[imc-baghdad] UPDATE from Iraq - 7 May 2003

[Ramzi Kysia]

All,

Apologies for the somewhat panicky emails earlier, but
access to the web has been very bad this entire week
(troubles with electricity & too busy in general :-))

The first issue of the paper is going to be out
Sunday/Monday. It'll be Arabic/English and have news,
commentary & poetry. We're trying to be actively
inclusive, but it's been difficult due to the current
situation...

We'll have a house/office this weekend too, and I'll
forward you the address as soon as that comes through.
While we'd like to make Al-Muajaha a weekly as soon as
possible, realistically that might take a couple of
issues more before we can nail it down that regularly
- I'd expect the 2nd issue to come out in about 10-14
days...

There are no banks here, nor credit cards & such (as
well as no phones or much electricity), so cash would
have to be hand-carried in. I believe that both
Jacquie and Julia are planning on coming here soon, so
money could be sent with them. We can also see about
other alternatives once folks have the money to send -
let me know.

We can purchase, I think, everything except the sat
modems locally, and cheaper, than it would be to send
in equipment, but we do need computers, cameras
(digital), and audio recorders asap (in addition to
funds for printing!). We also need to purchase a
generator right off, as electricity is
spotty-to-nonexistent...

The three, big problems so far have been lack of
equipment/electricity leading to bottlenecks at the
two computers we do have (mine & VitW's), lack of
office space (we're working out of the hotel lobby -
not ideal), and lack of personnel. We do have about 15
people actively involved, but the number available for
translation is much less, and most are working at
other jobs too, so...

Some of these problems will clear up with getting our
own office space & a generator, and I think once the
first issue comes out - we'll have a *ton* of more
people clammering to help out... but equipment is
still going to be a bottleneck, as is money for
printing...

Questions:

- How can we post to the website? It would be best if
I could send the paper as an attachment to someone
else to post (until Jacquie gets in & can train us on
how to do it ourselves).

- Can we post other material, that doesn't appear in
the paper? We could (should!) have much more material
available than we can print, and available sooner than
the weekly issue - so it would be good if we could
post things immediately as it comes in... What do you
all think?

- We may not be able to translate everything for the
website from Arabic into English (although we *will*
translate everything, here, that appears in the paper,
and pass those translations to the website). Is that
okay with folks? Or is there another way to do
translations (from the outside), and is that really
worth the time/effort (on your part) given an
open-posting policy?

It would be GREAT if folks could write a letter to the
people here working on the paper, letting them know
what you think of the project, and what sort of
support is likely to materialize. Even if not much
money is going to come through, the letter would be
very (*VERY*) encouraging to people here... they
really have no idea what to expect from all of this
:-))

Love,
Ramzi

PS: what's the final website address? cnn is going to
cover our 1st issue going out, and i'd *LOVE* to push
the site address as hard as possible in the segment...


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