Malaysian Police Firing On Ethnic Indians With Tear Gas And Water Cannons

Tensions continue to escalate as a demonstration by the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) was fired upon by the Malaysian police with tear gas and water cannons loaded with chemical irritants.

No word that I can see on reports of injuries.

The Internal Security Minister is threatening to invoke the Internal Security Act as a last resort.

What is involved with this I have NO idea but hopefully Crankshaft and Ariel can fill us in.

AlJazeera is providing video coverage:



And the BBC has a great collection of pictures of the conflict.

No word yet on whether some sort of equivalent of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is in the works.

Obviously anything along the lines of a "March On Washington" isn't going to be terribly easy with the Malays insisting on initiating chemical warfare against the Indians ...

Crankshaft's Coverage:
Making All The Dumb Moves
Police Tear-Gas And Water Cannon Protestors
Washington Post On HINDRAF Rally

Ariel's Coverage:
Teary-eyed but Hopeful

Other Coverage:
Ethnic Indians go to the street in Malaysia, for the HINDRAF gathering - Colin Charles Agenda
Indian protest rocks Malaysia ahead of polls - ABC News
Hindu Protests in Malaysia - Friskodude

Malaysian Indian UK Lawsuit Ends Up on Yahoo "Odd" News

If you've been keeping up here at all, you know my two good, close, personal friends of Indian heritage in Malaysia are in the midst of a civil rights struggle with their majority Malay government not terribly dissimilar to the one between African-Americans and the majority Redneck governments of the American south in the 1950's and 1960's.

What I didn't know, however, was that this story constituted "Odd News", but, sure enough, I open up my overwhelming number of RSS feeds this morning and I find the Reuters story "Malaysian sues Britain over ethnic Indians' woes" filed under "Odd News".

The gist of the story is that there is a lawyer named Waytha Moorthy who is petitioning Queen Elizabeth II to appoint lawyers in the attempt to secure damages from England to the tune of $4 trillion for "colonial-era labour schemes" that brought the ancestors of the ethnic Indians to Malaysia in the first place.

Hmmmmm ... it will be interesting to see how far it goes, because it would of course leave open the possibility of the members of the African-American community suing England and Spain for dragging THEIR ancestors to North America and the Carribbean as outright chattel.

Of course the Malaysian Indians could also use an advocate parallel to Denmark Vesey who would not only advocate equal rights but also post huge screeds about the Illuminati and even being in AGREEMENT with DAVID DUKE ...

Yep ... Looks Like Verizon Is Airing ALL Your Business

In another story that I'm sure is going to leave my favorite conspiracy theorist friend going "toldja", it looks like Verizon has admitted to releasing tens of thousands of communication and business records relating to customers based on emergency requests from state and local law enforcement agencies without a court order or administrative subpoena.

Oh, fantastic.

And this is after I have told everyone how much everyone I know on Verizon wireless just loooooooooves the great signal coverage they get on Verizon.

Then there's the matter of our favorite "alternatively employed" blogger who seems to be getting all kinds of use out of Verizon's fiber optic service within a stone's throw of our nation's capital.

Now, it does look like some of the information requested WAS clearly of IMPORT - coughing up the IP of a child predator who had abducted a 13-year-old girl leading to his capture, and helping to track down a webcam being used to broadcast a six year old being sexually abused.

Yes, these are worthy endeavors of course, but someone better set up some sort Emergency Room of the judicial system so that these agencies can get in a request 24/7 with SOME modicum of checks and balances still in place.

Of course no one has a problem with a communications company coughing up information leading to the capture of a child sexual predator, but, if all it takes is one phone call to cough up this information, yes, someone COULD extract the top-secret Sun workstation configuration video from my conspiracist friend and we can't have THAT now, can we?

But, seriously ... this is some scary stuff. Obviously there are legitimate needs to obtain this information in a hurry, and obviously there ought to be more legit ways of going about allowing law enforcement access to this information ...

Student TASERED At John Kerry Speech

I'll be god damned.

And I was just trying to tell my Malaysian friends America wasn't like this ...

Looks like the mainstream media is just starting to pick this up this morning, but apparently a University of Florida student, Andrew Meyer, 21, was TASERED by police while trying to make a statement about the voting irregularies of the 2004 Presidential election during a townhall meeting with Senator John Kerry.

As of 9 a.m. this morning Andrew Meyer was released from jail.

More as this story develops ...

Related:
Student Tasered at Kerry speech - OCALA.com
UF student Tasered at Kerry forum - The Independent Florida Alligator
Student Tasered at Kerry Q & A - AM850.com
UF Student Tasered During John Kerry Speech - NBC6.net
Ask Kerry a Question ... Get Tasered - Townhall.com
Student Arrested, Tasered at Kerry Event - AP
University of Florida Student Tasered at John Kerry Event - Towleroad
Instant Political Martyrdom via YouTube - The New York Times
Document drop: The Andrew Meyer Taser Stunt police report - Michelle Malkin