Photo courtesy of www.csknet.net
By ANDREW LAM, New America Media
SAN
FRANCISCO–In 2010 Time Magazine’s
prestigious Person of the Year title went to two individuals. While its readers
picked Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, Time’s editors picked Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
“Facebook
is now the third-largest country on earth and surely has more information about
its citizens than any government does,” the magazine noted. “Zuckerberg, a
Harvard dropout, is its T-shirt-wearing head of state.”
Assange,
founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, on the other hand, undermined
entire nation-states’ public narratives of themselves by providing a platform
where individuals can anonymously whistle blow and show their government’s dark
underbellies by uploading top-secret documents. Spy agencies can only look on
with envy and alarm.
In
2011, a fruit vendor made the cut. Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian who set
himself ablaze protesting police corruption, became literally the torch that
lit the Arab Spring revolution that spread quickly throughout the Middle East.
Bouazizi achieved this in his very public death because many who had cell
phones saw it and the subsequent videos kick-started the uprising. The
revolution took all governments by surprise.
Convicted filmmaker’s many aliases
This
year, no doubt, Time can add “Nakoula Basseley Nakoula,” aka “Sam Bacile,” as a
major contender. An unknown amateur filmmaker until this week, he fanned the
flames in the Middle East with incendiary video clips. In effect, the film
mocked and insulted the prophet Mohammed and turned the whole Arab Spring of
2011 into Autumn Rage of 2012 Against the USA.
Nakoula/Bacile
is currently in hiding and may in fact be fictitious. Much evidence now points
to him as a Egyptian Coptic Christian, who allegedly holds grudges against Islam.
On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Nakoula was
convicted two years ago on federal charges of financial fraud.
The
jury is out on who instigated the violence against U.S. workers in Libya,
resulting in the death of the American ambassador and three other personnel.
The attack was carefully planned, it was reported, and not the mere work of
angry protesters – but few doubt that the film has a direct effect in stoking a
combustible anger in the Middle East against what many consider as yet another
American act of profanity against the sacred.
In
the global age, it seems that not only dictators or overzealous elected heads
of state with power of preemptive strikes can direct history to the edge of an
abyss, but also fruit vendors and lousy filmmakers.
If
Zuckerberg is a kind of head of state of the third-largest country and Assange
has become the equivalent of a CIA institution gone rogue, then Bouazizi, a
private individual, has become the modern equivalent Joan of Arc.
Soon,
too, the director of “Innocence of Muslim,” whoever he is, will become a kind
of knuckleheaded hater, who nevertheless emerged with the extraordinary power
to incite violence against America. That would make Al-Qaeda, by comparison,
seem tongue-tied.
or
all its planning, for all its propaganda and brainwashing of the illiterate and
easily duped to blow themselves up – merely to garner dwindling media attention
in the West ― Al-Qaeda hasn’t achieved what an inane video has. The film and
its 13-minute YouTube trailer quickly undermined much of the United States’
soft diplomacy in a region it considers of utmost importance.
In
a blog for The Boston Globe, a
friend of slain Ambassador Chris Stevens shared her shock with this headline:
“How Could Chris Stevens Die Because of a YouTube clip?” Alas, the answer is:
Why not? In our information age, the breakup of a virtual friendship can lead
to suicide, and misinformation can create a real lynch mob, half a world away.
A digital parallel universe
A while back, Robert Young, an Internet entrepreneur, noted,
“People around the world are now learning how to leverage the incredible power
inherent in the URL to create what is essentially a parallel universe of
digital identities.”
What
he didn’t predict is that people do not only leverage URL power for
self-promotion or product sales, but to change the outcome of world history.
While governments worry about sophisticated cyberterrorism, a virtual town
square is now available to any second-rate hater willing to desecrate what
others consider sacred in order to push the buttons that might lead to mass
protest.
It
is important to note that within the 24-hour period after Ambassador Stevens
and his staff perished in Libya, Apple came out with its iPhone 5 version.
“Larger, meaner, faster” is how one reporter at the convention described it. In
the same news cycle, CNN published article with this headline, “How Smartphones, Tablets Make Us Superhuman.”
The
article cites Michael Saylor, author of the new book, “The Mobile Wave,” and CEO of MicroStrategy.
“The
Agricultural Revolution took thousands of years to run its course. The
Industrial Revolution required a few centuries. The Information Revolution,
propelled by mobile technology will likely reshape our world on the order of
decades,” notes Saylor. “But despite the turbulence ahead, we live at one of
the greatest times in history. Software will suffuse the planet, filling in
every niche, and exciting opportunities will lie everywhere.”
And
so are the risk factors as the magic wand of history is bestowing incredible
power to private citizens, to fruit vendors and hateful amateur
filmmakers.
Through
the digital world, people can attain real power to speak beyond their own
geographical constrains. Erstwhile, unknown singers and performers can become
famous practically overnight with a well-placed YouTube video. And haters can
pinch the right nerve endings at the most vulnerable time so American missions
anywhere at distant place can go up in flames.
Nation-states
are being stunned by the swiftness with which social media can change the
outcome of world events. Excited copycats are waiting in the wing. Why not make
a false video showing Japanese killing Chinese on Dao Yu island? Why not show
blurry videos of Pakistani soldiers raping Hindu women in Kashmir? The list is
endless.
Of
course, there is only fairness in the law of exchange. Assange is now in
virtual house arrest in London, living in a tiny space in Ecuador’s embassy, as
he is a wanted man in the United States and elsewhere. Bouazizi is dead.
And
this moronic filmmaker, whose identity is yet to be fully determined, is now in
hiding, perhaps for good. Lawsuits and arrest may follow; death threats are
only to be expected. He will learn soon enough: There’s a price to pay if you
incite in these global days.
Still,
this amateur with a camera crew and a group of funders has made his point. No
longer do heads of states and sophisticated terrorist organizations have the
monopoly of power to press those dangerous buttons. Those buttons are available
now for those who want to spend $199 or, for swifter downloads and uploads,
$399 for the 64 GB version of the latest iPhone.
New
America Media editor, Andrew Lam, is the author of “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese
Diaspora” and “East Eats West: Writing in two Hemispheres.” His book of short stories, Birds of Paradise Lost,
is due out in 2013.
