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In Praise of the King: 1.7M Social Media Comments In Thailand
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Prachatai.com: "Thailand's Rangers Task Force 45, in response to Army policy, has put its troops to the task of promoting and protecting the monarchy in cyber space, claiming to have posted 1.69 million comments on webboards and social media during a 4-month period of last year ... According to the video clip, the Army Chief has approved the establishment of an army internet network to promote and protect the monarchy by monitoring websites and webboards which have content alluding to the monarchy and countering them by posting comments which worship the institution. ...The unit's military operations personnel provide the troops with information, or what to post, and set them targets for the number of posts they must complete."
His Majesty King Bhumibol is the most respected one! The monarchy brings great glory to Thailand! Long live the King!
we have Media Matters Action Network, NBC, NPR, the Washington Post, the AP, and the New York Times for this.
I, for one, welcome our new 50 Cent Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party Overlords (Thailand Branch).
Retweeting Private Ryan.
And yet that made sense to someone in their military.
Kings started out as dictators. Then they managed to convince people that god had granted them and their children the right to be dictators, and the suckers lapped it up.
I guess they can do what he wants.
It's one thing to require the troops to sing the king's praises. It's another to criminalize people who might justly criticize the king. From what I (might mis)remember, he's a popular king. But that doesn't mean every Thai likes him.
Stuff like this makes me wary of him though.
"To stop the terrorists."
The King of Thailand has long had an officially-backed, and in early years American-assisted, cult of personality. It's illegal to criticise the king in Thailand, and hundreds of people are convicted of insulting the King every year, and in many cases thrown in jail for extended periods of time.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'd hate to see the money funding that going to, for instance, HIV/AIDS awareness so that maybe some day Thailand won't have the highest HIV infection rate in Asia. Good job, King Ramalamading-dong!
once you have their souls, their hearts and minds will follow.
Judging by his embarrassing fuckface, Bhumibol Adulyadej Ramadhibodi Chakrinarubodin Sayamindaradhraj Boromanatbophit loves gerbilling and practices it avidly.
Too bad he won't end like all bad monarchs deserve.
You can do that?!? Wow, I guess their economy really does rely heavily on prostitution.
Blank until
The Thai king is a douchebag and a giant piece of dogshit, and he sucks balls.
The Thai king has repeatedly voiced his displeasure at the cases of people being prosecuted for speaking their mind. His only failing is that he hasn't been more forceful with those elements of the government who keep on persecuting those who do.
we just get audited by the IRS.
Thailand is a dictatorship only in as much as the people want it to be. I've spent a lot of time there, and aside from some really rediculous laws concerned with disrespecting his likeness (which are more institutional rather than by his command) the Thai monarchy is hardly what I would call dictatorial. If you go spit on the King's picture in a resturaunt they'll call the police, but its not becuase the King himself decreed it or would give a shit, its just on the books. The PM (currently some guy named Shinawatra, which is like "Smith" in Anglo countries) hold way more power.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Meh. Hire some Russian dudes to write a KingBot and install it on compromised workstations. They'll praise the crap out of your ruler. 1.7 million? Chicken feed.
Really, so you haven't spent enough time there to figure out that the prime minister is a woman. Lemme guess, english expat looking for cheap hookers? Incidentally your knowledge of what the king has and hasn't done is just as weak. Bhumibol ain't no kind of nice guy.
I fart in king Bhumibol's general direction. His mother was a binturong and his father smelt of durians.
Circumcision is child abuse.
maybe they can come help us in Afghanistan.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Like a king.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
..and it's been going on for years. I posted about the false-flag terrorist operation September 11th 2001 in a Norwegian forum. Some guy sent me a private message there asking for more details about what I knew about it. I gave him a specially crafted link to one of my webservers and it was interesting, but not very shocking, to see this "17 year student" visiting from IP 158.112.84.2 - which belongs to the Norwegian military. I suspect most countries has a disinformation / "cyperspace" unit. It's all jolly to talk about how they do this in Thailand here in the west, but cyberwar and torture of people who write "wrong things" on the Internet, like Norway does on a regular basis, is apparently not newsworthy in the "free" western world.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Then why doesn't he do something about it, being the king and all?
Because, like many other contemporary monarchs, he is head of state not head of government; he is kept around only because he has no real power.
pacifism is compliance
Nothing like some good old-fashioned astroturfing!
Let's take a step back for a second and just accept that other countries have different cultures and in the case of Thailand, the monarchy is actually very respected by a large portion of the population because the king, unlike many other monarchs, is not only quite well educated but really did a lot for his country and his people. Not only has Thailand never been a Western colony, they only started to open more towards the West and Western culture at around the turn of the 20th century. To top that off, "democracy" has so far been more of a process in Thailand for a lot of reasons.
What you are seeing now and saw a few years back in the riots and rapid changes of government is essentially a struggle between the old and dying benevolent constitutional monarchy which still had a lot of power and the new ultra-capitalistic push for power of none other than Thaksin Shinawatra; he has been challenging the king these last years, something that has pretty much not happened before. Thaksin likes to present himself as a "humble" down-to-earth man, yet he is by far the richest and one of the most powerful man of the country and it is safe to assume he did not get to that height without bodies in his cellar; some of those he was convicted for and had to stay in exile.
There were no wrong-doings by the monarchy prior to the military coup but Thaksin was pushing for power with TRT to grow his huge business empire at that time and buying voters and that's when through the monarch the military put a foot down and he was trialed for nepotism and corruption amongst others.
Now I know, you are going to argue these were wrong allegations and he is pretty much a "saint" trying to bring freedom to the population against an oppressive regime. The reason you are saying so is because this is the picture Thaksin's followers were very busy painting for the international media throughout the military coups. It is essentially a calculated way of presenting the Western media with an image everyone here can easily understand - the oppressed farmers fighting against their oppressors. Yet, in the case of Thailand this just is not true. Thailand clearly has a lot of issues but it is wrong to blame the king and the monarchy for that and the people in Thailand are not oppressed, they are somewhere stuck between the old ways of the monarchy and moving toward bona-fide western democracy, they just are not there yet. Like I said, democracy is not yet 100% there in Thailand and it is going to take them a while longer... much like what you saw as outcomes of the "Arab spring". You don't drop the democracy bomb and everything is going to be great and wholesome in a week.
And before you argue in favor of the rebels and Thaksin voters, consider the fact that a huge portion of the votes were just bought from poor farmers. That's what I mean, that's how Thaksin is challenging the monarchy. He presents a new feeding hand and asks absolute loyalty in return. For nothing but his own gain in power and to grow his businesses and influence. Imagine Larry Ellison buying the presidency. This is not democracy either, yet with a huge part of the population being poor you will find it hard to establish a real democracy because starving people want food and they don't care who gives them bread.
So don't be too quick to side against the king and the monarchy and for Thaksin and his henchmen just because the romantic Western idea of oppressed people fighting against an abusive state feels good in your rebellious first world tummies.
As ridiculous as what they are doing may seem to you, essentially they are pushing back against what Thaksin and his henchmen have been doing ever since the riots. Thaksin has grown huge in media, he knows how to influence the international opinion and how to twist things the right way. You are getting front row seats to an internal political power struggle, that's all this is. There is no "good" and "evil" side, if anything it is the conservative and well educated against the poor under the leadership of greed
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
Even with god's approval, a king is a dictator. The only exception is with powerful feudal lords, where the king is more like a puppet dictator - he holds the power but if doesn't do what he's told the crown will change heads. Nothing wrong with it, even a bad king is better than a dozen lords fighting each other all the time.
The king of Thailand has no more power than the queen of England - people, for whatever reasons, like him but he doesn't make any real decision. He isn't even that much of a bad guy. The people in the government there are much worse for abusing the laws to "protect" the monarchy. But fake posts aren't a big deal, China does it, the USA does it...
Except one power he does have (that completely negates your point here) is the royal pardon.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/9391118/Thai-king-pardons-US-car-salesman-over-royal-insult.html
But apparently he only does that for American citizens when highly pressured by the US state department, and not for his own citizens...
I haven't been there in 10 years. Whatever.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
They'd care that you did it more if you were powerful.
And yet, if I did it in an anglo country, no harm, no foul.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
But what's worse is that some anti-semites might compare this to what Israeli is doing. Clearly such a comparison would be unwarranted.
Given the volume, I do not know whether I shall call this propaganda or spam. If it is propaganda, I suspect it is so blunt that it is rather ineffective.
Yingluck Shinawatra is not just a woman, but a really attractive one. She's an even bigger PMILF than Yulia Tymoshenko was, but lets face it, the bar fine for a head of government is way out of my pricerange.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
MUCH better than what the US used its military for most of the time since WWII.
Yeah he is a total saint. If he had any reasonable morals he would do something. Which he doesn't.
Thailand is imperfect; the United States is imperfect. As my father said many years ago, you pays your money and takes your choice. I decided twenty years ago that I would rather die in Thailand than live in America. I'm still here.
Any of you are welcome to come and take a look.
If you're having naughty thoughts about her, shouldn't the nickname "crab" be a warning to you? *nudge nudge, wink wink*
Ezekiel 23:20
All Glory to the Hypnotoad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHU2RlSCdxU
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
70% of Obama's twitter followers are fake and paid for.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/fashion/twitter-followers-for-sale.html?_r=0
Parent Score +1 ON topic. "And ida been able to get away with my Obama astroturfing... if it weren't for those meddling kids." Must! suppress! dissent! for! Obama!
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Thailand is a dictatorship only in as much as the people want it to be. I've spent a lot of time there, and aside from some really rediculous laws concerned with disrespecting his likeness (which are more institutional rather than by his command) the Thai monarchy is hardly what I would call dictatorial. If you go spit on the King's picture in a resturaunt they'll call the police, but its not becuase the King himself decreed it or would give a shit, its just on the books. The PM (currently some guy named Shinawatra, which is like "Smith" in Anglo countries) hold way more power.
The government in Thailand is dictatorial for all intents and purposes.
However the King of Thailand has as much real power as the Queen of England, as you pointed out the Shinawatra family alone holds much more power and they are not the only powerful family in Bangkok. Pretty much the entire country is run by these families who tend to own most of the companies in Thailand.
Thailand is pretty much a non-functioning democracy (if the wrong person is elected, there will be a coup) but the King is not part of it. He's a figurehead and cult of personality but far from having any real power.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Really, so you haven't spent enough time there to figure out that the prime minister is a woman.
The PM is a Shinawatra, sister of deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra. She also wasn't elected, rather installed after a series of "protests" removed the elected government (Abhisit).
You have to be pretty stupid not to be able to put two and two together and figure out that Thaksin is pulling the strings, especially since she called for a pardon for Thaksin 2 weeks after getting into office.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
He may be pulling some strings from afar but his influence is waning considerably.
However, you would have to be pretty stupid not to know that the current PM was elected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_general_election,_2011 and that this isn't exactly the government Thais want. It was the democrat party, that was in power before the election, who got there with administrative maneuvers.
Less *is* more.
I agree with your characterization of a non-functioning democracy but, you're wrong that the king is simply a figurehead. The monarchy wields considerable power and influence with the government and private sector through the privy counsel. He's the 4th richest man in the world, personally, even without full disclosure of his wealth. The assets belong to the monarchy (him), they are not property of the country in trust to the monarchy, there's no comparison. The military answers to the monarchy and the monarchy first. The monarchy may choose to not visibly exercise their authority often but, don't mistake that they have a very big hand in shaping the larger landscape of their land. No coup happens without their approval, the military is insanely loyal to the monarchy above all.
I think you know just enough about Thai politics to sound like an authority but, with all due respect, you're not. I've lived here 7-years and I'm still not either.
Finally, from the Asian / Thai perspective the harsh lesse lèse-majesté laws make sense... The monarchy occupies the highest rung on the social ladder and therefore, must be respectful to everyone and can't speak ill of anyone so, not being able to defend themselves, the state put into place laws to defend them. I'm from the US so it's hard to reckon with my system of logic but, it makes perfect sense to Thais.
Less *is* more.