Showing posts with label democracy.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy.. Show all posts

Saturday, 24 May 2014

Military Coup And Smartphones.

 

        So there's been a military coup in Thailand, to save the country of course. This is not Thailand's first military coup, they have had 12 since the its break from absolute monarchy in 1932 and this is the second in the last eight years. The first thing the military do to protect democracy is shut down TV broadcasting, you can't have information getting out to the general public if you want a “military democracy”. However, Thailand is one of those many countries that are avid users of social media and so it was a simple switch from TV to smartphones. Information continued to flow through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. So people were still getting and passing on information of what was going on. This of course doesn't suit “military democracy”
     To protect the country, the New Thailand masters summoned the local internet providers and ordered them to “monitor, check and block the dissemination of information which is distorted, incites violence or which may lead to unrest in the kingdom or affect national security or contravene public morals.”. On top of this, the Thai newspaper The Nation, had its headquarters occupied by troops, just to protect the people from any nasty news that might slip out.

 
     To get the population to be subservient, the powers that be need to control what information, ”propaganda”, the people are fed, so called “representative democracies” are a little bit more subtle, but the military move in with the boot, it's how they think.
       Social media and smartphones make it much more difficult for the powers that be to isolate us from each other, and from information of what is going on in our world, making us much more difficult to be controlled. Let's hope the Thai people use it to full advantage to achieve real freedom and democracy. 

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