The community blogging....

Again, as promised we do not often engage in the near metaphysical discussion of blogging as a subject unto itself. The range of those that have called for greater use of blogging encompasses just about anyone that takes up the digital ink. Sometimes, these are even worth reading. Regardless, this is a subject rather well covered by others, and the truly interesting aspects are in the participation not the abstract.

The range of community professionals which actually blog is however much, much smaller. We wish to take a moment to highlight some of their work, as they have been in the space longer than we and of course have a lot to offer simply by virtue of their different focus areas and interests.

The first is actually a group blog at Terrorism Unveiled which includes on individual whose work we have been reading since she was at university and traveling in the Mideast. We did not realize that she and her collegue are now bona fide members of the community, but we are not surprised that someone of such intellect and literary gift would find a natural home to common interests.

The second is another group effort (Group Intel) by many of the contributors from the Terrorism Research Center. We have to give these individuals unique credit, because they have been in the space since before 9/11 which makes them quite rare indeed. There are only a few of us out there, surrounded by a sea of newcomers. (And while we hasten to add many of the newcomers are themselves quite professional, the old hands are well worth knowing.) TRC has also recently caught our attention for a unique Red Cell training effort in conjunction with Blackwater. We might well have chosen to attend had we not just spent far too much time in austere environs, eating poorly prepared goat and lamb, and losing our hearing to gunfire and explosions. Plus, we just shaved our beards and are not eager to go back to that state of dress again... Maybe next time.

There may well be others we have missed today, and deserve our attention. We will endeavor to present these to you as they come to our notice.