Category: Elective Post

Twitter announced earlier today that it will start deleting Tweets in some countries. There have been many cases in which governments have complained to Twitter regarding some of the content that its users generate.
Twitter spokesperson Jodi Olson said that the company is doing its best to comply with such requests while protecting freedom of speech.
The tweets that Twitter delete will still be available to the rest of the world because Twitter values freedom of expression and does not want to remove content globally. For example, pro-Nazi tweets will be banned in Germany and France only. Olson also said that it will practice transparency by letting the users know if their tweets are removed.
I understand that user-generated Internet content can be uncontrollable and cause fervor or conflict. Twitter must have been bombarded with requests to remove certain tweets, not just from governments but also from groups, organizations and individuals.
Nonetheless, why must Twitter dictate what people can say in their countries? Twitter seems to be willing to accord with government policies – but what if these policies don’t do any justice? Governments may just be trying to censor Internet content for their own agenda and benefit. If Twitter yields to these regulations, we are losing another mechanism for expressing our democratic civilian interests.
Twitter may say that it only wants to emphasize freedom of speech, but, with this latest decision, it is only doing what it wants to appear to be against: censorship.

Just today, it was announced that the European Union adopted an oil embargo against Iran and froze the assets of the Iranian central bank. By doing so, the EU is trying to pressure Iran to consider further negotiation on its nuclear program. The latest sanctions will immediately place an embargo on any new contracts, while the existing contracts will be in effect until July.

The EU wants to show Iran that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons is heavily discouraged by the international community, and that the community is willing to have talks with Iran on its nuclear program.

There is one problem that the EU must face: Greece, one of the EU members in dire financial crisis, depends a lot on cheap Iranian oil. The EU foreign ministers claimed that they will make up the costs that will impact Greece due to the embargo — but have not exactly specified how.

Sometimes, economic sanctions only bring a series of further conflict and predicaments. They can even backfire on the region or the group that initiated them. With Iran being one of the biggest exporters of oil to the Western country, how will the latest oil embargo impact the world?

The EU is firm on the belief that this is mainly for the security of the world – but they need to realize the economic consequences this may bring, especially to one of its very own members, Greece.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/23/world/europe/iran-eu-oil/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Somewhere along the fierce and somewhat entertaining series of the Republican presidential campaigns, a new topic is on fire: the accusations of Newt Gingrich, a major Republican presidential candidate, wanting an open marriage.

It’s really not a surprising matter – hearing that yet another famous politician has been disloyal to his spouse. And the timing is not all that startling either, because these scandals usually arise amidst a huge political event, like the Republican primaries.

The accusations come from Gingrich’s second and ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich. She claims that Mr. Gingrich offered to stay married to her only if she allowed him to have an open relationship with his former congressional aide. Of course, Mr. Gingrich denied such claims, and was infuriated that he would even be asked about it during a presidential debate. While other candidates Rick Santorum and Ron Paul seemed to allude to ‘forgiveness,’ Mitt Romney avoided the topic as a whole – saying they should focus on the real issue of political debates.

Romney pulled the right card here – discussing someone’s private life on national television during a presidential debate is what some would call mudslinging or dirty politics. This is, after all, about their performance as politicians and presidential candidates. Whatever goes on in their home and family should not be a focal point, or even a relevant subject, of a presidential candidate’s proposed policies and agenda.

On the other hand, how somebody is in their home can reflect a lot on the character of the person. Both time his first and second wives were diagnosed with illnesses, Mr. Gingrich left them. The congressional aide with whom he supposedly asked his wife’s permission to have an open relationship is now his third wife. Ironically, he was disloyal to his wife while he was trying to impeach ex-President Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Obviously, Marianne Gingrich succeeded in distracting the nation during this key point of Mr. Gingrich’s presidential bid. Now, it’s up to Mr. Gingrich – whether he can graciously save himself from further humiliation and accusations against him, or he will fall into the trap that Marianne so calculatingly set up, and stumble along the primaries putting in time and effort to steer the attention away from it.

You can read the full article on Gingrich and the accusations on TIME: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/20/gingrich-and-the-open-marriage-question-how-newt-can-spin-things-to-his-advantage/?xid=healthland-daily