kah kah. See the news story here.

Yes, I did ban the anonymous coward who calls himself “ShadowFox” from Project Petaling Street (he is the only one banned from PPS, by the way) and make no apologies for doing so. I personally do not feel that he is an individual who will give a meaningful contribution to the overall change that I have planned for PPS, which is epitomised in the tagline “the face of the Malaysian blogosphere”. Honestly, do you want this anonymous, pompous, rude, idiotic, hypocritical, coarse and uncivilised scumbag to represent “the face” of the local blogosphere and Malaysia in general?

That, plus the fact that when I acquired PPS, I found out by serendipity that this anonymous person, just like everyone else, left a trail of IPs that would lead back to him. There is a chokeful of “ShadowFox’s” IPs embedded in the database. I checked his blog just now and he has kindly “provided” the URLs to the blog posts which will be the basis of a police report that I will be making against him (and this, I have been itching to do so for months). And I have printed those blog posts out in full colour, so now he cannot escape from the evidence either.

I have to thank the fella for being so dumb as to incriminate himself openly. Now that I have everything I need to make a police report, I am sure the police will take a keen interest in him. A very, very keen interest, indeed.

P.S. I found out that even Singaporean bloggers dislike this person and want him banned. I don’t know why Malaysians are giving me flak over something which even Singaporeans can agree with me. I am standing by my decision to ban this person forever.

Incoming search terms:

• power shadowfox -lyrics -mp3 -download -video -youtube -rhapsody

I did some SEO work last night for Project Petaling Street after the successful takeover (some people who think that I am a “right-wing nutjob” might consider it a kudeta….I don’t care) of the site. From a SEO perspective, PPS has little to no SEO work done for it and hence it does not rank properly for certain important keywords (“blog aggregator”, “blogtal”, “ping blog”) in its niche at all. Frankly, I am amazed at how PPS could survive this long with no SEO work done for it. So I am going to take it upon myself to do some more SEO and hire people to submit the site to web directories, social bookmarking, etc. The idea is to attract traffic and showcase PPS as “the face of the Malaysian blogosphere”, just as the tagline says.

And for those who are wondering what will happen to PPS from this point onwards, the first order of the day is to change that ugly default skin to a more slick look before I even think of the next step. The preview of that template is already available online, do take a look!