links for 2006-10-13

• Thai leaders stand pat on martial law as media, civil rights advocates grow restless « southeast asian press alliance
  "The Thai Broadcast Journalists Association says the broadcasting industry and media in general are intimidated enough to “feel suffocated” and to practice widespread self-censorship."
  (tags: thailand freespeech censorship)
• Andy Kessler: Media 2.Uh-Oh: Intro
  "Is it Media 2.0 or Media Two Point Uh-oh?"
  (tags: media google youtube web2.0)
• Caijing: Courts Move to Control Press Coverage of Legal Proceedings
  "In a major step backward for judicial transparency and freedom of the press, China’s highest court is seeking to dramatically restrict media coverage of trials, giving itself broad discretion over what information courts are allowed to release to the p
  (tags: freespeech humanrights media law journalism china)
• El Oso, El Moreno, and El Abogado » Blog Archive » “Promoting Hacker-Citizens”
  "The following is my translation of Juan Freire’s post “Declaration of Independence of the Blogosphere: Promoting Hacker-Citizens” and is posted with his permission."
  (tags: cyber-activism blogging blogs)

Comments

[mahathir_fan]

The Thai coup is interesting. My take is that it was not a popular coup, only popular in the large cities. His support in the rural area is scattered. Thanksin had been doing a good job, but it appeared that he stepped on the foot of an influential businessman who controls the media. Since then, he plunged into one crisis after another.

Every little step he takes becomes an opportunity to condemn Thaksin. For example, he was accused of conflict of interest becaus e he owns a telecom company. His critics say that Thai should open up its telecom sector to foreign companies. OK. What better way to fix this than to sell his shares in that company, and to sell it to a foreigner. He did that, and he becomes the subject of criticism again. Now he is accused to giving away the country's telecom market to foreigners.

He even held new elections to prove that he as the democratic mandate, but his critics refused to take part. His critics know they cannot win against him in democratic elections. He has broken no law.

I want to challenge the coup government to do 2 things:
1) Formally charge Thaksin in the court of law for abuse of power
2) Allow Thaksin to return to Thai politics if the court found Thaksin not guilty

I suspect that they will not pick up on my challenge. His enemies do not like him and knows it is hard to beat him, and will want to see this man fade away from politics or migrate to some Western country. They will not want to fight him in a democratically contested election.