How The Dissent Movement In Saudi Arabia Uses Social Media To Survive

Social Media Helps Keep the Door Open to Sustained Dissent Inside Saudi Arabia -- New York Times

AL KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia — When Manal al-Sharif posted a video of herself breaking the law by driving her own black S.U.V. around this hot, flat city and called for a collective protest on Friday, the government responded harshly: she was jailed for nine days.

But unlike in the past, government censure did not quash debate. Instead, the Internet buzzed to life in Ms. Sharif’s defense, building on the surge of social media here after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Twitter and Facebook overflowed with comments denouncing both Saudi Arabia’s ruling princes and the clerics who called for her to be flogged as Neanderthals completely detached from the realities of life for women here.

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My Comment: The Saudi Government may wish to shutdown social networks .... but it is not going to happen. Social media is now like television, radio, and cell phones .... if you want to live in the 21rst century these are indispensable tools for a country to survive. Shut it down .... you shut down the country. As for the protest movement, the best action for the Saudi government to pursue is to confront and accommodate some of the needs that many of Saudi Arabia's young want to see implemented. Failure to do so .... will result in dissent on the computer screen being translated into dissent on the street .... a development that no one in the Saudi government should wish for.