Appreciation to Juan Cole
Regular JWN readers are probably aware that I have a couple of fairly serious disagreements with Juan Cole; and it occurs to me that I probably spend a disproportionate amount of space on this blog criticizing his views. I have always tried to do so in a way that expresses the huge admiration in which I have always held his scholarship and his strong stand in support of academic and human freedoms.
But I was made aware yet again today of the truly massive contribution Juan makes to the wellbeing of the world, day after day after day, simply by virtue of the dedication and levelheadedness with which he sticks to trying to understand what's going on in Iraq and to sharing that understanding with the English-speaking public through his blog.
I am constantly amazed at how much, truly excellent work he produces there! It makes me tired just to think of how many hours he must spend at it each day. Any of you JWN readers who writes a blog must also know how much just darn' hard work this businss entails.
Today, one commenter on Juan's blog suggested that the CIA should simply be dismantled so the world could rely on what Juan tells us, instead... Not such a bad idea. What certainly is true is that by reading and digesting into English a wide variety of Arabic-language sources on Iraq, and then by making those digests/analyses available in a timely fashion on a no-cost open source, Juan is providing an amazing service that you cannot find anywhere else.
Today, I didn't have time to read Al-Hayat till fairly late in the day. Reading Juan's blog got me up to speed, showed me which articles to look at... I used to find the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's daily "Iraqi Press Monitor" was a helpful supplementary source. But that operation, which no doubt has a hefty budget and a large number of staff members, has produced nothing at all since December 20! (Back in the good old days, of course, there was the CIA's open-source translation service, FBIS, freely available in all US Government depositary libraries. But that got axed. Now the US government has a subscription-only service called "World News Connection" which promises its potential paying readers that, "New information is added within 24-72 hours from the time of original publication or broadcast". Thanks, but no thanks.)
So anyway, I want to express some special New Year's good wishes to my colleague and friend Juan Cole. We may have our disagreements, and they are over serious matters. But that fact does nothing at all to dim the admiration I have for you, Juan. In this business, you really are the gold standard. A healthy and long life to you!
In fact there is nothing like Juan Cole on Irak. I am an Arabist and have been correspondent in the ME for the renwoed swiss paper Neue Zuercher Zeitung from 1956 to 1991 working mostly from Beirut and Cyprus, still very interested in the region, and I read Informed Comment every day, always with great advantage. So I would like to addmz best wishes and express also my highly felt appreciation Arnold Hottinger
I entirely agree Cole is a good read, and I look at it every day.
On the other hand the new comments section is not a success. There's rarely a comment by anybody who knows anything about Iraq. Too much simple flattery of Cole, which he could cut. On the other hand, my comments have not been accepted, although I have some knowledge about Iraq, as I spend most of my research time on the subject. could be a problem in the blogging motor, I suppose.
Also the comments take a long time to come up, because of the process of approval. I sympathise with him that it must be boring and time consuming to approve comments.
He would do better to go back to the old format, and just tell us what he thinks.
Helena, I would just like to join you in your tribute to Juan Cole. I think his level of consistency in providing day-to-day expert analysis is unique. I find his blog indispensable. Whenever I encounter wild reports about Iraq in the mainstream media, I take comfort in the fact that Juan reportedly has enormous numbers of readers.
Yes, IMO, Informed Comment is quite phenomenal, Cole is amazingly good in explaining the events in the most complicated modern conflict.
I think that discussion section is also important. Why? If a theory cannot explain facts, it is irrelevant. However, objections are also facts which a theory must explain! That is, good theory needs to frame the discussion properly. No meaningful discussion - no theory to talk about.
Recent predicament with ID only confirms this. Evolution deniers simply refuse to discuss Evolution properly, this is why ID needs to be discarded.
I know I am opening a can of worms, but I still want to remind the row between GU and Chomsky. GU published pretty nasty interview with Chomsky, he lamented about misrepresentation, etc, etc. The problem is, argumentation of both sides was pretty weak!
IMO, IC does pretty good in this respect. Not just because my comments appear there from time to time, but because this discussion is usually meaningful.
Hear, hear. Kudos to you, Helena, for your generous and well-deserved acknowledgement of Cole's contribution.
Re "comments" I will just note that I really like the near-real-time kind of discussions that happen here at JWN. (For example, folks should check out the one that's been going on for the past couple of days down near the end of this recent post.)
The relatively unmoderated nature of the comments here means that sometimes the tone gets a little combative, but actually generally these days much less so than in the past... And meanwhile, we have some real discussions. Indeed, I believe we are creating new, "social" knowledge by our interactions here. I know I've learned a lot from many comments here-- including, most notably in recent days, those posted by Reidar here. (Btw Reidar, I'm sorry I've misspelled your family name a couple of times and Juan seems to have perpetuated that.)
Juan's comments zone doesn't have nearly the interactivity we have here, because of the way he runs it.
Another model to follow could be Billmon's-- not to have comments on the main site but to have a shadow site, run by someone else, that hosts comments on "posts" that mirror the one's on the main "Whisky Bar"... Well, I just went over there. Billmon himself hasn't posted on his site since Dec 20, but Bernhard, who runs the shadow site, has been posting stuff there quite regularly in recent weeks, so I guess his site now has a life of its own.
Well, for now, I feel quite happy with the way the comments zone is working here, so no changes.
I'll add my appreciation of Juan, who I read daily, but also to the interaction between JWN and Informed Comment. It is especially valuable to have challenging exchanges between two of the very well informed and thoughtful people writing about Iraq
Gratititude doesn't begin to cover my appreciation of Juan Cole's dedication and discipline. Thank you Professor Cole!
I'd like to add my appreciation for Juan Cole's work -- I start every day there, regardless of what other demands impinge on my time.
Two more observations: he responds to emails from people he has never heard of. I'm amazed by such generosity. And the one time the comments there got hot and heavy was when he accused the "out now" folks of loony leftism -- he generously accepted huge numbers of comments (mine included) and clarified his meaning.
On bad and good blogs
IMO, no blogger can be taken seriously until he can prove experimentally that Cole is right and Karsh is wrong. IMO, this hilarious PR jewel immortalizes the role of the Likud in the maturing of blogging practices.
Efraim Karsh. Juan Cole's Bad Blog http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1945
"Sharon just wanted to reshape Lebanese politics, the way his disciples in the Bush administration now want to reshape Iraqi politics," he wrote shortly before the outbreak of hostilities. "We'll see if the American Likudniks have more luck than Sharon himself did." But, whether or not Iraq's politics will be successfully reshaped, the real goal of "Wolfowitz's adventure in Iraq" is "to defang Iraq as a favor to Ariel Sharon."
Cole provides no proof whatsoever for this conspiratorial thinking--there is none.