All who are regular visitors to our blogsite know I am passionate about text messaging. The wonderful service used by over 1.4 billion people worldwide, delivering good news and alerts and from the useful like bank activity alerts in South Africa to the life-saving like medical pill reminders in Croatia to the frivolous like SMS voting in Big Brother and Pop Idol. At 70 billion dollars worldwide, SMS text messaging is also a massive global industry in its own right.
Today I have heartbreaking news from the Middle East. In a cruel 21st century twist on the terror bombing campaigns of World War 2, when both sides often sent propaganda leaflets with bombers to try to frighten the other side's civilian population. We now have the chilling modern variant of that. The UK free daily newspaper Standard Lite, has on its front cover the news that in Lebanon in the war-torn town of Tyre, thousands of civilian citizens have received SMS messages which say "Get out or die" and the messages are signed by "from the State of Israel".
I do need to mention that I have not yet been able to independently verify this from other sources. But the Standard Lite does have its Deputy Political Editor Paul Waugh sign the story, and it is its front-page headline. I am inclined to believe it.
But it saddens me to no end. Earlier we have already learned of school bullying via SMS text messaging. But this is now the use of text messages as a terror weapon by a government. I am ashamed. It is a sad day for SMS. A mournful morning for messaging.
Dear Alan,
Sad indeed! However, look at it this way, at least SMS has given those people a chance to get out of there. It might indeed be the instrument which ends up saving large scale slaughter of innocent civilians.
H.
Posted by: Harsh Dhundia | July 24, 2006 at 09:12 PM
Thank you Harsh. Thank you for visiting, for commenting - and for caring. We wish them all the best.
Tomi
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | July 24, 2006 at 10:43 PM
Hi Tomi,
Yes it is sad, but war is always sad. Any technological possibility can be used.
I served in Kosovo in 1999 and e-mail terror was used then by both parties. After I wrote a nice comment about the Albanians in a discussion board, someone (presumably a Serb) used my name in discussion boards, writing horrible hatemails to the Albanians. So I had to stop partisipating into the discussion, because my identity was taken.
So, either these SMS messages are from the Israel Army, or they are from some anti-Israel organisation. Who really knows?
Posted by: Frans Hartman | July 25, 2006 at 08:16 AM
Thank you Frans
Sounds "predictable" at the worst of human nature. I am sorry you've experienced it so close - and that your digital persona has been perverted in such a way.
I agree, we don't know who is really behind it. It can also be vigilantes on either side. But it is a sad case.
Tomi
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | July 25, 2006 at 10:35 AM
Alan,
Just wanted to draw your attention to this. What do you think of this?
http://chautauquas.blogspot.com/2006/07/government-bans-blog-sites-in-india.html
Isn't this super sad as well?
Posted by: Harsh Dhundia | July 26, 2006 at 08:40 AM