social (cause) network

If you're on Facebook, and you encounter a group called "Facebook Youth," that admittedly might be too generic a name to get your attention. It sounds like something a sociologist would use as a label for those currently in their teens and twenties. But if you had to picture it, you might come up with any of the thousands of inane gatherings that compose our vast digital wasteland. Certainly, it wouldn't be anything to inspire fear in government officials.

Unless you live in Egypt. The government there has arrested members of the so-called Facebook Youth for helping to publicize a general strike, something the government didn't like. Hosni Mubarak, a US ally, has been president of Egypt since 1981, right after Anwar Sadat was assassinated. He has been in power, and delaying democracy, for 27 years. I don't care who you are, that's way too long for anyone! (By the way, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe came to power in 1980.)