[IMC-bristol] indymedia iraq support / twinning

[spikeymike@rnetmail.co.uk]

Dear Jo,

Update on progress of iraq support project:

Support for this project in Bristol seems strong.  We have resources available to support an emerging iraq indymedia project and volunteers to help with fundraising as necessary.

Initial work on providing a server is close to completion and should be available at this temporary address:  http://iraqimc.dyndns.org

I am requesting a public mailing list from indymedia central mail server which would be imc-iraq-support@lists.indymedia.org and would be a working group aiming to support an emerging iraq group, leaving space for any new group to form and to define it's own policies.

It seems that hosting the site in Bristol would offer advantages and be more difficult for authorities to shut down for political reasons.  These issues should however be raised on a public list for feedback.

Would be good to speak with you and make arrangements for information / skills to be passed out to people in iraq ASAP.

Other issues regarding the look of the site should really be created by volunteers from iraq.  Notice I have done a quick logo for now.

Issues of translation.  I confirm we can hold arabic [unicode] content in our database and we should be able to modify the site to read from right to left for arabic articles.  However we will need help with transaltion - contacts in bristol would be really usefull, as I assume that the site will be dual language english / arabic [apologies for my own ignorance of local dialect / language issues]

Regards,

Mike