Picking Sides Thousands of Miles Away

Between Facebook, Twitter, and blogs the world has shrunk to make anyone with a moderately stable internet connection feel like a world citizen connected to people, places, and events from down the street to half-way around the world.

Today, we receive the news faster, more varied, and more intense than ever before. It is easy to feel connected to the people inside the news story as well as the journalists writing these stories. Nowadays, I get the news link on Twitter, open and read the article about Palin, leave a comment to the world on said article and head back to Twitter to tell @AlaskaGovPalin what I think of her and while I’m at it I can tell the article’s author my suggestions on how to write his article.

Ten years ago, we all yelled at the tv or turned around and discussed the news with a friend. Today, we all have megaphones directed straight at anyone we choose and boy do we use them.

Recent news from Iran and Honduras have made us all feel like we are Tehranian University students fighting for freedom in the streets. The Twitterverse has turned green in support of Iranian protesters. Today, it is abuzz criticizing the Honduran military coup.

Although these events deserve international attention and even outrage, we must all be careful of picking sides. It is clear that the Iranian issue is one not of who won the election, but of how the election was won. However, in our fervor for freedom-fighting characters have emerged as heroes of the Revolution, who the web’s population has not truly vetted.

For example, the person who has benefited most Iran’s protests and the Web’s support is Moussavi, some netizens, far removed from Iran, have even thrown their support to Moussavi’s side. Sure, Ahmadinejad has been bad for Iran, but Moussavi is not much better. Moussavi only champions freedoms now because it benefits him and brings him closer to power. However, he has quite a repressionist past, and remember, he too is backed by the Ayatollah in the sense that he was granted permission to run for president.

In Honduras, once the words “military coup” surfaced, the Web World turned their support to Zelaya and denounced the coup along with the Main-Stream Media. Not that I condone military coups, but I beg the media, traditional and modern to dig deeper. Latin America has a long and troubled history with socialism, revolutions, military coups, and authoritarianism. Things are not black in white here, as in most political cases. Honduras was ruled militarily for 25 years. Things did not go so well. Zelaya was a democratically elected president, but things have not gone so well for him either.  He began to lean left after his election, which was good as long as he was creating social agendas to help the poor citizens of his country. However, the line was crossed when he got closer and closer to Hugo Chavez of Honduras. Latin America sees Chavez as a dictator, and  a pretty bad one at that.

Latin American democracies have been working hard to avoid the Chavez influence to seep into their country’s politics for the last decade.  So, when the Honduran president announces that despite the Constitution, the Congress, and the Military, he will hold a national referendum to get the people’s permission to Constitutionally change presidential term limits, the country naturally perked up. After all, Chavez too, once had term limits, and his authoritarian rise began with a referendum on Constitutional term limits, whose election results are said to have been rigged. The Congress and MIlitary thus have a duty to uphold their Constitution against a Chavez-backed aspiring dictator, which is how they saw Zelaya.  It can also be noted that the Colombian Constitution was also controversially changed in the past decade to allow for the re-election of Alvaro Uribe.

I concede that a military coup was not the way to go for Honduras. The Iranian elections are a mess. The people in these countries deserve our respect and support. However, before you pick sides in a matter that you don’t have much knowledge on, I beg you, people of the internet, to use the power of Google. Research and learn, don’t just pick a side due to a trending topic or the color of your friend’s avatar. Be an informed citizen and protester. Know exactly what you are standing up against and what you are standing up for. Don’t simply get carried away in the stream and the mob.

Obama Watch

It is day 3 of President Obama’s governance and the world is on Obama watch.

What has he done thus far?

1. Given us a new and improved White House website, complete with more realistic biographies of our past presidents, ways to contact President Obama and uploads of his executive acts. As well as White House 101 for the education of the people. But even with his own website, Politico still gets the scoop on Executive Orders before they’re evn posted on the website
2. Issued this Ethics Executive Order, where in he demands ethics from government appointees. Most of these are obious, but for some reason not adhered to in our past administration:
   1. May not receive gifts from lobbyists
   2. May not lobby within a 2 year period
   3. Lobbiests may not work in the field they lobbied for and nust abide by the 2 year rule above
   4.  Appointees may not become lobbiests in the field they worked in within 2 years after leaving gv’t
   5.  Must abide by equal hiring laws and hire based on qualifications
3. Then there’s the order on Presidential Records which seems to imply that Bush’s records are finally going to be disclosed.
4. Of course, there are the Guantanamo Orders! He closed Guantanamo, as promised and created a Task Force too deal with the detainees and signed new interrogation policies. Also, he ordered Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri’s Supreme Court case reviewed.

What does it all mean? It means he said what he meant and said what he meant. It means there are scruples and ethics back in the government. It means those that work for Obama and for the country have rules to follow. Most importantly, it means we will not torture. It means he isn’t going to spend a year creating a committee to figure out whether or not Gitmo should be closed. He knows it is wrong so he closed it. He knows there are consequences to the closings, so he immediately creates a task force to figure out which detainees should be freed and which ones are legitinately being held. It means due process will be followed. It means he understands you can’t leave people in limbo, not the detainees nor the interrogators. So, he signed new interrogation procedures so everyone understands what is and is not acceptable. It means we have one heck of a president!