Thailand Bans YouTube 377
An anonymous reader writes "The new government of Thailand that forced its way into power last year has banned the website YouTube after a 44 second clip was found of someone spray painting on a picture of Thailand's king. When Google refused to remove the 'offending' clip the website was redirected to a different page. This comes days after a Swiss man was jailed 10 years for spray painting on pictures of the king while drunk, and is the same government that earlier this year slammed open source software for being useless and buggy."
Re:Respect and Freedom? (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends how you view it - I'd argue that the cult of personality he has built around himself is totally fucking crazy, and not at all healthy for the nation. The military coup of the elected leader was headed by the head of the king's private council, while the coup happened it replaced television and radio broadcasting with images and pro-monarchy messages. Later, the king pledged his support to the military coup.
Also it's hard to support a guy who has made himself one of the richest men in the entire world, with all of his money coming off the resources of a rather impoverished, rather small 3rd world nation. Thai's sparse money could be used in better ways than filming 6 hour films about heroic Thai princesses, and a tradition of hefty jail sentences for insulting the king by innuendo is not doing the cause of democracy any great favors.
Citizens of North Korea supposedly love the Dear Leader just as strongly.
Re:Respect and Freedom? (Score:4, Interesting)
You might have missed the news, but Thailand was overtaken by a military coup last year and is now being run as a military dictatorship. "Their own morality" is irrelevent, particularly when the dictator is a Muslim.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absoltue despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
There, go argue your bullshit with Jefferson, he'll kick you around the room.
Re:Thais take this very seriously (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A little perspective from an Ex-Pat (Score:3, Interesting)
How is it absurd? They are both physical representations of a human being. Vandalizing the grave stone, is not going to hurt your grandfather, but it will piss off your family. You just have to understand that in Thailand, they feel the King is everyone's grandfather.
Second of all, you suggest the correct thing to do: appeal to the law to punish the vandal. That's exactly what they're doing here, appealing to the law to punish the vandal. It just so happens that this law punishes a more severe crime in Thai eyes than vandalism. They caught him on tape, he confessed to the crime, they put him through the court, he had a lawyer, he pled guilty, the judge gave him a severely reduced sentence, and the king will most likely pardon him in the end. Sounds to me like justice was carried out.
The Swiss government actually took what I feel to be a very classy stance. Essentially they said, you have one of our citizens, he broke your law, we know how important that particular law is to you. We'll be there to see that there's a fair trial, but whatever you decide, that's your right. Contrast that with how the USA handled that kid who got caned in Singapore.
Re:Now if only... (Score:3, Interesting)
Using materialism/utilitarianism to judge what "backwards" means in terms of moral code is nonsense. We in the West have become habituated to certain phenomenae that were simply unthinkable to us before, and which, after years of religion losing its meaning, are perfectly acceptable to us now. I have Eastern-European friends who have lived in the middle east for a while as I have, and some of them are still not able to settle back home. They just can't come to grips with the gothic, sex - centered culture certain places have developed. Fathers watch T.V downstairs while their daughters get nailed by 14 year old boyfriends in the room directly above. People engage in sexual acts in public. Women are advertised/sold in glass windows, subsidized by government...
I am of the opinion that most of morality is relative/nurture-based, although some dogmatic moral systems (notably monotheist ones) have extremely high correlations with evolved psychological response. Take the marriage thing, for instance: it's not by accident that relationships between "settled" couples are heavily encouraged in so many cultures whereas wild sex is frowned upon to the degree of criminalization - it makes sense that the couples who are formally "together" can provide and care for their offspring better than participants in a one-night-stand, who might jeapordize the well being of the larger familial group as a whole. Just because we have developed a tolerance for this activity does not mean the people who despise it are "ass-backward", from *whatever* point of view you're coming from. In other words, we have become habituated to things that are instinctive as well as required by religious doctrine, all in the name of "fun", and our advanced "humanism" has done the opposite by creating issues that were never before problematic (PETA lives off this).
Anyway I again stress that this has nothing to do with the blatant hypocrisy that you talked about. I agree with you. The indifference to child prostitution..etc has nothing to do with nature (which we should understand) and nurture (which we should at least respect).
Re:Now if only... (Score:3, Interesting)
The government should serve its people, not the other way around. The king is hugely popular, AFAIK. If this action offends the people of the country, then the law should reflect this accordingly.
That said, I am also quite shocked by this specific lack of a basic freedom of expression.
But, again, it's their country and their law. If they don't like the way they are, they could try to change that. Countries do it from time to time. I think that's why US citizens have the right to bear firearms - to remind their government of what can happen if they forget who serves who.