Prachatai webboard to be closed at end of July

Friday, 3 September 2010

Prachatai webboard to be closed at end of July

Thu, 08/07/2010 - 12:36

Chiranuch Premchaiporn has informed readers that the Prachatai webboard will be closed on 31 July. The announcement should have been made a month earlier, but she has been too speechless, she says. She apologizes to readers.

The Prachatai webboard was created when the Prachatai website first began, and was meant to be a space for free discussion.

Back when there was no yellow vs. red scene, it was a small forum for those who either liked or hated Thaksin, or supported the PAD, but not its Section 7 proposal. As moderator, she also communicated with members in a bid to make the space open for all voices, and received both flowers and brickbats in the process. The discussions in the forum went on with no hiccups, up until the coup on 19 Sept 2006.

Due to the very limited and restricted space available for those who were against the coup and liked Thaksin, the Prachatai webboard, which holds firm its belief in the freedom of expression, was greatly expanded, to the point that the Prachatai team has had to make this decision.

The Prachatai webboard, whose URL had to be changed from www.prachataiwebboard.com to www.prachataiboard1.info due to government blocking, has been truly shaped by the hands of the posters.

However, during this time when rights and freedoms are under serious threat, legal troubles have arisen which have to be fought through the judicial process. Posters of comments have been incessantly arrested, some reported and some not.

The media and posters alike face the threat of sweeping accusations that they are a ‘threat to national security’ through the use of the 2007 Computer Crimes Act, the Emergency Decree and Section 112 of the Criminal Code.

The tracking and hunting down of people who post comments in the webboard seems to be no problem at all for the authorities who do not even have to obtain any information from Prachatai.

With limited protection and no guarantee of safety for anyone who uses the webboard, the Prachatai team has to come to this conclusion.

Source:

http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2010/07/30243

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Comments

by doctor J (not verified) (127.0.0.1 58.8.119.74) ... Thu, 08/07/2010 - 14:38.

Rest in peace, Prachatai

Rest in peace, Prachatai webboard.

Rest in peace, freedom of speech.

by jud (not verified) (127.0.0.1 91.0.108.137) ... Fri, 09/07/2010 - 22:59.

we will miss you and best

we will miss you and best wishes to all.At least thank you for your continue fighting for Human Rights

by CJ Hinke (not verified) (127.0.0.1 119.197.233.43) ... Thu, 08/07/2010 - 15:43.

So finally govt gets to force

So finally govt gets to force us all to self-censor. No more 'net spaces to be anonymous, to speak freely and share opinions with others.

We understand why Prachatai must close its webboard in view of computer 'crimes' prosecutions.

This is one more nail in the coffin of free speech in Thailand. We are well on the road to Burma.

by john francis lee (not verified) (127.0.0.1 118.172.67.91, 204.3.153.218) ... Thu, 08/07/2010 - 18:52.

The reds were the only force

The reds were the only force forestalling full-bore military rule in Thailand. They came to Bangkok by the truckload, vehicles by the family-full, to reinstate the results of the last two elections in Thailand.

The Yellow shirts were their model. They certainly hadn't approved of the Yellow shirts rampage, but by gum, if that's what it takes in this country, well they could protest and occupy Bangkok with the best of them.

Remember their singing, dancing, joyful procession into town? Remember the joyful reception they received in the streets from their brothers and sisters who do all the work there?

Unlike the Yellow shirts they were gunned down by the Thai military. That's what the Thai military is for, the ultimate double standard in Thailand.

The Thai "elite" wannabes, the young, upwardly-mobile, they hope, urbanites let loose their loathing of their own rural roots on the reds. Watched with glee their massacre and downfall.

A young PhD student at ANU, more moderate, more liberal said during Episode 3 of their Thailand in Crisis:

"...we prefer democracy, but it's not in our future... it will affect a lot of rural people... whether or not Thailand is democratic or not the middle class will not be affected anyway...".

The Thai middle class, like the Siamese "elite" they follow, think they are separate from the buffaloes, the creatures, that inhabit the tung na outside of Bangkok. Like the Siamese "elite" they regard them, their own Thai brothers and sisters, as squatters on Siamese territory, and are ready to help drive them off the land, to swing Thailand from a country of villages and villagers to a land of corporate farms run from Bangkok. After they've driven the "squatters" off "their" land.

So the Siamese "elite" and their wannabes march off into their brave new world of military dictatorship with a slick corporate, civilian face, prepared to destroy a thousand years of Thai culture, no questions asked. Gleeful.

Ask not for who the bell tolls, oh wannabe. It tolls as well for Thailand and for thee.

by john francis lee (not verified) (127.0.0.1 118.172.67.91, 204.3.153.218) ... Thu, 08/07/2010 - 19:28.

Big Brother is a

Big Brother is a Military/Capitalist partnership in Bangkok...

Thailand's Red Shirts Struggle to Survive

The country's military continues to build an overwhelming surveillance machine

To prevent protesters unleashing another urban insurrection, new CCTV cameras will eyeball the Bangkok streets where 90 people died, most of them civilians, and 1,400 were injured when the military battled Red Shirts and crushed their bamboo barricades in May.

Thailand's army-backed government is now wielding overwhelming surveillance, imprisonment, censorship and other "state of emergency" powers across much of this Buddhist-majority Southeast Asian nation. The United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, commonly known as the Red Shirts, acknowledge that they have been strangled and are struggling to stay alive. Thousands of cameras are to be installed all over Bangkok, making it probably the most heavily surveilled city in Asia.

"We have 68 cameras in the Ratchaprasong area, and there will be more cameras installed," said the Ratchaprasong Square Trade Association's president, Chai Srivikorn, in an interview... "If it is an organized movement, they [protesters] will identify any camera that they can reach. "So to defend them, and make that more secure, it has to be high up where they cannot access. So that's why we have to put more cameras there." Ratchaprasong's cameras and operating costs are paid for privately by building owners, but stream digital video only to police, he said. The government "plans for 10,000 cameras" to be installed elsewhere across Bangkok, including where other deadly clashes occurred.

I guess the middle-class have not yet realized he effects of full-spectrum dominance in a total surveillance society.

With enough information you can "prove" that anyone is anything by taking the appropriate sample.

In Thailand today that sort of circumstantial case is all the courts are looking for as justification to hand down the predetermined decree.

by john francis lee (not verified) (127.0.0.1 118.172.67.91) ... Fri, 09/07/2010 - 13:16.

I wonder if the unblocking of

I wonder if the unblocking of prachatai.com is in anyway related to the closing of the webboard?

by Darren Nelson (not verified) (127.0.0.1 89.241.158.178) ... Fri, 09/07/2010 - 16:36.

A sad day for free speech.

by sulasno (not verified) (127.0.0.1 1.1.1.12, 58.8.214.41) ... Sat, 10/07/2010 - 15:34.

is the domain for sale ?

by john francis lee (not verified) (127.0.0.1 118.172.78.28) ... Sun, 11/07/2010 - 14:08.

There are no more 'net spaces

There are no more 'net spaces to be anonymous, to speak freely and share opinions with others. The corporations that provide "free" email, "free" blogs, "free" networking are all exacting a price, a price that too many seem willing to pay without a second thought, all the while campaigning sanctimoniously for a "free" internet.

There is a website, http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm, through which anyone may send their websearches to google. The extra layer of indirection makes google unable to effectively trace, record, and analyze your searches, derive patterns, and compile a dossier on your search history.

The scroogle site itself does no such processing and further wipes its logs completely every 48 hours.

Google never throws anything away.

Google is public enemy number one on the internet, not because its intentions are worse or its employees more evil than the others, but because its employees are smarter, more competent, at least at the technical end, and this has given it a commercial edge which has given it a financial edge which feeds back to the commercial edge... and now it is allied with the NSA (US National Security Administration).

Not ordinarily a fan of sci-fi myself, I found a short story which humanizes the description of the situation at scroogle. The story is itself entitled 'Scroogled'.

Everyone who runs a google blog or who forces their correspondents to communicate with them over a gmail channel is handing your personal information over to the googleplex.

Google is the world's premier collector, analyzer, and compiler of information on us all. Their product. like Soylent Green is their customers.

Real friends don't turn their friends communications over to the googleplex.

I had originally posted this information at the TAKE BACK YOUR INTERNET! page on the FACT website, but it didn't pass the censor there so I post it here, because it is important to know.

Google is important to avoid, insofar as possible.

by Frank G Anderson (not verified) (127.0.0.1 69.182.53.248) ... Sun, 11/07/2010 - 17:04.

Illusion will plod along,

Illusion will plod along, taking freedom to the grave,
Until one day there is no one left to save.
National security must be preserved at all cost,
Over and above democracy forever lost.
Thailand's future in shades of gray will be written,
That it was saved by the military, not smitten.
Behind the shiny armored tanks and
Fancy dress uniforms of its officers,
The discerning man will detect not a few
Small but deadly Lucifers.

by eggomaniac (not verified) (127.0.0.1 207.216.60.226) ... Thu, 02/09/2010 - 02:37.

So, was it closed only in

So, was it closed only in Thailand?
Can folks start there own Topics here?