Friday, September 30, 2005

lese majeste

Over on the Thaivisa.com forums there is a topic asking people what their biggest fear of moving to or living in Thailand would be. One poster said "Fearing what may become of Thailand when the King passes on."
A subsequent poster enquired (naturally enough I might think) what the implications of the King passing away might be.
The answer this poster received was as follows:

"dont go there... as the forum rules state

"Discussion of topics concerning the King or other current or deceased members of the Thai Royal Family is forbidden. "

I understand that this probably has a lot to do with Thailand's "lese majeste" laws, which call for stiff punishment for making any critical or defamatory remarks about the King or the royal family. Also included is " Purposely tearing or destroying Thai bank notes, which carry an image of the King, may be considered such an offense, as can spitting on or otherwise defiling an official uniform bearing royal insignia." source This crime is punishable by a prison sentence of 3 to 15 years (plus I wouldn't want to imagine the treatment you would receive in prison at the hands of the guards and the other prisoners.)

Notwithstanding this, I would still like to know what the implications for Thailand would be upon the passing away of the King. This is not meant in anyway to be disrespectful by any means. I just thought I would start a discussion outside of Thailand and away from censorship.
If anybody has any opinions on this I would welcome them to discuss them here. Please do keep it respectful though.

Update
It appears that the Lese Majeste laws even prohibit linking to any sites where free discussion is allowed. The link to this site at the abovementioned site lasted 10 minutes before it was "edited" read: deleted.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Fun with Opera

The Opera browser ( opera.com ) has just been updated and is now free of advertising. It has long been the best browser available and it has just gotten better. One of the new features is "voice" where you can highlight some text on a webpage and the browser will read it out to you in a monotonous robot voice.

Try getting it to read out the lyrics to "Suck my dick" by Lil' Kim, the female rapper who only this week went to the big house on a 366 day bid for lying under oath.
I guarantee the results are hilarious.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

A rethink on the bush impeachment





After posting yesterday I have decided that I may not have thought the whole "impeach bush" thing through thoroughly. I mean in the highly unlikely event that the little emperor is impeached, and even then if he is removed from office, think about what happens next. Look who is next in line for the crown.

As bad as it is having an incompetent moron as the boss of the world, how much worse would it be if the real shot caller who is not so much stupid as just plain evil was on the throne.

While impeaching the terrorist is a great idea, I think we need to think of the consequences. If Dick is capable of holding up the helping of New Orleans for a few days in order to fatten the inevitable Halliburton clean-up contract, what will he do when he really holds the strings?

Saturday, September 10, 2005

you stupid stupid people


Impeach Bush

Why is it that after Bill Clinton lied about having an extramarital affair- a lie that in reality would have only hurt his wife- he was impeached, while george bush lies to start an illegal war, which as of Sept 9 2005 has claimed the lives of 2087 coalition troops, 1893 of them American*, and has become the world's most despotic terrorist, but there is still no sign of any calls for his impeachment?

Ya'll need to get your priorities straight.



*source CNN article

Panty Pulling, The Latest fake craze to Hit Japan

The apparent "latest craze" in Japan to do the rounds on the internet is "panty pulling". This time, instead of Photoshopped images like the ones below purporting to back up the scanty swimsuit hoax and the seethrough skirt hoax (see below), there is a video to substantiate the new craze. Having viewed the video (for research purposes only of course) it very much has the look of one of the plethora of Japan's independant porn videos. (Incidentally, having just quickly googled one of the more major independant porn makers in Japan, I came across a great title of a new release, "Ero terrorists.")





See the video here