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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).
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.
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?)
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
It is more in the military's interests to promote the king than the king himself. The military wants to marginalized democratic (read money) influence in national politics. The king isn't that long for this earth...
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".'
I fart in king Bhumibol's general direction. His mother was a binturong and his father smelt of durians.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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.
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
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".'
MUCH better than what the US used its military for most of the time since WWII.