Baghdad Burning

UPDATE: We were suddenly getting an increase in hits to our blog. Turns out this post has been picked up by the Mumbai Mirror.

The more exposure for bloggers, the better!

Here’s some great news – of all places, I first found the article in the NZ Herald!

When I explored all the blogs that are listed on toot, I came across a couple that really tugged at my heart and soul. Since “discovering” them, I’ve regularly visited their sites for updates.

One of them is Baghdad Burning (riverbendblog); written by an anonymous Female Iraqi blogger whose tagline is: “Girl blog from Iraq...let’s talk war, politics and occupation.”

Her posts can sometimes send cold chills rushing through me as I read about what the normal Iraqis are enduring every day in their own country. After reading her accounts, no one could truthfully say that Iraq is better off now that it was 3 years ago.

I’m pleased to read that more literary bods, than I, have been reading Baghdad Burning, and she has been nominated for one of literature's most prestigious non-fiction awards – the £30,000 British Samuel Johnson Prize.

The posts have been compiled into a book, published by independent publishers, Marion Boyars, and it is among 19 contenders vying for the award – the winner will be announced on June 14th in London.

Congratulations to Riverbend – I know that this blogger and lots more like her will be hoping, wishing and praying that you win.

“…I’ll meet you ‘round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend…”

toot Map

The toot people have created a toot map on Frappr which hopefully will remain unblocked for those with cretinous internet providors who seem bent on spoiling everyone's fun.

Members of toot can go to the map and plug themselves in.

We can even download images that can be made into a movie, and with the code embedded into the blog template, it can play like this:



Cool huh?

As more images get added by more members, it will get even better.

I have it permanently displayed at the bottom of this page.

tooting our own horn

Our blog has been chosen to appear on toot.

The incredibly hard-working webmasters monitor the best of Arabian Arabic and English language blogs from around the Middle East and promote them on their fresh and clean website, complete with RSS feeds to pick up the latest posts as they happen.

To quote the good people at toot:
“We witnessed something amazing and decided to start this site! Across Arabia and all around the world, intelligent, passionate, interesting, funny, knowledgeable and courageous people are using the web to make their voices heard. It started with a few, then a few hundred. Now, thousands of them are taking to their keyboards and starting to write blogs, share their knowledge, pictures, opinions, emotions and life. This is big!”

Visit the toot site to see the list of the best blogs in the Middle East - it's the best opportunity that you have to understand what is happening to the ordinary folk in this region in their everyday lives - and what they write isn't being influenced (censored) by governments or the press.

This is real life.