• the democratic revolution at a grass roots level

I'd like to see some discussion about actual events and struggles in Iraq.  As well as discussing US strategy, it's important to look at what is actually happening at a more grass roots level.


For instance the situation for women in many parts of Iraq is definitely not good. We need to discuss what's happening on this front. How this struggle develops will be a key inidicator of the democratic revolution in Iraq.


(I'm sure those who oppose the war will be happy to write about how bad it all is!)


Both the right and the pseudo-left can only look at Iraq and see disaster. The common denominator is that the war has opened some sort of Pandora's box, and 'who knows what will happen next?'. The overt right is saying that Bush's policies are suicidal for US interests, the lack of stability is terrible, it's "premature" to expect a genuine democracy to emerge and what is more likely is an upsurge in Anti-Americanism and the triumph of militant Islamism. The pseudo-left is saying similar things clothed in anti-US rhetoric. ..... eg the Iraqi people are now just being oppressed by Islamic fundamentalists, things are going from bad to worse, there's no stability, at least the old Iraq was relatively secular, you can't establish democracy under occupation, the US should withdraw immediately and leave the Iraqis to sort things out etc etc


My perspective is that what we are seeing is a real revolution and the Iraqis are doing it themselves. If it was more orderly and peaceful I'd be suspicious.


Interestingly I was talking today to an Iraqi Christian (he manages our local convenience store). I asked him how he felt about the recent attacks on churches in Iraq and he replied that he was upset   "we (Christians) are a little minority, nobody knows about us, they only know about the other groups" but then he went on to say that he thinks the  Iraqis are working things out, "they learning new ways, it takes time to get over the past" ...it's still a good situation because "the different groups have to work together now" ..."people are negotiating".  (He has recently returned from a visit to Iraq - his wife and children spent most of last year there while he kept working over here)

My guess is that people active in grass roots struggles in Iraq would be generally too busy fighting them and writing about them in Arabic and/or Kurdish to make much info available in english.

However it should be straight forward to assemble a list of keywords used in newsagency reports, websites that specialize in Iraqi reportage and Iraqi english language blogs to find any relevant material.

Organizationally I guess one way to do this could be to establish folders and keywords for collecting relevant materials and lists of specific web sites and google searches likely to locate them. Then anyone interested in maintaining those areas of the site could volunteer to monitor specific portions of the list of web sites and google searches on a regular basis.

In practice the same is true on other issues and many of the sources would be the same web sites so it may be more efficient to do it generally for a complete keyword list and feed interesting items found into multiple topic streams for each currently active keyword.

That just means people interested in helping the site would be given instructions about selecting from a list of topics and where interesting material from those topics is likely to be found and asked to post interesting links, preferably with skeleton comments, to a team of writers and reviewers who would select further and publish items on the site.

However all this presupposes having significant numbers of people willing to put time into helping publish the site, which in turn presupposes already having a significant audience.

Until then anybody who does write anything is going to just pick a topic, do their own googling and write casually without paying much attention to what anybody thinks "should" be covered. After all, what's the point if there isn't a significant number of readers and it isn't likely to produce feedback?

They will also tend to just feed it into the forum as a quick comment rather than editing it properly or indexing it with keywords and they would expect it to be treated as "ephemera" rather than becoming part of a navigable indexed resource that people would go to when looking for info so they would not bother polishing up the presentation. Consequently whatever they contribute will tend not to be linked to from other web sites (since its just an ephemeral forum comment, even if they happened to see it) and so will not help attract audience to this one.

The only way to get people writing anything is together with also getting people reading and responding to it. The only way to do that is to go out and write material of interest to other web sites and post links back here from those web sites. Material of interest to other web sites will generally be responses to things they have written (plus comments on their own sites linking to other items here).

Only when we have a substantial audience and a team of regular writers would there be any point daydreaming about getting the writers more organized to take on specific priorities rather than whatever happens to indiviually interest them.

Until then the daydreaming is just the result of not having the conquering spirit required to actually write articles of interest to other web sites by responding to and challenging their views.

On the paragraphs of comment comparing the pseudo-left and conservatives in seeing disaster - while that is old news here, and therefore unlikely to stimulate further discussion - it represents a "novel" point of view elsewhere and one that would get you flamed and force you to find links (to other old news here) backing it up when challenged if you were to post it at many other web sites. (Once you broke through and actually got them to pay attention to you which is quite difficult - best done in pairs so you can reinforce each other but not in larger numbers and not turning up suddenly but saying hello and asking questions first).

It is of course much easier to post stuff we already know here among friends than out there where others are less receptive and we will be treated as ignorant newbies rather than coddled and protected from "unfair" criticism.

If there is some other explanation for posting more stuff we already know here rather than linking to it here from elsewhere, I've missed it.

   If you want to write about what's wrong with the site and how to improve it, start a thread about it.

At least ninety  five percent of the above  was off topic.  It doesn't belong in this thread and its disruptive to put it here.

keza

keza: The title of your topic is "the democratic revolution at a grass roots level". This may explain why you could sincerely believe that is what your post was about and that my response to your post is off topic.

Conceivably your last paragraph about the views of an Iraqi Christian shopkeeper in your neighbourood has some tangential relation to that title though the choice of title is far from natural. But most of your post simply was not about what you imagine it was about.

In fact your post was about "what's wrong with the site and how to improve it". Hence my response was on the same theme.

Your post was not, as you perhaps imagine, a "discussion about actual events and struggles in Iraq". There was no mention of any such events or struggles, whether "at a grass roots level" or not.

What you said was "I'd like to see some discussion about...", "it's important to look at...", "We need to discuss what's happening..." These phrases might have been used as an introduction to a "discussion about actual events and struggles in Iraq" - but they simply weren't. These are plainly proposals to improve the site, with a very mild implicit criticism that the site is not yet doing what you propose. Unfortunately your implicit criticism and proposal were so mildly stated that you actually perceived them as answering yourself by doing what you propose.

You are hallucinating.

Then you distracted yourself by repeating an important analytical meme about the pseudo-left saying similar things about disaster to the overt right. However you did not illustrate this with either examples of parallel statements or references to actual events and struggles in Iraq. It was just dogmatic assertion unrelated to your title.

My response dealt with what would need to be done first if you actually intended your desired improvements to happen instead of day dreaming about them and calling on imaginary friends to help out.

It isn't pleasant but its actually more helpful than smiling and nodding and letting you continue with your happy delusions while nothing actually happens that could result in the improvements you desire.