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November 19, 2004

Operation "Viral Freedom"

Spirit of America is funding the development of an Arabic blogging tool.

The vendor is iUpload. Beta testing starts in December.  Here is how they describe the project:

We are funding the development of an Arabic blogging (Web logging) tool and, with donor support, we will host the blogs at no cost to the bloggers. This will allow blogs to be created easily. It will give voice to those working for freedom and democracy in the Arab world. And it will enable them to more easily connect with and share ideas with their peers.

The site is soliciting donations. More about hosting and future plans:

Viral Freedom
Every blog developed using the Arabic blogging tool will include space that is under the control of organizations that we work with, such as Friends of Democracy. This space or “real estate” will be a portion of the blog header (top of the page) and the left column. The organizations will use the space to promote groups, individuals and news that, in the big picture, advance freedom, democracy and peace in the region. Thus, everyone that creates a blog will be promoting moderate and progressive information and viewpoints in the Arab world. Friends of Democracy will use the space to publicize pro-democracy groups, election information and related news. The blogs created under Friends of Democracy will be ambassadors of democracy in the Arab world.

Friends of Democracy
The first group of blogs will be under Friends of Democracy. It will focus on Iraq but anyone, and any group, anywhere that wants to be a “friend of democracy” will be able to create and maintain a Friends of Democracy blog in Arabic at no cost. Friends of Democracy will establish and enforce policies regarding blog use and blog content.

Beyond Iraq
If enough funds are raised, we will seek other moderate organizations to oversee blogs in other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Syria. We will also fund the development of the blogging tool in Farsi so it may be used in Iran and in Kurdish.

I wonder what criteria and measures will be used to "establish and enforce policies regarding blog use and blog content."  I wonder how tolerant FoD will be of pro-democratic but not necessarily pro-U.S. views. This will be very interesting to watch. I hope the Arabic-speaking online community will help keep us updated on how this develops.

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Operation "Viral Freedom":

» Global Blogging from Frozen Tundra Blog
If FoD is not going to be very tolerant, then this is basically just pushing an agenda on a foreign land trying to gain converts. Push and shove, shove and push, one viewpoint only, many voices, just as if we were trying to convert them all to Christ... [Read More]

» Viral Freedom from What We Do In Life Echoes In Eternity
[Read More]

» Viral Freedom from What We Do In Life Echoes In Eternity
[Read More]

» Rebecca McKinnon blogs about new iUpload customer... from iUpload Insights
I see that Rebecca McKinnon has blogged about new iUpload customer Spirit of America before the ink has even dried on the contract. We're extremely excited about our role in the project but I just wanted to clarify that Rebecca's post refers to th... [Read More]

» Liberté virtuelle... from miss-information.net
L'association Spirit of America (traduction littérale: Esprit de l'Amérique) subventionne en ce moment le développement d'un outil de blogues pour les pays de langue arabe. [Read More]

Comments

I'm curious why they didn't just build on an existing GPL blog tool? Surely Drupal or WordPress could have used the shot in the development arm.

i think we need to know more each other including arabs and what they think like but that has limits i guest

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