Uighur women protested through the streets of Urumchi yesterday. According to the BBC, Uighur women and men were not armed and pleaded with the Chinese police force to release their sons, husbands, and fathers who were taken after Sunday’s riots. It’s reported that over 1,400 Uighurs were imprisoned in what has become the biggest protest in China since Tienanmen Square. Just hours after the Uighur protests, Han Chinese took to the streets. Witnesses say many carried knives, sticks, meat cleavers and wanted revenge.

What seems to have fallen through the cracks in main stream media is why these people are fighting. What exactly do the Uighurs want and how are they communicating?
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Grassroots Enterprise, the D.C. based communications firm, has announced today the launch of “Actions”, a new application which let’s page administrators enable page visitors to immediately send letters to Federal or state officials. While there are lots of companies which provide similar services, none that I’ve seen so far are integrated into the Facebook platform. It’s honestly surprising that it’s taken this long considering all the companies I’ve spoken to which have expressed interest in developing similar products.
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One of the world’s most hardline leaders may soon lose his position as the President of Iran thanks to the increasing level of free public expression, much of which appears to be taking place on Facebook. Only three weeks ago I wrote about Iran blocking Facebook, but within days the site was back up and running. Mirhossein Mousavi, the opposition candidate, and former Prime Minister, has experienced tremendous growth in his Facebook Page from around 5,000 fans just a few weeks ago to almost 40,000 as of today.
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This morning I’ve been receiving numerous reports that Iran has blocked Facebook. After doing a little searching around I found an article stating that it was blocked “to prevent supporters of the leading opposition candidate from using the site for his campaign.” Mir Hossein Mousavi has attracted over 5,200 supporters on the site. While it’s far from a majority of voters, it was clearly the beginning of a movement that the Ahmadinejad regime was not a fan of.
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Last week Katie Couric decided to ask Facebook users about their thoughts on Obama’s first 100 days in office. The reward for users? The possibility of having their video clip used in a live webcast on Wednesday. There has been a decent response so far, with around 20 - 25 submissions in the past day. I took the time to watch some of the responses, many of which are pretty entertaining (I’ve included a video of the responses below).

This isn’t the first time that internet users have been asked to voice their political opinions. Back in 2007, the first YouTube debates were held and in 2008 the first ever Facebook Debates took place. Both events were a step toward real-time interaction with the audience although there is still a filtering process to ensure offensive content doesn’t get on air.
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For the first time in the history of humanity, 150,000,000 people are CONNECTED in one place! Facebook is more than just hype – every online business and politician needs to know how to use this social platform. In this post I will describe our experience with running a Political Campaign on Facebook. From our experience, Facebook pages tend to experience a Snowball effect once a critical mass of supporters has been obtained.
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The inauguration of Barack Obama has already brought about significant change in this country and Facebook in partnership with CNN were able to cover the inauguration in its entirety. Millions of people logged in to share the experience with their friends around the globe. As of 1:15 pm Eastern, Facebook and CNN posted some impressive results:
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Uruguay’s interior minister apparently thought it would be a good idea to post photos of herself in the shower on Facebook with the caption, “there’s nothing more natural than a woman in the shower,” according to the Associated Press. Apparently the photo was taken at a shower at the beach and was for private use.

The most entertaining part of the story is probably the comment left on the photo by “ruling party lawmaker Victor Semproni” which stated “I’m thinking about taking a photo of myself in the shower, but a full body shot.” According to our Facebook demographics tool, there are around 200,000 Facebook users in Uruguay out of a population of over 3.47 million.
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CNN and Facebook are partnering for coverage of the upcoming inauguration. Facebook user statuses will be updated with streaming updates of Obama’s inaguration. Facebook users will be able to log in to CNN.com Live through Facebook Connect and update their statuses while watching the live stream on January 20th.
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We’ve covered multiple international protests that have been initiated on Facebook. While there haven’t been many protests to speak of over the past week, we continue to be on the lookout for upcoming political events initiated on the site. One country which I’ve been wondering about increasingly is Venezuela after watching Frontline’s “The Hugo Chavez Show“, something that I think everybody should take the time to watch.

The show highlights how much control Hugo Chavez has over the Venezuelan media, hosting his own weekly show which often goes on for hours. During the show he essentially lectures the country on his ideals and spends time placing blame on his advisors to are required to attend the show every week. With the rapid increase in poverty and crime, one has to wonder how much longer the country will support their leader.
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