If the Egyptian revolution was inspired and organized on Facebook, maybe the post-revolution is destined to run its course on Twitter.
Wael Ghonim, the former Google executive who launched We are all Khalid Said, the Facebook page that acted as a clearinghouse for the uprising, has fallen under opprobrium for recent comments and a lot of the criticism is being expressed via the Twitter hashtag #unfollowedghonimbecause.
Malcolm X was an integral figure in the American civil rights movement. He remains an inspiration, a bugbear and a dorm room poster and coffee mug graphic second only to Che Guevara. The thing that throws people, especially in the vile political atmosphere of the early 21st century, is that Malcolm X appears to be a man who changed his mind when faced with new facts. That is a political blasphemy no faction seems prepared to tolerate.
Today is Malcolm X's birthday. He would have been 86 had he not been murdered in 1965. Since 1971, this date also marks Malcolm X Day. So it might be the right time to make up your own mind. There are tons of online resources available to learn about the man. We have put together a sample of them. Even if you've already decided how you feel about him, maybe this is an opportunity to revisit your conclusions. You may change your mind about him. Stranger things have happened.
The 2008 United States presidential election, the 56th in the nation's history, started surprisingly early. The first candidate to declare for the office, the since-disgraced Democratic senator John Edwards, did so two years prior to the election. 2012's candidates have not been quite so quick off the blocks. But they are slowly assembling and social media is now firmly part of the campaigning package.
Experian Hitwise has released some numbers regarding how the candidates (and now former candidates) have used social media already in the campaign.
The Taliban, the ultra-conservative Islamist group that ran Afghanistan while it acted as a host to Osama Bin Laden, have a Twitter feed. Called @alemarahweb (Mostafa Ahmedi), the website attached to it is described as belonging to the "islamic emirat of afghanistan" (sic).
The Taliban have usually been described, rather euphemistically, as "medieval" in outlook and they have not had a public relationship to communications technology, unlike the late Bin Laden. However, the group has been tweeting since December 19 of last year. In that time, they have posted 773 tweets. They have 2,970 followers but only follow 12. So not exactly a robust back-and-forth there.
It's now over a month since influential Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained by China's government. In what New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg called a "bittersweet honor," Ai Weiwei's latest art exhibition opened today in NYC. The 12-piece outdoor public sculpture, entitled Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, is supplemented by a special Tumblr blog, Twitter account, Facebook Page and official website.
Nobody has heard from Ai Weiwei since his detention on April 3rd, also the date of his most recent tweet (Weiwei is a prolific Twitter user). We hope this brave artist is safe and will be released as soon as possible.
An innocuous-sounding set of rules called the "Information Technology (Electronic Service Delivery) Rules, 2011" [pdf] went quietly into effect last month in India. These rules, possessing the force of law, practically guarantees that no user of electronic communications in one of the world's largest countries will ever be completely safe from persecution again.
Under the new rules, anyone who objects to content online will be able to effect that content's immediate removal. The justifications for removal are so extensive and so vague that virtually anything will qualify for removal.
In a blog post on the OpenNet Initiative blog, Rebekah Heacock notes that "most of sub-Saharan Africa has historically been free of technical filtering." No more.
Uganda, at the insistence of its national police commissioner, has sent its three largest ISPs a memo requesting they begin blocking what they called "Tweeter" (presumably Twitter) and Facebook, in order to "eliminate the connection and sharing of information that incites the public."
When Tunisian strongman Ben Ali was chased out of power last January, after a month's escalating protests, his documents begun to disappear. It was not all nefarious goings-on. In many of the situations, the simple fact that old government and personal sites weren't being kept up meant the documents they held disappeared in the blink of an eye. Brian Whitaker is taking steps to preserve them.
Whitaker's site Al-Bab (the door or gate in Arabic), was an important source of information during the revolution and during further expressions of the widespread Jasmine Revolutions. He discovered that he couldn't access some important documents and began gathering them together via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
For the first time since Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was chased from power, a blogger has been sentenced to a jail term. Maikel Nabil Sanad, a veterinarian, blogger and conscientious objector, has been sentenced to three years in prison for criticizing the military.
Sanad was arrested last month, amid violence directed by the military, or elements of the military, against those protesters who remained in Tahrir Square in Cairo.
Bahraini blogger Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri died Saturday while in custody of the country's security services.
According to Al Jazeera, the official statement said that al-Ashiri was "held since the second of this month on charges of inciting hatred against the regime and the promotion of sectarian" and his death was a result of "sickle cell anemia."
