One of the many bad things about an authoritarian government is that it is sensitive to criticism, so censors the media. The Thai Prime minister does this buy buying TV stations and newspapers, and threatening to have his huge conglomerate buy less advertising from newspapers he doesn't own. There’s also the popular request for the media not to cover “unpatriotic” stories. So, while censorship is not direct, it’s still censorship.

That’s all fine and dandy. After all, the people love their PM, and he just won the election with an overwhelming majority. It’s not my country, and if that’s what the Thai people want, let ‘em have it. I can always get my news from 2bangkok.com anyways.

Well, at least I used to. An ongoing project has been to censor the internet to protect the conservative population from the evils of pornography and gambling. Of course, while they’re at it, they might as well block sites that “damage the national interest.” The first to go were sites about the separatists in the south. The latest is 2bangkok.com

Not only is censoring the internet wrong, it is technically impossible. There are constantly new websites being created, and addresses can change. Then there is the fact that it is a simple matter to use a proxy server to access any blocked sites.

But even when I use a proxy server, I still see a message saying 2bangkok.com has been blocked. Did they actually shut the site down?