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.
