A(n un-)Diplomatic Tweet of Interesting Implications.


Crown prince Salman personally insuring that BBM service will not stop.”Decision to stop it is ignorant,short sighted and unenforceable”less than a minute ago via UberTwitterKhalid Alkhalifa
khalidalkhalifa

Sheikh Khalid ibn Ahmad Al Khalifa, the Foreign Minister of Bahrain, responded via Twitter to the latest trend of Gulf countries (KSA, UAE) banning Blackberrys and Blackberry Messenger yesterday. There are more than a few interesting things about these 140-or-so characters:

(1) At the risk of coming across as paternalistic, I remain impressed with the efforts of many of Middle Eastern figures to embrace the Internet as a tool to dispel myths about their countries being ‘backward.’ I’m pretty sure I’m the only person that reads ‘Weblog of a Syrian Diplomat in America.’ These attempts at some form of openness and dialogue are certainly under-appreciated and this example of ‘Crown Prince->Foreign Minister-(Blackberry for Twitter)->The West’ communications in near real-time is no small example.

(2) The Foreign Minister of a country is calling the policy decision of two of its largest financial backers “ignorant.”

(3) Blackberrys seem to be a focal point of pure Elite-State conflict.

For whatever value, I found a random reply to have nearly as interesting implications.


@khalidalkhalifa As a lebanese prefer bb ban 2 ensure security in my country than 2 live under the threat of information laissez faireless than a minute ago via NimbuzzRana Gebara
Ranag55

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Published:
8.6.10 / 11am
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