[HN Gopher] Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai ...
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Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai Monarchy
Author : mzs
Score : 340 points
Date : 2021-01-19 13:39 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Pretty sad to see this insanity happening in such a beautiful
| country. I guess Thailand is due for a revolution. And it seems
| the West doesn't care that much about human rights abuses as long
| as the government only oppresses its own people while playing
| nice with the West otherwise (like Saudi Arabia).
| yokto wrote:
| Due to its unique geographical situation, Thailand already had
| more revolutions than any other country. It has the highest
| largest-to-second-largest-city ratio among comparably sized
| countries, making it ideal for coups.
|
| See more here: https://youtu.be/S9SMRuvnl2g
| fnord123 wrote:
| The video has a lot of incorrect or outdated information
| according to Wikipedia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city
|
| Second city is Chiang Mai with 960k people. So the ratio is
| about 10:1 and not 26:1. This puts it in line with Japan, and
| Austria. Hardly churn factories.
| namelosw wrote:
| Well, I would say the opposite. The West cares too much and
| incited too many revolutions.
|
| Remember the Arab spring? People are still burning in hell and
| nobody in the West gives a shit anymore. Sure, Gaddafi was a
| terrible dictator, but his death is making things much, much
| worse. If Assad was dead, things would become even more ugly.
| All the West wanted is to judge and prevail instead of solving
| the problems, or at least try not to screw everything.
|
| Imagine yourself as an average Syrian or Lybian person, the
| government is imperfect just like anyone else but life is
| Okayish. All of a sudden some superpowers just yell freedom in
| your face, then soon there's wars and bombs - your home turned
| into rubble, many people you were killed.
|
| It's not only painful but also confusing and not constructive
| at all. Nobody learned anything. That's worse, things like
| these doomed to happen again, in another year, on another land,
| and happens to some other people.
| openasocket wrote:
| I wouldn't blame the West for the Arab spring though, that
| was an organic, local movement. NATO bears some blame for
| what's happening in Libya since they did side with the rebels
| (though I think if you want to calculate blame you should
| compare the current situation with what would have happened
| if NATO had not intervened, which still would have involved a
| lot of casualties). But Syria? The West's support of the
| rebel movements has been token at best, and actual military
| support has been devoted almost entirely to ISIS and ISIS-
| aligned fighters.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| The Arab Spring was not an organic, local movement. It's
| been YEARS AND YEARS of American support for a
| "Westernized" style of freedom and individualism that they
| have promoted in that region which became that.
|
| Not saying that's the right or wrong way to live, but you
| have to realize that the US has been very actively
| promoting people to rise up against those leaders for years
| and years without considering that the kind of political
| instability they themselves face right now (in the US)
| could not be tolerated in countries with lesser means.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The Arab Spring was partially catalyzed by the leak of the
| US State Department cables to Wikileaks. I think it's fair
| to claim the US has some responsibility in the set of
| causes (there's a reason State Department correspondence is
| private).
|
| It turns out that while sunlight is a great disinfectant,
| it also sometimes starts unintended fires.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cabl
| e...
| openasocket wrote:
| The cable leaks sparked outrage because the US Tunisian
| embassy was reporting back to the State Department the
| Tunisian President was corrupt and self-dealing. If the
| US has some responsibility for the Tunisian revolution,
| it's a distant 4th: behind the President of Tunisia, the
| people of Tunisia, and Wikileaks for leaking the cables
| (and I'd put Wikileaks way, way below the others)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The Syrian government would not have lost control of the
| situation if it wasn't for Western support of the
| insurrection, Western bombings of infrastructure, and
| droves of Western armaments - ATGMs especially - that
| enabled the survival of the insurrection,
|
| The material support was absolutely not token, at all.
|
| There are also _literal US troops in Syria that are used
| purely to prevent the Syrian government from taking control
| of land in Syria_.
|
| These are also in strategic places used to cut off land
| trading routes to Syria and cause economic pain to the
| government via military means, in the hopes that the
| government would fall.
|
| Also, the US government actually did bomb the Syrian
| military multiple times.
|
| So no, the US is actually at war in every single sense of
| the world against the Syrian government, and without the US
| government and it's allies there would be no civil war in
| Syria past a year or two of unrest. Not anywhere even near
| 400 000 deaths.
| openasocket wrote:
| I strongly disagree with your assessment that, without
| Western funding for the rebels the government forces
| would have resumed control within a couple years, for a
| variety of reasons. The rebels made significant
| territorial gains before Western involvement, and the
| large number of factions that emerged is a solid
| demonstration that Assad was unable to control the
| population. The usage of artillery, air strikes, and
| chemical attacks on civilian targets greatly strengthened
| the resolve of the rebels. Repeatedly refusing to take
| actions to improve the humanitarian situation, along with
| draconian treatment of rebels and suspected rebels,
| ensured that the population would not yield to government
| forces without a long and protracted fight.
|
| It should be noted the large degree of foreign
| involvement in this war. You've got Hezbollah and
| Iranian-backed militia groups working alongside the Syria
| government forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar
| provided bases, training, and equipment to the free
| Syrian army. Turkey has even mounted offensives into
| northeast Syria. There's Kurdish forces, some funded by
| Kurdish nationalist elements. There's jihadist groups
| such as the al Nusra front and ISIL which took advantage
| of the power vacuum to grow in power and influence.
| Foreign fighters from throughout the middle east (and
| throughout the world) flocked to the region to join
| various factions. Russia has deployed troops to assist
| the Syrian government and is regularly striking Syrian
| opposition targets. And, of course, funding and training
| from several Western nations. None of the above was at
| the behest of the US, these are actions taken by
| different countries and groups in service of their own
| foreign policy goals and ideologies. It seems odd to
| place the blame squarely at the feet of the US when so
| many competing interests were involved, especially when
| others intervened significantly more.
|
| And things changed significantly with the emergence of
| ISIL, their invasion of Iraq, and numerous terrorist
| attacks around the world. The US was absolutely correct
| in providing support to Iraq and building a coalition to
| stop their territorial gains and mount a counter
| offensive. I think expecting the US to remain neutral in
| such a conflict is unreasonable. It was necessary to push
| them back into Syria, and to take steps to make sure they
| could not regain ground in western Syria. And while the
| Syrian and Russian governments might complain about this,
| the fact is that the region is far outside of their area
| of control.
|
| I think that blaming everything on the US belittles the
| decisions and actions or local groups, and groups around
| the world.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The funding and training by other Western nations was
| entirely contingent on US support. The US did the
| delivery, and operated the physical bases that allowed
| for training.
|
| As for foreign support, except for US-led support, all of
| it was to support Assad.
|
| Whats more, even at the very beginning the US limited
| Russia's support of Assad by threat of military
| intervention.
|
| As for the rest, if you think it is tenable for a
| fractured force of over twenty different factions without
| an access to weapons, training or funding to persist more
| than a few months against a modern army, you are simply
| wrong. Insurgency would have been possible, but not
| holding territory.
|
| In any case, the non-jihadist non-Kurdish independent
| (which were amenable to limited autonomy since the
| beginning) forces basically dissipated within a year with
| the fall of the Free Syrian Army in 2012. Your theory
| that the revolt would have been protracted and last for
| years without international support is completely absurd,
| because it was almost completely destroyed, leaving only
| the YPG and the Jihadists, within a year until US support
| returned.
|
| Indeed, the successor of the FSA, the SMC, was explicitly
| backed by the US-led coalition from its very founding.
|
| I'm not belittling the actions or decisions of local
| groups in anyway. I speak Arabic myself, and have friends
| that lived in Syria at the time. The movement was not
| sustainable at all, and was much, much, much less bloody
| until the Western weapons fell into the hands of
| Jihadists.
|
| I never asked the US to remain neutral in a conflict
| against terrorism. If they wish to do so, they could have
| joined it with the accord of the Syrian Government
| instead of waging war against it and indirectly (and
| directly) supplying the terrorists.
|
| I'm blaming the US squarely because she, and her allies
| which operated through the US, are the only source of
| armament for the opposition and the Jihadists, and knew
| very well that Democracy was completely impossible in
| Syria at the time since the very beginning, but instead
| saw an opportunity to pursue geopolitical interests at
| the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths, yet again.
|
| Your attempt to deflect the blame by accusing entities
| that never facilitated the Civil War at all of "doing it
| too", denying the clear pattern of US involvement in the
| rebel and jihadi elements of the Civil War is frankly
| disgusting.
|
| From 400 000 to 600 000 people died in a Civil War that,
| even at the very beginning, never even had a majority
| amongst the _rebels_ of support for a secular democracy,
| and that was prolonged 7 years past the functional
| collapse of the rebels - which were then swiftly
| reorganized under the watchful eye of the US - is denial
| of a horrible atrocity done for literally no possible
| benefit - which was clear from the very beginning to
| anyone that made even a cursory attempt at an independent
| reading of the situation.
|
| And by the way, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were
| solidly allied with the US in military matters in the
| large majority of the conflict. Qatar never actually put
| boots on the ground, by the way.
|
| The Turkish invasion itself was only ever possible
| because Kurdish control over NES allowed Turkey to invoke
| the Asana accords signed by Turkey and Syria that allowed
| them to invade. Note that I wholeheartedly support the
| Kurdish cause and identify very strongly with their
| politics, but I cannot let that influence my analysis
| here. The Kurdish forces whose presence made the Turkish
| invasion possible are only there because of US boots on
| the ground that are intended as tripwire forces, which
| prevent Russian and Syrian forces of taking control of
| that territory - either peacefully in exchange for
| limited autonomy, or through force, the first option
| being significantly more likely due to Russian pressure
| to allow this.
|
| No matter where you analyze the cause of the ridiculous
| prolongement of the war, you almost invariably find that
| the US is a blocker in the process of removing them.
|
| I'm not trying to defend the Syrian Government either. I
| deeply dislike them. But there was, realistically,
| absolutely no way for a stable alternative to exist at
| the time of the revolution. Popular support for a
| preferable government was never in the absolute majority,
| and the inevitable conclusion of the Civil War was either
| a victory by Assad or something even worse - in both
| cases at an incredibly high cost.
|
| This was explained and predicted to me by my father and
| Syrian friends all the way back in 2011, and while I did
| not agree at the time, in retrospect its clear that this
| was correct and I'm convinced the US knew as much too.
| namelosw wrote:
| It's not just governmental foreign policies, it's about the
| overall mentality, of both the government and people.
|
| The parent thread I was responding written "I guess
| Thailand is due for a revolution".
|
| There would surely be many people trying to convince Thai
| people "your government is evil, go overthrow it". Maybe
| sometimes to an extreme like "burn the parliament and
| everything will get better".
|
| To be "supportive" over the Internet is almost too easy,
| especially if it's not someone's home country it's easier
| to said than done because they don't need to take
| consequences. Yell at your boss and you'll be at risk of
| losing the job, but it won't hurt to encourage foreigners
| to go for the rebel path.
| simonh wrote:
| The protests in Tunisia started because an unemployed
| young man burned himself to death. In Syria it was
| because the secret police abducted a few teenagers for
| making some graffiti, and tore out their fingernails. In
| both cases, ordinary people were fed up. These things
| happen in corrupt and oppressive regimes, but blaming the
| west is really condescending. The people over there made
| their own choices for their own reasons.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| For a better perspective, flip the scenario around on a
| Western country. Black people have legitimate grievances
| with how they're treated by police in the US. "Ordinary
| people were fed up." If moves were made for a revolution
| to overthrow the US government, you would be ok with
| foreign countries' people encouraging and helping this
| revolution take place? After all, "The people over there
| made their own choices for their own reasons."
| simonh wrote:
| I'm absolutely ok with the west helping these people in
| their struggle for autonomy against oppression. I'm just
| saying they're not puppets to westerners who are driving
| their agenda.
| AdamN wrote:
| +1. People can have their own revolutions without it
| being caused by 'the West'. That's definitely noble
| savage territory when people say that only the West is
| capable of creating the problems of the world.
|
| Of course it is true that NATO, EU, the US, Russia, and
| China are engaged there and are part of the landscape but
| that's part of strategic power plays more than
| Westernism.
| avs733 wrote:
| During the Arab Spring, I was working in a different part of
| the Muslim world. One of the single most poignant moments of
| my life was when a local driver/fixed we contracted with
| asked me
|
| "How many people must die so that American's feel like
| everyone wants to live the way they do"
|
| I didn't have an answer, and at that point barely knew enough
| of my own country's 'real' history (despite 24 years of US
| education) to understand the scope of it.
|
| It wasn't instantaneous, but I can draw a clear line between
| that connection and the better and more knowledgeable person
| I am today.
| jariel wrote:
| "All of a sudden some superpowers just yell freedom in your
| face"
|
| This is completely false.
|
| The Arab spring was not incited by the West.
|
| It was well underway long before the West was even paying
| close attention.
|
| In Tunisia, the West was not involved.
|
| In Libya, the West stayed away as long as they could.
|
| In Egypt, the West avoided until they were forced to pick a
| winner and Obama weighed in politically to 'support' a
| transfer of power (they were all looking to the US Pres. at
| that point).
|
| In Syria, the West stayed out for a a long while, an when
| they did get involved, it was mostly against ISIS.
|
| The grievances on the Arabs street are very real.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| The Arab Spring would not have happened without Twitter,
| right?
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| So it was Twitter's "fault" for allowing people in these
| countries to communicate about the injustices they were
| facing? And please spare me the tired comparison to the
| collective hallucination that the Republican party is
| experiencing. People in Syria and Iran were being gunned
| down for acts of peaceful protest.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| It's nobody's "fault"; no one said that. But without this
| western owned and operated platform, how would they have
| communicated?
| jariel wrote:
| It would not have happened without the Printing Press,
| Television, Radio, AK47s designed in Russia and Made in
| China, the Suez Canal or Saudi Oil either.
|
| Of all possible contentious issues with respect to the
| Arab Spring uprising (and there are many) - this is not
| one of them.
|
| It definitely was not an 'inciting' factor.
|
| Frankly, if you want to point at 'the thing' it would be
| Chelsea Manning's cable leaks: determined to show her own
| nations foibles, she did nothing of the sort, rather she
| exposed the vast, totalitarian corruption among Arab
| state leaders, which lit the match in Tunisia and then
| elsewhere.
|
| It was a raw, populist uprising against the 'dumb
| tyranny' of those systems and had predictable results in
| each of the nations.
|
| It was completely outside the scope of US/Western
| control, and by and large totally outside the foreign
| policy objectives of most US/Western players. Nobody
| really wanted it - way too much instability and risk.
| There were also no winners, and a bunch of losers for
| sure, sadly.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| Do you really think that nations intervene like that out of a
| genuine desire to spread freedom?
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| I think the West has done enough meddling in other country's
| affairs the past 120 years.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Totally agree. I am not advocating for the West to start a
| revolution.
| miga wrote:
| Many civilized societies hand prison penalties that are
| considered insane and counterproductive by sentencing experts.
|
| US inmate composition analyses are great example:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092753711...
| https://jlc.org/news/what-foster-care-prison-pipeline
|
| Regretfully it is hard to sue the foster-child-care system as
| sharing guilt for the civil damages done to these children:
| bitcharmer wrote:
| As much as US is a good example, it's also a country with by
| far the worst incarceration rate:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera.
| ..
| iguy wrote:
| Interesting that Thailand is in 5th place on that list, 80%
| the US rate. And about 65% the murder rate (placing them
| pretty close together on the world scale):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentio
| n...
|
| Also interesting that including high estimates for China's
| "re-education" camps would still only move them up to about
| 30th place, for incarceration, somewhere around
| Russia/Turkey/Nigeria. Although that's one area being
| diluted by the whole.
| stunt wrote:
| It is worth noting that Facebook blocked some groups critical of
| Thai monarchy just last year.
| cute_boi wrote:
| True These American Company are like "We support BLM" but when
| it comes to Thailand, Hong Kong etc they are double standards
| and only use these things for PR stunts because they don't want
| government to block them. It seems we are living in century
| where lies and money prevails over ethics.
| TT3351 wrote:
| What gave you the impression that was unique to this century?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There must be some Thai readers on HN.. even ones who support
| these lese-majeste laws.
|
| I'm curious, for Thai supporters, what is the justification for
| them?
| wsc981 wrote:
| I live in Thailand and I know many Thai people don't love the
| current king. But from what I've seen the father of the current
| king was loved by most -if not all- Thais and I feel most Thais
| supported the laws in case of the previous king.
|
| But I believe it's very important that in Thai schools there
| are practices, even starting at kindergarten, to teach children
| to kneel or bow in front of the picture of the king daily. From
| what I understand children also sing the Thai national anthem
| at the start of the school day. Every day at 2 moments (09:00
| and 17:00) many people stop what they're doing and stand in
| attention for a second while the national anthem plays on TV,
| radio in cinemas, etc... So you might understand that reference
| for the king is a big part of the education system here.
|
| Also, most Thais just don't have the money to travel abroad.
| And likely also don't see much of other countries on
| television. News channels on TV might spend 95% of the news on
| happenings inside the country (e.g. visits of royal family to
| villages, etc...). As such, many Thais might not be aware that
| some countries operate very different from the Thai system.
| beervirus wrote:
| > But I believe it's very important that in Thai schools
| there are practices, even starting at kindergarten, to teach
| children to kneel or bow in front of the picture of the king
| daily. From what I understand children also sing the Thai
| national anthem at the start of the school day. Every day at
| 2 moments (09:00 and 17:00) many people stop what they're
| doing and stand in attention for a second while the national
| anthem plays on TV, radio in cinemas, etc... So you might
| understand that reference for the king is a big part of the
| education system here.
|
| That is creepy as fuck.
| Existenceblinks wrote:
| Those 80 years of brainwashing is not working for majority
| of kids today anymore. 2020 turned out as a year of mass
| awakening. I have some hope for gen Z teenageers, though
| uncertainty is very uncertain .. how would they be able to
| dismantle these network monarchy.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Don't many (most?) American schoolchildren also recite the
| pledge of allegiance daily?
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| > That is creepy as fuck.
|
| Maybe, but I suspect Thailand is a more united nation than
| the US.
| carapace wrote:
| We have out Pledge of Allegiance (and arguments over
| including or excluding "under God" from it.)
|
| The thing about the USA is that what unites or unifies us
| is our shared values, not the (worship of) a King.
|
| The whole point of democracy is that free people coming
| together to support each other can create a government
| more stable and durable and satisfying than Monarchy. The
| experiment is ongoing.
|
| (It's also more humane: think about what a mind-fuck it
| must be to be singled out and told "you're the prince,
| you're the king". You have no personal freedom at all.
| Your whole life is regimented and programmed. What are
| you doing today? Put on this funny dress and sit on this
| uncomfortable chair for N hours looking stuffed while
| everybody else rattles around you like so many robots. Oh
| and by the way, a few determined people are trying to
| kill you all day every day, and some of them are your own
| family.)
|
| (Our guys only have to do four or eight years before the
| mast. Then we chuck 'em. They're always grey and drained
| afterward but at least they live through it, mostly.)
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| "The major problem -- one of the major problems, for
| there are several -- one of the many major problems with
| governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or
| rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to
| them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those
| people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto,
| those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary:
| anyone who is capable of getting themselves made
| President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
|
| -- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the
| Universe
| trasz wrote:
| Schools in USA do something quite similar.
|
| And yeah, from European point of view it's quite creepy.
| beervirus wrote:
| Unity through brainwashing and indoctrination? No thanks.
| DenisM wrote:
| Every nation needs something that unites it, a sense of
| identity and purpose.
|
| The French, for example, were united by the King and the
| Church, until they were not. After the revolution they became
| very united by their nationalism, in the original sense of the
| word - shared language, values, traditions, symbols, customs,
| as well as by the ideals of republican democratic governance.
|
| Historically most nations were united in Monarchy and/or
| Religion. Over time some switched over to either nationalism or
| an ideology like communism, and some even switched back to
| Monarchy later on.
|
| A country that lost its uniting force can easily disappear into
| a fiery flash of a civil war or sink into a suffocating
| simmering of gradual societal disintegration. One might
| conclude that any attack on the Uniting Symbol is a heinous
| crime and needs to be stamped out as quickly as possible.
|
| This is questionable from the modern western perspective, but I
| can see how one could make this argument in good faith from the
| other parts of the world. Especially from the countries where
| they do not (yet) have a different Uniting Symbol.
| nont wrote:
| Absolutely, the first argument is always the country is "free"
| (Thai means free) because of their heroic ancestors in the
| past. The freedom in this case means never being colonized by
| other countries. The irony is we have never been freed from
| them,and all the propagandas are made so that we must feel
| indebted. There's a song playing every Dec 5 whole day on
| almost every street saying our value is less than a speck of
| dust under their feet. Your kids are taught to sing these kind
| a songs every day as well in some schools.
|
| Secondly you are not taught to question, and rather criticized
| for questioning. Not sure if any of you have been in a class
| with a Thai student, but I bet they all are quiet. In a family,
| you must never question your parents or you will be punished.
| These royal families (plural because there are many) have a
| pronoun like your royal father mother etc, so know your place.
|
| 3rd, they are very coupled to religious institutions and it's
| like a heresy to even talk about them. Any bad happened to
| those anti monarchy people are believed to have conducted bad
| karmas. It's stupid, but there are many stations that would
| revere them as the reincarnation of the Buddha.
|
| Last for now but there are more, they have high influence on
| the military and Thai conglomerates. The king even has his own
| unit, brainwashed to just serve him. Thai conglomerates will
| marry their children with the royal families just to gain more
| power and respect.
|
| There are more but gotta get back to work now.
| Existenceblinks wrote:
| Thai tech people have different problematic mindset. They do
| not support lese-majeste law, but most of them (in my
| observation) are not progressive either. These coming up gen Z
| are chasing their pro-capitalism ass (But these tech ppl hide
| those mindset really well .. not getting caught so easily!)
| vbtemp wrote:
| You will not find Thai people who support it, except cronies
| who benefit from the royal patronage network.
|
| The lese majeste laws are simply the work of an autocratic
| leader and institution that positions itself above the law. Any
| ordinary Thai who might have been okay with these laws[1]
| during the reign of the last king (who did genuinely serve as a
| kind of emotional anchor for Thais, despite the self-enrichment
| of his family) certainly sees them for what they are: The
| frantic efforts of a demented, bizarre, spoiled boy-child to
| deflect criticism and cement power.
|
| [1] Also remember, during the time of the last king, the laws
| were not really enforced. We all remember stories of black-out
| drunk Aussies pissing on a portrait of the king by a busy road
| getting arrested for it, but beyond those theatrical and
| scandalous episodes, the laws did not really affect many people
| until the new king took over.
| nont wrote:
| You actually do. They're mostly old generations
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| When I went first time in Bangkok I got few tips from born Thai
| person, among them, I was warned among other things to avoid
| talking about politics, and to never say and do anything that
| would insult royalty.
|
| But one tip I remember the most was: "If you drop your money to
| the ground, and it starts flying away, never try stepping on it
| with the foot, as you may end up in the brick or angry mob may
| lynch you", apparently each note has picture of the king so
| stepping on it has equal effect as insulting royalty. :/
| apexalpha wrote:
| Imagine living in a country where this is your king:
| https://www.dw.com/en/thailands-king-living-in-luxury-quaran...
|
| Siphoning off your tax money AND you're not allowed to say
| anything about it. Ridiculous.
| ben_w wrote:
| One of the things about being a personal sovereign ruler is
| that you get to put your face on all the money -- "render unto
| Ceaser" etc.
|
| (Social media TOS are not a direct analogy of this, but as the
| saying goes: history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme)
| speby wrote:
| The entire image of that King and the chair and being hauled
| around by people is just .... so over the top ridiculous.
| gadders wrote:
| The Spectator in the UK published an article about him as well.
| It wasn't very positive as you may be able to guess from the
| URL:
|
| https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-depraved-rule-of-tha...
| cute_boi wrote:
| And saying something against the king may end up to jail for 14
| years. Ridiculous. And even companies like facebook are helping
| them to identify the person who spoke against them.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well, companies have to abide by the rules of the country
| they operate in, hopefully we can both agree this is a good
| thing? I can then say that I wish FB didn't chose to be
| present in Thailand at all, but since they are there, they
| should comply with the laws.
| pieter_mj wrote:
| offtopic, absolutely!
|
| But Facebook/Whatsapp don't abide to the European GDPR.
| gambiting wrote:
| They don't? In what way? At least through a _very_ quick
| google search it seems like they do?
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/facebook-gdpr-
| changes/
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| The previous king (current king's father) was revered in
| Thailand and I think far fewer people had a reason to violate
| this law. Now that the son is king there's going to be a lot
| more problems with Thai citizens wanting to be openly critical
| of him. I married into a Thai family and we've had a lot of
| discussions about this exact issue, since long before the
| previous king passed. In my mind you can't have a free and open
| democracy when you still have these monarchs hanging around and
| especially when you aren't allowed to be openly critical of
| them. Thailand has an elected assembly and prime minister, but
| the king is still head of the military and both the previous
| king and current king use[d] their influence to stir things up
| as they saw fit. Thailand has technically been under a military
| dictatorship (with the king ultimately at the head) since 2014
| which is why these lese-majeste laws are much more frequently
| enforced now. In my opinion trying to maintain a monarchy (even
| as a symbolic figure) and democracy doesn't work, they've had
| 20 different constitutions in Thailand since 1932 and they've
| had the 4th most coups in the world in modern history.
| Currently Bangkok is in state of civil unrest with pro-
| democracy protestors forming the #MilkTeaAlliance with
| protestors in Hong Kong and Taiwan. We'll see if they are able
| to enact any real change in the country.
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| America in 20 years if trends don't change
| sixQuarks wrote:
| When I visited Thailand many years ago, I secretly gave the
| middle finger to the King's photo. I'm basically a fugitive on
| the run now.
| dahdum wrote:
| It's a shame they didn't even mention Germany in the article,
| considering that's where the king actually lives.
| miga wrote:
| In constitutional monarchy, the king is the institution. His
| personal location may be irrelevant to the case.
| mcv wrote:
| The Thai king lives in Germany? Why? Anyone can freely
| criticise him there.
| Existenceblinks wrote:
| Because:
|
| - No one cares there. There are many elites in Thailand that
| don't like him. Thai elites only like his father! The current
| king's behaviour does not spark joy (does not serve their
| cultural value whatever). I'm quite sure there are more
| people in Thailand than in Germany who like to criticize the
| king (and they've been gossiping for many decades!, he does
| not like these gossip .. he can't throw these elites in jail
| easily, too much damange)
|
| - Bavaria is nicer than Bangkok apparently since he like
| riding bikes .. nicer nature than bangkok.
|
| - He likes power, money, women, but he does not like anything
| that interfere his private life! In thailand, he has to do
| lots of ceremonies, it's annoying.
| mzs wrote:
| fear, COVID among them
| usrusr wrote:
| He might actually be doing his subjects a favor, if he lived
| that life closer to their eyes chances are that far more
| would feel an urge to criticize him despite the prison
| threat. (obviously, the good thing to do would end both, stop
| the permanent vacation and stop the prison threats)
| Veen wrote:
| In Germany, lese majeste laws made it technically illegal to
| insult a foreign leader until the law was abolished in 2017.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohmermann_affair
| qqn wrote:
| I thought about this too. It appears he may have left December
| 9th, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Turbulent-
| Thailand/Germany-..., though
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajiralongkorn#Reigning_from_B...
| doesn't mention this yet.
| dahdum wrote:
| I thought he may have spent the majority (or close) of his
| time since 2016 there. This article confirms he's welcome to
| return, doesn't need a visa, and is able to stay as long he
| wants. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-thailand-
| king/tha...
|
| Undoubtedly he feels much safer in Germany considering his
| popularity.
| trasz wrote:
| The fact that he's allowed to walk free in Germany is a failure
| of German justice system.
| coldcode wrote:
| What kind of King lives in another country? A terrible one
| (good thing I don't live in Thailand).
| trhway wrote:
| it is medieval of course. Even Russia can't probably beat it.
| Though when it comes to absurdity Russia is still a contender i
| think - for example last year Russia gave 13 and 12 years prison
| terms to newlywed bride and groom for disclosing "state secret" -
| a friend of the groom got drunk and was telling everybody who he
| is, giving out contact info, etc. The friend is an FSB officer
| and that is usually not a secret by itself. Well, the
| unsuspecting couple posted the wedding photos and video on
| Internet ...
|
| And Russian opposition leader Navalny has been just arrested
| right upon arrival back to Russia, for failure to check in with
| parole officers ... while he was treated for the poisoning in
| Germany. Because of that failure to check-in his parole may be
| revoked, and he will get to really serve the time.
| trasz wrote:
| Well, fuck King Maha Shitgibbon Vajiralongkorn, I suppose.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| The way Thai's feel about honor and defamation is a lot more
| complex and causes friction when the (existing Western) system
| tries to apply legal rules of how conflict is resolved (and
| punishment is applied) in an environment where the old values of
| honor are still valid.
|
| when I still lived in the South of Thailand early 90ies we took
| people diving from Koh Samui, Koh Phan-gan, Koh Tao. The
| relationship between Thai's and the law is a strange one. It's
| almost like there are 2 systems. One for Thais one for "Farang".
|
| A Thai would not dare to speak ill of the monarchs. They leave
| the room if a "farang" has had one too many and says something
| critical (they're peace loving but their love of peace might end
| there). This applies to both the very rich and the very poor.
|
| We hired the captain from another region of the South to
| transport our divers. He was with the company since the day these
| islands were still 100% jungle and the place belonged to local
| fishermen. The reason why he left the region was because he had
| an argument and killed his neighbor. The deal was that he would
| not get killed only if he left the region and settled without
| ever returning to his family - this is considered not just
| shameful but seen as a huge disadvantage to make a living. They
| settled it without police, lawyer, bailiff, or judge, all among
| themselves.
|
| Our other captain (in charge of the boat that left Koh Phangan)
| was also the right hand man of the most powerful person on the
| island. That guy was like a major, or village elder because he
| owned what was then the only "super market" on the island, and
| lot of the land. Our captain and "right hand man" to this guy was
| a devout monk (every year for several months left his wife to
| sweep the floor in silence in the monastery). He was a family
| man, highly respected within the community, and it was no secret
| among Thais that he was also heavily armed and had a body count
| of 12 people in his short life (late 20ies).
|
| While murder is obviously illegal by law in Thailand, it is still
| used as a way by locals to settle disputes within rural areas of
| the South. The illegality isn't even considered here since in
| this case they see it as their moral duty which still trumps
| whatever some judge/lawyer's definition of justice is who has
| never before left _Krung Thep_.
|
| Long story short it's quite complex to transform what is still in
| ways a tribal society into what we call "law-abiding" citizen.
| Especially when the law contradicts the values of society. And
| even more so when the existing police force is just a show for
| the tourists and to the urban population.
| Avshalom wrote:
| > A Thai would not dare to speak ill of the monarchs
|
| Well obviously at least one would
| toastal wrote:
| The current youth generation isn't adhering to these ideals.
| I hear a lot of people's parents tell them not to talk or
| post about the protests or anything, but they seem more
| interested in the movement, autonomy, and democracy than
| worrying about the traditions.
| Avshalom wrote:
| the current youth generation as represented here by a 65
| year old civil servant.
| novok wrote:
| Often the intellectual vanguard of youth movements come
| from older and sometimes isolated pioneers.
| [deleted]
| mzs wrote:
| FWIW there are parallels to organized crime in what you wrote.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The interaction between organized crime and formal law,
| nation to nation, is absolutely fascinating. The more I learn
| about it, the more fascinating it gets.
|
| I'm adding this story to what I've learned about the history
| of the yakuza in Japan and the various US mafia, gangs, and
| crime families.
| miga wrote:
| This *is* organized crime, however the author made it a point
| that these areas are *not* under rule of the law.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Law enforcement is effectively just the use of (threatened
| or actual) violence in a way that society has agreed is
| accepted. The police for (and similar entities) in many
| modern countries are just the group that has a monopoly on
| that accepted use a violence.
|
| It seems like what's being described _is_ the rule of law
| for that area, just not the rule of law most people expect.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Writing from the US: parallels to organized crime abounds
| in law enforcement here as well. Look what happened to
| Adrian Schoolcraft [1]
|
| _> After voicing his concerns, Schoolcraft was
| repeatedly harassed by members of the NYPD and reassigned
| to a desk job. After he left work early one day, an ESU
| unit illegally entered his apartment, physically abducted
| him and forcibly admitted him to a psychiatric facility,
| where he was held against his will for six days._
|
| The issue is that people here assume things like this are
| exceptional rather than systemic.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > It seems like what's being described
|
| yes this was exactly what I wanted to say. the local
| norms have over time become _illegal_ and many regions
| still have a combination of both. Say ... if a local
| person was just arriving on the island, without any
| reference (would be an odd thing to do but for the sake
| of argument[1]) this person then (hypothetically) gets
| robbed at the pier, his next stop isn 't the police who
| might end up beating him or finding ways to extort him,
| but they would visit whoever ran the village. They would
| beg for work, and they'll chat about who they might know
| in common, and find an arrangement (maybe even find the
| offender and get their stuff back). The police would be
| the last place they'd go to not only because they're
| corrupt but because it would potentially make the village
| elder who is actually in power lose a little face.
|
| [1] it's risky traveling being both without reference AND
| poor. especially poor folk would do everything in their
| power to arrange with people at their destination about
| their visit. so a job seeker turning up at the police
| saying they've been robbed would raise a lot of
| questions. (the person might be a good shoe-in for case
| they have open since a while and are still looking for a
| suspect).
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| obviously so. the Italian mafia is said to exist because the
| local (legal) system of distributing punishment was
| ineffective/unfair. modern what we call "democratic systems"
| will paint a different story - they will tell you these
| people were unable to live in peace until they came along.
|
| it's where the parallel ends though. my comment certainly was
| _not_ an endorsement or fetishization of crime, just an
| observation from my own experience living there. the
| alternative view point which is to call everyone who hasn't
| been integrated into a "civilized system" a crook (or
| backwards) is too imperialistic for my taste, especially
| since Thailand is also the home of many hill-tribes who have
| a natural difficult relationship with empire-building city
| folk.
| ergwwrt wrote:
| Shqiperia (Albania) is run by the Besa code. It is still
| feudal today since neither the Italians, Communists, or
| Ottomans have been able to rule the country. The Besa code
| was able to hide the Jews from the Nazis when every other
| european country would turn them in. Today, the Besa code
| allows Shqiperia to serve as Europe's leading marijuana
| supplier. 75% of the population is agrarian based, children
| learn organic farm work ethic, and the family still reigns
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| not sure why you're being downvoted,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besa_(Albanian_culture)
|
| The cannabis produced there ends up mostly in the EU (via
| Montenegro by ship to Italy or the land route via
| Croatia). EU countries simply pay more for weed then
| potatoes so it's the market working as expected IMO (but
| sadly also as intended). The way to address this is to
| legalize it like Portugal which curbed addiction rates
| and freed up the legal system with more important work.
| brightball wrote:
| When reading through the Old Testament I came across something
| I hadn't seen before, the Avenger of Blood. Essentially, a
| family member of a person who was murdered had every right to
| seek out the killer themselves. There were even rules around
| it.
|
| If you watch the old Disney 3 Musketeers movie, that's
| essentially what the man pursuing Countess de Winter for
| killing his brother is doing.
|
| Just the first historical parallel that came to mind on reading
| this. Similar figures in a family were also responsible for
| helping other family members who couldn't find work, gotten
| sick, etc.
|
| The family unit structure historically accounts for a lot.
| MontagFTB wrote:
| The Bible is also rife with passages that talk about justice
| for the fatherless, the widow, the orphan, and the poor.
| These are categories of people that by and large have no
| access to the same channels of justice that strong, large
| family units had. So the community- especially those in power
| and able to do something about it- were called to step up and
| fill in that void.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > The family unit structure historically accounts for a lot.
|
| indeed it is interesting how when we compare "Western"
| society with more tribal norms, how much the individual in
| the West expects the system to do the things for them where
| previously family was in charge of. Taking French or German
| late night news I don't recall once that the word "clan" ever
| used in a positive way. It is always about criminal
| associations (often about Balkan families) where the
| attachment of individuals is still stronger within than (the
| trust) in the state. People are absolutely terrified by the
| idea of others belonging to a family that knows it's roots
| since 300+ years with an also non-local footprint and reach.
| Also a clan is usually always a foreign group.
| iguy wrote:
| This is (crudely speaking) because the Catholic church
| stamped out such things in the core of Europe 1000 years
| ago. (Or perhaps that sentence should be the other way
| around.) Many edges of Europe skipped this process --
| Sicily (under the Sacreans?), the Balkans (Byzantine & then
| Ottoman), the Gaelic fringe (local kings), etc.
| alicorn wrote:
| I find it curious and vaguely racist that the word 'clan'
| is almost exclusively used in reference to immigrant and
| poc families and with an allusion to inherent criminality.
| This despite the fact that many Western countries have a
| handful of large, old families which own an inadequate
| proportion of the companies, resources, have outsized
| political influence and so on, and those families are
| almost exclusively in many generations from the country in
| question. They are as clan-ish as a 'clan' gets, but since
| they do not match the 'criminal immigrant' stereotype,
| nobody ever calls them a 'clan'. It irks me.
| fakedang wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Members of rich families in the
| US are routinely called as part of a clan - Roosevelt
| clan or Vanderbilt clan. Or they're collectively called
| something like Boston Brahmans.
|
| It's less used in Europe, but they are still referred to
| as aristocratic clans.
| mbg721 wrote:
| To me the connotation has always been something like
| Hatfields and McCoys, not exactly positive, but not
| linked to race.
| tpush wrote:
| > People are absolutely terrified by the idea of others
| belonging to a family that knows it's roots since 300+
| years with an also non-local footprint and reach.
|
| And, you know, organized crime.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| yes a a crime family will need to display very similar
| behavior as a clan in order to protect itself. And some
| clans certainly are criminal.
|
| While a large criminal syndicate would be a combination
| of families (that act like a clan), a clan by itself does
| not need to be part of a criminal syndicate. Also if a
| person from a clan robs a bank then this doesn't mean the
| clan is the cause (or the problem). Especially not when
| the group consists of a 600 or 1000 individuals who are
| part of that tribe. (whats your chances of bad apples
| over several extended family trees in the UK/US/France
| with such a size).
|
| My point specifically is that the media will 100% of the
| time criminalize the word clan and by extension anyone
| who is born into it.
|
| related: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/n
| ov/13/priti-...
| iguy wrote:
| There is distaste for clan-like behaviour even when no
| crimes are committed. For example, most westerners would
| not like to work in an organisation where your family
| connection to important people is valued over your work.
| Few would accept their choice of spouse being greatly
| constrained by what their grandfather thought was good
| for his little empire.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| yes indeed, ... no doubt for some tribes a total
| contradiction (if not an adversarial intent) what Western
| cultures consider their right. If a group is so socially
| different also smaller chance they see a host country as
| their final destination (at least not those in power).
| Then an appeal to _" integrate themselves"_ is a harder
| sell since the speaker has not only no authority in their
| eyes but what is proposed means cultural genocide in
| their eyes. Pretty hard place to build trust from here
| (maybe over generations but not years imo).
|
| unrelated: I do not want to give the impression that I am
| defending behavior which belongs to the stone age within
| our own societies. What might come across as too vague
| (or apologetic - though hopefully not), IMO the process
| is always violent for those who are on the receiving end
| of the more dominant system that incorporates them. Our
| own imperialist crimes in not too distant history (and
| still ongoing ones) indicate there is a lot of
| housekeeping still needed before we let the word clan get
| hi-jacked by our own (and perhaps unconscious) racial
| biases :)
| myWindoonn wrote:
| In the USA, there are "political families" or "presidential
| families" who serve as pseudo-patrician organizations
| [0][1]. Western individualism is often performative, not
| structural.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:United_States_pr
| eside...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_family
| generalizations wrote:
| It's also worth noting that the rules included protection for
| the murderer: in fact, that's where the term 'sanctuary city'
| came from, I think. If the murderer made it to a predefined
| sanctuary city, the "Avenger of Blood" wasn't allowed to
| touch them.
| brightball wrote:
| Yep. "City of Refuge"
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| I'm not in favour of revenge. But I find it irritating how
| rarely people resort to it. For example if I was a father and
| somebody killed and raped my daughter. I'd like to think of
| myself as someone who'll kill that person if he receives
| anything less than a life sentence - or maybe even anyway.
| I'd be aware that this is a crime and I'll have to serve a
| prison sentence for it myself - I'd even see the point of it
| - a society cannot tolerate revenge. But I'd non the less
| feel morally obligated to do it. The only possible good
| reason not to resort to revenge would be if there is a
| possibilty of being wrong about the identity of the culprit.
|
| That this doesn't happen more often just shows to me that
| most wo:men are cowards. Not just that - our society even
| systematically rewards and encourages cowardry by reframing
| it as smartness or sober-mindedness. But this is true in a
| more general sense and not restricted to revenge of course.
| This can be observed on a daily basis at work, at school,
| pretty much anywhere.
|
| ---
|
| Of course, I get downvoted - but how do you argue against my
| point?
| nicoburns wrote:
| What good would come of such revenge?
|
| Edit: to expand, if (god forbid) someone did that to my
| daughter, my instinct would not be to kill them, it would
| be to find them, talk them, to understand why they did it.
| And to try somehow to make them truly understand the
| consequences of what they had done. I don't feel like
| killing them would achieve any of that.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| Thanks for your response instead of just downvoting.
|
| > What good would come of such revenge?
|
| One bad person less. And, yes, I'd feel a bit better. Not
| much maybe. I might even question it in the long run. But
| think about the alternative. In Germany it is not at all
| unheard of that murderers (who murdered for sexual desire
| or greed) get less than ten years of sentencing and are
| on day parole after a couple of years. How would you feel
| about that? What "good" comes from that? Do you maybe
| even wish that person a happy life?
|
| > to expand, if (god forbid) someone did that to my
| daughter, my instinct would not be to kill them, it would
| be to find them, talk them, to understand why they did
| it.
|
| You want to ask the guy "Why did you rape and kill my
| daughter?"? Are you kidding yourself? What would you
| expect for an answer? Also in this hypothetical situation
| you'd have to use force to even ask that question. You
| think you'd get an honest answer? "Sorry, didn't know
| it's your daughter." "I was just so horny - didn't know
| what else to do." What would you expect for an answer
| that even has the slightes potential of being meaningful
| to your pain?
|
| > to make them truly understand the consequences of what
| they had done.
|
| People who rape and kill don't tend to be the
| "understanding" type ... just think about how f'ed up
| someone has to be to do that.
|
| > I don't feel like killing them would achieve any of
| that.
|
| How about asking questions, then torturing, then killing.
| You'd get the cake and eat it, too.
| btilly wrote:
| Per capita both rapes and murders happen in the USA at
| around 10x the rate that the respective crimes happen in
| Germany.
|
| Rather than give lectures about how stupid the German
| approach is, you should probably be asking questions
| about why their approach is working better in practice.
| If you're looking for the time to do so, I'd suggest
| reallocating the time you're currently spending imagining
| the pleasure of torturing an imaginary criminal in the
| aftermath of an imagined crime that hasn't actually
| happened.
| xenophonf wrote:
| > _One bad person less._
|
| Reform is better than revenge. Not only would society
| lose a bad person, we'd gain a good one.
|
| > _How about asking questions, then torturing, then
| killing. You 'd get the cake and eat it, too._
|
| This would serve only to turn good people into that which
| they condemn.
| Aeronwen wrote:
| >This would serve only to turn good people into that
| which they condemn.
|
| But they can reform.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "Reform is better than revenge" Cite your sources where a
| rapist and murderer is a benefit to society after reform.
|
| "This would serve only to turn good people into that
| which they condemn" How is the murder and rape of an
| innocent comparable to the punishment of a murderer and
| rapist?
|
| How do you measure reform? Are their limits to what
| should be reformed? Do the risks of relapse ever outweigh
| the benefit of reform? An example to consider are the
| France Shooters or the Boston Marathon Bomber.
| xenophonf wrote:
| I explained my logic in the previous comment and don't
| feel the need to go into further detail. Demanding
| sources isn't really a logical argument, anyway.
| btilly wrote:
| For the full book length explanation of why your attitude
| is bad for everyone, read _Enlightenment Now_.
|
| The short version is that in a society where justice relies
| on the strength of the individual, there is more conflict,
| more injury, and more murder. In areas of the USA with more
| of an honor culture, the murder rate is 10x what it is in
| areas without one.
|
| The problem is that in an honor culture, people have a need
| to demonstrate how capable they are so that they will not
| be considered potential targets. This demonstration takes
| the form of proving that you will be willing to seek to
| right any perceived injustice, and are capable of doing so.
| But these demonstrations tend to involve violence, and lead
| to conflict. Up to and including murder.
|
| In a law and order society, by contrast, people's safety is
| based on the continuation of law and order. Which means
| that justice is available to all, regardless of strength.
|
| Consider. The strength difference between the average man
| and average woman is the difference between the average NFL
| linebacker and the average man. Do you think it right that
| the average woman's ability to obtain justice is dependent
| on whether some man stands up for her? And yet that is how
| things tend to work out in an honor culture.
|
| I want to live in a law and order society. A place where
| potential rapists are deciding whether to worry about the
| police, and not whether to worry about me.
| generalizations wrote:
| > Consider. The strength difference between the average
| man and average woman is the difference between the
| average NFL linebacker and the average man. Do you think
| it right that the average woman's ability to obtain
| justice is dependent on whether some man stands up for
| her? And yet that is how things tend to work out in an
| honor culture.
|
| I've heard of guns described as 'the great equalizer'. An
| NFL linebacker, average man, and an average woman would
| each have an approximately equal ability to obtain
| 'justice'.
|
| > I want to live in a law and order society. A place
| where potential rapists are deciding whether to worry
| about the police, and not whether to worry about me.
|
| As someone else pointed out, the prison term for rape is
| about 10 years. So in your society, potential rapists
| worry about facing 10 years in prison, and in the other,
| an extrajudicial death penalty. Seems to me the latter
| might be a better deterrent.
| btilly wrote:
| _As someone else pointed out, the prison term for rape is
| about 10 years. So in your society, potential rapists
| worry about facing 10 years in prison, and in the other,
| an extrajudicial death penalty. Seems to me the latter
| might be a better deterrent._
|
| There is no need to theorize. You can just look at
| statistics. According to Wikipedia, the rape rate in
| Germany is estimated at 9 per 100,000. (Men and women.)
| The rape rate in the USA is estimated at 2.1 per thousand
| women per year. Rapes happen per capita at 10x the rate
| in the USA as in Germany.
|
| Theories about deterrence notwithstanding, Germany is
| actually working out better than the USA. This is typical
| of other statistics that I've seen. Being in a society
| that has internalized law and order is safer. By about a
| factor of 10.
|
| (Side note. The internalized US belief in deterrence is
| why we have the highest per capita incarceration rate in
| the world. And yet we also have higher rates of violent
| crime than any other developed nation. Deterrence may
| sound good, but it doesn't seem to work out very well in
| practice.)
| generalizations wrote:
| I don't think that either the US or Germany is actually
| representative of those two alternatives I mentioned. A
| "law and order society" that uses the police for law
| enforcement is a descriptor of both the US and Germany.
|
| It's a cool statistic, but it only says that whatever the
| US is doing must be worse than whatever Germany is doing.
| You would also have to say that the two countries are
| sufficiently representative of law and order vs.
| extrajudicial, which I don't think is true.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| You are responding to an imaginary comment - not to mine.
| I don't argue with "honor" for example. I'm also not
| arguing that we should establish a society based on
| strength ...
| striking wrote:
| > [some dumb thing about women for some reason, and also]
| our society even systematically rewards and encourages
| cowardry by reframing it as smartness or sober-mindedness
|
| is definitely arguing for some kind of honor or strength
| system.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| Prison is often described as an honor society. So it
| seems like those that won't tolerate a law and order
| society and commit violent crimes are placed
| involuntarily into prison (an honor society).
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| Your comment is of course facetious. Nonetheless I'd like
| to express that most interpretations of honor are of the
| perverted kind. This is especially true for professional
| criminals.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| A Utilitarian would argue against your point by pointing
| out that the utility created by the revenge murder is less
| than the utility created by not doing so. With the revenge
| murder you add another corpse to the pile and probably end
| up removing yourself from the utility pool. Without it,
| perhaps the rapist-murderer adds something of value to the
| world before their death, and you don't remove yourself
| from the utility pool.
|
| Utilitarianism is simplistic, but then again, so is "I'd
| feel morally obligated to do it, and I'd be a coward if I
| did otherwise." Point being, this is not a hard point to
| argue against, using almost any philosophical framework
| created in the last couple thousand years.
| conanbatt wrote:
| From this I would conclude that it is utilitarian-bad to
| revenge, but utilitarian good to murder
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Huh? Revenge murder would have the same net utility as
| regular murder.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| My stance is based on a society which isn't able to
| protect its citizens. Why would I care about utility for
| this society with respect to the described scenario?
| RankingMember wrote:
| You murder this rapist/murderer, and now you're in prison,
| and for what? Because you were mad, because you feel you'd
| lose face if you don't? Who benefits from this macho
| bullshit? The rapist is dead, your daughter is dead, and
| now your life is over. You've basically amplified the
| rapist's impact on your life- in a very real way, you let
| the rapist control you and ruin your life even more than it
| was when your daughter was murdered. What's so brave and
| manly about that?
| rossvor wrote:
| I did not downvote you. But you haven't actually argued the
| point, you just said that you find it irritating. Why? What
| benefit do you envision revenge would provide _you_ or
| society?
| zajio1am wrote:
| > For example if I was a father and somebody killed and
| raped my daughter. I'd like to think of myself as someone
| who'll kill that person if he receives anything less than a
| life sentence
|
| And then some relative of that person would kill you, and
| some your relative would kill your killler and so on.
| Hopefully, after several generations and few tens of dead
| such cycle of vendetta would end.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Isn't this just eye-for-an-eye, the oldest and most reliable
| type of justice that has ever existed? (reliable in the sense
| that it functions even in situations with low practical
| governance like a remote village or an understaffed nation /
| area).
| brightball wrote:
| Sort of but there were also 6 cities of refuge where the
| accused could flee for safety. If I remember correctly,
| there may have been a period of years after which they
| could no longer be pursued? It's been a while since I read
| about it though.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Whenever the high priest died, all such people accused of
| manslaughter were made innocent and could leave the
| cities of refuge again.
| simplify wrote:
| Yes, and it's a shame such justice isn't applied in the US
| like drug possession laws, where the punishment far exceeds
| the crime.
| chevill wrote:
| Isn't Thailand one of the places where you get either 50
| years or life for bringing tiny amounts of marijuana
| across the border?
| js2 wrote:
| "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father.
| Prepare to die."
| fakedang wrote:
| Beat me to it
| hinkley wrote:
| You have an over-developed sense of vengeance. It's going
| to get you into trouble someday.
| TravHatesMe wrote:
| I read your response aloud to my partner who was born and
| raised in Thailand. She agrees with what you've said.
| Communities often prefer to settle disputes amongst themselves.
| She also noted that, unfortunately rich people get away with
| injustice. If a rich person has done something wrong to poor
| person, the family feels like they have no choice but to accept
| monetary compensation instead of seeking justice by law. They
| feel like they are better off taking a settlement. And even in
| the pursuit of justice, bribery is so common that things will
| often get brushed under the rug.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| thanks, I am horrified by what happened especially in the
| Vorayuth Yoovidhaya case. But I wasn't shocked, because as
| your fiance might know is just the tip of the iceberg. If we
| look at what shameful things our people in power get away
| with in the West, it's not hard to imagine what the situation
| looks like in a developing systems/states. If you look at
| what happened in some of the elections around the world and
| the dismantling of institutions for profit by kleptocrats and
| rent-seeking billionaires, it seems these days Western
| nations are often on par with some developing countries.
|
| Also I don't want to paint the past better than the present
| by insinuating our Western way of punishing crime is
| "correct" while their traditional way was in any form more
| "pure" and better fitting for them. Foucault does a good job
| on how we came to our system in the West
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish
|
| But also I'm not a missionary who wants to go to visit the
| Jawari to "bring them god".
|
| Unfortunately I don't have an answer because if you drill
| down to the roots of power then it's all violent no matter
| how well dressed up it is with language. And "justice" is an
| incredibly slippery and ambiguous word meaning 5 different
| things to 2 people.
|
| For Thailand what I see as a bigger problem than the monarchy
| is the military. It doesn't matter what case people "legally"
| have against an army general (and by extension any
| professional soldier in Thailand). They're normally off-limit
| to law enforcement and cases usually don't become public.
| They're also the gatekeepers to big business. Both things are
| problematic. I think trying to navigate and make sense of
| power there is not difficult as long as people keep in mind
| the history of its stakeholders.
|
| I'm optimistic seeing how younger generations understand and
| question these power structures (better informed because of
| the Internet). I'm worried about violence and revolution
| since anyone can do a coup but the question is what will they
| do the next day. In the end any type of system will never
| just pack up and agree that it's time to make room for a
| replacement. (or it takes generations not years) New ideas on
| top of the toxic base we know well enough from Tech, but
| replacing a base is a trade off so hard it's ofc always a
| crime within the existing structure.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Thank you for this comment. It's a breath of insight in a sea
| of predictable (and perhaps justified) outrage.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| thank you!
| piercebot wrote:
| This comment, and your many replies to the other comments
| below, are wonderfully insightful; thank you for sharing.
|
| I'm actually in the middle of reading the Nebula-winning novel
| The Windup Girl, which takes place in 2200s Thailand, and the
| insights you've provided add great context to what I'm reading.
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| thank you for the kind words it makes me very happy if these
| old stories are useful to somebody in 2021.
|
| many thanks for the book tip, it looks like a fascinating
| read, and I will certainly devour it!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| It's so strange that New York Times is the only news site that
| forces a paywall and is acceptable to be posted on HN.
| xenocratus wrote:
| There's also plenty of Economist articles, Washington Post as
| well...
| freeflight wrote:
| NYT paywall is usually as soft as they come: Just opening the
| article in an incognito browser instance will usually bypass
| it.
| enriquto wrote:
| This is much worse than Spain, where rappers Pablo Hasel and
| Valtonyc are facing only 4 years for singing that the king is a
| thief. Valtonyc managed to escape his home island of Majorca
| (dozens of fans bought many plane tickets to Brussels in his
| name, and he took just one). Unfortunately, Hasel is facing
| prison and has said he is not willing to go into exile as
| Valtonyc.
| mleonhard wrote:
| I would expect EU free-speech laws to supersede such laws in
| Spain. Can these two appeal their case to the EU courts?
| beervirus wrote:
| This should be required reading for anyone who wants to repeal or
| limit the First Amendment in the US.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Imagine living in a country where it is a crime to criticize a
| person, better yet you should treat that person as a deity, when
| half the world is making fun of him. (There are articles of the
| current Thai king walking around half-naked in Germany...)
| eznzt wrote:
| It could be worse. There are Western countries with blasphemy
| laws.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There are Western countries where militant factions are
| calling to take up arms against both their own government and
| the party that recently won the elections for all branches of
| government, going as far as breaking into a government
| building with tie wraps, intending to kidnap politicians.
| kbelder wrote:
| It's like the 60's all over again!
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| RealLifeLore made an entire video about it, including
| mentioning that making the video meant he could get busted if
| he visited Thailand.
|
| https://youtu.be/9coptltk27s
| al3xandre wrote:
| YouTube is blocking this video if you are in Thailand....
| burnthrow wrote:
| I see a VPN ad.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| The ad finishes after 8 seconds.
| burnthrow wrote:
| Followed by a person narrating the news with flashy
| graphics. I can't stand this sort of garbage, there's
| nothing new at all, it's just to sell an ad.
| Hitton wrote:
| >The former civil servant, Anchan Preelert, was sentenced to 87
| years, but her prison term was cut in half because she agreed to
| plead guilty.
|
| I looked her up, she is 65 now. I don't know why she even
| bothered pleading guilty.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The main way people get out of these cases is to appeal to the
| king for clemency. Pleading guilty is the first step on that
| path once it becomes clear you'll get a defacto life sentence
| otherwise.
| miga wrote:
| Fundamentals of judicial process are constructed so at to evoke
| respect of the indicted.
|
| While mathematical analyses tend to treat lawsuit as a pure
| game, most people would disagree on the moral grounds.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Many legal systems have a concept of early release/parole,
| especially with good behavior or humanitarian reasons; a
| reduction in sentence may bring this substantially forwards as
| well. (I can't speak for how Thailand specifically handles
| this, though.)
| miga wrote:
| Laws protecting against insulting of government institutions
| exist in most countries of the world, but nowhere I heard about
| 43-year sentence. This conviction carries penalty that is over
| twice as long as maximum mandatory imprisonment for high felony
| in European countries.
|
| It shows the difference between law system based on terror of
| penalty, and law system that attempts to resocialize offenders
| (see over 1000-year total conviction here:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53003685).
|
| Another unfortunate consequence is that Thai prisons are
| overcrowded and likely to infringe on human rights of detainees:
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/14/joint-letter-thailand-de...
| ROARosen wrote:
| Theres a guy in the US sentenced to _845_ years for a _white
| collar_ crime [1]
|
| [1] https://medium.com/lighterside/sentenced-to-845-years-the-
| th...
| bccdee wrote:
| Right. Law systems based on terror of penalty. The US prison
| system is shockingly regressive.
| trasz wrote:
| On the other hand, in USA one can sometimes get sentenced a
| fine for murder, so perhaps it evens out
| amelius wrote:
| Probably because his crime was, rather arbitrarily, divided
| into sub-crimes, and the sentences for these were summed.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Probably. But to mangle a quote: nice reason, still
| injustice.
| [deleted]
| ROARosen wrote:
| I'm not that familiar with the case. Here is the first
| result from google however, comparing his sentence with
| other notorious cases[1]
|
| [1]https://www.freedomforsholam.com/
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > Laws protecting against insulting of government institutions
| exist in most countries of the world
|
| ??? Lese-majeste largely exists as an embarassing relic of a
| few European monarchies and former monarchies and in several
| thuggish middle eastern and asian dictatorships.
|
| In can insult government institutions in the US as much as I
| please.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Italy has lese-majeste laws against the head of state and
| other institutions.
| kaibee wrote:
| Are they actually enforced, or is it simply that they're
| still on the books? There are a lot of laws in the USA that
| are on the books, but would be struck down as
| unconstitutional if anyone ever tried to enforce them.
| adamlangsner wrote:
| When I was in Thailand a few years ago, I went to see a movie.
|
| Before the movie there was a montage about the king and everyone
| had to stand up out of respect. It showed pictures of the king
| throughout his life.
|
| Then I read up on the king and found out he's real bad news. He's
| basically an overgrown spoiled rich kid who doesn't do much other
| than throws birthdays for his dog.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| That's "Air Chief Marshal" Fufu, show some respect.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fufu_(dog)
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| Someone controversial once called some country a "shithole" and
| was mocked as racist. Well, after reading this, I can safely say
| this falls under the same "shithole country" category. Call me
| racist, I don't really care.
| Bootvis wrote:
| What did you achieve with this comment?
| a_new_start1 wrote:
| I don't understand the moderation policy of HN.
|
| It seems that being a racist is ok, you'll get downvotes but
| the moderators leave you alone, but telling someone to f off
| gets you banned.
|
| What a weird forum this is. Imagine valuing courtesy over
| morality.
|
| (ps this isn't directed at you, I just couldn't reply to the
| person you replied to)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| They signalled to all of us the virtue of "I don't mind if
| you ignore me".
| [deleted]
| secondcoming wrote:
| The US can expect similar headlines for critising Critical Race
| Theory.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| In Poland, we still have a blasphemy law. A newspaper along the
| lines of Charlie Hebdo had its owner dragged over courts for over
| 8 YEARS. The offense was illustrating an article about emptying
| churches with a surprised Jesus in a road sign. The newspaper
| routinely posts much more offensive content: cartoon dicks,
| cartoon sex, caricatures of pope, Jews, politicians (some dick-
| headed or engaged in homosexual sex), national flags in dog
| shit... But it was ostensibly a surprised Jesus that crossed the
| line.
|
| Since the current government entrenched itself, police is
| investigating things like suspicious duck-shaped snowmen next to
| statues (related to last name Kaczynski). The party leader that
| had 80 police squad cars guarding his villa.
|
| One of worst parts of thin skinned politicians is fabricating
| excuses to harass people they don't like.
| jariel wrote:
| There are literally words you can say in so called 'Western
| Liberal' countries that can get you arrested or charged with
| hate speech.
|
| Those are our version of 'Blasphemy' laws.
|
| It's basically very disrespectful what Charlie Hebdo does, but
| shouldn't be illegal, and I guess, there should be 'someone
| somewhere' who is pushing the boundaries. Similarly, there are
| a lot of very rude things you can say to people, but none of it
| should be illegal, and frankly I don't care if there's a
| website somewhere that people say nasty things. So long as none
| of it gets out of hand.
|
| While the top commenters bit about Thai, local law and 'face
| saving' is fine, it's also obviously unjust. Justice takes many
| forms but there is some degree of universality to it.
| echelon wrote:
| > Those are our version of 'Blasphemy' laws.
|
| There's a difference in a racial epithet, which is aimed at a
| person in hostility, and a religious mockery, which is aimed
| at something people believe in - not people directly.
| Attacking a person vs attacking something someone believes
| in.
|
| Saying "Christians are stupid" is different than saying
| "Christ is stupid".
|
| We should all be able to tolerate having our ideals and
| beliefs criticized and mocked. But we should stand up for
| anyone of a race or group being attacked or marginalized.
| Black, white, gay, straight, religious, atheist, educated or
| not, whatever.
|
| A belief doesn't have feelings and doesn't feel pain. People
| do.
|
| > can get you arrested or charged with hate speech.
|
| Maybe in some democracies, but in America we allow it. Free
| speech is one of the core foundations of our democracy. If
| you want to put your foot in your mouth and say something
| stupid or hateful, be my guest. I'll even defend your right
| to do it. But it doesn't free you from being judged by your
| peers.
| kenneth wrote:
| Pretty sure free speech is gone from "liberal democracies"
| now that the left has decided that Twitter and Facebook
| should be arbiters of what speech is allowed.
| echelon wrote:
| Holy shit, I'm a liberal and I'm being downvoted to hell
| anytime I bring up free speech.
|
| Any time I point out fascist China.
|
| Any time I say tech giants like Apple have reduced our
| ability to freely compute on our own hardware. Or create
| software without bowing to a cartel. Or that Google has
| destroyed the free and open web with its URL-destroying,
| AMP-chugging browser.
|
| If we don't protect our speech and our technology, we'll
| have nothing left to protect us when the monsters come.
|
| Imagine if freedom of speech was taken away and leveraged
| against you. Imagine not being able to speak out against
| religion or members of the ruling class. Or finding
| yourself on the other side of the tyranny of the
| majority.
|
| What happens when the next great issue is, say,
| _transhumanism_ or _human cloning_ and you have no right
| to talk about it?
|
| I'm a liberal. I voted for Biden, Warnock, and Ossoff.
|
| Why are there so many fascists in my party?
| xnyan wrote:
| I'm confused, are you arguing that if I host a popular
| website, the government should be able to compel to
| promote ideas I disagree with? How is that not worse than
| the current situation?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Exactly, just like the telephone company. Or that lady
| who didn't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding.
| xnyan wrote:
| Ok let's practice. I'm the government. I order you to
| post the following "I don't think the government should
| be able to order Twitter not to delete tweets"
|
| If you don't want to post that, why should Twitter be
| forced to do so?
| honkycat wrote:
| And what would the right do? Pass legislation to force
| these corporations to host unprofitable content on their
| website?
| kingaillas wrote:
| Here I thought it was the right-
| wing/conservative/republicans that were in favor of
| private enterprise, free association, no government
| intereference, etc. Which is exactly what happened here.
|
| Must only be for bakeries and gay wedding cakes.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| If the lady has to bake the cake, the cloud provider has
| to host the content hahaha
| trasz wrote:
| There's a fundamental difference between blasphemy - which by
| definition doesn't attack anyone, and the right to which is
| one of the cornerstones of our civilisation, being a part of
| religious freedom - and hate speech.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| In Poland it's not literally called blasphemy, but "offense
| against religious feelings". So it's framed as if someone
| was hurt. There are no equivalent laws for other kinds of
| feelings, like atheistic feelings, romantic feelings, vi vs
| emacs feelings, or even patriotic feelings. I think
| disrespecting the flag and national symbols is illegal. But
| it is essentially a blasphemy law.
|
| This caricature pokes fun at it:
|
| https://memnews.pl/images/0/0/0/6/7/6/7/1/2levbnjk.png
|
| "Doctor, will my husband come out of it?" "Hard to say.
| Religious feeling damage is very deep."
| jariel wrote:
| "blasphemy - which by definition doesn't attack anyone"
|
| There is a difference of course, but religious affiliation
| is absolutely a 'protected category' in most places and
| it's a very nuanced thing to say 'attacking a faith' is not
| attacking a culture or group.
|
| Most people in the world identify more with their faith as
| much as they do nationality, or skin colour.
|
| "Here's my funny, irreverent comment about X Religion"
|
| "Here's my funny movie questioning X Religion"
|
| "Here's me in a costume of X Religious Figure"
|
| "X Religious Figure is a cockroach"
|
| "People who follow Religious X Figure are cockroaches"
|
| "These Specific Religious Folks are cockroaches"
|
| "This Specific Religious Building is full of cockroaches"
|
| "There's no evidence This Specific Religious group was
| massacred"
|
| I'm going to bet some of those things are possibly a little
| 'blasphemous' but really benign, whereas others are
| 'blasphemous' to the point of straight up, 'hate speech' by
| legal definition.
|
| It get complicated quickly, it's not all just benign.
|
| In India, Myanmar etc. this seems to be quite evidently a
| problem, especially on Facebook.
| trasz wrote:
| It's true that blasphemy can sometimes turn into hate
| speech. But when it happens, then it's wrong because it's
| hate speech, not because it's blasphemy.
|
| It's also worth noting that in many, or perhaps most,
| cases of blasphemy the root of the problem is preventing
| someone from harassing others in the name of their
| religion. Good example is Poland, where people are being
| sued for protesting against Catholic discrimination of
| minorities.
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| It's incomprehensible how anyone would not shudder from anger
| seeing such injustice or how anyone would be clueless enough to
| argue that centralized, uncontrolled power of any kind has the
| right to exist in our time. We should all be working hard on
| dismantling these barbarian relics of the past as soon as
| possible, even if only to let their innocent victims to stand in
| the shambles and breathe the sweet air of freedom once again in
| their lives.
| fsflover wrote:
| >to argue that centralized, uncontrolled power of any kind has
| no right to exist in our time
|
| See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25828081
| validuser wrote:
| s/no right/the right?
| crispyambulance wrote:
| It's ugly but it's not "incomprehensible".
|
| They got a monarchy. That means something. The monarchy serves
| as a kind of sacred cultural identity and attacking the
| monarchy is like attacking the society itself.
|
| Places like England have more evolved monarchies, where saying
| something against royals won't land someone in jail, but the
| same sentiment is there. The only way to "dismantle it" is to
| wait and do it in steps over generations. Even Thailand is
| doing that now. The royals are largely symbolic and don't
| exercise direct political power. But there's still a strong
| cultural attachment.
| JRGC wrote:
| the new king is not his father
| xenocratus wrote:
| > Even Thailand is doing that now. The royals are largely
| symbolic and don't exercise direct political power. But
| there's still a strong cultural attachment.
|
| Don't know how biased the Economist is on this, but they've
| had a number of articles talking about the increasing role of
| the current king. An example is linked below.
|
| https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/10/14/thailands-
| king...
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210103234100if_/https://www.ec.
| ..
| notahacker wrote:
| Thailand has been _technically_ a constitutional monarchy
| like the UK since 1932. But the constitutional role of a
| monarch is a lot bigger in a country which has had more
| coups than most countries have had elections in the time
| period since, and everyone involved has tried to claim
| their legitimacy comes from the monarch
| iguy wrote:
| It sounds more like they have a military government, who
| claim to act in the name of a king. And hence claim that any
| criticism of them is criticism of him. Against which there
| are both strong laws (even if these were seldom applied so
| strongly before?) and a cultural taboo (which otherwise a
| general appointing himself leader would not command).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Places like England have more evolved monarchies, where
| saying something against royals won't land someone in jail
|
| ... anymore. The last prosecution for that was in 1715
| apparently. But it was illegal and probably still is; see
| also "Sedition". In a lot of countries, Lese-majeste has only
| been scrapped from laws in fairly recent history (in part
| because it conflicts with the freedom of speech / expression
| codified in a lot of constitutions):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9
| [deleted]
| yrimaxi wrote:
| Many people are fine with it when the centralized power is in
| the form of a corporation.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| They fact that such an obvious comment such as this is
| immediately downvote here is the strongest evidence of the
| truth of this statement I can imagine.
|
| We only question the authority of monarchy because we have
| moved on to a more powerful system of control. 500 years ago,
| when monarchs where publicly viewed as divinely ordained (a
| similar but less sophisticated ideology that create the idea
| that companies _should_ be totalitarian) even questioning the
| right of a king to his thrown as seen as heretical.
| Aunche wrote:
| You're on a forum created by company whose goal is to
| create as many billion-dollar corporations as possible.
| It's unsurprising that its users do not appreciate such a
| reductionist take on corporations.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| I hardly feel that claiming that corporations are able to
| exert the same type of non-democratic control over
| society as a monarchy through a complex system of
| ideological tools that make even pointing out the
| existence of such a power structure forbidden is
| _reductionist_.
|
| And the idea that HN should be free from any critical or
| skeptical opinions of the current state of the tech
| industry is at least against the hacker spirit, which,
| for all of PGs faults, is at least part of the founding
| of this forum.
| Aunche wrote:
| The article is about a woman sent to jail for 43 years.
| The worst thing a corporation can do is stop giving you
| money. You can then join a worker cooperative if you
| wish.
|
| Users are also free to downvote what they want. There's a
| good chance you'll be downvoted for defending
| corporations on Reddit, for example.
| [deleted]
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > The worst thing a corporation can do is stop giving you
| money
|
| In a late capitalist society a worker has no other means
| of survival other than to work for a corporation. In
| 1820, yes you could just go live on a farm and provide
| for you self but being cut off from a mean of living is
| not a small thing.
|
| It idea that you can "just" be denied a means of living,
| and that this is no big deal is pretty laughable. You are
| quite literally paraphrasing Scrooges infamous speech
| about poorhouses.
| [deleted]
| burrows wrote:
| > incomprehensible ... shudder ... anger ... such injustice ...
| clueless ... right to exist in our time ... dismantling ...
| barbarian relics ... innocent victims ... the shambles and
| breathe the sweet air of freedom
|
| A robust, well reasoned argument aimed directly at the rational
| principle in the soul of each reader. Exactly the sort of
| comment I expect to see recommended by a community of educated,
| intelligent people.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Breathless Appeal to Emotion, or related to it anyway.
| Breathless comments are quite common on HN.
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
| bitcharmer wrote:
| The same applies to blasphemy laws IMHO.
| ars wrote:
| That need a bit of nuance IMO. Blasphemy in general doesn't
| need protecting.
|
| But blasphemy targeting a specific person or institution is
| effectively hate speech, and there are good reasons to ban
| it.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Blasphemy - the action or offence of speaking
| sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk.
|
| It applies strictly to religion, not people.
| iguy wrote:
| Doesn't blasphemy _by definition_ target a non-existent
| person?
| jacobr1 wrote:
| You can craft the implication with clever rhetoric. You
| can imply that holding the lambasted beliefs would only
| be done by someone mentally-ill or mislead, maybe even
| the ideas are so ridiculous that it is likely those
| purporting to hold such beliefs are disingenuous and have
| more sinister motives.
| myWindoonn wrote:
| Yes, but that decomposes into blasphemy (against a deity)
| and defamation (against a person). For example, Jehovah
| probably doesn't exist. That's blasphemy, but it says
| nothing about those who believe in Jehovah. It's optional
| to include defamatory swipes at believers.
|
| For comparison, recall that Santa Claus also probably
| doesn't exist, and examine your emotions to see how you
| feel about the contrast between Santa Claus and Jehovah.
| burrows wrote:
| "Only a hateful racist Nazi-adjacent person could think
| that the gap between American black and white
| socioeconomic status is caused by degenerate,
| pathologically retarded black culture rather than
| 'oppression'."
|
| Am I doing it right?
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > uncontrolled power of any kind has the right to exist in our
| time.
|
| I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not anymore. Where
| do we not see this type of uncontrolled power?
|
| Residents of the US live in a vast oligarchy where the elite
| define freedom as "the ability to change which feudal lord you
| work for", in a system where all lords serve the same master.
| Our "democratic" government is largely a spectacle which has
| little impact on the day to day lives of citizens despite how
| terrified they are of its collapse.
|
| In the united states anyone who has too deeply radical thoughts
| will simply be unemployable, without a means of survival,
| healthcare or housing. The idea that employees of a company
| should have a say in the practices of the company is considered
| highest heresy. Even the times where some sort of worker union
| can emerge it's only to provided limited benefit to the
| workers.
|
| The US has evolved a more sophisticated form of "uncontrolled
| power", one so powerful that even stating its existence is
| fought with controversy. At least in traditional monarchy you
| can find a way to life your live largely away these power
| structures, "heaven is high and the emperor is far away".
| Whereas the power structures in our own society literally mesh
| themselves in our flesh and minds. The best part is you cannot
| even question them (there's a 50/50 chance this very comment
| will be downvoted into oblivion).
| u678u wrote:
| I know a lot of Americans don't like Monarchies, I don't love
| entitled rich families either but the alternative is really
| having a second parliament, and I've learned having a parliament
| + Monarch works a lot more smoothly than President + 2 houses.
|
| eg Western Monarchies: Canada, UK, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain,
| Australia, Norway
| chmod600 wrote:
| Interesting point. Monarchies are obviously not great, but it's
| good to remember that they aren't evil or something, and that
| there can still be a balance of power.
|
| I've been thinking that, in a liberal democracy, there's not
| much of a national identity. It's like a football club where
| anyone can drop in, and vote to play chess instead.
|
| I generally think that's fine, except that it seems like having
| no identity at all is a vacuum, and gets filled by something.
| That could easily end up being the opposite of liberal
| democracy, so lack of identity can be self-defeating.
| umvi wrote:
| The difference is a bad president is only locked in for 4
| years, a bad monarch is locked in for life because presumably
| their "blood" entitles them. Also, the entire concept of
| "divine bloodlines" flies in the face of equality of humans.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The US president has much more in common with a 17th to 19th
| century European monarch than the current European
| constitutional monarchs do.
|
| And have you noticed how many streets, businesses, and housing
| estates, educational institutions in the US have some sort of
| monarchical name? For instance Regency Parkway Cary, Regent and
| King Universities.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Coming to America soon (for Trump supporters at least).
| [deleted]
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| Hopefully they can criticize the government all they want
| still. It's that storm the Capitol building looking to
| overthrow the government that is going to earn them a timeout.
| frockington1 wrote:
| The part that worries me is AOCs Truth & Reconciliation
| Commission. Sounds way to similar to re-education camps and
| ministry of truths elsewhere
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Still a question remains that why the military went there
| instead of just the police? Generally the military is trained
| in killing people and the police in deescalation and keeping
| order inside the country.
|
| I'm still very optimistic for the US. I'm not a Joe Biden
| fan, but the people who he selected so far look knowledgable,
| which is a big improvement over many other countries.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Because there were people there hoping to kill political
| leaders and the police did not have control of the
| situation.
| Amezarak wrote:
| The DoJ is now walking back those claims.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/15/qanon-
| shama...
|
| > On Friday, however, Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd
| Allison walked back the claim of an assassination plot,
| saying that while it "may very well be appropriate at a
| trial," raising it at this stage could "mislead the
| court."
|
| [...]
|
| > We don't have any direct evidence of kill/capture
| teams," Sherwin said at a Friday news briefing.
|
| NB: It never ceases to surprise me that people take the
| public statements of the FBI/DoJ with its _long_ history
| of overzealous and often illegal overreaches very
| uncritically. We 're talking about an organization (the
| FBI) that was controlled by one of the most corrupt men
| in US political history for nearly half of its existence
| - J Edgar Hoover. Nothing much has changed. It doesn't
| matter which side of the political spectrum you are, they
| are not your friend - they both tried to blackmail MLK
| into killing himself and sent snipers to murder a hard-
| right woman holding a baby at Ruby Ridge.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The military seem to be, frankly, much better trained than
| the police.
|
| The US military has lots of recent experience in managing
| situations far more dangerous involving civilians in
| Afghanistan and The middle East. In contrast the US police
| are infamously shoot-first questions-later.
|
| Biden'd day1 plan has been leaked, it's all good to my eye,
| although he has a gargantuan task dealing with COVID and
| rebuilding trust in the government.
| miga wrote:
| There was military coup in 2014. In 2016, junta leader gave
| officers of the army were given police powers:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Thai_Police#Army_deputi
| z...
| Retric wrote:
| First police failed to control the situation.
|
| But, to make a long story short Republican governor Larry
| Hogan sent them in. https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/news/politics/gov-hogan-leaders-of...
|
| As to why, this goes back to the constitution. Article I,
| Section 8, Clause 15, and Article I, Section 10, Clause 3
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Guard
| chmod600 wrote:
| So the insurrectionists get a time out, or all 70M people who
| voted for him?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Are you saying voting for the wrong person should be
| illegal and grounds for prosecution?
|
| I mean for one, you wouldn't / shouldn't be able to trace
| who voted for who; it's called anonymity in voting and it's
| one of the pillars of democracy. And which party you side
| with is a massive part of the hostility between citizens of
| the US right now. It's not just a vote for many, it's a
| personality, a tribe, something to get entrenched in and
| lash out to the Other Side.
| grey-area wrote:
| Hopefully Trump (called for insurrection and dictatorship),
| and the people who constructed a gallows outside and
| stormed and sacked the capitol (actual insurrection) get a
| timeout.
|
| This should not be controversial if you like living in a
| democracy.
| DFHippie wrote:
| I don't know why you would read kemiller2002's comment as
| implying the actions of the insurrectionists would earn a
| "timeout" for everyone who voted for Trump.
|
| The insurrectionists were eager to be aggrieved about
| something. I guess they got their wish, those of them going
| into timeout. We don't all have to adopt this pose.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Because the original post said "Trump supporters", and
| the reply said they attacked the capitol and should get a
| time out.
| DFHippie wrote:
| I think that is an uncharitable reading of the comment
| you were responding to.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
| chmod600 wrote:
| I was asking for clarification of an ambiguity.
|
| It's an important ambiguity to clarify, because guilt-by-
| association moves quickly through society.
| 535188B17C93743 wrote:
| I pity you if you can't understand the difference. Really.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Democrats want to destroy Trump and every one of his
| supporters. And that is the truth. Ps. He did not call for
| insurrection. The blm and antifa violence and rioting all
| summer was far worse than what happened at the Capitol. What
| kind of America do you want? Go ahead and downvote/ban me
| here for the truth. Democrats are the true Nazis/Fascists.
| Think about it. Get your head out of cnn's ass.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Somehow, whenever someone says "think about it" to make
| their case instead of presenting their own reason and
| evidence, it makes it more difficult to accept their
| argument as valid.
|
| To be so very clear: The downvote was for your last
| sentence, not the sentiment.
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