WSJ on the 10th Anniversary of the Blog

Posted By Blackfive

The WSJ profiled some world players and what blogs they read and why they think blogs are important.  BG Bergner is quoted at the end of his piece on military blogs:

...By no means do all military blogs paint a positive picture, nor should they. Each posting represents an individual's musings at a particular point in time. We are waging a historic fight against a ruthless enemy. It is also a campaign that historians will be able to learn more broadly about from anecdotes and insights in today's military blogs.

Favorite blogs: "Around here, folks like to read Small Wars Journal (http://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php), Blackfive (http://www.blackfive.net/) and The Mudville Gazette (http://www.mudvillegazette.com/)."

Mudville is my favorite.  Small Wars Journal is a phenomonal resource and should get a lot more attention than it receives.

I am going to create separate pages to list military blogs and resources. 

Resources - As I said, I think that Small Wars Journal is one of the best.  So is StratFor, The Fourth Rail, ThreatsWatch, The Tank, Strategy Page, CounterTerrorism Blog, DangerRoom, US Cav On Point, DefenseTech, The Captain's Journal, etc. for analysis and thought provoking pieces.

Combat Reporting - Michael Yon is the best at reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Michael J. Totten is great too for world blogging - his coverage of the Cedar Revolution was nothing short of brilliant.  Pat Dollard and J.D. Johannes rock.

Military Blogs - there's a few that I haven't pointed out to you.  Major Andrew Olmsted is blogging for the Rocky Mountain News.  His own personal blog was one of the first on my blogroll.  There's a lot more to link to.  Some I haven't linked to yet because I don't know if they've registered with their chain of command and don't want to get them in trouble before getting the Blackfive-alanche.

Official Sites - RCT-6's blog is excellent.

Humor - Scrappleface, the Onion, Chris Muir, Cox & Forkum, IMAO, etc.

So, because this blog is about our community, I ask you readers to help.  I'm going to be building new pages (rather than sidebar lists) over the next week or so for "Military Blogs", "Resources", "Humor" and "Combat Reporting" (not military blogs, could be a mainstream media source or independent journalist)...put URLs in the Comments of those you think are valuable.  Will probably do pages for a Blogroll, Columnists, etc.

Thanks!

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Comments

[John]

Eighty Deuce on the Loose in Iraq
http://airborneparainf82.blogspot.com

Its been mentioned on here before, but I've never seen it mentioned in the blogroll. Its an 82nd soldiers life on the ground in Baghdad! GREAT READ!

[Rich Casebolt]

Matt:

Here's a milblog I found recently via Mudville's Dawn Patrol:

http://blogs.newsok.com/index.php?blog=58

It is the blog of Captain Kevin Calvey, former state representative in Oklahoma, currently in Iraq.

[Scott L]

Article was a great read this morning.

[JE]

The additional links under Resources are particulary appreciated. I wish the knowledge that these sites provide were required reading in the Halls of Congress!

[playertwo]

not as a criticism but to hopefully augment a great line up i would plead for you to add www.iraqthemodel and captain's quarters. you probably already have them up but I just want to reemphasize.
its 120 degrees over there right now and I wouldnt expect anything spectacular over there until september, that isnt goin to stop the airconditioned whiners over, here so keep up the pressure!

[Ymarsakar]

I'm not so much concerned with positive vs negative coverage as I am with people like Matt raising morale and others seeking to depress morale to the point of suicidal tendencies. One is good, the other is bad. The same cannot be said for positive vs negative coverage, for morale can actually be boosted using negative coverage.

[Jim]

Matt,

Here are a couple that I've found. You may already have them...

http://neptunuslex.com ... Great milblogger/naval aviator... not currently deployed.

http://desertflier.blogspot.com ... currently deployed to Iraq ... flight medic/RN.

http://rniniraq.blogspot.com ... currently deployed to Iraq ... flight medic/RN.

http://chicpilot.blogspot.com ... Airforce aviator ... great milblogger ... not currently deployed.

http://sackiniraq.blogspot.com ... Army lawyer ... just returned from Iraq ... I did an interview with him on the war, and he offers some great balanced analysis of the war and why we need to stay.

http://jawbreaker2delta.blogspot.com ... getting ready to re-deploy ... great milblogger.

Jim C

[schnitzel]

Mudville is great-when I can get it. But I've never had such a problem loading any other webpage as I do Mudville. Seems to always crash (I use Firefox on a Mac). I've always wondered if anyone else has this problem, but since I can't ever get to the site I could never ask.

[Rich Casebolt]

I found the entry from from Xiao Qiang particularly noteworthy:

Lian Yue started his blog in the spring of 2005. A free-lance columnist, Lian lives in Xiamen, one of China's most wealthy cities on the southeast coast. His liberal-style social commentary and humorous writing quickly won him thousands of readers.

Starting this March, Lian posted a series of articles warning the people in his hometown that a paraxylene (PX) chemical factory being built in his city could have a disastrous environmental impact. He called on residents to speak out against the construction. "Don't be afraid," Lian wrote on his blog on March 29. "Please just talk to your friends, family and colleagues about this event. They might still be in the dark."

Lian is one of 16 million (and growing) active bloggers in China. While most posts are personal, an increasing number of bloggers writing about public affairs have become opinion leaders in their local communities. Despite the government's "Great Firewall" to filter out "undesirable information," and the tens of thousands of personnel hired to police the Internet, the sheer number of bloggers writing about public affairs is having a transformative impact on Chinese politics.

Xiamen authorities have vigorously deleted anti-PX factory messages on any servers within their governing territory. However, word still got out to local residents via email, IM and SMS on mobile phones. One of Lian Yue's articles on this topic was published in a newspaper in a neighboring province and spread "like wildfire" throughout the blogosphere. By the end of May, SMS messages and cellphone photos of protesting slogans such as "Boycott PX, Protect Xiamen" were sent out to millions of Xiamen residents. On June 1 and 2, against the local authorities' warning, several thousand citizens spontaneously showed up "to walk" in front of the city government with anti-PX message boards. Participants reported the protest live with their cellphones, which directly transmitted photos and text to their blogs.

The government was forced to announce a "re-evaluation" of the factory construction.

In China, blogs enable millions of citizens to express their opinions with reduced political risk simply because of the sheer number of like-minded opinions online. Facing these independent voices, the old ideological machine starts to crumble. Within society, bloggers like Lian Yue are seen as more credible voices than propaganda officials. The Chinese blogosphere is a dynamically contested terrain. What will the long-term implications be? I think the writing is already on the Great Firewall.

Your civilization at work ... its technology and interconnections acting to protect the rights of people in the face of authoritarian rule.

If the leaders of China think enough of their people to keep them connected to our global civilization, they will realize that such grassroots empowerment must increase ... and by necessity, their authoritarian paragidm must decrease.

[MICHAEL in MI]

Under "Resources", a good blog to read regarding what is going on in the Middle East, especially the "Palestine"-Israel conflict is Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs. We cannot ignore the gorilla in the room that is Islam and Charles exposes all the work being done by the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR and links quite a bit to exposes by M.E.M.R.I.. Which is another good resource.

http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com

http://www.thememriblog.org/

http://www.memri.org/

http://www.memritv.org/

Some other military blogs I read that may not be on your blogroll:

http://www.blackanthem.com/

[TBinSTL]

First, how about auto linking in comments?
One of my favorites:

http://acutepolitics.blogspot.com/index.html

The Teflon Don has it goin' on.....I'm so ashamed of myself now.....

[Blackfive]

TB - unfortunately, the choice is (a) auto-links for URLS in Comments or (b) limited html for bold, blockquote, italics etc.

It's one or the other, and since you guys frequently highlight comments in response, I thought the blockquote or bold or italics would be more useful. Of course, I could be wrong (been known to happen).

[MICHAEL in MI]

Someone just needs to teach TB how to post a clickable link with HTML code. :)

Try this, TB: Creating HTML LINKS

[Ymarsakar]

What Michael said.

Of course, I could be wrong (been known to happen).

Not wrong. At least, to me. Should all bloggers know how to write up html links? heh I mean seriously, there's going to be an eventual problem with relying upon self-linker utilities eventually. Comparable with mechanical knowledge of a car.

[Ymarsakar]

It is hard to start with. But the more you do it, the better you get it. Until it becomes muscle memory. Like anything else.

[bthun]

Typepad ate my homework, so I'll two-part it in this attempt:

As a former squid I too have to submit a vote for the good Captains at NeptunusLex, and EagleSpeak which is another site I like to read in the Military Blogs category...

When I'm able to devote the time required for deep though and the ensuing headaches resulting from the exercise of an old mind, I like Grim's Hall and Cassandra's Villainous Company sites in the Military Blogs category with a dash of wicked humor from time to time, for slaps and tickles, er for good measure...

[bthun]

Part II:

And then there are the Resources sites such as Jane’s, The Cato Institute, Newt’s Winning the Future (Jawja boy!) , and The Heritage Foundation just because.

Finally a couple of other perspectives for Resources located at (Typepad does not seem to like my attempt to hot-link these so here they are in the raw) http://meria.idc.ac.il/ - The Middle East Review of International Affairs, and http://gloria.idc.ac.il/ - Global Research in International Affairs, aka GLORIA.