Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Bloggers from all over the world

Guardian Unlimited reported The Global Voices conference called to mind a United Nations of blogging: there was a Cambodian sitting next to an Iranian sitting next to an Indian sitting next to a Kenyan sitting next to Richard Dreyfuss... Everyone had a story to tell. The Iranians Farid Pouya and Shahram Kholdi described how all types of people, from homosexuals using pseudonyms to write about their personal lives to pro-Islamic republic Hezbollah supporters, have latched on to blogs as a tool for self-expression. In China, where a new blog is created every two seconds, photographs of a series of mine disasters have appeared on blogs in defiance of the straitjacketed mainstream media, commented blogger Kevin Wen. And Dina Mehta, from Mumbai, explained how a blog set up in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami prompted hundreds of offers of help from people around the globe and published SMS messages and calls for help from people in the affected areas. "It was one of my experiences that changed my life," she said. "It wasn't the television telling you what was going on in some other part of the world; it was real voices."

That makes a lot of sense. I get a lot of my news about Iraq from Iraq The Model and a number of other Iraqi Blogs (including some by soldiers)

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