UPDATE: Within the past 15 hours, several Kossacks have gone over and posted invites on the various blogs at Iraqi Blog Spot and there's been a favorable response posted on their frontpage!Invites. Tired of entertaining guests on your own blog? Bored of reading/sparring with emigre? Looking for something new? Good, some Daily Kos posters have invited people over to their site to discuss stuff. They've also invited people to discuss stuff at P4C and at Politalk UN-21, which seems to be a site about discussing the UN (which everyone seems to like doing, right, left and centre).
WOW!!!
Almost two months ago, I posted a
diary about Iraqis being arrested for blogging and a campaign that they began, "Arrest me, I blog."
The rest of the story...and the sequel after the flip!
I just saw a diary at
Iraqi blogspotwhere an Iraqi posted about my diary on
Kos:
Plus plus: a nearly overlooked mention but cheers anyway to
dailykos for helping to get the "arrest me" message out there. Would just like to point out that the idea is a kind of independent initiative and does not represent all bloggers let alone all Iraqi bloggers, only those who wish to be arrested in solidarity with others who already have been are campaigning for arrest. Hopefully, this will catch on. Because when I get arrested, I hope to have company. Would also like at this point to point out the plight of bloggers facing the threat of arrest in Iran and China.
How cool is that? Of course, some obtuse right-wing windbag, "Rob," posted a comment to the Iraqi bloggers, trashing Kossacks:
#10/08/2005 12:02:42 AM Assalam Aleikom Rob
You do understand that if the kids over at DailyKos had their way with international affairs, good Iraqis--such as the ones who maintain this blog and the other 167+ Iraqi blogs--would still be under the heel of Saddam.
I, of course, wasn't about to let that comment pass unanswered, so I posted:
#10/11/2005 07:13:35 AM Assalam Aleikom Sharon Jumper
I was the author of the diary in question on Daily Kos. Little does "Rob" know, but my son is a soldier who served in Iraq and is now in Afghanistan. "Rob" is probably one of the chickenhawk Americans who talks trash, but has never served his country or anyone else's.
I would like to invite all of you to come discuss things over at Daily Kos, as well as at an international online conference sponsored by the UN and several other international NGO's - Go to
http://discuss.politalk.org and register. We are anxious to have more input from Iraqis about things that we can do to make the world a better and safer place.
Sharon Jumper
This interchange got me to thinking... why don't we make a concerted effort to engage in dialogue with English-speaking Iraqi bloggers? We can read and post comments to their diaries without cumbersome registrations, post links over there to diaries over here, and invite them to post on Kos and let millions of Americans know how they feel and what the "real deal" is from their perspective.
There are 167+ English-speaking Iraqi bloggers who post over at Iraqi Blogspot. Some, like Riverbend, you may have heard of, but others are just as good, and it is fascinating to hear directly from them.
What do ya'll think? Should we go about this in an organized way, or individually? Am I just wasting time with this idea?