Juan Cole's Way of Protesting Middle Eastern Bloggers

Juan Cole, University of Michigan blogger and Middle Eastern "expert," has called for a flashmob to protest the Iranian government's jailing of dissident bloggers. This is in response to the popularity of a Website calling for a day of blog action concerning the dissidents.

Very admirable and yet this is the same Juan Cole who trashed Iraq the Model! Figures.

Left-wing professor, the model (Powerline, December 14, 2004)
A University of Michigan professor named Juan Cole identifies two blog practices he considers dangerous. The first is called "blog trolling" wherein someone makes false and inflammatory comments on a discussion board to which other posters feel they must respond. The second is called "astroturfing," in which a grass roots campaign turns out to be sponsored by a think tank or corporation. Cole goes on the suggest that the Iraqi bloggers at Iraq the Model may represent a case of astroturfing -- in other words Cole thinks they may be getting funding from "neoconservatives."

Cole's "evidence" is that the views of the Iraq the Model bloggers are "outside the mainstream of Iraqi public opinion" according to "public opinion polls.

Yet, it was the Iraq the Model who had to make clear that this was never the case with several other Iraqi bloggers chiming in saying the same thing. And yet it took Iraq the Model to expose Juan Cole's wanking conspiracy theory of his.

Let's see. Iranian bloggers represent the correct mainstream views inside Iran while Iraqi bloggers represent a "not-so-correct" mainstream views inside Iraq?

Yep. Juan Cole is losing it.