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Thai Government To Close 400 Anti-government Sites
Will Lord writes "The Guardian is reporting that the Thai government plans to close down 400 anti-government websites and is asking ISPs to block 1,200 more. The response follows a declaration of a state of emergency which has seen troops take to the streets of Bangkok to police anti-government protests.
With web crackdowns like this becoming more and more frequent, do you think we will start to see similar (overt) activities from US and European governments?"
It won't be so much the government cracking down against *dissident* websites in the U.S., it will be the government and major broadband ISP's cracking down on websites based on file-sharing and "Intellectual Property" violations (at the behest of the MPAA/RIAA and their ilk). It's only a matter of time before typing in piratebay.org into your browser leads you to a page that says "This page is blocked for copyright violations" or something similar. The courts have already directly taken down sites like Torrentspy and Lokitorrent in the U.S.
People will learn to get around blocks with proxies, true, but how long before ISP's start blocking major proxy sites too? If my workplace can use Websense to block virtually any proxy list (and it's REALLY good at it too, BTW), there is nothing to stop my ISP from doing it too. And, like most people, I only have a couple of choices of broadband ISP's in my area (AT&T and Time Warner), so it's not like I could just take my business elsewhere.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That wouldn't be in the best interest of the people, right?
With web crackdowns like this becoming more and more frequent do you think we will start to see similar (overt) activities from US and European governments?
I doubt it ... although, I think China & Russia will follow suit (if they aren't already).
... although I was getting a bit frightened there when it seemed for the longest time that a small select elite few wanted the war in Iraq. When Bush was re-elected, there wasn't much I could say however. I feel like half the country wanted it so there's no sense in me violently reacting to this. I'm certain the Thai feel much differently about their situation.
From what I've read, the short of this state of emergency is simply an elite urban ruling class that supports the Thai monarchy and abolished the prime minister back in 2006. The elite class is calling itself the People's Alliance for Democracy even though they have little to nothing to do with fair representation across the entire state. Again, I don't live there, this is second hand information.
Basically, violent protests from both sides are going down and people are dying. Hopefully shutting down the sites that point out the obvious will stop these clashes. I sincerely doubt it, this will clearly be more justification for the rest of Thailand to revolt against the Monarchy.
Unfortunately, Russia & China could both be seen in this same light with Beijing & Moscow being islands of wealth in an otherwise third world country.
I doubt the US and much of Europe need to do this
If you can't see healthy dissent in a country to some extent--something is terribly wrong.
My work here is dung.
It's only a matter of time before typing in piratebay.org into your browser leads you to a page that says "This page is blocked for copyright violations" or something similar.
It won't say "This page is blocked..." it will say "Your IP address has been recorded and the FBI has been notified that you are attempting illegal activities."
If people rebelling is so much of a concern that you find yourself trying to regulate it, you just might be a facist!
Twinstiq, game news
The US government is controlled by financial interests. Whether the congressmen who vote because of local financial interests, or big oil causing wars.
So I would look to cases where sites are being cracked down where the sites protest against companies in an effective way. For example the RIAA, has been able to push DMCA and DRM through, which has been a disaster for all concerned. Yet they are now able to close down sites that share keytabs for guitars, many types of filesharing that in the past were just gray are now illegal.
I spent August 1973 to August 1974 in Utapao AFB in Thailand. Utapao was a short boat ride away from Phuket (pronounced "fuck it"; the Thais have a different alphabet than we do) At the time, Thailand was then a third world country. Utapao was in the southern part of the country, and there was no electricity nor running water nor natural gas in homes. The roads were unpaved. The business districts of Saddaheep and Bong Chong to the south of Utapao had electricity, but not the houses.
We had a Thai intern at work a few years ago, and from her account Thailand has industrialized and is no longer a third world country.
Once while riding a bhat bus (so called because it cost one bhat to ride; a bhat equaled five American pennies. The "bus" was a Japanese pickup truck with benches in the bed) flashing lights came up behind us, the driver skidded to a halt and took off running. I cursed and started to get out. "No!" a fellow passenger insisted, "Day keel you!" She was right; I watched in horror as Thai police shot the driver as he ran across the field.
I attributed it to the fact that Thaland was closer to Vietnam than St Louis is to Chicago, and the war was going on, but it appears that even though they may no longer be a third world country, their government is still authoritarian.
What's troublesome is my government, USA, seems to have been headed more and more towards authoritarianism and less free as time has gone on. So I fear that the answer to the question posed in TFS is "yes".
I wrote two K5 diaries about my Thailand experiences a few years ago, Gecko Poker and War and Sex if anyone is interested in hearing about the place.
While I was there I thought that a visit to Mars couldn't be stranger. Nothing was the same as here, even the dirt was a different color, the hills were a different shape, the vegetation was completely different. But the world seems to becoming more homogenous as time goes on.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
As soon as someone dips their toe in the water and realizes that, in addition to all of the other legal transgressions committed by the government in recent years, they can get away with this to.
By "get away," I mean that they can forcibly take down a website and the public reaction will be a bunch of angry blogging and a noisy protest march, both of which completely unfaze the government (nor does the direct action (aka vandalism, aka hissy-fits) of the so-called anarchists).
Considering that this was as much as anyone did when the government started a war under either deliberately false pretenses, cherry-picked intelligence, or outright incompetence, I think there are those already thinking about outright censorship, which they'll cloak in some kind of undead HUAC-style (except having to do with "terrorism") rhetoric. I don't think this is some dark conspiracy where they're twisting their mustaches and laughing easily. Rather, the urge of this government and the power behind it is a line on a project plan somewhere, mapped to some kind of sick bottom line.
The same was the result of monkeying with the electoral system, and the same is the result of the various crackdowns on protesters, illegal detention of supposed "combatants", extraordinary rendition, and so on. Angry blogging and impotent protests.
The issue here is that no one is really willing to risk their neck to confront the government, or those who are, are unwilling to commit legal or literal suicide in doing so when the most solidarity they can hope for is people posting a bunch of angry shit on the Internet when they are arrested or worse.
This administration is laughing in the face of our impotence as citzens. They've probably always felt this way about us, but are now doing it in our faces.
There's nothing we can do. We have made this military-industrial corporatist complex into a religion of sorts, and they have addicted us to it - our jobs count on it - and they've basically got our nuts in a vice. They've taken a whole lot already. You can bet they'll take more, and with the witless approval of between 40 and 60% of US citizens, too.
This is America, the corporations ARE the government.
No, they are not. Actually being the government would leave them with all the bothersome stuff, like the national debt or the responsibility to run a country and provide at least basic services to people. Also the whole problem of elections.
Being "just very influential" to the point of control is much better, as it leaves you with the profits, but without the costs.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"No, they are not. Actually being the government would leave them with all the bothersome stuff, like the national debt or the responsibility to run a country and provide at least basic services to people."
Except that none of these are the responsibility of a properly-functioning government. There is no right to "basic services". There is only the right to your life and your property, the protection of which is the function of the government. The debt can easily be handled if the government shuts down the services that it does not have the right to run, and sells off the infrastructure and equipment used to maintain and facilitate those services.
A company can persuade all it wants. It is only when an elected official helps pass laws in that company's favor that corruption occurs.