Tip: Haveil Havalim #95

Haveil Havalim #95, for November 26, 2006, is hosted by Smooth Stone, to whose blog I put a link to on the sidebar way back, in August (the first month of my blog).

I’d heard of Haveil Havalim briefly in the course of surfing the Jewish blogosphere, without really knowing details about it. I’d supposed it was some kind of blogger custom. This morning I got an e-mail notifying me of the current edition of Haveil Havalim, which I promptly looked at and saw it was a collection of links to posts on the Jewish blogosphere.

Having read the above, please pardon my ignorance. I’m not one of the cognoscenti; I know just about enough to operate a blog, but I’m not well versed in the ins and outs of blog culture. I used to think blogs were for bored teenagers who wanted to put up a diary for the whole uninterested world to see. It was only during the last years, picking up special-interest blogs like Little Green Footballs and Jihad Watch, that I realized a blog was interesting according as its subject matter interested me. Finally, during the last Lebanon War, I realized the value of blogs as the New Media countering the Old Media, the majority of which can now be seen to be serve enemy interests, and so I launched a blog of my own.

I learn more about blogging jargon every day, though I’m still not into having a blog for more than what I believe to be its purpose: a channel for information and opinion unshackled to most rules and limitation of the mainstream media outlets. In that context, I have little patience with some of the notions concerning “blogging etiquette”. This once led to a scuffle between me and another blogger when I left a link to a post of mine on her blog; she saw it as spamming her blog, while I saw it as strengthening the Jewish blogosphere by passing [ideological] ammunition. No animus meant by either side, I’m sure, but that goes to show a difference between my blogging philosophy and that of most other bloggers.

The post of mine Smooth Stone linked to is Yes, They Exist. No, They Aren’t The Solution, from November 19. Of the linked posts I’ve checked so far and liked best:

• Exasperation, by Banagor. The post expresses a lot of ideas which, on my blog, are spread upon various posts. Banagor is an atheist, but unlike so many of them, a true heir of Voltaire.
• Louise Arbour, Louise Arbour, GO HOME!, by Carl in Jerusalem, on his blog Israel Matzav. Good refutation of a UN “High Commisioner for Human Rights” on her judicial pontifications.
• “Peace activists” for terrorism, by Elder of Ziyon, showing an egregious example of the moral bankruptcy of the “Peace Left”. For anyone who still had doubts about the equation, “anti-war = pro-terrorism”.