Guru Magazine 21st July

[dukkha]

Anyone read todays Guru Magazine in Bangkok Post? Thaivisa.com gets a mention as well as some scary stories......not new new news but still spelt out rather plainly.... Dukkha

[Phil Conners]

Guru mag doesn't seem available on the web. What's it say?

[Jai Yen Yen]

Guru mag doesn't seem available on the web. What's it say?

Slightly off-topic, Phil, but shouldn't your avatar be: ?

[Farma]

Hmmm does anyone have the link to the online Guru Magazine?

All my searches came up with a link to a sample of the cover and that’s all.

[rishi]

.... anyone interested in a genuine, offline issue of this collectors item??? --- I hereby put my copy on the open market ... starting bid is 100 baht (bid price includes postal fees to anywhere in Thailand) ... eventual insurance is up to bidder ...

[Explorer]

THB 110

[alexth]

THB 110

THB 130

[khall64au]

Bangkok Post are too lousy to freight their magazines to Phuket ... never get to see the good stuff. So, what does the story say?

Edited July 21, 2006 by khall64au

[farangsay]

Bangkok Paot are too lousy to freight their magazines to Phuket ... never get to see the good stuff. So, what does the story say?

Yeah , drop the other shoe and tell everybody what it says

[OldAsiaHand]

Bangkok Post are too lousy to freight their magazines to Phuket ... never get to see the good stuff. So, what does the story say?

I don't remember anyone ever calling Guru Magazine 'the good stuff' before. It's a jaw-droppingly lame effort by the Post to show how hip it is, self-consciously and patronizingly pitched at a late teens age group (and those who try to pretend they are).

Anyway, the piece everyone is referring to here was actually pretty good, far more substantive and focused than the fluff they usually publish. My guess is that it got in there riding on the back of the Post's current everything-the-government-does-is-wrong kick.

The hook of the piece was that the government had gotten into the internet censorship business in a big and enthusiastic way under the guise of preventing children from accessing porn, but was now using that as an excuse to limit access to anything of which the government disapproved. The point was made very clearly that the government had undertaken its campaign without any legal authority whatsoever and specific meetings were detailed in which they had theatened ISPs with the revokation of their licenses if they didn't go along.

An unnamed source who referred to TV as an example was quoted as describing how otherwise uninvolved internet forums were now fearful of become government targets and, as a result, were limiting what could be discussed on line. The source specifically referred to TV's refusal to allow the discussion of proxy servers as a technique for avoiding censorship.

My scorn for Guru aside, I was glad to see the web censorship issue finally getting some attention. The piece asked rethorically where the outrage was over the government undertaking such a campaign, as they were, extralegally and without even the slightest colorable authority to do so. Of course, one should remember that presumably several hundred people were killed quite recently in the government's alleged 'war on drugs' and Thais couldn't rouse themselves from their cultural passivity over that. It's hard to imagine that internet censorship is going to be the issue that cracks three hundred years of kowtowing by the Thai people to nearly everyone who wields power over them.

[dukkha]

Old Asia Hand, thanks for the synopsis of the article..prettty sure BKK POST does not deliver this Friday Insert outside of the Metro District....it is a cause for concern in my humble opinion and just further evidence of press censorship in The Kingdom... Dukkha