Prachatai's response to a Bangkok Post article
On 26 May 2010, Bangkok Post published an article entitled "Why the govt lost to the UDD on the tech battlefield" saying that "Norporchor IPTV transmissions have been made via different Prachathai domains" and that security experts found Prachatai's "correlation with the Norporchor network". Below is what Chiranuch Premchaiporn, Prachatai Director, has written to the Bangkok Post in response to the article.
29 May, 2010
Dear Editor,
Your article ‘Why the govt lost to the UDD on the tech battlefield’ (by Sasiwimon Boonruang , Database, 26 May) could easily be understood as saying that there are links and connections between the UDD and Prachatai, especially for less tech-savvy people. Behind a lot of technical terms which are not understandable for everyone, there is at least the suggestion that Prachatai and UDD are linked to each other in the technical domain (and going by some of the online reactions to the article it is indeed understood that way). This impression is false.
‘Based on in-depth correlation technical analysis of the UDD network, it was found that Norporchor IPTV transmissions have been made via different Prachathai domains registered with the GTLD (general top-level domain), ...
At mail relay server level, they found the UDD technical team had applied Web 2.0 technology via Google applications, with only one big group and one small group, and they identified the webmaster of Prachatai and finally the correlation with the Norporchor network.'
If using any Google application, especially Gmail, identifies a correlation with the Norporchor network, I am confident that there are more than a million people correlated to the Norporchor network. If you or the anonymous security experts that you quote really want to substantiate the claim in your analysis, you have to prove that the origin of Norporchor IPTV is one of Prachatai servers. In other words, you must prove that one of Norporchor IPTV sources is owned by Prachatai.
In addition, the fact that two domain names are on the same IP address does not mean they are related. Those two domain names may share a single IP address in a shared web hosting service.
The claim that URL filtering technology can block http://www.xyz.com, but will fail to block ‘subsequent pages inside the website, such as http://www.xyz.com/abc’ is laughably untrue as our readers have repeatedly discovered trying to access pages on any of blocked domain names.
Please be informed that your article describes the results of a very weak analysis, but tries to make it look convincing by referring to "security experts". It would be useful if you could disclose the names of these experts so that they can be held accountable for their "analysis".
‘Your "experts" present non-facts and omit very well-known facts in their "analysis". This is reporting of a very poor standard, it besmirches the name of Prachatai with no reason, and it appears to support the idea of censorship. We are surprised to see this in the Bangkok Post.’
Best regards,
Chiranuch Premchaiporn, Director of Prachatai
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I am not surprised at all to
I am not surprised at all to see completely unsubstantiated allegations and propaganda in the pages of the Bangkok Post. What was once a pretty good newspaper seems to be aspiring to become a 2nd rate version of The Nation, which itself rates somewhere below a dumbed down small town newspaper in a backward area of the American South...............
"dumbed down small town
"dumbed down small town newspaper in a backward area of the American South" I get where you are going with this but I am from this area and it is a bit offensive. The Nation quality is far below anything you will find in the south. The Nation is not a "newspaper", it is propaganda weapon for its owner Yoon, who is still bitter about the business war he had with Thaksin back in the early part of the 2000s. The argument you should be making is that the Bangkok Post is owned by Post Publishing, which recently won a government contract to produce "news" for NBT, a government media channel. This government contract completely throws into question the neutrality and objectivity of the Bangkok Post. There is clearly a conflict of interest.
I take your point and concede
I take your point and concede that "dumbed down small town newspapers in backward areas of the American South" are actually layers above The Nation and its pathetic staff of wannabe Pulitzer Prize aspirants.............
Dead fish complain when they
Dead fish complain when they are wrapped in the Bangkok Post.
Interesting item about the Bangkok Post's "new" best friends. That was what The Nation and the Bangkok Post were complaining about during Thaksin's run... that he steered government business to his favored media outlets.
It seems that anyone and everyone in power in Thailand is utterly unprincipled and utterly corrupt. And railing about "morality".
I do hope the Thai people get serious and run these people out of power once and for all.
Your article... could easily
Your article... could easily be understood as saying that there are links and connections between the UDD and Prachatai
Yeah it could... because it DID say so "it was found that Norporchor IPTV transmissions have been made via different Prachathai domains".
That is what they said.
In Thailand you can publish lies about the "right" people just as you can murder the "right" people and get away with it. No problem.
The Bangkok Post, bastard child of the CIA and military stooge and propagandist for decades, can print outright lies and... no problem. Nothing is said.
But Prachatai can print the truth and its editor is hauled before a military tribunal... there are no real courts in Thailand... and threatened with 50 years imprisonment.
Thailand is a police state. It is time for the rest of the world to accord it the same treatment as is accorded to the neighboring Burmese police state, its Siamese Twin in the Thai-Burman Co-Prosperity Sphere.
You know they DID say that
You know they DID say that "it was found that Norporchor IPTV transmissions have been made via different Prachathai domains".
That's certainly actionable in any country with a real rule of law.
In the USA people would be delighted to have the boneheads at a major media conglomerate libel them in such a way. They'd sue and win hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. It would make their fortune.
If it is possible to sue the Bangkok Post in any other jurisdiction you ought certainly to pursue it. You won't even have to go to court. Ten seconds' conference with their attorneys will have the BPost begging to settle.
Of course in Thailand, with its corrupt court system, you haven't a chance.
No one has a chance in Thailand until this illegitimate government is unseated by the people in an election.
More lucrative government
More lucrative government contracts for the Bangkok Post must surely be on their way. Given that taking handouts of public money is the only possible way that they can continue it would be surprising if they were not doing the government's bidding.
The awful truth is the most national press perform the similar roles in their own countries so foreign readers who shake their fingers at the Post or the Nation are open to the charge of hypocrisy. And to be fair, the Bangkok Post's international coverage is still reasonable. If I am stuck somewhere, with a free copy of this rag and nothing better to do, I just ignore their ludicrous propaganda on local matters and go straight to the international news. Its much better for the blood pressure...
The awful truth is the most
The awful truth is the most national press perform the similar roles in their own countries so foreign readers who shake their fingers at the Post or the Nation are open to the charge of hypocrisy.
Certainly the MSM in the US, for instance, are the tools of the regime. But they cannot just print lies, factually incorrect stuff, about the government's enemies. They would be bankrupted in court.
It is the government's lock on the court system that is the ultimate guarantor of injustice in Thailand.
The BPundit provides an
The BPundit provides an illustrative find his morning :
The last name in the list of PAD leaders who were given a walk last September, Therdphum Jaidee, is the same "authoritative source" on the Red shirts quoted by the mercenary writer William Barnes in Sondhi's online rag, atimesonline. No indication that Therdphum is Yellow is given in the article and he is made to seem the confidant of the Red shirt leadership. Perhaps one of them. Then he dictates the Yellow party line. Rather hired gun William Barnes does.
This sort of propaganda is not unexpected from rags like Asia Times Online or the Bangkok Post. It's just that the Bangkok Post has convinced a lot of people that it is somehow a cut above atimes online.
It is not. The only difference between the two is that Bangkok Post has been the tool of the Thai military for decades, and atimes online is a relative startup.
Peter Helliwell Bangkok Post
I can remember as well The Nation "winning" a lucrative government propaganda contract under the uniformed coup that preceded this one.
It would be very interesting to read the exact financial relationship between The Regime and their fawning MSM.
I remember BPundit wrote
Thai Government spends more money to promote itself
Who skims that dough? I'm sure it's higher than ever this year.
The Regime's mouthpiece, the
The Regime's mouthpiece, the BPost, runs the headline PM: Red shirts set the fires, which of course means that evidence of the Thai military's arson must have turned up.
Does anyone have a link to the evidence of the Thai military's involvement in the arson in Bangkok on 19 May?
No surprise at all. Bangkok
No surprise at all.
Bangkok Post is a criminal organizations of dirty assassins supporting and asking the gemocide against the Thai people.
Hundreds of messages promoting the genocide have been published in their website like "Kill them all ! (women and children) Smash all these bugs and than clean the streets from the trash !"
This was one of the messages published by Bangkok Post where assassins were asking the army to massacre all poor Thais (called "bugs" and "trash").
Every message supporting democracy is removed of course.
What can you expect by a journal willing to see women and children all massacred ?
Not even Hitler was so violent ...