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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Saying it the way they see it Michael Totten’s latest from Iraq is up and as usual highly recommended:
The Middle East beyond Israel strikingly lacks anything resembling political correctness. I hear much more severe denunciations of radical Islam there than I do in the U.S., and I don’t mean from Americans. I hear it from Arabs, and from Persians and Kurds. I hear it in Lebanon all the time, and in Iraq too.
Sabah Danou walked with Commander Summers and Admiral Driscoll. He’s an Iraqi who works for the multinational forces as a cultural and political advisor in Baghdad. “Look,” he said to me and gestured toward a local man with a long beard and a short dishdasha that left his ankles exposed. “He’s a Wahhabi,” Danou hissed. “He is linked to Al Qaeda. That’s their uniform, you know, that beard and that high-cut dishdasha. God, what pieces of shit those fuckers are.”
In less dissembling mealy-mouthed times, that would simply be described as saying it the ways he sees it.
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The lack of PC is certainly refreshing, but aside from that, I do hope no one automatically takes the views expressed as genuine, or even if they are, as some kind of indication of one’s loyalties. That is the other face of the ME.
Anyone remember an FT TV ad from about 2000 which featured footage of Lenin making a speech to an adoring crowd and an overdub of “We want Deutschmarks, not Karl Marx!”
Well…
We want dishwashers, not dishdashas!
Whilst Totten might actually defend certain publications from the major newsmedia when it comes to reporting on what conditions are in Iraq and other middle eastern nations because he knows many of the reporters, I myself can say without hesitation-
Michael Totten is running rings around entire million dollar operations in terms of insight and news value armed with a tipjar, a laptop and a camera.
I can’t decide whether I’m so excited that technology helps this to happen, or depressed because of how pathetic the major news media is.