The Hamas cat's paw, in a typical appeal to its NGO supporters, tweets this kind of thing: "#Israel's most inhuman army kills #Gaza civilians, kids, women and elders Gaza Victims in Numbers #HumanRights #Amnesty".

The IDF, on the other hand, typically turns down the emotional volume: "Before action, the IDF disperses warning leaflets calling all civilians to evacuate the area." But it does, now and then, display some passion: "We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead." In response, it gets: "Criminal enemy who started the battle treacherously should wait Black Days and Coming Hits #GazaUnderAttack #Gaza #Hamas".

For those who prefer wars in the past, as opposed to the present, @RealTimeWWII is "Livetweeting the 2nd World War, as it happens on this date & time in 1940, & for 5 years to come." Latest from the front: "Martial law has been declared in Coventry, to help evacuate homeless citizens & speed rescues & clearing of wreckage." Twitter, which seems such a simple format, is emerging as the most powerful storytelling device since the first newspaper was published. But no newspaper can match Twitter for immediacy and innovation.

So how does this "win" for humanity stack up when contrasted with reality? As it happens, the UAE will be taking up its seat at the Geneva HQ of the Human Rights Council equipped with a Draconian new law that mandates jail time for anyone who criticizes the government online. According the Global Arab Network, " In a presidential decree announced on official news agency WAM, authorities said the new legislation would target web sites and internet users that 'deride or... damage the reputation or the stature of the state or any of its institutions'. These institutions include the president, the vice president, any of the rulers of the emirates, their crown princes, the deputy rulers, the national flag, the national anthem, the emblem of the state or any of its symbols, the decree said."

And here's a really Orwellian section: "The new decree also imposes penalties of imprisonment to any person providing any organisations, bodies, institutions or entities, online or through any information technology means with misleading, inaccurate or incorrect information which would damage the interests of the state or damage its reputation and stature." [emphasis added]

And on and on the decree goes, paragraph after paragraph, each one more totalitarian than the other.

Reuters, in its report on the law, made this telling observation: "Social networking sites have enlivened public discourse in the UAE, a major oil exporter and business hub, where state media is tightly controlled and freedom of speech is restricted."

The UAE will be joined on the UN Human Rights Council by those other champions of liberty, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Kazakhstan and Pakistan.

Two observations: The smartphone screen is enabling international pop music artists to emerge from parts of the world that previously were limited to a domestic music scene, and the hook line of a globally successful song needs to be in English. "Eh, Sexy Lady, oh oh oh oh," sings Psy.

Meanwhile, the thing is mutating faster than a sci-fi virus. Students for a Free Tibet have posted a Gangnam Style parody video on YouTube satirizing China's new leader Xi Jinping. And last night Psy teamed up with Madonna for a Gangnam Style mashup inn Madison Square Garden in New York City

Behind all this is a neural networking system that reduces word-recognition errors significantly. As a result, Microsoft's translation engine, Bing Translate, is much better placed to feed intelligible Mandarin text into the speaking machine. The killer app, of course, is the generation of foreign language speech in a voice like that of the speaker's. Preserving your vocal style in translation means that what you're saying will be much more obvious to the listener and that discussion in Beijing or Berlin will be all the more productive. Your move, Siri.

"The Bureau was named as a contributor to the broadcast of a BBC Newsnight programme on November 2 on child abuse in North Wales. The Trustees are appalled at what appears to be a breach of its standards. To the extent that the principles of The Bureau have been ignored by an involvement in this story, remedial action will be taken against those responsible."

The role of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the disastrous Newsnight broadcast was greater than being "named as a contributor", however. On 2 November, Newsnight presented a report about Steve Messham who was sexually abused when living in a children's home in north Wales in the 1980s. In the report, Messham said that a leading Thatcher-era Conservative politician abused him a number of times. This led to a wave of speculation that the politician was the former treasury minister Lord McAlpine. And here's the kicker: The Newsnight investigation was led by one Angus Stickler "Lead Reporter" with, wait for it, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

A week later, the BBC issued an unreserved apology for the Newsnight report and announced an "immediate pause" in all Newsnight investigations. The Director General of the BBC, George Entwistle, quit on Saturday and yesterday, the BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten declared that a radical "structural overhaul" of the BBC is necessary. But Patton is part of the problem, not the solution, and it looks like he'll be next to go after it emerged last night that he had approved a £1.32 million severance package for the disgraced Entwistle.

Iain Overton, meanwhile, deleted his infamous tweet, but the net does not forget and it's been retweeted almost 2,000 times.

The BBC is corrupt beyond belief.

"The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night." F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Trivia: Midnight City is the opening and closing song on Series Two of the E4 reality TV programme Made in Chelsea. It has also been used in a Victoria's Secret commercial and by the BBC in its trailers for the London 2012 Olympics.

There is one thing, however, that unites everyone: the smartphone. It is the ultimate status symbol and is always conspicuously displayed. Calling and texting are constant, game playing and social media activity offer endless distraction and most people seem to be skilled at editing photos, shooting video and all the other multimedia options offered by top-end Samsung phones. That's right, Samsung. The South Korean conglomerate has the Vietnamese market locked down. So, when Bloomberg News publishes a story headlined "Vietnam Tech Exports Overtaking Garments Eases Trade Gap", it's not surprising to learn that:

"Intel Corp. (INTC), Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and Jabil Circuit Inc. (JBL) are among a growing roster of companies setting up or expanding in Vietnam, spurring exports amid a global slowdown that has damped demand for goods from other Asian nations. Shipments of mobile phones and other electronics from Vietnam surged 91 percent in the first 10 months of the year to $16 billion, making them the biggest source of export revenue."

Reading further, we see that the Florida provider of electronics manufacturing services, Jabil, plans to increase its investment in Vietnam and we get a very telling observation from Alessandro Parimbelli, who's described as "a Bergamo, Italy-based senior vice president of global business units at Jabil." He says: "We're trying to offer alternatives to our customers for whom some products are made in China, who whether because of the currency's appreciation or for other reasons, don't want to have all their eggs in one basket."

The "or for other reasons" there could include the relative cost of labour, but there are other ways of interpreting that "one basket", too.

LearnStreet is entering a crowded zone. Already, would-be coders can choose between an array of online offers that includes, Codeacademy, Treehouse, Coderdojo, Udacity, Codeavengers, Coursera and, of course, Khan Academy. Crowed field or not, more startups are gearing up to offer code for the masses. What's driving this? The rise of the digital economy.

In February this year, Cisco Systems, the technology company that helped define networking, produced its "Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016". It predicted worldwide mobile data traffic increasing 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes a month. "The expected sharp increase in mobile traffic is due, in part, to a projected surge in the number of mobile Internet — connected devices, which will exceed the number of people on earth (2016 world population estimate of 7.3 billion; source: United Nations)," according to the report.

Lots of coders will be needed to cope with what's coming.

More numbers: With just 58 percent of the US working-age population employed today, the budget deficit is now running at more than a trillion dollars a year. During the past year alone, the US Treasury borrowed $1.2 trillion. This cannot continue. But a second term for Barack Obama means more of the same: more dependency, more spending and more debt. All against the backdrop of a profoundly divided country, with the popular vote virtually tied, not to mention the 90 million Americans who didn't even bother to vote. Change? Hope?

Those who did vote for Obama have placed a big bet on hope. At home, they hope that he'll use his second term to foster prosperity, security, tolerance and justice. On the international front, they hope that he'll address the Palestinian tragedy, face down the anti-democratic Middle Eastern petro-monarchies, bring Iran to the negotiating table, engage meaningfully with Russia and manage the pivot to Asia in a way that avoids conflict with China. Over to you, Mr President.

What will our world be like when it's ruled by China? An inkling is provided by Tianjin, one of China's many, almost anonymous megacities. The 11 million people living there busily churn out goods for the world market, but in an attempt to add international profile, the city's leaders rebranding the megalopolis with projects such as the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city. This 30 square-kilometre development built with the latest green technologies is designed to serve as a model for future eco-cities in developing countries. Another booming Tianjin industry is censorship.

Tianjin's party secretary, Zhang Gaoli, is one of the seven men tipped to get a seat on the politburo standing committee, and if he does, Tianjin will likely become China's capital of internet censorship. In the Financial Times yesterday, Kathrin Hille noted: "The censorship departments of Sina Weibo, China's leading Twitter equivalent, and the online video website Sohu have already been moved to Tianjin. When users of Sina Weibo post content deemed offensive or subversive, a virtual 'little secretary' deletes their posts, blocks searches for keywords or admonishes them to back off."

"China's New Manhattan' Becomes Censorship Capital" is the title of Kathrin Hille's article and it contains the following sobering observation: "The Chinese government requires the private companies that run internet services such as search engines and social media to censor. Censorship has intensified ahead of the party congress in an effort to muzzle discussion of the party's internal power struggle and corruption."

This will be the reality "When China Rules the World". The best hope of preventing this from ever happening is the more than 130 million voters exercising their democratic rights today in the USA.

However, writing in the must-read Monday Note, Frédéric Filloux hits this particular rusty nail soundly on the head. In "The press, Google, its algorithm, their scale", he concludes: "Legacy media must deal with a harsh reality: despite their role in promoting and defending democracy, in lifting the veil on things that mean much for society, or in propagating new ideas, when it come to data, news media compete in the junior leagues. And for Google, the most data-driven company in the world, having newspapers articles in its search system is no more than small cool stuff."

In light of this, the best translation of Leistungsschutzrecht is "scam".

Here's another thing about batteries: They need to be charged. "If you plan on coming into Manhattan, bring cash, a phone charger, and cigarettes," tweeted Vito Ferraro. "You will automatically be Mayor. #NYC #Sandy". The image here that Greg Clayman tweeted with the caption " Public phone charging on 40th St — just outside the dead zone" speaks volumes about the vulnerability at the core of the machine.

Sure, the latest iPads come with a 24.8-watt lithium-ion (Li-ion) polymer battery that Apple claims can carry the user through 10 hours of surfing, but Moore's Law doesn't apply to batteries and since the first Li-ion batteries appeared in 1991, the transistor count in the information devices they power has increased a thousand-fold while the batteries have just managed a mere 3x increase in their volumetric energy density in over the same time.

Jargon note: Energy density determines the amount of run-time you can pack into a given size (volumetric) or weight (gravimetric) of a battery.

Backgrounder: In the late 1970s, Professor M. Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University in New York conducted a series of battery experiments using lithium as a pole in one instance. He discovered he had a powerful energy source, but it came at a price. Lithium is highly combustible and reacts explosively to water. Not exactly the kind of thing you would want to keep close to your ear on a rainy day, in other words. Batteries made with lithium-ion materials turned out to be safer and offered all the merits of lithium without the perils.

But now we've reached the point where changes in the battery chemistry are needed, urgently. And just in our hour of need along comes Li-imide, which doesn't generate hydrofluoric acid and so delivers a huge improvement in thermal stability and battery life. It also permits thinner batteries by eliminating most of the puffiness characteristic of current Li-ion pouch cells over their working life, which forces device designers to sacrifice space to accommodate the swelling. So, hang in there, New Yorkers, help is on the way. Mayor Bloomberg might prefer to distract you with visions of climate change, but it's Leyden Energy that will put an end to your charging nightmare.