It is interesting to see the evolution of blogs and blogging generally. Increasingly blogs are becoming the source of choice for many seeking information or news on this or that. In fact, many bloggers were given accreditation, alongside the mainstream media, to the GOP and Democratic Conventions in the USA last year. Now comes news that Yahoo will include blogs as part of its search engine. Google is one step behind but it won't be long before they too will have to acknowledge that blogs and blogging is a force to be reckoned with.
There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
Comments