Asia's Freedom Blog

It's Jeff Ooi after all. I do rather regret missing the talk he was doing when he came to the law faculty. But anyway, the reason for the link is because of the Malaysian 'Abu Ghraib' Video as it seems to have been named for the striking resemblance of women in uniform abusing naked person.

And he has links to other links.

There's really nothing to more to add to the already huge amount of analysis and news that's out there. But I like the point Mr. Ooi made, that technology can be a great impetus for transparency and accountability. At the risk of making a tautological argument, any system that fundamentally relies on the control of information and on the asymmetry of knowledge is necessarily fatally undermined when information becomes freer and more egalitarian. Thus, fax machine into Eastern Europe, hence kablooie USSR.

This, of course, is not to deny that a system can remain resistent to change and slowly adapt itself to maintain its chokehold on power but it's nigh inevitable. If one does not accept that democracy creates wealth then one MUST accept that wealth creates democracy given the immense correlation between the two variables. I personally think its a self-reinforcing cycle. If you want the causative links behind these two hypothesis, just search for democracy on this blog.