Freedom of information undoes despots
Across North Africa and the Middle East despots, tyrants and the plain unhinged are being turfed out through nothing more deadly than the free flow of information. Dougal Paver ponders on what it all means.
If you want to calm a baying mob whilst all around you burns then I'd say a pithy, 20 second statement during which you twirl a brollie out of a car door and call the media 'those dogs' should just about do it. But when you're as bonkers as Gadaffi that's par for the course.
You might wonder what took the people so long to revolt, but then oppression via an all-seeing secret police isn't a bad starting point if your aim is to secure subservience.
Funny, then, how it was something as simple as the tweets, blogs, facebook postings and freely accessible news reports that was his undoing. Emboldened by revolts elsewhere and armed with the confidence that comes from being able to share opinions and mobilise a common cause, the good folk of Libya have had enough.
Right across the Arab world leaders have failed to grasp just how empowering information and technology have become. They still think they're in the sixties, when patriotic music and films of stirring military parades was the daily offering from state TV.
Sorry lads, but guess what: those pesky citizens of yours want what we've got - democracy, liberty, justice and economic opportunity. They can see it every day via satellite TV and their mobile handsets and they've decided they're going to get it.
Quite where that leaves western governments I'm not sure. We've been propping up tinpot dictators for years out of the expediency of cheap oil, earning dollars back the other way by flogging them weapons.
Best sharpen our diplomatic skills and have a plausible explanation for the new boys once they get hold of their respective parliaments.
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