December 16, 2004
Iraq, Iran, Iblog
As far as I know, the upcoming Iraqi Elections will be the first time in world history when foreigners can legally give online donations to campaigns, possibly impacting the outcome.
There is a lot to be said about this, but for now I’ll leave you with the latest pulled from James Taranto’s Best of the Web:
Cole Cash
A blogger called Juan Cole has declared a jihad against the Ali brothers, who run the pro-democracy Iraq the Model blog. (For more about them, read Daniel Henninger's Friday column, which describes their visit to The Wall Street Journal last week.) Cole claims the Alis "are far out of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion," and he endorses instead an anonymous anti-American blogress who uses the handle "Riverbend."
Relying on a zany conspiracy-mongering post from an unknown blog with an appealing name, Cole engages in some fevered speculation:
The MR posting brings up questions about the Iraqi brothers who run the IraqTheModel site. It points out that the views of the brothers are celebrated in the right-leaning weblogging world of the US, even though opinion polling shows that their views are far out of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion. It notes that their choice of internet service provider, in Abilene, Texas, is rather suspicious, and wonders whether they are getting some extra support from certain quarters. . . .
The phenomenon of blog trolling, and frankly of blog agents provocateurs secretly working for a particular group or goal and deliberately attempting to spread disinformation, is likely to grow in importance. It is a technique made for the well-funded Neoconservatives, for instance, and I have my suspicions about one or two sites out there already.
This has set off quite a kerfuffle, with blogger Jeff Jarvis calling Cole "pond scum." We're not sure about that (though Jarvis makes a pretty compelling case), but what we do know is that Cole is far out of the mainstream of American opinion, as evidenced by the result of last month's election. Cole might want to look into whether he himself is getting some extra support from certain quarters.
Posted by Buzz Webster at December 16, 2004 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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