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Plus,

I cannot quite see your point here. As a journalist I am sure Mr Le Fevre receives many e-mail, twitters or whatever making all sorts of accusations - I am not a journalist but I get 100s of unsolicited e-mails on a daily basis but this doesn't mean I am in cohoots with the odd nigerian general or two. Surely what is important here is that if accustations are made, and I am sure most journalists receive many unsubstantiated claims on a daily basis, particularly if they are thought to be sympathetic to a cause, it is the job of a responsible journalist to verify these claims partly through thier own sources and possibly through contacts provided by the original source. As long as these sources are who they claim to be, which I am sure would be part of the verification process. I notice from his previous response to my question that he has obtained some written responses from eyewitnesses...

I have no problems with recaps of what has been posted on tweeter, as long as it is clearly stated that it is the source.

John has said he obtained the info for his story from interviews with eye-wtinesses and I have no problems with that either.

Earlier I asked how many people he interviewed, because it appeared that he covered the whole country and some regions reported abuse of power. Was it really the case? Or was it a case of one or two interviews projected on the rest of the country. From reading the article lots of people assumed that it was a nationwide policy.

And a tweet question still remains - how much info for that article, if any, came from unattributed and unverified tweets posted on the Internet?

And a few quotes posted by dp25 - what's the relationship between "redtweeter" and John, and what's the deal with requesting to publish a coup story, and in exchange for what?

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These are fair question for the only news reporter allowed to publish his own articles on TV and start new threads from those articles. If he wants to be taken seriously, he should "come clean".

Another thing about VirtualBox - you have to allocate it some RAM but prefereably not more than half of what you have (VB will give you warnings). I gave it 256MB to XP and it runs ok, but if you plan on doing some heavy memory/CPU intensive stuff - it won't have access to ALL your computer resourses like a dual boot would.

Also - things that won't work are the ones Linux doesn't have drivers for. Sun VB gives Windows direct access to USB devices but not much else. Direct3d doesn't work because no one has wrote translation from it to similar features in OpenGl used by Linux, so Windows gives errors.

Dual boot will solve all those problems but it's a waste of time for simple tasks - virtualBox suits a lot better for that.

Currently I use it for searching and generating NZB files with a program that runs only on Windows. Once I got them, I shutdown VB and download stuff using Windows prgrams that run in Wine mentioned earlier.

It's not illegal until the courts rule on the complaints (filed by PAD and Democrats).

I am not sure who your attack is aimed at, ThaiVisa or at the journalist. Journalists subscribe to a code of ethics and stories are developed and facts are checked. Good journalists don't always divulge their sources. You may recall the guy who was referred to as "Deep Throat" that brought down Nixon, but was never named. He eventually came forward on his own.

It's one thing to hide the identity of the source it's quite another to invent your "sources".

Phrases like "reports are filtering out" sound like tweet messages. Also - who is filtering them?

I was writing about the questioning -almost interrogation- of the anti-Thaksin brigade about the OP article.

For the past couple of pages no one questions the OP article.

The question is its source and methods the information was obtained.

It would be real shame if even parts of it came from unattributed and anonymous tweet messages and then passed as "news" on ThaiVisa, BY ThaiVisa.

Anyone with a spare 300 baht could post a hundred tweets describing any imaginary event he wishes in full detail and from different perspectives. And it would look like a flood.

Is this how ThaiVisa News is possibly created? I hope not.

Or Vicodin, Dr House.

There's no point in installing Windows drivers in VirtualBox - Windows inside the box doesn't have direct access to any of your hardware, it uses drivers provided by your host system (Ubuntu, I suppose).

What you need is to install Guest Additions from VirtualBox menu. I just did it a week or so ago, but I use Sun's proprietary version of VB instead of OSE (open source edition from in Ubuntu official repositories).

Prior to Guest Additions I still could run VB in full screen but it was convoluted, there was a special key to switch mouse between VB and Ubuntu, and there were key combinations to run in full screen (also available from VB menu).

With Guest Additions it all went away - now it works just like any other application witout any hassle. Also I got VirtualBox Shared folders so I have access to files from both Linux and Windows.

What might not work in VB is Windows programs relying on Direct3D - two online games I installed for kids. They didn't work before Guest Additions, now the support is promised but I don't have passwords to login and test myself.

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Windows 7 runs on small or old machines like a breeze, I have it on dual boot, and you can use "Readyboost" feature that isn't available in XP - it's using flash drives for pagefile that is normally placed on a hard disk, next best thing to more RAM.

My next project is to install Win7 in Virtualbox, too, now that VB works on my Ubuntu.

The author of this story. He posts in and reads all the red shirt twitters.

Oh Jesus...

This is where this "news" comes from? Anonymous tweets?

That has nothing to do with my comment that it is so overly visible that the anti-Thaksin brigade expose themselves on Thaivisa, in this thread, by questioning an article which is NOT in their favor.

Their favor is: we hate Thaksin and we do NOT accept anything which is in our way and we will use any means to fight anybody who is opposed to our vision.

This is incorrect as far as my contributions are concerned.

In the beginning some people asked around civil servants they know personally and it didn't check out. Now everyone talks about the source of this "news".

I'm sure there are places where people were ordered to collect a hundred signatures or be fired, but how many are there? Are they localised? Is it really a government policy or just some overzealous local bosses trying to please Bangkok?

I, personally, don't know what to make of it unless I know how the story came into being the way it was presented.

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2. The entire ANTI Thaksin brigade on Thaivisa jumps out of bed and without even showering or dressing starts questioning the content.

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Twice in this thread I said that the content might be basically correct, because that's what Newin boys at the Interior would do.

What is in question is John's journalist ethics - the way he presented it leaves big doubts about authenticity of his "interviews" and "reports".

In the end it doesn't matter much - there will always be big a discrepancy between what happened and how it was percieved from the news, but little things like "reports are filtering out" or implying that hundreds if not thousands of civilc servants across the country were interviewed leaves a bad taste in the mouth. He could have just said "got it from the grapevine", would be more reliable.

Projecting what he heard from one source on the whole country makes me believe in Abac polls as if it was a Bible.

UBC/True has absolutely no control over movie content on HBO/Cinemax/Star moviesand it has all the popular TV series covered - Lost, House, 24 etc. Apart from that Grantbkk is "right".

They don't accept more petition after 31st July as they keep their word.

Then how come the number increased from 5.2 million to 6?

Is "Pheu Thai MP Pracha Prasopdee" predicting riots a third hand?

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Reds WILL have to do something on Monday 17.

The govt might simply say "We need time to verify the signatures" and put in on the back burner for months. Reds can't wait that long.

At least they will publicly announce a plan of action, or, most likely, start a new round of protests against the government, small in the beginning, then surround govt house, then moving on to other targets.

One thing they WON'T do - disperse quietly and wait for the outcome of the pardon petition.

There might be a "surprise", there might be not, but they will have to do something - November is drawing close and closer and they need to start early to build a momentum. It was sited as one of the reasons they failed in April - the escalated too fast.

Well, it would appear that a lot of people are willing to kill the messenger as well as the message.

The message could be kosher, but the messenger's reliability is in question.

Did John Le Fevre really interview lots of civil servants to state things like "most notably in the north and northeast of the country"? Did he interview them by phone? How many did he call? How many said they never heard of manadtory petitions, payments and the like? How are they spread geographically?

And what about "Throughout the country reports are also gradually filtering out" - who is reporting to whom? Does John Le Fevre collect reports from agents throughout the country?

Really?

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The "news" article looks like a recap of an unattributed RSS feed. It's fine if it's a recap of the headlines in some Red/Yellow papers - if the source is stated clearly.

So what about the content of this petition and who it is addressed to?

Earlier it was meant to be for those who changed their minds after signing the red petition. Now apparently everyone can sign this counterpetition. Has the text been changed?

If you belive the numbers, 10 million people have signed somewhere, and there are just over 40 million registered voters in Thailand. That's one in four. Doesn't sound right in my little circle.

So poster "photojourn" who replied to Orac's question is actually John Le Fevre?

What about the content of the petition?

Where did Le Fevre obtain this information?

"Likewise, some district, town and village administrators, most notably in the north and northeast of the country – traditional Thaksin strongholds – are claiming they have been instructed to obtain 100 percent support for the government petition from residents, or face dismissal and loose all central government budget funding.

According to a number of civil servants in the Northern Province of Chiang Mai, each employee has been told to collect 100 signatures for the government’s rebuttal petition by Friday, August 14, or face dismissal.

The reports from Chiang Mai match similar ones from the Northeastern Province of Chaiyaphum where the Interior Ministry appointed governor is reported to have summoned district and sub-district leaders to a meeting at City Hall on August 12 and instructed them they must obtain the signatures of all village residents - without exception."

Did he interview district, town and village administrators? How many? Where? Did he actually recieved reports from Chiang Mai and Chayaphum?

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Regardless - the Interior Ministry that rnus this "reported" campaign is run by Newin's men. I would be surprised if they didn't do anything stupid like that at all.

And maybe John Le Fevre, who apparently knows all this information first hand, can provide us with the text of this counter-petition everyone is signing. What does it say and who is it addressed to?

Each petition has three pages with one signature at the bottom of the third page.

10,000 petitions is 30,000 sheets of paper, or 66.6 stacks of regular A4 paper(450 sheets), and it would weigh 130kg, if they use 70 g/m2 paper. Two people carrying this box? Koo once said they'll have a hot red ass dancing in front of them for the surge of extra power, but I don't think even that is going to work for the whole distance.

There's also a page with only forms for five signatures on it but I don't think that's official - there must be some other text on a page - what people are signing for, not just five signatures alone.

Maybe they'll go with a two page version, without a coverpage, for the sake of convenience, but it might also not checkout legally, certainly wouldn't be very respectful.

In the end all this math can turn out completely wrong. This is just what has been mentioned in the press with their usual 70 people would carry 75 flags reports from press-conferences. I bet that's what the guy said and not Nation's mistake. I think the actual numbers will never be checked of verified. No one has seen these 5-6 million signatures, ever, it's all just words. Their storage place at D-station (fifth floor of Imperial Lad Prao) can't possibly hold 5 million peitions, which is over 60 ton in weight. But that's math again.

You can argue until cows come home - two door cars don't sell here. Period.

Honda isn't going to build 270hp Coupe in Thailand when they can't sell even four door sedans with that power.

There IS some market for two door coupes, but not for Honda. Benz and BMW or some other Euros, but not Accord.

As for young Civic lovers - the Coupe is way way out of their league. They are still hooked on a fifteen year old hutchback, just seen some local race on the news.

Honda couldn't even find market for much cheaper Civic TypeR, even if shared with Australia. Those racers just don't exist in any significant numbers.

Nothing like that is going to happen, ever. At most generals will move to exile.

What WILL happen is that the country will soon start seeing new laws passed by elected legislature, and the government will be held accountable to the parliament, at least to a degree. Those representatives are not going to be freely elected, but they will be voted in by people, and probably not all candidates will be selected by the junta, too. And NLD will be soon forgotten completely unless they step up to the plate themselves.

It's not some Narnia land where one evil general keeps the whole country under a magic spell. There are millions and millions of people there who learned to live and work under junta government - build their lives, raise families, run businesses etc. Most of what they want from the government or parliament isn't connected to democracy or politics at all.

Changed the Constitution - well, the elected, non-junta parliament has been trying for a year and a half, and it is a total disaster as far as people are concerned, only self-serving crooks trying to protect their own interests. The junta's version is far more people centered, and they took it for public referendum. The elected bunch, on the other, isn't going to consult with people at all.

Junta appointed parliament was also far more productive than elected one as far as legistating is concerned. Last year was a complete write off, for example - they couldn't pass any laws at all, being busy squabbling with the people whether they should work for Thaksin or the country.

Poorly ran the country - there was 5-6% growth, including exports and foreign investment, and and they repaid hundreds of billions of public debts. What have the elected governments accomplished in a year and a half?

Increased the military budget - that was also the first order of business of Somchai govt, for example. As percentage of GDP it's still below Singapore or Malaysia.

Gripen fighter deal was Thaksin's pet project - chickens for planes.

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What Thailand needs is a few years under competent, working government. Doesn't matter where it comes from, democratic vs coup government is a false dichotomy. Coup government was in many ways far more democratic than some elected goverments we had since.

No, but that's what's going to happen anyway, so we just try to make the best of it as well.

Generals won't be able to keep it under complete control forever. First elections - ok, second, third - control will be slipping away.

Pity NLD decided to sideline itself for good, without ANY chance of getting into politics.

We could have had that "roadmap" implemented ten years ago if they were a bit more realistic about their principles. Burma wouild have been better off by now.

They brought up donation case from five years ago. Party leadership has completely changed since then, Sec General is even working for another party. Waste of everybody's time.

If Dems managed to keep those extra funds off the books it's impossible to dissolve the party itself - it was individuals cheating on party own rules and regulations, if they can prove even that.

During the no confidence motion a few months ago the only evidence linking the party to the funds was one little fax sent TO party provincial office. It could have been for anybody who was there at the time and for any business. "Can I use your fax machine, someone's trying to send me some documents" - "Sure, you know the number".

Bout was convicted in absentia in New York, wasn't he?

Doesn't matter. Thais have problems with drugs, the US has nothing to do wtih it.

There's a great number of people who would give up the habit if drugs were unavailable/too expensive, and for them cutting off the supplies would work the best - it's like being forced into a rehab.

It's also about time Thais have grown some balls and confronted Wa about the matter. Of course it's easier to kill your own compatriots and you still get the whole glory, ala Thaksin, but that strategy doesn't seem to work anymore - they don't dare to go on another rampage and without actuall killings numreous drug wars announced every couple of months have no effect whatsoever. All Thaksin's bla bla bla about decriminalising the addicts, sending them to rehabs, getting sworn oaths not to trade, none of that works by itself - killing people without mercy was the singlemost cause of drug war success.

Sondhi assassination and police reshuffle are two separate subjects. Most of the officers accused by Sirichoke don't give a rat's ass about Sondhi, or Patcharawat, for that matter. It's about getting best position for the next few years - this is not just annual rotation, it's restructuring of the police force itself, everybody needs a foot in the door.