Spicy Magazine: Laos Riled Over Insulting Article

[Heng]

Quite rightly there was a fuss.

How would the British feel if they saw     "London---whose most famous area is Soho",

or "Brighton is best remembered for its phone boxes being papered with explicit advertisements by prostitutes".

The first thing a reporter and/or editor needs is a sense of proportion (even ahead of spelling and grammar, in this age of spellcheckers etc).

My point was the Thai's can give criticism, but not take it

Not true... or else when we wanted to view Thaivisa.com we'd get a message like:

"Sorry, the web site you are accessing has been closed by Royal Thai Police due to inappropriateness such as pornography, gambling or contain any information which is deemed to violate national security.

For more information, please contact "Police Information System Center" Bld#19 2nd Flr, Royal Thai Police, Rama I, Patumwan, Bangkok 10330 Tel. 0-2251-0164,

email : [email protected]

http://www.police.go.th"

For your information:

We have great communication with the Royal Thai Web Police at the HQ, just to avoid any issues. The Web Police have no plans to shut us down. They are actually reading this this forum from time to time. Immigration officials read it. Consulates and embassies abroad surf our pages and enjoy the discussions.

Our admins and moderators are doing a great work to reduce the amount of bad posts, and if we should fail to act quickly in some topics, there will be no penalty like a "shut down".

Be assured that we are trying to do a well moderated forum, accepted and appreciated by the Thai authorities. We maintain a hard moderation policy.

We are running Asia's biggest expat website, and with our efforts to keep it clean it is at no risk.

We are not recognized as a threat to the Thai Government, political opposition or the Royal Thai Family.

To block Thaivisa.com from access within Thailand is not on their agenda. Should the evil "censure" people try that with us, they will have problems. Period.

Kind regards,

George

Admin

Thaivisa.com

For your information:

That's the point I was trying to make. There is criticism of Thais going on here... whether it's criticism of the prime minister, driving ability/honest/etc. of locals, various opinions of the police and justice system, and so forth.... and yet yes, such criticism is apparently welcome (contrary to the opinion of those who feel that locals don't accept criticism).

A webforum such as this would be about as much of a threat as Noi's CD Shack in Pantip is a threat to Microsoft.

Edited July 12, 2005 by Heng

[phuketsiam]

But MS are always trying to close the pantip bootlegs down