Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Mit offenen Karten

Le Dessous des Cartes or Mit offenen Karten is a weekly French TV documentary presenting one specific topic of geopolitical significance and explaining its backgrounds with maps, mostly topics which were recently in the news. The German title translates to with open maps, but it's also a wordplay with the poker term open cards. The French title is something like the backside of maps, though I am not sure since I don't speak French. The program is originally in French, but as it is shown on the German-French culture channel arte there's also a German dubbed version. I usually miss to view it since they moved it from showing on Wednesday to Saturday, but when it was still in the Wednesday slot there was once a presentation on Thailand. Thailand - ein Putsch mit ungewissen Folgen (La Thailande: Coup d'état a risques) was shown on January 21 2007. The topic was the coup d'etat of September 2006 which removed prime minister Thaksin from power.

The details on that specific presentation is still available on the arte website (German or French) with maps and their explanation, as well as some bibliography and internet resources on the topic. Sadly the videos of programs on arte are only available in a rather expensive video on demand site, where they are additionally locked with digital rights management and only allowing downloads from Germany and France. Thus it's no wonder there are many (illegal) upload on youtube, yet I could find this specific show only in different websites, one for the French and one for the German version.

Looking though the archive I notice that in 2003 it had another on on Thailand. That program was on water problems in various parts of the world, including the problems with overuse of the groundwater resources in Bangkok.

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