The Brown Moses Blog Fundraiser Launches!

A number of you may already know that a couple of weeks ago I was offered a position as an open source analyst which would have required me to give up work Syria, and other related topics, effectively ending the Brown Moses Blog.  I was on the verge of accepting the job, and announced my decision on Twitter.

The response to that announcement took me by surprise, with many people offering to support the blog in whatever way they could, so I took the decision to turn down the job offer and instead start a fundraising campaign with the hope of raising enough money to allow me to work on the blog as a full-time job for the next six months, instead of part-time like I do at the moment,.

I've now set up a Indiegogo campaign in the hope of raising £6000, which will be enough to keep me blogging full-time for the next six months.  That'll mean more blog posts, more time for me to analyse the vast number of videos coming out of Syria, and hopefully more time to explore other areas.  My other aim is to start releasing regular videos looking at different aspects of the conflict, which will hopefully make the most of the many Youtube videos I've collected over the past year.

If the Indiegogo campaign goes well I'm also hoping my first stretch goal will be to start Brown Moses Arabic, a separate blog with all the posts I make on Syria translated into Arabic, as well as a separate Twitter account.  It's always seemed to me slightly perverse that I'm writing about a conflict that's of such great interest to the Arab world, yet all my work is in English, so I'm hoping if I reach my first stretch goal I'll be able to go ahead with it.  

If you want to read more about me and my blog there's been a number of articles published on that subject in recent weeks, some of which are listed below

The Guardian - How Brown Moses exposed Syrian arms trafficking from his front room

Channel 4 News - Brown Moses: the British blogger tracking Syrian arms

CNN - In his living room, blogger traces arms trafficking to Syria

Deutsche Welle – Interview with Eliot Higgins

Here's some articles for non-English speakers

NOS TV - Britse blogger stort zich op Syrische wapenhandel (Dutch)

ARD TV - Gestern Kosovo, heute Syrien (German)

Radio Netherlands Worldwide – Brown Moses – A Reliable Source Of Information On The Weapons In Syria (Arabic)

Sky Italia - Siria, il blogger che racconta il lato oscuro della guerra (Italian)

Vercernji List - Kako sam otkrio da Hrvati šalju oružje u Siriju (Croatian)

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com