Just what does impunity mean to you or better yet, do you have such a word in your mother tongue? ...Read more here.

Impunity is when a public servant decides to abuse his/her position by nominating his/her relatives to a public office without following the due process and gets away with it.
Impunity is when a Member of Parliament embezzles public money for his own benefit and he’s not held to account.
Impunity is when a public servant is indicted for corruption and crime against humanity and still continues to hold a public office.
Impunity is when the president or the prime minister or any other government official dishes out public land or any other property illegally and gets away with it.
Impunity is when the incumbent steals elections and still controls the instruments of power without consequences.
Impunity in when police officers engage in extra judicial killings and nothing happens to them.
Impunity is when traffic police officers are caught red handed receiving bribes and nothing is done about it.
Impunity is when Kenyans throw rubbish and litter all over and nobody raises a finger about that.
Impunity is when men and women of clothe swindle and con unsuspecting Kenyans of their hard earned cash and nothing is done about that.
Impunity is when a gang of youth form cartels to extort money from the public in cahoots with the powers that be and nothing Is done about that.

Social Media; A blessing or a curse

When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in the late 1900s or www as its popularly known, his idea was mainly to ease communication, allowing the transmission of data in the form of videos, text, images and multimedia among different users. This would therefore ensure that the hitherto geographical boundaries that hampered communication are no longer a barrier. This invention opened up avenues for other inventions and innovations in the software industry, all aimed at solving one problem or the other affecting the people of the world.
The early years of '2000' to me marked the era of technology explosion as companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple etc came up with various products like the popular search engine, mobile web applications,operating systems to mention but a few, that hit the consumer market thereby allowing even more the accessibility of information stored in different parts of the world in servers.
This trends and innovations have provided a remarkable platform for other software developers for both desktop and mobile computing to come up with even more amazing and sophisticated products that continue to push the boundaries of impossibilities like the smart phones and the ipad that continue to change the way people communicate.
But my focus in this blog today isn't so much on the achievements the world has made in technological inventions but rather on the impacts the social media has on the contemporary world. The invention of Facebook, Youtube, Myspace and other web2 tools as they are popularly known, has seen the entire globe reduced in to a small village. This has largely been boosted by the huge penetration of the high speed internet to even small villages in Africa.
Events that happen in Moscow for instance, reach down to people who are thousands of miles away in Kenya in a couple of seconds using this amazing platforms mentioned above with huge impacts. But several questions have been raised regarding the possible abuse or misuse of these noble tools by dissidents fueling unrest through the spread of propaganda that could affect a countries state of peace. Some of these tools and applications are reportedly burned in some countries like China and the middle east or heavily censured because such governments appreciate the kind of impact they could have in their country.
The recent uprisings in the Middle east have partly and largely been blamed on the social media, not because they are sensational in nature but because they have this amazing capability of reaching out to people not just within the affected areas, but also in distant worlds as it were. The events that happened in Tunisia that saw the ouster of their presidents Ben Ali were well reported by the traditional mainstream media, but the most impact was achieved by the social media; and its believed its exactly this that encouraged other countries like Egypt to take a cue from Tunisia and drive out their long serving leader from power as well. As i write this article, there are reported cases of unrest and protests in different cities in Libya; Other countries like Yemen have also seen quite a sizable number of disgruntled citizens coming out to air their grievances in peaceful protests in what has been termed as the "Middle East Revolution".
Its against this backdrop that a lot of questions are being raised as to whether the social media is a blessing or a curse in disguise in this day and age. I guess the answer for me here depends on which side of the coin one is looking this issue at. While there are a few folks who might abuse these invaluable inventions for their selfish agendas, their value and impact cannot be gainsaid. I'd like to think of it like a gun, when its pointed at the opponent there's no problem, but when its pointed at you, that's when problems begin. But the jury is still out there.