Facebook and Twitter empower all groups—not just the pro-Western groups that we like. To put it in a more formal framework: not all social capital created by the Internet is bound to produce "social goods"; "social bads" are inevitable as well. The political scientist Robert Putnam, who was instrumental in promoting the notion of "social capital" in popular discourse, was not blind to such possibilities. In "Bowling Alone," his most famous book, he explicitly cautioned against the "kumbaya interpretation of social capital," stating that "networks…are generally good for those inside the network, but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive."

"Many countries are debating whether they should have population policies. Here are two – very different – examples of nations that rapidly reduced their birth rates."

"Anonymous Iran is a collaboration between The Pirate Bay — operators of the world’s largest torrent site, convicted in April of copyright infringement — and Anonymous, the prankster collective dedicated to exposing 'Scientology’s crimes.'"

"'It should be of no pride to American society to say they defend something like this,' President Ahmadinejad said."

"Iran's state-run media agency has been accused before of having digitally manipulated images released to foreign media. This week, as word spread of purported missile tests in Iran, the validity of an image of four missiles shooting into the sky turned o

"Now we are creating a new fog of mythologies -- about a "dictator" who isn't one, about "appeasement" that is completely inapplicable, about nuclear weapons that don't exist, about a country that is "evil" -- that make it seem like we must do something."