The Current Discussion: Egypt has detained a number of its citizens for using the social networking site Facebook to organize anti-government protests. What online sites are most effective in influencing politics -- and is the impact positive?

Nobody can diminish the power of the new media, especially social networking sites, in setting and driving political agenda. Just examine how heavily two U.S. Democratic presidential candidates – Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – have been using them to run their campaigns.

On the home pages of their official campaign web sites are links to personal pages on major social networking sites, including Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube. These pages are acting as recruiting, fundraising and policy articulation platforms. It’s here that they’re socializing with their most passionate supporters, especially youth.

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The Current Discussion: The American magazine Foreign Policy and British magazine Prospect have published a joint list of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals. The list includes several PostGlobal panelists. Who's missing from the list? Who would you take off?

Exasperated by squalor, despair, poor governance and the wanton abuse of human rights that have come to define Africa, one man is investing his personal fortune to try to right the situation. In 2006, Mo Ibrahim, a native of Sudan (who also holds British citizenship) and a billionaire telecommunications entrepreneur, launched a reward program to aid African leaders who voluntarily relinquish power and work their hearts out to emancipate their citizens from abject poverty.

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