The most recent issue of the New York Review of Books has a fascinating piece by Michael Massing on a blog run by Iraqi journalists that work for McClatchy Newspapers, one of the few outfits that has kept a Mideast bureau despite its fall into the black hole of massive media consolidation.
Inside Iraq consists of intense, personal accounts of day-to-day life for these Iraqi journalists, who mask their identities in order to avoid the death threats that many Iraqis receive for helping Americans. The blog posts include fears of being gunned down by Americans for driving to close to convoys as they travel to and from work, intense encounters with American and Iraqi soldiers randomly searching their homes, their cars, the details of their lives, what it’s like living without electricity for hours on end, day after day. (While here we whine way at PG&E…) All the essential details of life in Iraq that have been irrevocably altered by the war.
It’s scary, tense reading, and puts a real face on and beating heart in this war, which is sorely lacking from so much media coverage, as Massing points out in his article.
Apropos for today’s New Hampshire primary, a Jan. 3 post includes a plea to Americans to choose our next candidate wisely: “…Your choice will determine the main lines for our life … Yes your choice will change our life for good or for bad,” writes Jenan.
We hear you. I hope.