Super Injunction Farce

So it's Ryan Giggs. How many of you didn't know this? Not many. I thought so.

To put it quite bluntly, the whole super injunction saga for the past few weeks has been completely and uttely ridiculous. A gag on the media in order to cover up celebrity wrong doings, which, only apply to England and cannot possibly be policed online.

Let's face it, in this age of mass media and technology, one cannot possibly cover up information of this nature. Even if I had tried to avoid finding out who this "Top Premier League Footballer" was, I would have failed miserably. Facebook and Twitter are like the women's bookclub in a small village. The purveyors of gossip and rumour.

And isn't this just a complete mockery of our so called liberal democracy which supposedly gaurantees a free press? I mean, the very fact that a wealthy person can pay for the courts to control the media should have the North Korean government scoffing at our supposedly superior system.

If a famous person does something wrong or immoral, they should face up to the consequences. Part of the package (or curse depending on how you see it) of being in the public eye, is that the media will report and scrutinize your actions should they get any sort of whiff. It is harsh but then if they did not want this happening, they should not have have done what they did in the first place.

Bin Laden’s death – A contradiction in reaction

It is a peculiar sight to behold, on the day of Osama Bin Laden’s death, to see two headlines on the BBC website that seemingly contradict each other. “World safer without Bin Laden, says Obama” and “UK warning after Bin Laden death”.

It would seem that it depends entirely on how you interpret Bin Laden’s demise on whether the threat of terror really will decrease. On the one hand, the al-Qaeda leader’s termination is a blow to the movement - he was the global symbol of Islamic extremist fundamentalism and although not always the orchestrator, he was often the voice of justification that his followers admired and the rest of the world abhorred.

Yet on the other hand, his death will encourage a response from Islamic fundamentalism who will seek to avenge his death with further violent acts of terrorism.

And then there is the third question of whether his death will have any impact at all on disrupting al-Qaeda – a worldwide movement with hundreds of factions and numerous other leaders. Since 9/11, it felt at times, that the media and the US and British government were elevating Osama Bin Laden’s status to an unrealistic level. To a level where his importance and influence in extremism was hugely overstated. Governments become so embroiled in capturing this bounty “dead or alive” that they began seeing it too much as a game of cat and mouse, rather than a campaign to topple terrorist movements.

 

It would also seem that his media coverage will continue to contribute towards the leader’s mythology for further years to come, even helping to attract new supporters.

And so, whilst the patriotic cheering American citizens rejoice outside the White House, whilst the American forces pat themselves on the back, whilst Obama laps up the media acclaim for his country’s success in ridding this pest of a terrorist, we have to ask: has Bin Laden’s death actually done anything good for us?