I attended today the 2006 symposium of Middle Eastern geopolitics think-tank AFIDORA, which took place at the French Assemblée Nationale or Parliament (sponsored by Member of Parliament Richard Dell’ Agnola, a connoisseur in international affairs and also a humble person, a rare enough attribute among politician circles to be underligned).

Great stuff, excellent speakers. I had co-founded 4,5 years ago this non-profit organization, left it about 6 months ago, and I’m glad to see the team doing extremely well under the leadership of Steve, Jean-Luc, and newcomers such as Mohammed, Nicolas, Tina, etc.

I was getting more and more used to attending high tech events (Internet, software, telcos, etc.) recently, and I have to say that I enjoyed a lot refreshing my memory and updating my analyses on current world geopolitics.

Apart for marketing the existence of now-pretty-well-known in France AFIDORA, I chose to blog about the event because one of my major conclusions for the day is that the impact of new information and communication technologies (the media, the Internet, etc.) is everyday more significant in Arabic-speaking people’s representation of the Western world.

As a matter of fact, one of today’s lecturers, namely expert of the Arab world Jean-Pierre Filiu and author of Mitterrand and Palestine, reported:

- the importance of Bluetooth mobile technologies for dating purpose (!) in some shopping malls in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Dubai; funny enough to be blogged I guess;

- more relevantly, an Arabic websites worldwide ranking. Number One is IslamOnLine, a website aimed at Arabic and English speakers willing to understand Islam better. Number Two is Al-Jazeera, a 10-year (like Google) start-up in the media industry that has been growing well up to being today a top brand worldwide.

Although these facts wouldn’t necessarily make me change my mind – and become an optimistic, about the future of the Middle East, I have to say that having two rather “moderate” websites (Al-Jazeera, although sometimes broadcasting border-line vehemently anti-West speeches, is the only Arab TV where women commonly appear dressed the European way and where real debates actually happen) coming on top instead of ignominious websites of TVs such as Al-Iqraa (I just had the homepage translated by my Palestinian friend Michal over MSN Messenger, and it’s really really a shame) is good news.

Addendum December 10th 2006: no real sound connection with this post, but since we’re already in the Middle East, have a look at Ouriel’s post over here. Ahmadinejad is a verbal and physical danger that has to be fought in some way.