Twitter - Why Fear?

It seems I am not the only one who has not used Twitter yet. Barack Obama told students in Shanghai, last week, that he had not used Twitter yet. The curiosity about the term is justified by the fact that Twitter was blocked for some time in China. Is this censorship? And why bother blocking Twitter?

Kaiser Kuo, an expert on internet use in China, said that in recent times the internet sites which are blocked in China are social media sites. "The authorities are not worried about people having access to what the rest of the world is saying, but about the ability of these tools to spread rumours very, very quickly," he said. According to him state media have alleged that social media spread misinformation and even that outsiders use social media to orchestrate violence.

China's internet population is estimated at 360 million. 124 million of those are on social networking sites. Most of the big players on the internet in China are domestic and they are large enough to monitor all content and remove anything sensitive.

Probably most of what is on social networking sites is harmless, regardless of what your opinion on a subject is. The only time that social networking becomes a problem is when content is contrary to one's ideas/ideology/interpretation of ethics. Ethically speaking, then, is it o.k. to post anything you want to post, even if it offends someone else? Is it ethical to stop some one posting if you are offended by their post? For the benefit of the many should there be free and equal access to posting on the internet and social networking sites?

It is impossible to please all the people all the time. But when the government decides to stop access we have a situation on inequality. One part of the "formula" is much more powerful than the other. Governments should not be intruding on people's access to social networking sites.

Where would it stop? Next thing you won't be allowed to demonstrate outside a government building on public property!

Sources for this post:

Branigan, T. (Nov. 23, 2009). Twitter ye not. The Guardian.

Education, Health Care and Energy

The consensus seems to be that Bobby Jindal had a tough job to do and he didn't do it too well at all. The audio cutting in and out could not have helped him (unless this happened only in my own home) but the contents of his response to the Obama speech were childish and almost endearing, although the endearing quality got lost when he started talking about the federal government and the old ideologies of the GOP where big government was concerned. He tried to move the anecdotal speech to ideologies and political strong talk but this was lost.

One of the FOX pundits rounded up the opinion of Obama's account of the future for Iraq. This consisted of "winding down Iraq equals winding up Afghanistan." Oh well, one must be aware of all that is being said or not said. Over on MSNBC, Keith Oberman, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews were all positive and upbeat about the speech. Maddow said that "this is the largest tax cut in history." Maybe one day in the future one of these FOX or MSNBC personalities will do something to surprise us - but not today. Everyone is in line where they are "supposed" to be.

MSNBC pundits referred to the beautiful backdrop to the President's speech. It was o.k. The flag is a beautiful backdrop but does it have to be vertical? What is the benefit of that? I would have chosen a different tie for the President. Stripes don't play very well on TV and therefore Joe's tie was more solid and looked cleaner. Interesting how women's outfits really stand out at these events because of their contrast with the dull colors of all the men's suits. Hillary stood out in color probably a little more than needed. Nancy in green closed out the three in a blue, red and green ensemble. I suppose that's o.k. too.

Interesting how President Obama's height was above the other two while he stood even though they were higher behind him. A nice statement of who's who.

I don't know if I'll listen to Rush tomorrow. I feel that I know what he's going to say. Some snide remarks about Nancy's aggressive applauding and continuous trashing of Joe and of course he will pick and pull at the speech. What is wrong with what President Obama said according to Rush Limbaugh? All you have to do is pick any topic from the speech and Rush will be playing with it tomorrow and pulling his millions of viewers with him.

The President launched right into the economy. No messing around. He did the "rally the troops" cry as one would expect and said that we will emerge stronger than before. He had to do some of this and his critics like Rush will analyze this to suit themselves. Preparing us for working with the banks that are being exposed every day (it seems) for corruption, he said that we cannot govern out of anger. We must cooperate to help people not banks, he said.

The three areas he will not cut back on are energy, health and education. It might be interesting to hear what Rush will say about this point. The President went on at length to explain why these three cannot be cut back. He said that health care reform cannot wait another year. I was expecting a cut away to Hillary at this point but I didn't get it on my station.

He has promised in this speech to close Guantanamo, tax those who earn over 250,000, cut taxes for most of the people earning under 250,000, reform health care and get out of Iraq. He stated that the U.S. does not torture. And he will start on the road to economic recovery by getting loans and credit moving again.

FOX stated that it was a 15 minute speech interrupted 65 times. They really put it in perspective. In that 15 minutes a lot of promises were made. Can they be kept?

"I will not allow terrorists to plot against America," he said. One wonders how is he going to do this but I guess he had to say something like this?

President Obama said that it is a "burden and a privilege to govern in these times." One hopes that the man who has hope can handle the burden and the privilege.