- Distributors complained of having books arbitarily seized at borders by over-zealous customs officials. The thing is the customs officers are breaking the law, anyone can see you can't just intervene in someones business they are able to sue for compensation if a book is not officially banned, they should also receicve a written explanation if is not, but the officer seizes it anyway. But the small guys don't have the money to challenge them and the big guys are also trapped they can't afford the government disrupting their business so they self-censor themselves not even bringing in books which in anyway might be challenged. The writers commitee is looking to bring a test case.

- It was a bit boring, the 3 speakers spoke of the importance of the repealing of the PPPA act making at one point the observation, that ever year they say this but nothing ever changes.

- 1. Olive Branch - You can't expect frightened politicians just to abolish the PPPA. Their FEAR and self-justification is that the PPPA absolutely stops of people telling lies about them .. what will you replace it with ? If there was a strong journalism code of ethics then there would be security for them and they could abolish the PPPA.

- 2. Will technology make the PPPA obsolete ? The internet makes so many news sources available it makes it seem difficult to suppress "bad stories".
However it's important to realise that can indeed try to censor the internet.
- i. they could deny organisations avertising revenue
-ii. They could physically censor the net. Now the old government promised not to do this, but a new government could easily reverse this promise particularly if they engineer a provactive act... "you see we had no option other than to censor the internet, after people organised that violent demonstration ! Public safety ! we must protect the public. ..blah blah blah"

- From the Book festival we ended up with a load of books for the HC House Library Shelf - from the 'book give-away' plus another 6 from Bookcrossing.com mainly about management account. I guess Bookcrossing.com is like a library without a building ie a system where users exchange books between themselves.

BCID 976-6100403 , 375-6100405 , 473-6100411 , 319-1732969 , 652-6100449 , 015-6100421

- and a couple of magazines from aliran.com

- There was some good Orang Asli videos, but there were technical problems and was only able to see the one about the Penan People having their ancestral lands stolen by logging companies with the help of plainclothes policeman explaining "see the boundaries are always moving from year to year so the mapping you tribal people did from 10 years ago no longer counts" - the government claims it's given them a 4 million rm community hall, but it's just a roofless shack.

Reita gave me the DVD about the Kelau Dam Project - called : Drowned Forests Damned Lives from coac.org.my

- people standing at the back whilst there are empty seats at front. I wouldn't put out all chairs until the 5 front rows are filled up. The next 5 rows just leave a stack of chairs at the end of the row.

PS if in the event less people turn up then 1. the room doesn't look empty and 2. it easier to collect up the chairs afterwards as you won't have put most of them out.