WordLo

Using the microblogging service as a diplomatic toolto publicize the inner workings of governments.

Source: Businessweek

See also:
Sweet to tweetNot a medium for compromise

Government Organized Non-Governmental Organization.Many NGOs are not actually NGOs. They are what observers are now calling GONGOs – government organized non-governmental organizations. They are funded, staffed, and otherwise supported by governments. The idea is not to instigate or inspire change, but rather to control and manage it.

read more on: Schott's Vocab

Diplomatic messages sent electronically using a Blackberry or similar device.

"Mr. Erdogan's warm embrace of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Istanbul as "a dear friend" and his opposition to further sanctions against Iran (voted June 9 by the U.N. Security Council) mark Turkey's new "BlackBerry diplomacy," a break with conventional diplomacy - when major shifts take place in real time above the heads of foreign-policy officials and the diplomats with whom they normally deal."

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washingtontimes

When is a leak not a leak?

The classified documents unveiled by the Web site WikiLeaks stretched the semantics of leak to a bursting point.


“The word ‘leak’ just doesn’t seem adequate for a data dump and security breach of this magnitude,” wrote Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University, in a blog post for Foreign Policy. “This is not so much a leak as a gusher.” Jack Shafer of Slate concurred: “To call the torrent of information about the Afghanistan war released by WikiLeaks a mere leak is to insult the gods of hydrodynamics.”

Read more on: On Language, Ben Zimmer

The acronymic name for a service established in Germany to help people escape radical Muslim groups.

published on: Schott's Vocab

Reporting on the decision of Germany’s intelligence agency to found HATIF, The Local/DPA revealed:
Participants and their family or friends can now find help via email or telephone with the new “HATIF” service, which stands for Heraus Aus Terrorismus und Islamistischem Fanatismus, or “Leaving terrorism and Islamist fanaticism.” …
“The main goal of HATIF is to prevent violence in the name of Islam,“ the intelligence agency the Verfassungsschutz said.
The service, offered in both Turkish and Arabic, will not try to lead people from the religion of Islam, but instead provide safe options for those hoping to extract themselves from extremist circles, the agency said.
Hatif is the Arabic word for telephone.

Acronym for a group of growing economies: Africa, Brazil, India, China and Indonesia.

published on: Schott's Vocab

Reporting for Time on this year’s Global Forum in South Africa, Michael Elliott commented on the fragile economic recovery taking place in the developed economies of the Atlantic region, and spotlighted the “tremendous” performance of “what we will soon have to stop calling the developing world”:China grew by 8.7% in 2009, according to official figures. India showed excellent growth too, and even in Africa — so long dismissed by seers as an underperformer – growth hit 2% before the recession took hold, which followed years when the continent was growing at the historically robust rate of 6% or more.This isn’t simply a function of the famous BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China – setting the pace. Indeed, as veteran global economist Kenneth Courtis of Themes Investment Management pointed out, Russia has fallen out of the club of most-favored developing economies, havi…

published on: worldwidewords

AfPak is the usual shorthand way in military and political circles, especially within Washington and NATO, to refer to Afghanistan and Pakistan jointly. The term began to appear widely in newspapers in early February 2009, following a speech given by the US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, then recently appointed as US special envoy to the region, to a security conference in Munich on 8 February. He said:First of all, we often call the problem AfPak, as in Afghanistan Pakistan. This is not just an effort to save eight syllables. It is an attempt to indicate and imprint in our DNA the fact that there is one theater of war, straddling an ill-defined border, the Durand Line, and that on the western side of that border, NATO and other forces are able to operate. On the eastern side, it’s the sovereign territory of Pakistan. But it is on the eastern side of this ill-defined border that the international terrorist movement is located. Hampton Roads International Secur…

Term in China associated with administrative transparency.

published on: Schott's Vocab

In an article for Inter Press Service, Kit Gillet noted a sixty-year tendency in the Chinese government not to disclose information on budgetary and spending matters and revealed, “this may be about to change”:In January, in what some are calling China’s first case of “naked government,” Baimiao, a small town in the southern province of Sichuan, released its budget to the public. The details were not pretty: they showed that 65% of local government spending had gone to accommodating and entertaining officials.
Then, in March, Guangdong, the province closest to Hong Kong and the manufacturing heartland of China, announced that it would be publicizing its financial budget for this year. This is the first time that a provincial-level administration has decided to release these records since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Many feel that this could be the beginning of greater govern…