"An exciting moment in this world"

"Omar is now speaking about what drove him to start the blog: 'Mainstream media . . . and by that, I mean Arabic media.' See, the U.S. is not the only place where 'mainstream media' has become a bad word," writes Jeff Jarvis re "an exciting moment in this world" when top bloggers from around the world got together at Harvard for a Soros-sponsored [He's not all bad] talkfest:

What [Omar] likes about blogs is that it is from people to people, not from institutions. "There are no barriers, no filters." He says comments are "the core of blogs." For those of you in the U.S. who are scared of comments, listen to this blogger.

He tells the story of one of my favorite posts of Omar's, about a cousin who hated Americans; they wrote his story; and the cousin read the comments from around the world, all of them encouraging. "Maybe I don't hate them, but I don't like them," the cousin said. A few weeks later, the cousin's father got a car and the cousin had to admit that would not have happened two years ago. He put up a picture of the young man in the car and the comments made him cry. And Omar almost starts himself as he says:

"If I visited America a year and a half ago, before I started this blog, I feel a stranger." but he does not now. "I am surrounded by friends."

Mohammed now says: "It's from person to person, from heart to heart. I did not have any trouble understanding people thousands of miles away from me in spite of language and distance . . . We share many things. Media try to show only the differences between groups and countries but really human beings have many, many things to share . . . Here in blogging, I learn from my readers . . . I think through blogging we can spread love more than we can spread hate. I started blogging because I saw through the media that they just want to spread hate . . . I have a different story and many Iraqi people agree with me.

Asked why they called their blog Iraq The Model, they said, "Iraq will be a model for the Middle East region and the world."

Thrilling to have access to the horse's mouth.  Thanks, Jeff, for sharing these historic moments with the immediate blogosphere.  You are a prince. Omar and Mohammed had met with the President in the Oval Office earlier in the week.  Jeff reports:

Mohammed said the President understood what blogs are and their importance and they found the staff in the White House views reading blogs as part of their jobs now. The brothers said they were in the White House not just as Iraqi citizens but as representatives of the blogosphere.

Thanks, too -- big time -- to Right Thinking Girl, another recent Oval Office visitor with her friend, Jon, who works at the White House, for letting us watch over her shoulder as she put her arm around GW's waist at a White House Christmas Party Friday and told the Leader of the Free World "I am so glad you won the re-election, sir." She's promising photos, and we just can't wait -- the dress, the jewelry, the photos she took of the Reagan and Hillary portraits.  So nice to have insiders around the Big House.

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