Plus

There are far wider structural questions to be addressed that led to both deadly events. The police, the military and the bureaucracy's role in each are crucial to understanding how they were allowed to occur.

If only political structures had any credibility to "clean up" the military.

The reality was that the military had to clean up politics.

That is why i recommend newzbin.com. Gotta use the right tools

There you go, it's like private torrent trackers - it's not enough to have a proper downloading program only.

Is newzbin paid or free, apart from needing an invitation?

I haven't tried searching for that episode with usenext, but I seriously doubt they won't be indexing their own files in their own search.

TVnzb looks just right.

I check eztv everyday, but their HD torrents are not cached locally and are very slow here.

These are search results from Newzleech

The first two are not videos, they are just 1kb files. The rest are German.

Can you put any numbers forward?

70% of the buses will be locally assembled according to Suthep.

The total cost has been trimmed in several steps, the project has been in the works for over a year already.

Now is not the time to go back to square one and consider inviting Mercedes Benz to invest in a bus building plant here.

Hard to disagree with Suthep - if you know something, tell the public, don't just wallow in platitudes about corruption and demand endless "reviews".

Browsing groups is ok when there's nothing "on", when I'm not looking for anything in particular.

I will try to get on usenetserver again, just for the sake of unlimited download. Two week trial will give me enough time to compare it to usenext.

If I can get sustainable 2-4 mbps speeds, I'll switch to HiDef versions of movies and shows. Those are still terribly slow on torrents, but torrents still give better variety.

Example - The Mentalist episode 8. It's unavailable on usenet, there are only german versions, dutch embedded subtitles and so on. There's 16 seed torrent file, however, and it comes down at a steady 30 kbps. Not much but I'm not in a hurry.

Every show on torrents have whole season versions. On usenet those come only as dvds. Marginally better quality but dvd images are enormous. Six dvds for one season is just too much, and many are german prints and in ratDVD format. They have english audio and subtitles, thank god, but require special codecs to play.

Still, I think setting up a newsserver in Thailand would be a good business idea. No messing with CC, just sell prepaid cards like for mobile phones. You can rip off Thai subtitles off pirated DVDs so that everybody can download and watch the videos, not just farangs. Local bandwidth is adequate, and underutilised, there will be no bottlenecks in the immediate future.

Over the weekend checked out usenet updates.

Usenestserver - didn't approve my credit card. They e-mailed me to try again as it's not their policy. Will try.

Giganews - signed up for trial period, downloaded about 9GB already, top speed was nearly 2mbps. Pricing is treaky as for SSL and 20 connections they often charge extra $5.

Like with torrents, you need to check nzb sites first, the equivalent of .torrent, then drop them into usenet client. I use Grabit for now. Best clients and best nzb sites are not free.

Went back to Usenext, upgraded my plan - 25GB per month for basically the same price, about 400baht.

Earlier usenext client versions gave a warning about increasing number of connections. Not anymore, but the maximum is only 12.

With SSL encryption the speed went up to 5Mbps, at least twice that of giganews.

With usenext the search is integrated, and, unlike on nzb sites, results can be sorted in any way you like. There's "preview" for videos and slideshows for images, and it all looks and feels a lot better than grabit.

Also browsing newsgroups is a breeze. Getting headers for just one group with grabit took over two hours before I quit it altogether. With usenext it's just click and it's all there.

Now trying to get a proper working client for Linux. Usenext has linux version but I have problems with SSL...

Were soldiers acting under emergency degree? If they were, you can't sue them.

Was there a need to transport about a thousand detained men to a military camp? It sure looks so.

Did they have enough trucks? Probably not. Did they have other transport? Probably not.

They failed to sound alarm when the first trucks arrived with people already dead.

Even if they did - did the truck drivers had enough manpower to check what was going on inside? There were probably only two-three soldiers per truck with about a hundred detainees, in the middle of the jungle.

The videos that made rounds after the incident were about the initial crackdown, and it was brutal. However, here's the same "emergency degree" question. If there was a degree, suing is useless.

There must political or internal military, not legal responsibility here. Politically Thaksin made it only worse, military won't be punishing themselves very hard in any case.

Surayud made a heartfelt apology but stopped there.

Now it's Abhisit's chance to go beyond some local court decision and promise that the attitude in Bangkok will change.

The matter is a lot bigger than two Songkla judges can handle, even if the verdict was different.

But the importance is, that the drug war was not just killings, the whole thing was a combined strategy to reduce the amount of drugs as fast as possible.

I would say that killings were the cornerstone of the whole program.

They were accepted as part of the deal at most, the part that no one would ever want to talk about in public. It's a stretch to say that they were "concerted effort".

Don't you think you contradict yourself here a bit?

Not at all, I believe very very few were aware of killing plans before hand. Thaksin generated a lot of publicity for the drug war and there was overwhelming support to "do something". When the killings started the media began making noises but was ordered to stop reporting a couple of weeks into the campaign. Govt line of "dealers killing off eachother" was drilled into the public mind, dealers killed in shootouts the police didn't get any sympathy either.

Everyone was caught off hand by this sudden maneuvre. The campaign was clearly successful and had broad support, the existence of death squads was officially denied, there is no evidence of them to this day.

So yes, killings as enforcement were probably a cornerstone but they were never announced before hand and it is not right to blame supporters for what had happened without their knowledge.

Could they stop them? How? They didn't even exist, officially, and everyone thought it wasn't such a big deal anyway. Johpa's post is the best testimony:

Yes, a few people lost a distant relative (nephew) including my wife, but all were still overjoyed at the results

Nice tradeoff, huh? Some nephew you never knew anyway had to be killed, but the benefits!!!!

I thought the era of human sacrifices was over. Apparently not.

I was hoping for

"Cheaper access to females, condoms"

What is a femdom anyway? I'm sorely tempted to google images it but my obsenety filter is set to high on this machine.

I'll go and have a look anyway.

Anothr Satirday morning on thaivisa.

But the importance is, that the drug war was not just killings, the whole thing was a combined strategy to reduce the amount of drugs as fast as possible.

I would say that killings were the cornerstone of the whole program.

Re-education camps, signing off sworn statements never to deal again etc are useless without enforcement, a farce, and enforcement came through killings, did it not? Officially they had absolutely nothing to be afraid of - no jail, no persecution, nothing. Just killings.

But it was not just police, it was a concerted effort of all security forces, including police, army, BPP and the different militias and paramilitary organizations and volonteer organizations, with support from politics, bureaucracy and above.

I think you are going out on a limb here. Drug war as a whole was a concerted effort but killings were most certainly not.

They were accepted as part of the deal at most, the part that no one would ever want to talk about in public. It's a stretch to say that they were "concerted effort".

Suthep giving out towels.

He's the last dinosaur in Dem govt. Busting him might actually improve the image, though I don't know in whose eyes.

I agree with the necessity of the drug war, but not with the killings.

Do you think it would have been as successful in stopping the trade without the killings? It was a pretty strong deterrent - the police clearly meant business.

There will be no elections until constitution is fixed, in about six months. Calling elections now is impossible, so there's not point in this poll.

If const. doesn't pass the referendum, Abhisit can stay for as long as he can keep his coalition together.

If his coalition desintegrates, the new government will have exactly the same problems, minus several months to get a working government together.

Realistically - there's no one else who can make any kind of decisions to stave off the crisis. PTP si headless and Thaksin proposed Chavalit as a new party leader. How much confidence does that inspire?

I noticed that they don't give an address or a land line number, they could be stealing the stuff somewhere for all I know.

And they don't have ane aging cheese, only fresh, like cottage.

Feta sounds interesting, though.

I tried lxde yesterday - even less features than xface.

Don't know why, but it couldn't browse network and some desktop items were not working anymore, like "My computer". It was there, but no icon and application assossiated with it.

So Isuzu is a gay truck now?

Kidding.

I'm well aware the resale value of a Ford in Thailand is lower than Toyota/Isuzu purely because of the sheep mindset of Thai's (and Plus) who will only buy a Toyota or isuzu

Or they buy Chevrolet, Mitsubishi or Nissan before they consider Ford. But what do they (we) know - customers are idiots, can't blame the company.

I didn't read the whole story, but it appears that Thai Chinee woman was busted with Cambodian made fakes at a border tow.

How do Thai counterfeiters got involved? Is it somewhere down the page?

So a nephew of a very very upper class woman couldn't save himself from the police.

And I was told elites control this country.

Let the TV, radio and bloggers free.

Just what do you mean by "free"?

These days TV and other forms of media are set up with specific purpose of promoting a particular point of view. None of them have any editorial freedom whatsoever.

All the rest of your raving seems like a blast from the past - evil, controlling government vs freethinking people looking for channels to express themselves.

That world doesn't exist anymore and owners of "free" media are even bigger control freaks.

Just why would anyone wish this "free" media on anyone is beyond me.

If you assume that people are so stupid to swallow lies for ever then you don't have a very high opinion of your fellow man.

Assume?

Why do I have to assume what has been proven again and again and again, and each time someone paid with their lives for YOUR assumption that people could not be duped long enough to inflict serious harm on others.

I suppose you can't be called an upper class unless you can pull the rank on the police.

These "flies" appear out of nowhere on some days, they are not small but have thin bodies and get through the window/door mesh very easily, once inside they can be rpetty annoying, and there could be thousands of them. Next morning they are all dead and don't appear for another year or so.

The only way to keep them out is to shut all doors and windows and turn on the air for the night.

Unfortunate natural phenomenon that got out of hand.

Id sooner juvenile lies then Big Brother locking people away for posting Caricatures or their opinion, as they do are are willing to do in many nations including LOS.

If they manage to incite riots and murder, as was the case with red shirts recently, it doesn't look so juvenile anymore, does it?

Big Brother is a pervert!

And so are "juvenile liars".

The govt is accountable before the people, at least in principle. Who are those anonimous revolutionaries and how can you hold them accountable and transparent? Who will take responsibility is something goes terribly wrong?

"But poster "jcloveschildren" said that yellows/reds/communists/royalists deserve to be beaten and shot, Your Honor"

"And you believed him?"

"Everybody did"

Because he implied that his truck is somehow superior to Toyota or Isuzu because the parent company in the US has better financial results this year.

Ford is the healthiest out of the big x3 US car manufactures and although they initially asked the US govt for help, they actually turned down the money the govt offered them as they now say they don't need it.

And didn't Toyota recently announce record losses and aren't Isuzu part of GM?

There's a classified section for those who just want to sell, btw, no one would interfere with his advertising there. Here he is a fair game.

Both shut down the complete fuel system including the fuel pump in the tank.

How can I check if it is shutdown in my car?

LPG/gasoline switch is instantaneious and unnoticable.