When to shed tears

There must be a convenient spigot somewhere that allows the capitalist media to turn on and off the tears they can shed so copiously over human rights violations. When conditions dictate it, the tears flow like the Nile. At other times, they dry up like the Sahara.

Right now the collective heart of the imperialist media seems broken over repression in Syria. Before that, it was Libya. Before that, Iraq. Each outpouring of indignation was followed by a war that evidently must have fixed everything, since those tears are now gone.

Where is the yardstick used to measure these “violations of human rights”? Like the spigot, it must be somewhere. That place seems to be known to all the editors and producers of the major “mainstream” news media. Suddenly, they all know which stories to put at the top of the hour or on the front page.

Here’s a little story that didn’t make it to the top. It seems that in Thailand, which has a royal family, there’s a crime called “lèse majesté.” It means you can go to jail if you insult the king. Thailand is a country of 69 million people that boasts of a modern infrastructure in big cities like Bangkok. Do they really put people in jail for insulting King Rama IX, the world’s longest-reigning head of state?

Yes, they do. Actually, you can even go to jail for allowing someone else to insult the king.

That’s what Chiranuch Premchaiporn found out recently. She’s the executive director of an online news portal called Prachatai, which has a message board that is popular among young people. Almost 3,000 post messages on various topics there every day.

One year after a military coup in Thailand, the Computer Crimes Act was passed in 2007, which threatens jail terms for those who allow the distribution of “prohibited” material online. Among the many posts on Prachatai’s message board were some deemed insulting to the king.

Premchaiporn faced a possible 20 years in jail because of this. On May 30, a criminal court found her guilty of failing to monitor the comments, but was “lenient” and gave her only an eight-month suspended sentence and a fine. The message was clear. It was a warning to the independent media to toe the line.

Had you seen or heard about this? Probably not, since most papers and networks here didn’t cover the case. They were obviously too busy worrying about people’s rights elsewhere, like in Iran and Syria.

Is there a connection between the U.S. and Thailand, other than the usual one of U.S. investors making money there?

The most striking connection is a military one. At the height of the Vietnam War, 80 percent of the Pentagon’s flights to drop explosive bombs, napalm and Agent Orange on that country originated from huge U.S. air bases in Thailand, of which there were seven. It was also a major destination for U.S. troops on R&R (rest and relaxation), which spawned a large sex industry.

After the U.S. lost the war but destroyed much of Vietnam, most of the bases were closed. But there are still at least 500 U.S. military personnel in Thailand, where they train soldiers of the same military that staged the coup in 2006. They pose a potential threat to other countries in the area, including China.

The Thai government is now back to being a constitutional monarchy again, sporting all the trappings of democracy like “free elections,” etc., but with all the necessary repression — like the army, the Computer Crimes Act and so on — still available if the ruling class needs them.

That’s why the World Bank and U.S. investors are quite happy with Thailand today and don’t think their media need to shed any tears for Chiranuch Premchaiporn.