April 2009 in Review: Academic Freedom, Imperialism, and Militarization

The top 10 posts for April 2009 and the pattern of visits in many ways continued what was observed for March 2009, concerning in some cases stories that will of course continue to be relevant.

The top post overall was “Sex Beats Money, Hitler Beats Gandhi: More Google Insights” (11 April), with 960 views.

The second most visited post concerned Ward Churchill’s court victory, “The Verdict is in: WARD CHURCHILL WINS!” (02 April), with 690 views.

The third most viewed post, and one of my personal favourites, was “Cheb Khaled (خالد حاج ابراهيم), King of Raï (راي‎): Algerian Freedom, Fusion, and Fête” (15 April), with 678 visits.

Related to the second one, the fourth most visited post was “Ward Churchill, George Galloway: Speaking at Concordia University” (01 April), with 660 views.

The fifth most popular post, again one of my own favourites, was “NATO and Afghanistan’s Shia Marriage Law: The Collapse of a Master Narrative” (26 April), with 641 views.

The sixth most popular post was again related to Ward Churchill — “Ward Churchill’s Court Victory: Benjamin Whitmer, Eric Verlo, Michael Roberts, and Juror Bethany Newill” (03 April), with 598 views.

Stemming from Ward Churchill’s talk at Concordia, and another of the occasions where the activity on this blog is connected to the activity of the blogger offline, the seventh most visited post was “On Colonialism as Genocide: Ward Churchill Speaks at Concordia University, Montreal” (17 April), with 597 views, and a video produced for the post.

The eighth most viewed post was related to the top post, dealing with analysis of Google search popularity statistics, this time focused on anthropology: “Worldwide Popular Interest in Anthropology, 2004-2009: Online Search Statistics” (11 April), with 590 views.

The ninth most viewed post concerned the Human Terrain System, specifically John Stanton’s article, “US Army 101st Airborne Investigative Report on Human Terrain System” (02 April), which received 585 views, yet few comments.

Finally, and again related to Ward Churchill, the tenth most popular post was “Ward Churchill’s Victory is Our Victory” (02 April), with 582 views.

Overall views for the month of April were essentially the same as those for each month this year, with a total of 17,800 on-site views (not including syndicated views from readers using RSS feed readers), and an average of 600 on-site visits per day (again, not including RSS nor email subscriptions).

I am leaving out the activity of this project on YouTube, Twitter, Vodpod, and Vimeo, leaving that for the end of the year.

One interesting note: the top referrer to this blog for this past quarter was Abu Muqawama, a counterinsurgency blog. The second most prominent referrer, thanks to Lorenz Khazaleh, was antropologi.info. Canons to the left of me, cannons to the right of me…