[FACT comments: The Simpsons creator, Matt Groening, was one of the pioneers exposing the dangers of nuclear power to a mainstream television audience. The Simpsons also show how greedy the nuke boss, Mr. Burns, is and how complacent the public.
So now the solution is censorship, a typical govt reaction. So far, Canada, Australia, Germany have followed.
Grow a skin! They’re cartoons, already!
If any FACT reader has a list of the eight banned episodes, we’d love to see it.]
Japan crisis sparks Simpsons nuclear disaster ban
Broadcasters in Germany, Australia and Switzerland have decided to ban or censor episodes of The Simpsons that poke fun at nuclear disasters in light of Japan’s atomic emergency.
The Telegraph: March 29, 2011
The nuclear plant in the Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield is a key element in the long-running satirical cartoon [REX]
“We are checking all the episodes and we won’t show any suspect ones, but we won’t cut any scenes,” Stella Rodger, a spokesman for German private broadcaster Pro7, said. “We haven’t postponed any yet.”
Austria’s ORF network has so far banned a total of eight episodes, including one that features scientists Marie and Pierre Curie dying of radiation poisoning. Switzerland’s SF network has done the same.
The nuclear plant in the Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield is a key element in the long-running satirical cartoon, with the hapless Homer in charge of safety despite a slapdash approach evident from the opening credits onwards.
Previous episodes have shown nuclear waste dumped in a children’s playground, plutonium used as a paperweight, cracked cooling towers, luminous rats and three-eyed mutant fish, as well as near-meltdowns.
“Of course we can’t completely change the entire content,” Ms Rodger acknowledged.
Surveys show that people in Germany are particularly uneasy about the dangers of nuclear power, with shipments of radioactive waste regularly attracting angry protests.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of people — 250,000, according to organisers — took part in demonstrations around Germany protesting against nuclear power in light of events in Japan.
Chancellor Angela Merkel announced earlier this month a three-month moratorium on plans to extend the operating times of Germany’s nuclear plants and ordered that the seven oldest reactors be shut down.
The Pirate Bay Tops 5 Million Registered Users
| TorrentFreak: April 4, 2011
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tops-5-million-users-110404/
May 31, 2006, only two years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in the outskirts of Stockholm. The officers were tasked with shutting down the largest threat to the entertainment industry at the time – The Pirate Bay’s servers. In the months leading up to the raid the US Government threatened to put Sweden on the WTO’s black list if they refused to deal with the Pirate Bay problem. Even the MPAA was involved, with John Malcolm, Executive Vice President of the MPAA, writing a letter to Sweden’s Secretary of State in which he stated, “It is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation among other nations and trading partners as a place where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated.” The pressure worked and The Pirate Bay’s servers went down, but to the disappointment of the entertainment industries this only lasted for three days. Instead of calling it quits The Pirate Bay founders fought back, and in an ironic twist all the attention from the press due to legal troubles helped grow the site to what it is today – the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet. Apparently it’s easier to overthrow governments than to take a website down. At the time of the raid The Pirate Bay had only a few hundred thousand registered users, but with the spotlight on the deviant Swedes, the user count soon skyrocketed. At the start of July 2006 the site broke the magical milestone of one million registered users, and that was just the beginning. Today, despite numerous court cases, blocking attempts by ISPs and two full trials at the Stockholm Court, The Pirate Bay has welcomed its 5 millionth user. Quite a remarkable achievement for a site that doesn’t even require registration to download. Day in and day out, a few thousand new users sign up for an account at the most-visited BitTorrent site. There is of course also a downside to the ever growing list of users, as the site’s popularity also makes it a huge target for spammers who want to pass off their fake torrents pointing to malware. TorrentFreak talked to one of the Pirate Bay moderators, who said that indeed hundreds of ‘spam’ accounts and fake uploads have to be deleted every day. Needless to say, without the moderator team the site would become pretty much be unusable in a matter of days. Yes, The Pirate Bay also has several algorithms to spot the obvious spammers, but even after this first screening hundreds of torrents have to be removed manually. The current moderator team exists of about 40 people, half of which are full moderators and the other half so-called ‘helpers’. Together these people remove numerous fake torrents and spam accounts every day, abiding to a strict take-down policy that does not cover copyrighted material. The big question is whether the site will live to welcome its 10 millionth user in a few years from now. The community and moderators – who all work for free – is certainly large enough, but the pressure from the entertainment industry on ISPs and governments is ever increasing. But then again, this never stopped The Pirate Bay before. |
More Black Men Now in Prison System than Were Enslaved
Law Professor Michelle Alexander says the shocking incarceration rate is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color.
Dick Price
LA Progressive: March 31, 2011
“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, the first of many jarring points she made in a riveting presentation.
Alexander, currently a law professor at Ohio State, had been brought in to discuss her year-old bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Interest ran so high beforehand that the organizers had to move the event to a location that could accommodate the eager attendees. That evening, more than 200 people braved the pouring rain and inevitable traffic jams to crowd into the library’s main room, with dozens more shuffled into an overflow room, and even more latecomers turned away altogether. Alexander and her topic had struck a nerve.
Growing crime rates over the past 30 years don’t explain the skyrocketing numbers of black — and increasingly brown — men caught in America’s prison system, according to Alexander, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun after attending Stanford Law. “In fact, crime rates have fluctuated over the years and are now at historical lows.”
“Most of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color,” she said, even though studies have shown that whites use and sell illegal drugs at rates equal to or above blacks. In some black inner-city communities, four of five black youth can expect to be caught up in the criminal justice system during their lifetimes.
As a consequence, a great many black men are disenfranchised, said Alexander — prevented because of their felony convictions from voting and from living in public housing, discriminated in hiring, excluded from juries, and denied educational opportunities.
“What do we expect them to do?” she asked, who researched her ground-breaking book while serving as Director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California. “Well, seventy percent return to prison within two years, that’s what they do.”
Organized by the Pasadena Public Library and the Flintridge Center, with a dozen or more cosponsors, including the ACLU Pasadena/Foothills Chapter and Neighborhood Church, and the LA Progressive as the sole media sponsor, the event drew a crowd of the converted, frankly — more than two-thirds from Pasadena’s well-established black community and others drawn from activists circles. Although Alexander is a polished speaker on a deeply researched topic, little she said stunned the crowd, which, after all, was the choir. So the question is what to do about this glaring injustice.
Married to a federal prosecutor, Alexander briefly touched on the differing opinion in the Alexander household. “You can imagine the arguments we have,” Alexander said in relating discussions she has with her husband. “He thinks there are changes we can make within the system,” she said, agreeing that there are good people working on the issues and that improvements can be made. “But I think there has to be a revolution of some kind.”
However change is to come, a big impediment will be the massive prison-industrial system.
“If we were to return prison populations to 1970 levels, before the War on Drugs began,” she said. “More than a million people working in the system would see their jobs disappear.”
So it’s like America’s current war addiction. We have built a massive war machine — one bigger than all the other countries in the world combined — with millions of well-paid defense industry and billions of dollars at stake. With a hammer that big, every foreign policy issue looks like a nail — another bomb to drop, another country to invade, another massive weapons development project to build.
Similarly, with such a well-entrenched prison-industrial complex in place — also with a million jobs and billions of dollars at stake — every criminal justice issue also looks like a nail — another prison sentence to pass down, another third strike to enforce, another prison to build in some job-starved small town, another chance at a better life to deny.
Alexander, who drew her early inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., devotes the last part of “The New Jim Crow” to steps people can take to combat this gross injustice. In particular, she recommended supporting the Drug Policy Alliance. At the book signing afterwards, Dr. Anthony Samad recruited Michelle Alexander to appear this fall at one his Urban Issues Forums, typically at the California African American Museum next to USC.
Dick Price is the editor of LA Progressive.org.
[FACT comments: Okay, let’s get down to it. YOU, yes, I mean you personally, would pull the trigger, drop the trap, push the button. Really? Might be time to take a close look at you and see if you really think killing anyone for anything solves anything.]
60 years ago today, my parents were sentenced to death
Rosenberg Fund for Children: April 6, 2011
http://www.rfc.org/blog/article/905
Sixty years ago today, Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman sentenced my parents to death. He justified the death penalty for their “Conspiracy to Commit Espionage” (planning to commit espionage) conviction by saying their “conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding fifty thousand.”
The hoopla about Morton Sobell’s recent statements that he and my father engaged in non-atomic espionage to help the Soviet Union both during and after World War II serves to distract attention from Judge Kaufman’s towering lie: that the government of the United States knew that neither Ethel nor Julius Rosenberg stole the secret of the atomic bomb, and that Ethel Rosenberg did not actively participate in any illegal activity. Nevertheless, the government arrested, charged, tried, convicted and ultimately executed her, solely to put pressure on my father to acquiesce to the lie that he stole atomic secrets.
Judge Kaufman’s statement remains as false today as it was in 1951. The FBI, the Justice Department and Judge Kaufman were guilty of a much more serious conspiracy than any my father was involved in. The formers’ involved the fabrication of evidence, the subornation of perjury, the manipulation of the jury and the wrongful execution of two young parents. It subverted the rule of law, violated the constitution and damaged our democracy. Sixty years later, the government still refuses to come clean, and most of the corporate-controlled media continue to ignore this scandal.
I’d be less than honest if I did not admit that the latest news that Morton Sobell, my father and two others provided aeronautical information to the Soviet Union in 1948 gives me pause. My parents wrote in their last letter to me and my brother: “Always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience.” My father, at least, doesn’t seem quite so innocent anymore.
Right-wing cold warriors trumpet that Sobell’s recent statement proves that my parents were lying manipulators, but it is much more complicated than that. Neither Julius nor Ethel was guilty of the crime for which they faced the executioner. Ethel was not a spy and Julius was ignorant of the atomic bomb project. They were innocent of stealing the secret of the atomic bomb and they were fighting for their lives. It would have been next to impossible for them to explain to their children and supporters the subtle distinction between not being guilty of stealing atomic secrets and blanket innocence. Given that, I can understand the course of action they took from a political standpoint
But how does this impact me personally? How could they engage in such high-risk activities that could potentially leave their children orphans? When I wrote An Execution in the Family, I thought my father might only have engaged in helping the Soviet Union fight fascism during World War II and I asked, “How many tens of thousands of American men with young children willingly went to fight during World War II knowing that they might not survive the conflict? Was my father, whose poor eyesight disqualified him for military service, taking a greater risk by choosing this role in the battle?”
I disagree with my parents’ uncritical support for the USSR and the strategy my father employed to aid it after World War II. And knowing the terrible toll parents’ activism can take on the family, I believe parents should always take their children into account when they engage in risky activity. But I do not believe it axiomatic that all parents of young children should refrain from such activity. The RFC helps parents who engage the world and take courageous actions even though they have children. Our best chance of building a more humane and just society rests on the activism of ordinary citizens with family concerns.
Still, I question my parents’ actions more than I used to. I’ve had the luxury of living a much longer life than they did and hopefully I’ve learned from many experiences that were foreclosed to them. I may question my parents’ judgment, but I remain proud of them, even if my father did what he could to aid the Soviet Union throughout the 1940’s and my mother supported him. Despite the awful consequences of their choices and of Judge Kaufman’s lie, my parents acted with integrity, courage and in furtherance of righteous ideals, and passed their passion for social justice on to me and my brother.
Sincerely,
Robert Meeropol,
Executive Director
Rosenberg Fund for Children
[FACT comments: Can you really think humans are more important?]
Did BP Spill Kill Hundreds More Dolphins?
Deep Blue Home: March 29, 2011
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/03/bp-atlantic-spotted-dolphin
Orcas jumping. [Pittman, NOAA]
A new paper in Conservation Letters calculates that the numbers of whales and dolphins killed in BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster could be 50 times higher than the number of carcasses found.
The authors—a high-powered list of renowned cetacean researchers from Canada, the US, Australia, and Scotland (including Scott Krause, who I filmed years ago for a documentary about North Atlantic right whales)—write of a general misperception of the Deepwater Horizon impact:
Many media reports have suggested that the spill caused only modest environmental impacts, in part because of a low number of observed wildlife mortalities, especially marine mammals.
Atlantic spotted dolphins. [Bmatulis]
Compared to the 1989 Exxon Valdez, with its iconic oiled otters and high body counts, the Deepwater Horizon seems, well, not so bad. The authors point out that “only” 101 dead cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) were found in the Northern Gulf of Mexico as of 7 November 2010. The number’s misleading though.
The issue arises when policymakers, legislators, or biologists treat these carcass-recovery counts as though they were complete counts or parameters estimated from some representative sample, when in fact, they are opportunistic observations. Our study suggests that these opportunistic observations should be taken to estimate only the bare minimum number of human-caused mortalities.
Humpback whale. [Whit Welles Wwelles14]
So how many more whales, dolphins, and porpoises actually died? That problem is tough to figure to begin with and is compounded by a dearth of data in the Gulf—a fact that will work greatly in BP’s favor when the time comes to levy fines.
The Gulf of Mexico is a semi-enclosed subtropical sea that forms essentially one ecosystem with many demographically independent cetacean populations. Some of these cetacean populations, such as killer whales (Orcinus orca), false killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens), melonheaded whales (Peponocephala electra), and several beaked whale species, appear to be quite small, are poorly studied, or are found in the pelagic realm where they could have been exposed to oil and yet never strand. Small, genetically isolated populations of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) could have experienced substantial losses either inshore or offshore.
Atlantic spotted dolphins. [Bmatulis]
Two methods of extrapolation could shed light on how many cetaceans BP’s disaster killed:
- Compare abundance before the disaster to abundance after—but since we don’t know the population size of whale and dolphins species in the Gulf before hand we’re unlikely to notice anything short of “the most catastrophic decline” and maybe not even that.
- Count the number of carcasses recovered—knowing that many will evade our count, having sunk, decayed, been scavenged, or drifted away. So adjust the counts upward to estimate total mortality. This approach is used to estimate bird deaths at power lines, where, in at least one instance, we now know that bird body counts underestimate total actual deaths by a whopping 32 percent.
The authors worked the two methods as best they could and added something more.
Given the magnitude of the spill and complexity of the response, quantifying the ecological impacts will take a long time. To contribute to this effort, we examined historical data from the Northern Gulf of Mexico to evaluate whether cetacean carcass counts in this region have previously been reliable indicators of mortality, and may therefore accurately represent deaths caused by the Deepwater Horizon/BP event.
Sperm whale. [NOAA]
Their methods and analysis suggest that an average of 4,474 cetaceans died in the northern Gulf every year between 2003 and 2007 from all causes, human and natural. Yet since an average of only 17 bodies were found in those years, the body count represented only ~0.4 percent of total deaths.
Consider, for example, one sperm whale being detected as a carcass, and a necropsy identified oiling as a contributing factor in the whale’s death. If the carcass-detection rate for sperm whales is 3.4%, then it is plausible that 29 sperm whale deaths represents the best estimate of total mortality, given no additional information. If, for example, 101 cetacean carcasses were recovered overall, and all deaths were attributed to oiling, the average-recovery rate (2%) would translate to 5,050 carcasses, given the 101 carcasses detected.
Those are chilling numbers. Period. But also in light of the relatively tiny populations of cetaceans in the Gulf. Especially since most if not all cetaceans are highly social, and since oil and chemical dispersants likely injured, sickened, or killed entire clusters, schools, pods, matrilines, or groups at the same time—and may still be doing so.
The authors describe the near-lethal affect of the Exxon Valdez disaster on one well-known and well-studied pod of killer whales in Alaska.
In the first year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, the AT1 group of “transient” killer whales experienced a 41% loss; there has been no reproduction since the spill. Although the cause of the apparent sterility is unknown, the lesson serves as an important reminder that immediate death is not the only factor that can lead to long-term loss of population viability.
Pilot whale mother and calf. [Clark Anderson]
The paper:
- Williams. R, Gero. S, Bejder. L., Calambokidis. J, Kraus. S, Lusseau. D, Read. A, Robbins. J. Underestimating the Damage: Interpreting Cetacean Carcass Recoveries in the Context of the Deepwater Horizon/BP Incident. Conservation Letters. Wiley-Blackwell. March 2011, DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2011.00168.x
[FACT comments: Okay, so we’re laughing so fucking hard it fucking hurts… The Official Information Act is an organic law, attached to the Thai Constitution, and administered by the Official Information Commission. However, when FACT petitioned the OIC in 2007 over Internet censorship, MICT officials refused to attend when subpoenaed and suffered no consequences. The OIC was therefore unable to reach any conclusions. And now the PM is offering us freedom of information?!? What a cruel joke on Thai people! We should look to the other “democratic” countries whose FOI laws result in releasing precisely no genuine govt information to the public. We have no doubt this is just another empty promise. And why should he start now and spoil a broken record?!? Please note this is NOT Not the Nation.]
Abhisit vows to give public full access to facts
The Nation: February 5, 2011
The public should be given full access to government information, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said yesterday as he reiterated his commitment to push for full compliance with the 1997 Official Information Act.
“The spirit of the law is to ensure good governance and promote people’s participation in the decision-making process, therefore access to information is vital for people to make an informed judgement,” he said.
Abhisit explained that in the face of modern information technology and the WikiLeaks phenomenon, any attempts to withhold information would be futile and more damaging.
If access is denied, people will turn to non-governmental channels for information and end up with biased data, while government agencies would be deprived of the opportunity to tell the real story, he said.
The premier listed the following reasons to justify full public access to information:
- Technology has advanced to a point where it would be counter-productive to withhold information;
- Transparency and full access to information will help in the fight against corruption;
- News reports have often been skewed because media professionals do not have access to official information, forcing them to look to other sources, which provide distorted data.
In reaction to Abhisit’s remarks, Pheu Thai Party spokesman Promphong Nopparit said this government was the worst when it came to withholding information, adding that the opposition party had little or no access to facts.
Instead, he said, members of the opposition had to rely on complaints from disgruntled officials in order to check on the government’s performance.
Ministry of Communications Bans Over 2,000 Metaphors
Not the Nation: July 6, 2010
http://notthenation.com/2010/07/ministry-of-communications-bans-over-2000-metaphors/
The Ministry of Communications and Technology, or MICT, today released a list of over two thousand metaphors which are no longer legal in print media or online communications in Thailand.
A spokesperson for the Ministry explained that Thais were subverting the usual prohibitions on discussing sensitive subjects by using the metaphors, and thus they represented a sort of loophole that could not be tolerated.
“Just as it is illegal to use proxy servers to access banned, subversive websites, it must also be illegal to use proxy words to access banned, subversive ideas,” the spokesperson said.
Under the new law, anyone using one of the listed metaphors, or a simile version of the metaphor, is subject to up to 100,000 baht in fines and 3 years imprisonment. A complete list of the banned literary devices can be accessed at the Ministry’s website, and includes popular phrases such as “when the leaf finally falls from the tree,” “whispers behind the wall,” and “Lady Macbeth.”
A thorough review of the list shows that almost any metaphor referring to death, generational succession, natural transformation, females in power, sibling preference, hidden corridors of power, short-sightedness, immaturity, organized systems of belief, or things happening that lead invariably to other things, is now banned.
Academics and free speech advocates were quick to criticize the new laws as draconian, culturally problematic and subjective in enforcement.
“The use of vague, obtuse metaphors to hide the actual topic of conversation is a long and important tradition in Thailand,” said Laksana Satawedin, a professor at Chulalongkorn’s Faculty of Communication Arts. “Thai culture is all about talking about things by talking about something else. To take that away is an attack on our Thai-ness.”
Laksana began to compare the new laws to “ a blindfold for the already mute” but was stopped by a police officer at the press conference, who warned her that she was about to break the law.
Sanitsuda Ekachai, a spokesperson for the Thai Journalists Association, agreed. “Already we’ve self-censored ourselves to the point where we can’t talk about royalty, the army, the Privy Council, the Crown Property Bureau, Buddhism, monks, the ministries, or powerful businessmen. If they take away our metaphors we’ll have nothing left but football scores, celebrity gossip, and gold prices.”
“The Ministry has become like a child smashing ants with a st–” she said before quickly consulting the list of banned phrases. “Um, I mean like a child smashing…ladybugs…with a clock radio.”
Despite the criticism, the Abhisit government expressed its wholehearted support for the new laws, calling them a necessary safeguard for national security and good morality.
“The use of dangerous use of metaphors is well documented among the most radical red-shirts, as well as by fugitive terrorist Thaksin Shinawatra,” said Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban. “If we had these laws during the protests in May, we could have arrested the red leaders on stage. It’s a long overdue action to ensure unity.”
Thailand’s monarchy
When more is less
The increasing use of lèse-majesté laws serves no one
The Economist: February 3, 2011
http://www.economist.com/node/18073343?story_id=18073343
ON FEBRUARY 4th the latest trial for insulting the monarchy was to begin in a Bangkok courtroom. The accused is Chiranuch Premchaiporn, arrested in 2009 for violating the Computer Crime Act. As director of Prachatai.com, she faces ten charges for not preventing comments on bulletin boards that might have offended the royal family. If found guilty she faces up to 50 years in jail.
The 2007 act was originally intended to prevent cybercrimes such as hacking. But most prosecutions are for online content which supposedly endangers national security. Prosecutions for insulting the monarchy come under this rubric. The trial of Ms Chiranuch is an unwelcome reminder that laws on lèse-majesté, once used only sparingly, are now deployed with ferocious frequency—more for political gain than to protect the monarchy.
With government statistics, David Streckfuss, an academic, says the number of lèse-majesté charges each year has leapt, from just 2.5 on average in the 1980s to 164 in 2009. Many of the accused are jailed. The Computer Crime Act has also had a powerful effect. Work by Thammasat University says the courts have used it to block nearly 75,000 web pages, 57,330 for anti-monarchy content. Some 44,000 of those pages were blocked in 2010.
The increase in repression dates from the coup against the populist prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, in 2006. He was widely seen by those around the king to be too powerful, even usurping the prerogatives of the monarch. Today the conservative government of Abhisit Vejjajiva says lèse-majesté laws should be used vigorously to protect the king from criticism and prevent him from being dragged into party politics. But it acknowledges over-enthusiastic appplication and has set up a committee to review this.
Yet Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a diplomat-turned-academic, argues that the opposite is happening. The almost arbitrary use of lèse-majesté, he writes, has “served to damage, not safeguard, the institution.” Meanwhile, he argues, using laws to suppress the opposition and media obstructs Thailand’s democratisation. Official veneration of the monarchy has sometimes reached ridiculous proportions. For critics like Mr Pavin, the rush to prosecute is not really about protecting the monarchy but about exploiting its prestige to legitimise the royalist establishment.
How far the ailing King Bhumibol supports the use of the law to protect his name, no one is sure. But Sulak Sivaraksa, a lawyer who has twice been prosecuted for lèse-majesté, has an illuminating story. His most recent case, in 2009, involved a critical essay on the monarchy in an obscure journal. He was arrested, but found out while dining with a public prosecutor that his case had been dropped. Mr Sulak asked why. “He told me frankly that the king wanted it to be done, to stop.”
[FACT comments: We were inclined to dismiss the two foreigners who spoke from the Redshirt stage as brainless yobs. However, their real story shows them to be real people involved in Thai life who care about Thailand. It is terrible punished enough to be persona non grata.]
A story of two red-shirt farangs in a Thai prison
Prachatai: January 31, 201
http://www.prachatai3.info/english/node/2280
A Thai red shirt held in prison shares with Prachatai the story of Conor David Purcell, Australian, and Jeff Savage, a Briton, who were arrested for their involvement in the red-shirt rallies in April and May 2010 and deported to their home countries last year.
Mr X, a Thai red shirt, said that Conor and Jeff were brought to the prison among hundreds of red shirts a few days after the end of the rallies in May 2010.
Both of them were detained at the remand centre for a while, before being sent to Mr X’s zone. Jeff was held in Room 10 which was fitted with surveillance cameras. Mr X was there when Jeff was moved in, so he felt more familiar with him than Conor. Conor was placed in Room 2, as the wardens wanted to separate him from Jeff, and that room was fitted with surveillance cameras as well.
According to Mr X, when Conor came to his prison zone, he had so much pain in his leg muscles that he could hardly sit. Inmates said that he had been beaten up in the first zone.
Mr X introduced himself to Jeff and Conor to let them know that they had an English-speaking friend here.
‘Normally, in my zone, any red shirts who came in would be met with “special greetings,” as the head warden loves red shirts so-o-o much. I was the first red shirt here, and was well “greeted” by the head warden. All red shirts, except those who were old or disabled, were “greeted”,’ he said, but did not elaborate.
‘Fortunately, Jeff and Conor are farangs, so they got here safely. It’s odd that Thais treat their fellow Thais with such contempt. If you’re a red shirt, you’re bad in the eyes of the warden,’ he said.
The room that Jeff was put in was already crowded, and that displeased the big guy there who ruled the room, a former police officer arrested for his involvement with methamphetamines. But Jeff was a funny guy and could speak a little Thai, so he could get along with other inmates and had no problems.
Jeff had a Thai wife and a step child in Pattaya. He always said he missed his step child with tears in his eye. Mr X also had a child, so they often shared their feelings and consoled each other.
Jeff was once asked by an inmate that, ‘Why the hell do you damn farangs mess with the red shirts?’ Jeff quickly replied, translated by Mr X, that he had a Thai wife and a Thai daughter, so he had joined the red shirts for the future of his daughter.
One morning, Mr X was told that his ‘red-shirt farang friend’, Conor, had nearly got beaten the previous night. He went to Conor’s room and found messages written in English with a pen on both walls, cursing the Thai government and constitution and venting the writer’s anger about his arrest.
Conor was always reading and writing. At 1 pm every day, he would exercise in the yard, doing boxing training with other inmates.
When Jeff was denied bail, he stood with his hands holding the iron bars, looking outside in tears. Sometimes when he was lying down, he would suddenly pound his head with his fists and cry.
Conor was never seen crying or appeared sad, except for one thing. He was frustrated and under a lot of stress when the prison ordered no visitors for him, as a result of the brawl he had with other inmates when he first came. A panel had been set up to look into the incident, and it had interrogated the others involved, but not him. Finally, three of them including Conor were barred from receiving visitors for one month.
At first, he seemed OK with it, but after a week he became less cheerful and at bedtime he would lie down and stare quietly at the ceiling.
Mr X said that all inmates looked forward to visits by relatives and friends. He said that even a visit from this Prachatai reporter made him happy.
Later, Jeff, Conor and Mr X were put in the same room.
When Jeff was brought to the court, he chose to plead guilty, and was released right away as he had already served jail time.
Jeff came to say goodbye to Mr X and Conor, smiling and in tears. They shook hands and promised to meet again outside. His departure distressed Mr X, as he wondered when his day would come.
Jeff’s choice to confess and get immediate release shook Conor who was determined to fight to the end.
One day, Conor received a letter from his closest friend who had always visited him. In the letter, the friend admired his fighting spirit, and respected his decision, but the friend cared for him and wished him to care for his friend too.
When Mr X read the letter, Conor asked if he was him, what he would do. Mr X advised him to confess.
Conor did so and was released. On the afternoon of that day, he shook hands with Mr X through the iron bars for the last time.
Mr X said that he hoped to see them again outside.
Source:
http://www.prachatai3.info/journal/2011/01/32822
[FACT comments: Now here’s a hoot. Only one person was investigated for the comments posted to Prachatai which resulted in Chiranuch Premchaiporn’s arrest. Now those charges have been dropped. But, of course, there were nine remaining commenters that our vigilant police never tried to catch. Far easier to arrest Jiew, whose charges continue.]
Lèse majesté case against Prachatai poster dropped
Prachatai: January 31, 2011
http://www.prachatai3.info/english/node/2281
The Criminal Court has dropped the case against a woman alleged to have posted offensive messages on the Prachatai webboard in 2008, citing inconclusive evidence, thus giving her the benefit of the doubt.
On 31 Jan, the Criminal Court dismissed the case against Miss A, 28, who was alleged to have used the alias Bento to post messages offensive to the Queen and the Crown Prince on the Prachatai webboard in October 2008, in violation of Section 112 of the Criminal Code and Section 14 of the 2007 Computer Crimes Act.
According to the court ruling, the investigators found that the internet service and telephone number were registered under the name of the defendant’s mother, and were used for her family’s business.
Although the defendant’s notebook computer contained information pertaining to the Prachatai website, no evidence was found to show that the messages had been posted through that computer, the court said.
The court went on to say that the defendant was arrested in a police raid, so she could not have deleted the information. The prosecutor merely checked the IP address with Prachatai and the internet service provider, and this was not sufficient evidence. There was no witness who could confirm that the defendant posted the messages. The defendant’s residence was a factory which had several computers with internet connections, and it was not known which one was used for the posting. Several employees could have used the computers.
The court cited the testimony of a defence witness, an IT expert from Australia, who said that any sophisticated computer user could fake an IP address. Therefore, it was possible that the IP address had been faked.
Unconvinced by the evidence, the court gave the defendant the benefit of the doubt, and dismissed the case.
Miss A was arrested on 30 Jan 2009, and was detained at the Central Women’s Detention Centre for about 10 days before being granted bail. Her alleged offence was also used against Prachatai Director Chiranuch Premchaiporn as the 10th charge against her under Section 15 of the 2007 Computer Crimes Act. Chiranuch’s trial will begin on 4 Feb.
Prachatai has withheld the defendant’s real name at her own strong request.
Source:
http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2011/01/32871
