Thai Premier Spams Nation, Prompts Consumer Outcry

patiwat writes "Newly installed Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's first act was to send a spam SMS to tens of millions of Thai cell phone subscribers. The message, signed 'Your PM,' urged people to help him solve the Thai political crisis and respond with their postal code at a charge of 3 baht (10 US cents). The new premier was criticized for violating privacy regulations."

Comments

*BSD is Dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:*BSD is Dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, thank God, I thought I was the only FreeBSD user. There's 36399 other users?! Phew...

Hmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what this plan to solve the crisis involves. Figuring out who is more likely to respond to unsolicited mail/email/etc...?

Re:Hmmmm...

[ScrewMaster]

I wonder what this plan to solve the crisis involves. Figuring out who is more likely to respond to unsolicited mail/email/etc...?

I think the charge of 3 baht per message says it all.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Mozk]

The charge is from the mobile network, not Saree.

Re:Hmmmm...

[timmarhy]

what gets me is if he has the power to send all these, he can probably get the phone company to provide the cell tower location they are connected to, providing a pretty good estimate as to their postcode....

Re:Hmmmm...

[Arthur Grumbine]

FTFA:

The postal code reply would give the government a clearer idea about which parts of the country wanted to take part in the government's attempt to solve the crisis.

Seems more likely that you'll get a sense of where the concentrations are of idiots who believe that they can actually solve a political crisis by sending their postal code in a text message.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Arthur Grumbine]

...get the phone company to provide the cell tower location they are connected to....

I'm not sure you comprehend the logistics involved in doing this for tens of millions of users. And besides supposedly, according to the article, people spending the effort to send back the text message will give him an indication of "those who wants to 'help' solve the crisis", not "those who received this message". Otherwise, just pulling the address database from the telecoms would be a helluva lot easier then your method.

This whole attempt, of course, speaks volumes, mostly to the apparent idiocy of a PM who believes that either:
1) The people who respond really want to help (instead of just responding to the novelty of it)
2) People that don't respond want the crisis to continue
3) The people that are intelligent/capable enough to actually provide major support for his efforts would be attracted to his cause by this text message.

I'm betting more that he's actually not an idiot, but has some shady deal/debt with the telecoms.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pop quiz: what business is Thaksin (oddly enough the loser in the current round of turmoil) in?

Re:Hmmmm...

[timmarhy]

"I'm not sure you comprehend the logistics involved in doing this for tens of millions of users"

it's certainly no harder than sending 10's of millions of sms's then dealing with the returned data. mordern cell systems can tell what number is locked on to what tower.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Daengbo]

I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure that Thaksin (the deposed PM from two years ago) sold all his stock in the telecom and moved the money to Singapore in the weeks before the coup.

Also, the new PM is from a coalition of minor Thai parties and has nothing to do with Thaksin.

This story also appears to be a non-starter in Thailand. I went back to the 18th at thairath.co.th (a Thai language newspaper) and found no mention of this story in the political section.

Anyway, I'm not sure I would consider it spam if Obama had a message stating something like "I, the new President, invite you, the people of the U.S., to join together and help us rise out of our current situation. I welcome your comments." (The picture in the Bangkok Post is too blurry for me to make out every word the Thai PM wrote, but that's the gist of it.) In fact, I fully expect Obama to do something very similar in his first week, though it will be an announcement on TV pre-empting your favorite show. I doubt it will be quite as short or too the point, either.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Hal_Porter]

If we could ELIMINATE the idiots we wouldn't have so many crises.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh, you're ruining his plan! Some idiots might not have had the time to respond yet because they're too busy reading /.!

Re:Hmmmm...

[Cillian]

The charge is for replying, which is by no means necessary, and it goes to the mobile phone provider...

Re:Hmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you right wingers were still hunkered down somewhere praying due to the end of the world being nigh. Has Rush said it was OK to come out?

Why stop with your rant about Obama pre-empting your fav show and move on to something else, like birds will start attacking, blood will spill from the sky, locusts will descend etc...

What you say has happened every new president for my entire life. Your comments in the last paragraph have nothing to do with the article even though you try to tie them to it and simply is as an attempt to push your political agenda. You should focus that energy on cleaning up your party instead of putting the other down. Of course, it is simpler to be negative.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Daengbo]

I'm not a right-winger, I don't live in the U.S., and your tirade was exactly my point: this happens every four years. Americans don't call it "spam."

Re:Hmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Silk.

As in, silkworms, ties, dresses..

Re:Hmmmm...

[Arthur Grumbine]

Anyway, I'm not sure I would consider it spam if Obama had a message stating something like "I, the new President, invite you, the people of the U.S., to join together and help us rise out of our current situation. I welcome your comments."

Replace "comments" with "zip codes", and voilÃ, SPAM!

Re:Hmmmm...

[Daengbo]

Actually, the Thai says "If you would like to be contacted by me again, please send your five-digit zip code to [number]." I'd still rather receive that than a thirty minute address (see the pun?).

Re:Hmmmm...

[Tubal-Cain]

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=puns

Re:Hmmmm...

[Daengbo]

Haha. I see what you're dong there ....

Cast your vote?

[DigiShaman]

Was it one of those "Cast your vote" messages?

Re:Cast your vote?

[Potor]

I got one of those from Thaksin in February 2005 when I was working in Thailand. From what I remember it was a sort of scam, because the transmitting telephone company, still owned sub rosa by Thaksin, got paid for all those SMSs.

The link above is a bit confusing; it refers to an SMS for the 2006 election, but the 2005 election was held on Feb. 6 (that's my birthday and alcohol sales were banned as of noon Feb.5, so I remember it quite well, and not without some resentment ...).

Obgl...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your PM

Not really spam

[geek]

People over use the word spam these days. All the new PM did was try to rally his people to a cause. It was in bad taste perhaps but seeing as how Thailand doesn't have the type of emergency broadcast system we have here in the USA I'd think this isn't totally uncalled for.

If he had made this a habit and over used it then I would call it spam, but this looks like a one time deal during a genuine state of emergency. I wouldn't call that spam personally.

Re:Not really spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam can be considered any kind of unsolicited electronic contact if you didn't provide your number personally and it was also sent to thousands of other people.

Re:Not really spam

[belmolis]

This wasn't an emergency communication. It was just a "hi from the new prime minister", and the responses would do no more than give him an idea of the geographic distribution of his support. It isn't even a good survey technique.

Moreover, Thailand has good radio and television penetration. There is one TV for every two Thai people. He could easily have gone on TV and radio.

Re:Not really spam

[dov_0]

Maybe we could view electoral commission letters and tax office demands as junk mail. We may not have given our details personally and they also sent mail to thousands of other people!

Re:Not really spam

[Admiral Ag]

He should have been honest and said: "Hi, I'm your new Prime Minister who was installed by the military and the middle classes, because the poor majority of our country finally got it into their stupid heads to get together and vote for a party that more or less represented their interests. This is not allowed. Democracy is not about having a government that gets the most votes, but about serving the interests of the middle class and wealthy."

It's the same old sad story.

This guy and his supporters deserve something more than a reply to a text message.

Re:Not really spam

[Daengbo]

That's a nice theory about the new PM, but as far as I can tell, he's part of a coalition of minor parties and he spoke out over the army coup in 2006. He was actually supported by the King, not the military.

Admittedly, the Suvanabhumi airport fiasco and the removal of Somchai, the democratically-elected PM was sad, but there's no way to know how corrupt those elections were. A vote sold for two beers when I lived there. The PPP (Somchai's party) was apparently dissolved for buying votes, though there's some evidence that it was business as usual.

Thai Rak Thai (Thaksin's party) was also elected several times by gaming the Bangkok vs. upcountry political system and throwing so much pork at the outer provinces that everyone voted for him. Hey, who wouldn't vote for an extra month's salary in cash and interest-free loans?

Since The recently-deposed PM was Thaksin's brother-in-law and one of the richest families in the country, and Thaksin was extraordinarily corrupt even by Thailand's standards, your propoganda makes me doubt you're a disinterested party in the manner.

The King has been the only thing keeping Thai politics remotely sane since it went constitutional, and his death will let the dogs loose.

Re:Not really spam

[LingNoi]

Indeed the GP should be modded "-1 head up ass". When the king dies expect a coup every couple of months.

Re:Not really spam

[Daengbo]

Jeez. How many Slashdotters are there in Thailand? You're number four, I think.

Re:Not really spam

[mjwx]

Moreover, Thailand has good radio and television penetration. There is one TV for every two Thai people. He could easily have gone on TV and radio.

The thing is that there are two Mobile Phones for every one Thai person.

If you've ever met a Thai you'll find that they are married to the phone. Mobile coverage is better then TV and Radio combined in Thailand.

This wasn't an emergency communication. It was just a "hi from the new prime minister", and the responses would do no more than give him an idea of the geographic distribution of his support. It isn't even a good survey technique.

This is just the information he would need to strengthen his power base and weaken his oppositions. If you think that American politicians are petty and corrupt, you've never learned about Thai politics, they take pork barrel spending to a whole new level. Abhisit is learning who he needs to appease to stay in power, his predecessor did the same thing.

Re:Not really spam

[Mostly a lurker]

Khun Abhisit has become premier after extraordinary political manoeuvrings and a bidding war for MPs. For a fascinating look at how politics and "democracy" works in Thailand, take a look at this timeline by a Thai newspaper editor. While some details are based on rumours, the cash incentives to MPs and refusal by any body to investigate are public knowledge.

Thai politics has always been corrupt to a greater or lesser extent. However, the corruption reached a new level under the premiership of Khun Thaksin, a level which was maintained under the Thaksin proxy governments of Khun Samak and, briefly, Thaksin's son-in-law.

It has been reported that Thaksin has been hit hard by the global financial crisis, and the UK government's decision to freeze his UK assets based on doubts over their ownership. A cynic might suspect that Thaksin's latest proxies in the Phua Thai party lost out to the Democrat party because Thaksin balked over what winning would cost.

Thaksin's populist policies, helping the rural poor, were a welcome departure from government by an elitist urban elite with contempt for those up country. However, these policies were only pursued by Thaksin in order to gain power and line his own pockets.

The political kingmaker Khun Newin has advised Khun Abhisit to spoil the rural poor in the model of Thaksin. This might defuse the political situation here, but Thailand today is a politically divided country.

Re:Not really spam

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate spammers there the lowest life on this planet.

les thompson
thegamesframer@hotmail.com ph: 9603 9924 mob: 0424 548 314

Re:Not really spam

[Admiral Ag]

All the parties game the system. It's how politics in Thailand works. The new guy is just as, if not more, corrupt than the old one. The whole thing is a joke. Thaksin's replacement was removed after being convicted of a conflict of interest (he was moonlighting as a chef on a television cooking show â" that's so pathetic that words fail me).

The difference is that Thaksin's lot were voted in with a majority, and he'd more or less kept most of his campaign promises. Hell, he'd even completed a previous term, and his party had been voted an absolute majority (both almost unheard of there). That's not to say he wasn't bent. They're all bent. But it's better to have a bent leader who represents the will of the majority than a bent leader who doesn't and who is more or less installed as the result of a coup, eh?

The antics of the current government have set democracy in Thailand back 40 years. For that, they should hang.

Re:Not really spam

[Daengbo]

Thaksin was the most corrupt man I've seen in Thailand. He "donated" land to a Buddhist temple to avoid taxes then built a luxury golf course on it, for god's sake, and that was before he ever got elected. There's a reason he was several times the richest man in Thailand. You don't get that way by being clean, and his level of wealth speaks directly against your "serving the rich" rant.

Since the average vote costs a couple of beers, it doesn't take much to get "the will of the majority," especially if you have the money to buy the votes and the position gives you the opportunity to triple your cash.

As I mentioned above, the PPP was suspended for buying votes.

I lived in Thailand (and watched nightly TV news) during Thaksin's establishment of TRT, the election, his first term, and part of his second. If he represented the majority, it's only because he promised enough pork to get the votes. There was no real political platform. Don't pretend that there was. Eventually, even the common man turned against Thaksin when he started claiming to be on the level of the King and sitting in his assigned spots.

I was all for the Eua-Athorn schemes (computer, loans, etc.), though. I liked pork as much as the next guy.

Re:Not really spam

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one little problem with your heart-felt democracy claims: it's based on an invalid perception.

The only reason most of the poor voted for Thaksin and people like him was because of vote buying.

Here's how it works:

1) politician goes to village leaders saying, "if you guarantee me X votes, I guarantee you Y baht to distribute"

2) village leaders essentially go to villagers saying, "if you vote for X, I will give you Y baht" and then distribute the money given to them by the politician (keeping a nice sum for themselves)

3) political victory (profit?)

Because the majority of the poor in Thailand are desperate to support their families, and often can't because of the corruption of people like Thaksin and others, they *feel* they have no choice but to accept the vote money, thus leading to a never-ending cycle of corruption and political turmoil.

Most of the people in higher-education areas have realised what's going on and they are the reason why corrupt politicians like Thaksin (otherwise known as square-face by his opponents in Thailand) have been exposed for what they really are.

For Americans, it's easy to think that this is all just a war of the rich against the poor in a fight to kill democracy, but it's quite the opposite. Thailand's political system is so corrupt that any semblance of democracy there is really just a front for rich, corrupt politicians like Thaksin (and whoever is related to him) to find a position of political power.

Re:Not really spam

[Dahan]

That's a nice theory about the new PM, but as far as I can tell, he's part of a coalition of minor parties and he spoke out over the army coup in 2006. He was actually supported by the King, not the military.

While it's true that the Democrats are in coalition with minor parties, I would hardly call the Democrat party itself a "minor party"--they were the #2 party behind TRT/PPP before the latter's dissolution.

Admittedly, the Suvanabhumi airport fiasco and the removal of Somchai, the democratically-elected PM was sad, but there's no way to know how corrupt those elections were. A vote sold for two beers when I lived there. The PPP (Somchai's party) was apparently dissolved for buying votes, though there's some evidence that it was business as usual.

Well, election monitors from the EU said that the 2007 election that put the PPP and Samak Sundaravej in power went mostly smoothly, despite complaints of vote-buying. Yes, it's unfortunate that vote-buying is commonplace in Thailand, but according to Transparency International, corruption in Thailand went down while Thaksin was in power, and went back up after the coup. Their CPI for Thailand was 3.0 in 1998, then stayed at 3.2 until 2003, when it went up to 3.3, then 3.6, then to a high of 3.8 in 2005. 2006 saw it fall to 3.6, then 3.3. Their latest report for 2008 has it at 3.5. Higher scores means less corruption. Thaksin was PM from 2001 to 2006. Now, none of those number are particularly good on a global scale (Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden tied for least corrupt this year, with a score of 9.3--the USA is at 7.3 along with Belgium and Japan), so Thailand certainly has a ways to go, but the allegations of corruption against Thaksin sound more like sour grapes to me--the traditional elite are just upset that they're no longer the ones getting their palms greased.

Disclaimer: I do know former Democrat PM Chuan Leekpai as a very very casual acquaintance--I'm certainly not buddy-buddy with him, but I have met with him one-on-one a few times. However, I don't feel that I'm being biased either for or against the Democrats in this post.

Re:Not really spam

[Dahan]

Indeed the GP should be modded "-1 head up ass". When the king dies expect a coup every couple of months.

Heh, seeing that you said Samak Sundaravej was never voted into power, but was instead installed by the Army, and also said that Somchai Wongsawat was similarly never voted into power, you've got your head too far up your ass to be able to see where anyone else's head is.

Re:Not really spam

[Anonymous Coward]

add one more to the count... Thaksin owns the telcos in Thailand. The PM was just helping him generate revenue.

Re:Not really spam

[rogera]

I feel that I must respond to your post and apologise for the length of this reply. There is a saying in Thailand that goes something like this "The Northeast elect the Government, Bangkok brings it down". It is no surprise that Thaksin won two successive elections (three if you include the PPP one in March 2007) as he has spent millions of Baht promoting himself and buying in cash the votes of the rural people, particularly in the Northeast. I have personally witnessed the buying of votes with amounts of between THB500 to THB 2000 per person depending on the constituency. When I asked some of these recipients why they accepted the money, they said that it is a long established custom in the giving of and accepting it. I asked if they would vote for Thaksin they said that, in accepting the money, the have an obligation to vote for him. The Thais call this "grengjai" and this in itself is a legacy of the system that slavery left after it was abolished in 1902 or thereabouts. The owner (the phuyai) and the serf mentality is still very strong in the rural areas. Initially, I was a supporter of Thaksin, but having seen his wealth triple during his tenure by highly inflating the cost of large infrastructure projects and then creaming off the difference in actual costs, together with the indiscriminate murder of over 3,000 Thais under the guise of drug suppression, I decided that Thaksin is not the man who he pretends to be. The tripling of his wealth does not include the THB 72 billion that he got from selling his mobile phone empire to the Singapore government. Thaksin is not a democrat. He is in reality a fascist, destroying those who stand in his way, rather like Putin in Russia. In the last election in March this year, the Democrats came within an inch of winning the popular vote, which, as in the US, does not mean winning Government, so the two main parties were neck and neck. The PPP were only able to form a government with the backing of the smaller parties, who have now switched their support to the Democrats. It is in this light that it can be said that the Democrats have come to power through legitimate means. In doing so, it gives Thailand the chance to reconcile the opposing views and to move the country forward into the 21st century. Hope springs eternal!!

Re:Not really spam

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thaksin was the most corrupt man I've seen in Thailand."

I can only assume you haven't seen many politicians in Thailand.

We all saw the claims about corruption made before the coup, and then we watched as the entire energies of the Thai state were turned on proving them. And then we saw that there was no evidence at all to support most of them. You do realise that people outside Thailand can follow this stuff, right?

Re:Not really spam

[Daengbo]

Actually, I was talking about the period 2000-2004, not the 2006 coup, but hey, don't let my personal experience get in the way of your opinion.

I was involved with gov't relations in the 90's, too. Thaksin siphoned more money off of the Thai government than any politician in recent history. Ther's a reason his wealth nearly tripled while he was in power. Since he was the richest man before he became PM, I think we can see how much money that truly was.

He was a crook. He stole unbelievable sums of money. He legalized the execution of thousands without trial. There is no disputing those facts.

Stop doing that.

[Tubal-Cain]

Newly installed Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's first act was to send a spam SMS to tens of millions of Thai cell phone subscribers. The message... urged people to help him solve the Thai political crisis and respond with their postal code at a charge of 3 baht (10 US cents)

Step one: don't make it so easy for a politician to send a text message to everyone in the country that has a cell phone. If they can do that, they can abuse it.

The real question, though;

[Anonymous Coward]

What can Gentoo do that Ubuntu can't?

Re:The real question, though;

[Anonymous Coward]

emerge...

3 baht is not excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost to send an SMS in Thailand is typically 3 baht. Pre-paid plans on the major carriers (True, DTAC, AIS) all charge about 3 baht per SMS.

The SMS wasn't sent to all mobile phones either. I have 3 phones, and the only one to receive the SMS was the one without Thai fonts.

The papers tried to make a big deal out of it over here, but I haven't met a single person who so much as mentioned it.

Re:3 baht is not excessive

[mdmkolbe]

It looks like 3 baht is about 8-9 US cents by the currency exchanges. But then again by the Big Mac Index which (humerously) measures purchasing power rather than exchange rate, 3 baht is 17-18 US cents. Then again, we really need to factor in local wages which means the Premier cost each person the equivalent of 96 cents(*).

(*) Start with 3 baht. Convert to Thai Big Macs at rate of 1BM per 62 baht to get 0.0484MB. Convert that to hours of labor at rate of 67min per 1 Thai BM to get 3.24min. Now convert back using US values. In the USA it takes about 12 minutes of labor to buy a Big Mac so we are now at 0.270 BM and at the price of $3.57 per USA BM this gives us $0.964. All rates taken from and .

For entertainment purposes only. All figures should be assumed wrong until proven otherwise.

Re:3 baht is not excessive

[mdmkolbe]

Ghah, got "continue editing" and "submit" buttons mixed up. Anyway, all rates are taken from http://www.ubs.com/1/ShowMedia/ubs_ch/wealth_mgmt_ch?contentId=103982&name=eng.pdf and http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11793125

Re:3 baht is not excessive

[bhiestand]

Thai cell phone companies charge for receiving texts? I thought they were like the rest of the Asian countries and only charged the sender.

Thailand, nice bomber base during the Vietnam war

[Anonymous Coward]

But today it's a pile of crap like the rest of South East Asia.

As it is always with SPAM: Wrong audience

[Ruvim]

Instead, he should have sent it to all the tourists that visit the country. Oh, wait... they do not do it any more because of the airport chaos.

Re:As it is always with SPAM: Wrong audience

[CaptainZapp]

I plan a couple weeks of chilling on the pristine Thai beaches, come February, you insensitive clod!

Ssshhh! Please keep this quiet!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

If this gets too much press coverage, politicians in other countries might get the idea to start doing this!

Thailand *is* in a crisis situation right now, and the PM could fudge his way out of this.

But the US auto industry is also in a crisis. Would you like to receive some spam everyday from US Senator Carl Levin, asking you to support the bailout? (For the non-US folks, Carl Levin happens to be the Senator from Michigan, where most of the US auto industry is based).

If the government in the country where I live gets the ability to spam everyone, as they please, first I will chuck my cell phone, and then I will move.

Re:Ssshhh! Please keep this quiet!

[parliboy]

I am okay if Carl Levin sends a spam SMS to each of our personal cell phones every day. All I ask in return is that we be allowed to each send an SMS to his personal cell phone every day.

It depends on how much is in it.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I read the article, but couldn't decipher the picture with the Thai text.

But I think I recognized "Pad Thai" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pad_thai) in there somewhere.

So this message could be just "spam, Pad Thai and spam." There is not much spam in that. Of course, you could ask the waiter to replace the Pad Thai with spam, and the you would have "spam, spam and spam."

Hmmm . . . Pad Thai . . . is it ok to eat that for breakfast?

Re:It depends on how much is in it.

[Daengbo]

I can't get every word, but here's a rough translation:

I, the new Prime Minister, invite you to help Thailand come out of its current {illegible, probably crisis). If you're interested in receiving (illegible, probably information) from me,please send your 5-digit postal code to this number .... (the rest is cut off)

It doesn't seem very spammy. The tone was appropriate, neither common nor overly polite. The Thai language paper I looked through didn't even mention the message. I look at it as just a better version of the required political speech on your first day.

p.s. I know that you were joking about reading (it does have "Thai," though), but I though you might be interested in the content.

Re:It depends on how much is in it.

[Dahan]

Googling for the first few words finds a transcript of the SMS here. Basically says, "I, the new Prime Minister, invite you to help bring Thailand out of its crisis. If you're interested in being contacted by me, please send your 5-digit postal code to 9191 (3 baht)."

Re:It depends on how much is in it.

[Anonymous Coward]

For those too lazy to follow the link, Pad Thai is a traditional Thai noodle dish (aroi - tasty!).
Hence.. this is another one of those occasions where ./ seems to use Insightful and Funny interchangeably (whether or not its actually funny depends on your humour-impairment level..).

A better translation of the message

[Anonymous Coward]

The message, signed 'Your PM,' urged people to help him solve the Thai political crisis, and asked if the recipient would like to receive more contacts from him, if so, respond with their postal code at a charge of 3 Baht (10 US cents).

The actually SMS message translation

[societyofrobots]

If every politician and businessmen here sent a message to rally people for their cause, we'd end up with dozens of spam messages per day. Actually, I get ~2 spam messages/day from businesses in Thailand already (I live here).

This is abuse of communication, not privacy.

Oh and it was from 'yourPM', no spaces. I got it on my cell, here is the translation:

"I am your new prime minister. I ask that everyone join hands for Thailand / if you are interested in talking with me please send me a postcard to your main postoffice at #9191 (3 baht)"

My thai friends thought the SMS was a prank . . . The majority population feels he became PM through very immoral means, so I can see this SMS message making a lot of people not happy over here . . .

Re:The actually SMS message translation

[Daengbo]

From the picture in the article (I don't live there anymore so I didn't get the message), it's more like:

I, the new Prime Minister, invite you (hon.) to join together to bring Thailand out of (something illegible). If you are interested in being contacted by me again, please send your 5-digit postal code ("rahat praisanee") to the number ... (cut off in the picture).

Personal interest -- where did you learn Thai? How long have you lived there? Are you in IT?

Re:The actually SMS message translation

[societyofrobots]

Here is the actual text so someone else can do a better translation job . . . make sure your encoding is set to Thai!

àoeàà(TM)àààà£à±ààà(TM)àà£ààà(TM)àfàààààààSààà--ààà(TM)à£àààà(TM)ààà£ààà--ààà--ààààààààààààà/àà(TM)àfàààà"àà£à±àsààà£ààà"àààààààoeààà£àà"ààààà£àà±àààà£à©à"àààOE 5 àà¥à±ààààà--ààà(TM)ààà--ààààsàà£àOE 9191 (3às)

Re:The actually SMS message translation

[LingNoi]

he majority population feels he became PM through very immoral means, so I can see this SMS message making a lot of people not happy over here.

Maybe your country wife isn't happy because Thaksin isn't giving her bribes anymore but the rest of us honest people who don't do illegal things are quite happy thank you.

Re:The actually SMS message translation

[societyofrobots]

Don't you have more important things to do like an airport to 'legally' shut down and Newin to bribe with ministerial posts? ;)

Whatever the PAD says, true or not, the reality is that the current gov't lost every election but they are the ones in power.

C...n

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything starting with C and ending with n.

Re:C...n

[Krupuk]

CNN?

my feet on the head of the Thai PM!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'd prefer a nice Thai girl's feet on my head, but I can do dom too. If she had a spare toe she could wiggle it into Bhumibol's mouth.

Mmmm, forbidden foot porn, worse than showing a NIPPLE OMG CRISIS BABIES MIGHT SEE IT on US TV.

Re:my feet on the head of the Thai PM!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at me, Mum! I'm being a complete cretin!

BUSINESS TRANSACTION URGENT

[Arancaytar]

GOOD DAY TO YOU SIRS OR MADAM

I AM [PRIME MINISTER OF KINGDOM OF THAILAND]. I HAVE BUSINESS PROPOSITION TO MAKE YOU. Have URGENT POLITICAL CRISIS to get out of the country; need you to send 10c ([TEN CENTS]) to me and it's yours.
Is NOT pyramid scheme

Signed,
[Thai prime minister]

Re:The actual SMS message translation

[societyofrobots]

I like your translation better . . .

> Personal interest -- where did you learn Thai? How long have you lived there? Are you in IT?

Taught it to myself over 4+ years, lived here no more than 4-5 months, and I'm an engineer that runs a fairly popular website (which is why I visit /.). I'm guessing by your better translation you must be Thai? =P

Re:Thailand, nice bomber base during the Vietnam w

[Anonymous Coward]

And come 10 years hence, the same in Iraq and its region. I say, if you got nukes, use them! God's will. End it now, and get the hell out.

Re:The actual SMS message translation

[Daengbo]

Not Thai, no. I was a Thai linguist then lived there for four years. I've been in Korea for almost five years now.

I was there when FOSS was in full swing. How's it holding up now? I don't hear much from the LinuxTLE or OfficeTLE teams at NECTEC these days.

My gal's brother is pissed about the new PM, too. He lives in Bangkok but doesn't like the politics there (being a northerner at heart). Every time she talks to him, they spend more time on politics these days than anything else.

Thais didn't seem so obsessed with politics a few years ago. I hope that signals some real change coming.

Link to your site, please!

Re:The actual SMS message translation

[societyofrobots]

Yea, I find a lot of Thais would rather pretend politics didn't even exist here . . . but the extremists have definitely created some polarization . . . as for political change, I could use a bit less corporate protectionism and bit more Visa time between runs =P

I'm not involved with the programming/OS/IT community here, although they contacted me to join them. I tend to the robotics community here.

My site is the same as my username, http://www.societyofrobots.com/
Probably not interesting for you unless you like programming/controlling embedded hardware =P

It's a military coup in disguise

[Anonymous Coward]

He got elected after the Bangkok Survanabhumi Airport mob kicked out the elected prime minister, and the police and army refused to intervene.

It's effectively a coup.

The electoral council (chosen by the army after the coup) decided 29 MPs from the elected party were illegally elected and banned them, that gave the 'democrats' (I use the word loosely since the last thing they want is the elected government) enough votes together with some bribed smaller parties to put him in power.

It's a military coup, just in disguise.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12724800&source=hptextfeature

Re:It's a military coup in disguise

[Daengbo]

The Economist doesn't know what it's talking about:

None of this is to absolve Mr Thaksin and his cronies of their sins. But even his gravest abuse -- a "war on drugs" in 2003, in which police were suspected of hundreds of extra-judicial killings -- was not entirely his fault. The dirty war against supposed drug-dealers was misguidedly supported by Thais of all social classes. Even the king, in an equivocal speech that year, sounded at times as if he approved of it.

Wrong. Thaksin explicitly gave the police in the north the right to execute suspected drug dealers on sight. No right to a trial by peers. No trial for the public record. Just a bullet to the back of the head. It wasn't "suspected." It was well-documented and widely reported.

Never mind that the police up there are just organized crime and used the "War on Drugs" to consolidate power. You didn't even need to be a low-level drug dealer because the police could just plant some heroine and be cleared. A friend of a friend was executed that way. (The army is no better. They fight the police over what part of the country to control. I know guys who have been at the meetings dividing the drug routes between the two.)

The only good thing that came out of TRT's reign was OTOP (One Tambon One Product). All the pork projects, cheap loans, and other Eua Athorn projects were just ways for TRT to buy and keep popular support from upcountry while mortgaging the country's future and lining the pockets of Thaksin and his friends.

For about forty years, Thailand was the only country in the area that had any prosperity. The only constant during that time was the king. The Economist seems to believe that people are brainwashed to follow him. They aren't. If you get close to them, they'll talk about their misgivings. They'll even talk about inbreeding. Still, Thaksin lost his popular support when he claimed to be sovereign and at the level of the king. That's because almost all of them truly love and revere him.

Everyone fears the day he dies and the crown prince becomes the new king. He doesn't have the moral backbone to lead a largely conservative and Buddhist country. He's the Prince Charles of Thailand.

It is even possible to dream of the red- and yellow-shirt movements transforming themselves into a well-behaved, mainstream two-party system with broad public participation.

The fact that the Economist wants a two-party system for Thailand just proves that they have their heads up their asses. They don't even discuss Islamic separatists. Wow.

p.s. I used to "joke" about Thailand's war on drugs being a real war and that U.S. officials should learn to use English correctly.

Re:It's a military coup in disguise

[Dishevel]

The Economist doesn't know what it's talking about:

The fact that the Economist wants a two-party system for Thailand just proves that they have their heads up their asses. They don't even discuss Islamic separatists. Wow.

I did not know people were allowed to talk about Islamic separatists.

Re:It's a military coup in disguise

[tehcyder]

He's the Prince Charles of Thailand.

Maybe, but I bet at least his wife doesn't look like a horse with a hangover.

in thailand, the government IS the problem.

[swschrad]

and here's one more example.

He's late

[Krigl]

Our current president has already done this before 2002 election with a pre-recorded message and dialer calling to all private phones in the country and the message even got a house remix KlausHaus. His party has subsequently lost the election, wonder why...

Oh, the innocent times, within several years, the boom of telemarketing has immunized the populace to the extent this wouldn't raise too many eyebrows today.