Plus

It's just as dangerous driving on normal roads. Should we ban bikes there as well?

That's an idea.

>>>

How can you say that accidents at speeds over 120km/h are equally dangerous as at crawling speeds on normal roads, hardly ever higher than 60km/h (for bikes)?

Now you are only being dishonest. And UK hdoesn't have a 'first amendment' protecting free speech and has never really been a free nation. Hence why it wasn't used as an example.

You telling why I didn't use the UK as an example? I singled out the US and Osama as the easiest to relate to, elsewhere I just talked about "west" in general.

I don't think the senator would have charged FCCT for selling dvds prior to charges against Jakrapob, that was over a year ago, after all. If they are not on sale now, how would she even substantiate her charge?

Any Thai media outlet, like the Nation, doesn't publish content of LM speeches and remarks, precisely because they'd be subjecting themselves to charges. Sondhi was charged for relating such remards off the PAD stage.

What did FCCT think? Did they expect a different standard applied to themselves.

Also, they are charged for selling DVD copies of a speech containing LM offenses. It has nothing to do with whatever else they sell there, their published books, how much they gave to charity etc etc.

Thai papers print huge tributes to the royal family on various occasions, they don't think it earns them the right to print offensive comments, too.

Jakrapob wants armed struggle against Thailand, he's past simple insults already.

Oh, and there's a very little practical difference if he was charged for making speeches, or it was worded as "encouraging/supporting terrorism" for legal purposes of going around First Amendment.

Plus, I'm afraid I can't engage with someone on a rational level who wants to refer to Obama as a terrorist.

Obama, Osama, they are all the same to you, aren't they?

>>>>

I agree, I don't think we can have a rational discussion if you can't even be bothered to read my posts and accuse me of some bizarre baiting practices.

it is legal to copy* and distribute any speeches by Osama in the US.

Did you read my post about muslim cleric who was convicted for possession of Osama's handbook, among other things? Even though it was in the Uk, he was wanted in the US for "supporting terrorism", too.

As long as no court has convicted Jakrapop, this speech is simply not illegal.

They can present this as a defence argument. They have the right to defend themselves, just as people have the right to accuse them.

If it turns out to be illegal they will have to answer for their decision to distribute the speech, regardless of Jakrapob's own case.

..

If you wanna see a real lese-majeste speech search YouTube for 'Giles Ungpakorn SOAS'. Idiots at MICT haven't blocked that too!

I just watch it from outside Thailand.

Very GOOD stuff.

I am not sure if this clip is block in Thailand.

This guy is a Republican, and by that alone, should get 15 years sentence in Thailand.

No one in Thailand can be a Republican.

Is that true? No one in Thailand can be a Republican? Is that the law? If so, I wasn't aware of that.

Consitutionally Thailand is a monarchy, campaigning for republican system would be unconstitutional.

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Btw, this is a perfect example of how people use LM related thread to gain publicity for some "awesome" Giles videos, just like in real life.

Finally a review on new 2l Altis in Bangkok Post.

Just as expected/predicted: it's geared to low-mid range performance and gets a lot of praise for that.

Altis 2.0l review

Quick Media Converter

Not sure but think Windows Movie Maker may be able to convert also - and that is built into Vista - just type the name in search field of start. Believe it is publish movie function in movie maker.

I tried this but the only non .wmv options is .avi, which is fine but which turns a 119mb file into a 6gb .avi file !!!!!!!!

Any ideas ?

On XP there's only one option for it - DV AV, uncompressed avi, which indeed could be very large.

If your converting program has any more options - choose a codec for .avi, that would compress it to a manageable size.

In the dark you can't clearly see the gear position so audio reminder that you are in R instead of D is not so bad, though annoying, I agree.

Why not disconnect the beeper itself?

I could list several pages of ways in which the character of monitor lizards are superior to the character of people.

I'm curious, can you keep it down to few lines?

The FCCT has not, as Sondhi Limthingkul has done, repeated to maybe offending remarks, it has distributed the recording of the event to its members. Until now this speech has by no court in the country been judged as offending to the monarchy.

Oh so legal we are now. What's the meaning of this? That FCCT cannot be charged for selling the DVDs? What kind of twisted logic is that?

Why should they be granted the immunity from country's laws? They are not diplomats.

The worst part of this is, that the reason for Lese Majeste laws is to protect the monarchy against insults and defamation, and is not supposed to be hijacked by political pressure groups to further their own political agenda, and to shut up their critics.

Not so legal here, though - no court in the country judged that anyone was advancing their political agenda by filing LM charges. That's your own allegation to which my response is the same - it's the offenders themselves who try to advance their political agenda by trumping up anti-LM rhetoric.

They make allegations against monarchy, and when those are questioned they go to the media to publicise their whole ideology that otherwise goes unnoticed. Giles is a perfect example. He wrote a book, no one cared, he was charged, no one cared. Then he fled and faxed his "manifesto" to every news media. Next morning half the country was "Giles who? What did he say?"

.. in the US, political speech (with a few rare exceptions) is protected speech (example: the 1960s). Wouldn't be surprised if attempts were made assuming there were any commercial outlets to suppress them, but ultimately these would probably not survive a Supreme Court test...

Osama is not a politician, he is a terrorist.

Check out this radical muslim preacher:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Hamza_al-...rorism_Act_2000

Though he was arrested and charged in the UK, he was also facing extradition to the US.

"The charges related to his possession of the Encyclopedia of Afghan Jihad, a Al Qaeda Handbook and to propaganda materials produced by Abu Hamza", though there's no citation for that.

My point - western coutnries DO have laws to deal with threats to national security that often supercede the usual, legally protected rights.

Why should Thailand be denied these laws? Currently Jakrapob is also charged with inciting unrest or something like that.

The FCCT must be really dumb to sell his speeches and get themselves right in the middle of the political struggle, not to mention being opened to all kinds of legal troubles.

Imagine a car going 150km/h trying to squeeze between 2 other cars going 120km/h.

Easily, they might clip side mirrors or leave a scratch mark. In case of an accident there is a steel body cage, glorified crump zones, a bunch of airbags and seat belts. Even trucks come with two bags now.

What does a motocycle have? A couple of optional knee pads?

Some people here advise from driving pickup trucks at those speeds because of lack of safety.

>>>>

Bottom line, if Thailand had enough roads, maybe even bike lanes like in Malaysia, enough space for everybody to drive safely, and enough big bikes to make it an issue, the proposal could have been considered.

In Thailand as it is it's a non-starter.

There's a lot more to safe driving that the ability to maintain speed.

Imagine a bike going 150km/h between two lanes of cars going at 120, and someone decides to change the lane?

Imagine some car accelerating over 160km/h to overtake on the left and trying to squeeze past the bike crusing at 140?

One little clip on a handlebar is all what is needed to end biker's life.

Yes, legal limit is "safe" 120km/h, but then there's the reality.

Oh heavy traffic jams during major holidays with extra lanes on hard shoulders, it's hard for bikers to navigate even a stationary jams like that. Imagine moving at 90km/h, and everybody trying to squeeze them out of the way because there's no mercy in those conditions - every square inch of road surface is taken within seconds.

All for what? So that they can enjoy the speed? So that the can drive over legal limits, too? It feels, good, sure, but from the point of view of safety it's a nightmare for everyone else.

Windows movie maker should do the trick, just don't get lost in all the "features", just change the output format to something your DVD can read, like mpeg2 (Dvd standard) or DivX/Xvid codec if you go for .avi.

"open new tab next to active" checkbox in Opera...

I feel like I'm hikacking the thread.

What else am I to do - there's no linux version in linux repositories yet. Should wait a couple more days.

On Windows it looked pretty much the same to me.

I didn't reply to your "not intuitice" charge, it's very subjective, I only have issue with

"Opera ... doesn't allow basic Gui personalization. "

About opening new tabs - Opera has a "reuse current tabs" checkbox in settings. I don't know how it's set by default, but you can either check or uncheck it and it will open new tabs or load things like search results in the current tab.

Should I mention that you can search for any text you see on a webpage via right click and using any of the dozen or so search engines? By default it will use the last one. To me it's very intuitive - see something on a page, like "sailing stones" - select with a mouse, right click, search with wikipedia. Voila - you learn about a very interesting, unexplained phenomenon, in Dead Sea valley, of all places. Rocks there apparently are alive.

I just called a friend of mine, a regular at the FCCT; he said that the FCCT made and sold/distributed the vids of Jakhrapob' speech before he was charged with lese-majeste.

So, how the hel_l can FCCT be charged?

You mean to say they discontinued the sales when he was charged?

Otherwise it's irrelevant when they started.

Do you get any errors in you mail program when gmail is not working? Can you try some other mailing software to see where the problem is?

I don't want to move my toolbars... Usually I want to "slim" them down, or get rid of them altogether... I like window space... I don't need too much on my bar... and I like the buttons I want... If it's on my bar, i should be able to get rid of it.. If it isn't than I should be able to add it.... or put them in the order that suits the way that I browse..

Errrm, right click-remove from toolbar works on any button. How could you miss that?

Tools-Appearance gets you to the window where you can drag them all back and rearrange in any order, and also disable/enable any of the nine toolbars that could be there, and reduce icon size by 50% to make them slimmer if you need extra space.

I could go on, but my point is that you made a ridiculous comment about not being allowed to personalise Opera. I have no idea how you could come to that conclusion. Makes me take all your other comments about browsers with a huge grain of salt.

>>

I don't know why there's no "new tab" button in FF and people should go through a right click menu for something so basic. In IE, on the other hand, there are no "close" buttons on tabs, you have to activate the tab first to close it, and you can't close the last one no matter what, it always stays there, open, no matter how embarassing it might be.

Also "Customize" window in FF is really featureless. Only for buttons. I just switched to a different desktop theme and suddenly Firefox menu toolbar is black on very very dark blue, and I can't find the way to change the font color.

What have you seen? Arrests of CNN staff?

Does CNN sell a collection of Osama speeches on it's website, btw? Or better yet, does Al Jazeera sell Osama speeches in the US?

And if you insist it's a better comparison - which FCCT member has been arrested?

The point is - when it concerns national security, the West finds pleny of ways to go around "freedom of speech" kind of rights and restrict public access to "dangerous" information, like funerals of servicemen or Osama broadcasts, but when Thailand does the same - it has not right to protect its national security.

When Thailand goes bankrupt, the West preaches about transparency and forces it to accept free market solutions. When the West goes bust, it's all socialism and govt bailouts.

LM law, as was explained by Abhisit, is a legal tool to protect the monarchy from defamation and libel, a protection that is extended to every Thai citizen, but by some incredulous red logic must be denied to the King.

Defamation and libel are not about freedom of speech - if you offend someone, that person must have a right to protect his name. In case of the monarchy - the institution can't sue it's own subjects, so other people have to file the charges. Maybe there should be some vetting panel, but it doesn't seem to be a pressing matter for lawmakers in this country, representatives of Thai people apparently don't think it's important.

As for abuse of LM for political purposes - isn't it what the hacks at FCCT tried to do themselves by writing dozens of articles on the issue? Now it looks like they even tried to cash in on LM content in Jakrapob's speech? I bet it wouldn't sell a single copy if not for the controversy, and even if FCCT doesn't have a monetary insentive to sell the DVD, they apparently feel ideological need to spread his ideas, and then create even more publicity when caught by making it into a big LM issue.

Same pattern in almost all LM stories, like that Australian idiot who presented an outright lie as a matter of fact, just to gain publicity - who made it into a big political issue? FCCT journos and other assorted defenders of "freedom of speech". There was absolutely nothing political about it until they came along.

Now it seems you can spout any kind of nonsense, if no one cares - throw a couple of LM statements in it to attract attention, and voila, you can claim that you are prosecuted by state for your "ideas".

Who is abusing LM here?

Can you give an example of a US mosque selling DVDs of Osama sermons or something similar?

Otherwise it's like "I think legal but I'm not sure".

Actually, how about foreign, visiting clerics peddling Osama tapes?

A quote I saw in "Thaksin, the business of politics":

http://books.google.co.th/books?id=bPjRk3F...v1Sw&edge=0

Have I missed something here:

When did the FCCT distribute the speech? Before Jakrapob was charged or after?

If the FCCT distributed the speech before he was charged, did they do anything wrong?

Did they stop any and all distribution after he was charged?

Did they begin selling the DVDs only after Jakrapob called for guerilla war?

Did anyone actually buy the DVD?

What a strange twist of fate that would be, the only person to buy the DVD is the person behind the charges.

Apparently DVDs were on sale AFTER Jakrapob was charged, they could still be on sale now. There was an explanation that they are available only to members, in reality it probably means whoever is inside the club.

Personally, I would have withdrawn them after Jakrapob declared guerilla war on Thailand. They guy has completely discredited himself.

I though he discredited himself even in that speech when he couldn't defend his theory after people pointed out that Thaksin's system was in no way better than the patronage itself and what he was proposing was not an improvement in any sense.

I dont' understand foreign journos fascination with him, apart from "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic.