Yes, the blog resumes . . .

And really that is about it.

FACEBOOK doesn't cut it and this unwieldy TOME needs editing.

Due to Web Marshall being turned on where I was writing, I could not access these pages for the past YEAR. However, as of yesterday when I was at long last able to side pass that oppressor and get some good new posting tools installed, my enthusiasm cup runneth over.

I'M BACK !!

The Age of the Blogger: David Swanson

As a blogger myself: sometimes writing, sometimes researching, sometimes answering TONS of email, watching alerts from google to get my information - I can understand precisely where Swanson is coming from. A day or two offline produces something like withdrawal. Been difficult lately, too, as both my computers have been DOWN and have had to go out and use the library and internet cafes. That's my perogative, eh?? Just keep on blogging is my idea of a good time.

I took the time to write a book, Earthlings Anonymous, and it was finished, but it got thrown out by an unscrupulous landlord. But I kept on blogging everyday as I wrote it. To go for 30-days without internet exposure seems like a real drag. But I plan to do that to write down my memoirs AFTER the Andover war crimes conference. I have an idea of the outline already. It's basically to show young women activists, NEVER GIVE UP !!! And you know, I think my Earthlings Anonymous Book was MEANT to be written by a better group of people than I originally planned. I can find the new 100 stories via internet !!

I've tried insistently to even get a newspaper column, which didn't even work out. But BLOGGING? Now that's the supreme activity of our time, imho. It helps you organize your thoughts, keep up with happening stuff for your readers and you meet the most incredible friends when you do it.

Here's to David Swanson's new book - if he does it now, he'll miss the Bejing Olympics ?? But I am sure if ANYONE has something useful to say, it's David Swanson.

I live the cup of victory to David's new book. Let's all make it a bestseller.

Virginia

by David Swanson himself

Robert Fisk's "The Age of the Warrior" collects 500 stupendous pages of his columns from the past several years. Fisk is, of course, the Middle Eastern correspondent for the Independent (UK) based in Beirut. He writes about Iraq, Turkey, Palestine, the United States, literature, cinema, genocide, whatever grabs his interest, and he does so with a great deal of honesty and courage. I couldn't recommend the book more highly. It lives up to its rather epic title. But I have one point of disagreement, or at least divergent perspective....

Fisk inserts into his essays occasional jibes at the internet, which -- like John McCain -- he does not use. (Well, I bet he uses it a little more than McCain, but he doesn't like to.) Or at least he thinks he doesn't. The fact is that without the internet, a great many of us in the United States and around the world would not have the opportunity to read Fisk's writing other than when it's published in book form. Without the internet, I'd have a choice of two or three nearly worthless -- scratch that, WORSE than worthless -- U.S. newspapers. Maybe they'd be slightly better without the competition of the internet. Maybe they'd be slightly worse.

Fisk doesn't even like writing on computers, and he does not like to be Emailed. I spend more time every day writing and receiving Emails than any other activity in my life. If I miss a day I fall hopelessly behind. I love the internet and have been able to use it to accomplish things I never could have otherwise. I love open-source crowd-corrected reporting, investigating, and activist organizing. I love multitasking. But I do have my complaints about Emails. They can miscommunicate. They can be improperly shared. And they can be as annoying as anything ever invented. Most of them have to simply be ignored, and others could be responded to were it not for the fact that responding will result in additional Emails.

I recently stopped using a cell phone, and I love the difference it has made in my life. But this was not much of a sacrifice in terms of my ability to communicate with people, since I can converse with many more people by Email than I can in the same number of minutes by telephone. What would make a huge difference would be ceasing to receive or reply to or send out Emails. And that's what I'm going to try for the next month, from August 8 to September 8, 2008. I'm not going to use Email, not going to blog, not going to use a cell phone, not going to use a landline. At the end of the month I may have something to say about the difference it made in my life. There's even the chance I'll have convinced myself to stay offline for good.

That's rather unlikely, though. I'm doing this little experiment, not to avoid the internet, but to engage in something else, namely writing a book. I don't want to publish a collection of columns. I want to compose a single coherent book and publish it. Then, no doubt, I'll want to blog about it too. I spoke with some publishers about a year ago, and they expressed interest in publishing a book by me, but they all wanted to see roughly half the book and to know in detail what the other half would look like before giving me an "advance." In other words, the "advance" comes after you've pretty well written the book. I have a lot of books in mind that I want to write, but I can't describe them in detail without actually writing them, and I can't write them or accomplish anything else at all while the internet is surgically attached to my fingertips. So, I've decided to simply vanish for a month, write a book, and then show it to the publishers. They can give me an "advance" then, or simply buy the book. We can pretend it took me 8 months to write if they think that sounds better. Little do they know what an eternity 30 days offline will be.

http://www.davidswanson.org

DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997.

How blogges reacted to cable cuts in ME

Today: Middle East

Middle East. "Internet Outage Enrages Bloggers" by Amira Al Hussaini (*) What is a blogger without access to the Internet? March 03, 2008 - This was the dilemma facing tens of thousands of bloggers in parts of the Middle East and Asia, after a cable in the Mediterranean was damaged, crippling millions of Internet users. No surprise, some of the region's bloggers were fuming especially when they realised that it could take up to two weeks to fix the damage and have to deal with slow Internet in the meanwhile. Qatar: Thanks to slow Internet, Mohamed Nanabhay in Doha sends us a Twitter message saying: Apparently some undersea cables have been damaged near Alexandria, Egypt and thus the 28.8k type internet speeds on my ADSL.. Bahrain: Braving slow connections, Bahraini Mahmood Al Yousif says the fact that such a large part of the world depends on ‘one cable' for its online communications is ridiculous and needs to be addressed. He adds: The real question is, how is much of the fastest growing economies in the world dependent on a single undersea cable? Didn’t anyone think of a redundancy plan which covers just such an eventuality? One which would withstand such a technical disruption with complete transparency to the customers? Ammar too was left scratching his head and after listing his country's achievements goes on a rampage saying: It boggles the mind to think that a country on the scale of the above would actually be internetless for a full day. Yup, the internet was down EVERYWHERE today morning, probably for a good 8 hours or so, and we just got it back about 30 minutes ago. That's for people, companies, banks, institutions, schools, coffee shops, etc.They are joined by Ali7, another disgruntled customer. Meanwhile, Bint Battuta calls on bloggers to leave their frustrations at home and attend the country's Blogger's meeting instead. She notes: Don't sit at home feeling frustrated by your slow internet connection! Come and talk to people instead! We're meeting on Saturday (2 February). Kuwait: In Kuwait, Forza blames Egypt for the cut, while Mark volunteers: Slow internet is better than no internet K The Kuwaiti says it may take two weeks to fix the problem and Fonzy describes life without Internet, saying: I’m sure yesterday was a frustrating day for a LOT of people. At around 11:00 a.m. the internet was down in the whole Middle East. Everything seems functional today but it is still a little slow, but I got to say that although it was cut for less than a day, it felt like eternity! UAE: Syrian blogger Dubai Jazz, who lives in Dubai, is also angry with an Egyptian fisherman for the breakdown of Internet communications in the region. He writes: I couldn't do anything significant during the slow down. I couldn't even post comments on my own blog let alone others. Gmail was also down. Youtube? … forget about it. All this was because some extra-witty Egyptian fisherman has decided to drop his anchor deep in the Mediterranean. Not only he'd dropped the anchor so deep and hurt one of the cables supplying bites to the Middle East and India, he had also dragged his anchor for 400 meters and cut another main cable in the process. We could live with one cable cut, but two? That, in my standard, is unprecedented. And the fisherman is certainly demented. Tunisia: “Internet goes down, everything goes down…” writes Subzero Blue from Tunisia. He then takes the opportunity to reflect on our attachment to technology and its impact on everything we do. He notes: This is what's so scary about technology; we quickly get so used to it, we integrate it into our everyday lives and work, we become dependent on it for everything we do, and then when it fails for one reason or another our lives stop, we're left crippled and helpless; we can't go back and we can't move forward; we just have to wait for things to be sorted out so we can go back to life as usual. We're too dependent on technology, and we don't have a fail-safe plan; a major technological meltdown in the future could bring the whole world to a stand-still; and blow us back centuries into the past. (*) - Blogger an former news editor of an English language daily in Bahrain. Educated and raised in Bahrain.