This is true. New media can change everything, if it's used effectively. Don't tweet to each other, tweet information to the endangered. Tweet and email your elected representatives and remind them that corporate money can't buy your vote. Remind them that you are watching their voting record on important issues. And when you have finished tweeting, and emailing, and sharing on Facebook - get out in the street and, as Daniel Berrigan said: Know where you stand and stand there.

Stand there until we have won the battle of human rights over corporate ones, until we have made it clear we will protect the planet with our very bodies if need be. Be present, because right now we risk losing the future. New media can help make change, but we must embody it.

Japan Times l DAVID POSTILION June 12, 2012

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano and Environment Minister Goshi Hosono,

The rise of the Internet has allowed more and more people to turn to nontraditional media, such as blogs, feeds or wiki forums, for information. While there is often a heightened need to scrutinize and corroborate information from such sources, these new media sources serve an important role when traditional sources disappoint.

In post-Fukushima Japan, the government and nuclear industry "expertitioners" often claim that bloggers and tweeters monitoring the crisis have fanned the flames of mistrust and impeded reconstruction and recovery efforts. Yet, in too many cases, nontraditional sources were the only ones that revealed the extent of contamination in certain areas, the severity of the Fukushima disaster, the consequent risks, and the presence of food contamination the government's own monitoring failed to detect.

Prominent examples that come to mind include...

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