Sunday’s special ops killing in Pakistan of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — mastermind, symbol and financial underwriter of the Al Qaeda network — produced real feelings of unity in our divided and atomistic culture, aided by social media.
Saudi Arabians will now need a governmental license to post on Twitter.
Western democracies are not immune from the Net regulation trend. In the name of the fight against child pornography or the theft of intellectual property, laws and decrees have been adopted, or are being deliberated, notably in Australia, France, Italy and Great Britain.
So with Al Quaeda essentially not hiding in Afghanistan — and certainly not operating terrorist training camps any more — why should the United States care about the Talban and a political “insurgency”?
Sixty-four years later, the world remains in the dark about what really happened in Adolph Hitler’s bunker on April 30, 1945. And it appears that, just as with the JFK assassination, the Soviets are in the middle of it, as they hid what are claimed to be Hitler’s bones.
This is paternalistic regulation at its worse.
Pat Oliphant’s editorial cartoon today captures the disconnect between global geopolitics and the people-powered “almost revolution” going on in Iran these days.
Of course “social media is documenting the Iranian revolution — not leading it.” But that still requires media exposure, coordination and communication, all of which Twitter supplies in spades.
Even countries with legal traditions very different from that of the United States can teach Americans something about values. Goodbye “freedom fries.” You Frenchies aren’t so bad after all.
If Twitter and other social media networks had been available in China in 1990, Shanghai might already be free, more than economically.