Andy Worthington Is In Technorati’s Top 100 World Politics Blogs

I was delighted to hear, via my colleague Jason Leopold (Truthout, The Public Record), that Technorati, one of the leading analysts of the blogosphere, has recently revamped its appraisals of the blogging community, introducing Top 100 lists, and that this site, Andy Worthington, now features in the Top 100 World Politics Blogs (as I write, it’s ranked 46, but sites are reappraised on a daily basis, so it could go up or down).

My thanks to all the readers who have helped to get this site noticed, and to all those who have linked to and cross-posted my articles. As I recently explained in an article marking my 600th blog post:

Although the Internet has no quality control, those who genuinely have something to say — and who know how to get their message across — will discover that it rewards perseverance and specialization, and that it favors cooperation over self-absorption. Linking, networking, communication: the Internet positively embraces all these, and remains resistant to corporate attempts to raise tollbooths on its highways.

To this I would only add that, when it comes to favoring cooperation over self-absorption, what this means in particular is that the Internet is genuinely democratic, favoring those who willingly share their information, rather than jealously guarding it, and that, so long as links are provided, cross-posting articles invariably raises bloggers’ profiles, and their visibility to search engines.

So please feel free to join in this ongoing experiment. As ever, I ask cross-posters only to link to my site and to preserve internal links. And if you’re new to the site, you could, if you like, begin by looking at my latest article, “Resisting Injustice At Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz al-Kandari,” originally published on Truthout, which provides an unprecedented glimpse into the life story of a Kuwaiti prisoner at Guantánamo, seized after traveling to Afghanistan to provide humanitarian aid, and reveals what happens when — as with al-Kandari — prisoners refuse to bow to the prevailing pressure in Guantánamo to demonstrate that “there is no innocent person here,” by refusing to cooperate with the authorities.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009, details about my film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed with Polly Nash, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.