Thailand Jails Dissident For What People Thought He Would Have Said 325
patiwat writes "A Thai court has convicted a man for censoring himself. In a 2010 anti-government rally, Yossawarit Chuklom said several people were against the dissolution of Abhisit Vejjajiva's government. He mentioned a few names, and then put his hand over his mouth and said he wasn't brave enough to continue. A court ruled that he would have mentioned King Bhumibol Adulyadej — thus earning him a conviction for insulting the King, who is constitutionally banned from any political role."
King Bhumibol Adulyade (Score:5, Informative)
King Bhumibol Adulyade enjoys licking my toes.
Re:How does cuba have an embargo (Score:5, Informative)
Hard disks - lots of them come from Thailand. Easier to ensure that sensitive technology is kept in-house and not leaked to up-and-coming competitors.
Re:But that is quite logical... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the king of Thailand is just as censored as anyone else. He's not allowed to speak to his people, and is always silent and muted in public and on TV. All the lese majeste laws are created and enforced by parliament. The Thai monarchy is very much a symbolic post... the only political thing the royal family appears to do occasionally is send flowers to their favored candidates, or sometimes the news media picks up on a certain color they're wearing and interprets it to mean that they support this group - which has led to some hilarity as everyone else starts wearing whatever color to associate themselves with whatever support.
The king is just some Harvard-educated jazz musician. He's probably pretty groovy, we'd never know. Some people blame the queen for starting some of the political upheavals, but I'm guessing it's mostly due to misogyny.
Re:How does cuba have an embargo (Score:5, Informative)
Presumably because people are taught from birth that communism is evil but it's okay to invite monarchist totalitarians to the barbeque? And if they're rich and likely to bring plenty booze, so much the better.
One of the fundamental principles of communism is that it must spread and take over the entire world. Marx himself said that. Communism inherently cannot co-exist peacefully with non-communist countries, not if they are sticking to their ideology even moderately. That's why people are taught from birth that communism is evil. Because it is.
The relevant quote from the end of the Communist Manifesto (Chapter 4 if you want to find it yourself):
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
OTOH, most monarchical totalitarians are perfectly willing to let everyone else live in peace so long as their power isn't threatened. Pragmatically speaking, most countries are fine with that so long as they keep their humanitarian fouls to a relative minimum. Other countries only turn their attention towards them when they either a) expand their power by conquering other countries (or threatening to), or b) start murdering lots of people in cold blood. And even those can be ignored if it's politically convenient, since starting war over someone else's problem is... well, frowned upon, at least after the fact, when people notice the bill.
Re:Bhumibol Adulyadej must be a giant (Score:4, Informative)
I think maybe you're uninformed. The king doesn't "allow" such crap to happen. The kind is obviously a figurehead, and a tool. I've never heard that the king accused anyone of badmouthing him. It's all the nincompoops who run the government doing it. If Kingy-Poo objects, those more powerful members of the government who enjoy using the king as their tool will set him straight.
I'd rather be a dirt-poor nobody, right here in America, than to be in Bhum-boy's position.
(Who thinks that Thailand will try to have me extradited for calling their king a Bhum-boy?)
Re:How does cuba have an embargo (Score:3, Informative)
communism tends to be aggressive towards you.
Citation needed. Seriously.
You have got to be kidding. Kulaks [wikipedia.org], a history of the KGB. [wikipedia.org]
This is not to suggest that (so-called) Capitalism isn't every bit as aggressive [wikipedia.org], or that monarchies are any better.
Geez man, read a book!
Re:How does cuba have an embargo (Score:5, Informative)
The USSR was not a communist state. It claimed to be, but plain fact demonstrated it was not. Read a book.
The USSR was a totalitarian state, which fully explains the Kulaks and KGB without any need to implicate communism.
So your conclusions are based on a false premise from the start.
Re:King Bhumibol Adulyade (Score:4, Informative)
Thailand's wealth comes from exports. Without exports, it'd be nothing much. It's not about some bad outside world supposedly trying to change the Thailand's system. It's about your customers telling you to put up or shut up, in a roundabout way. Thailand is free to ignore it at its own peril, pretty much. They are participating in global trade, with it come both benefits and obligations. You're deluded if you think otherwise.
Greece, Italy and Spain were also offering everybody a chance in exactly the same way: offering crazy wages and benefits for little productivity. See where that went? Thailand is going there if a joe random hat seller can make $2k in profits. Unless you're just saying that your GF is in a very lucrative spot and sells high-end goods, which doesn't make her representative of what's going on then, does it? Just like a $100k/year NYC panhandler isn't representative of how most jobless have it.
Never mind the fact that no matter what the King has done, everyone should be free to "shit" on him. It's a basic freedom. You don't need to trade it off for the other greatness bestowed by royalty (supposedly, as you claim). One doesn't preclude the other. There are other relatively successful kingdoms out there where such freedoms exist, duh.