Rhod Sharp, Kevin Anderson and Chris Vallance blog for Up All Night

An Iraqi view on Iraq23-11-2005

by Chris Vallance

On pods and blogs this week we looked at the debate over whether or not the US should withdraw from Iraq before the security situation improves. Rather than go to a US political anaylst we decided to talk with the people who really matter; ordinary Iraqis themselves. Hussein who blogs at An Average Iraqi gave us his thoughts on whether the US should leave sooner rather than later.

Ariel Sharon's departure from Likud to form his own party aimed at the centre ground of Israeli politics was described in the Israeli media as a political earthquake. For an assessment of his chances in a political environment that has traditionally been a tough place for centre parties we spoke to David Essing of the Isracast podcast.

We followed up with the row over the World Summit on the Information Society and the row over Tunisia's human rights record, with a piece from Clark Boyd podcaster and technology correspondent for The World. Internet analyst Bill Thompson filled us in on the rest of the goings on at the summit including the advent of the $100 wind-up laptop.

Kevin looked at the plight of an arrested Egyptian blogger, Abdolkarim and the successful efforts the nascent Egyptian blogosphere made to secure his release in the company of blogger Amr Gharbeia .

Finally, as previewed last week, we spoke at length with Podcast Paul about his experiences in Swaziland and his podcasts based on his contact with an AIDS and HIV charity there.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author

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