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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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October 27, 2002
Yeah, just where the heck IS Raed?
There's a web journal called "Where Is Raed" apparently written on the sly by a couple of regular Joes in Iraq, specifically Baghdad. It fascinates me on a couple of general grounds.
First, I'm damned curious what people in Iraq (and the whole Middle East, for that matter) really think of the US. This looks like an invaluable window into this part of the world. Do they mostly even kind of half believe the Baath party American Satan thing? Do they anxiously await us to come "liberate" them, as our government generally insists they will? Raed seems to welcome our prospective liberation- if perhaps with some trepidation. "Ha. Bomb us already, stop pussyfooting."
The other fascinating thing: how do we know this site is as it claims? It is getting recognition and links from various blog sites, and comments back on them. But how do we know this site is actually written by Iraqis? Could it be a CIA put-up, a propoganda ploy? That would not strike me as overly farfetched. How would we know the difference? It puts me in mind of the epistemological hall of mirrors that is the Orson Welles movie "F Is for Fake."
The site looks believable. Also, however, I WANT to believe. This alone makes me a little suspicious. They have a somewhat cynical and fatalistic tone that I'd find likely. There are cryptic personal notes. The use of the English language is convincingly rough. But does that really mean that it's real? If someone at the CIA were trying to construct a convincing fake Iraqi website for our domestic consumption, it would probably look somewhat like this. If "Raed" is a fake, it's a fairly convincing one.
Raed can't really be expected to prove himself. He's writing stuff that would get him shot in a second if Hussein's goons found him. So, he can't very well put a real name and address where we could send him a postcard; he's straight out of the underground. Only this ain't the American "underground" where you have an idiot punk rock band in an obscure basement club that the straights just don't care about. This would be more the kind of underground where you must purposely hide your subversive activities because the straights will SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE if you are found out.
Any y'all out in webland can tell me how to properly analyze Raed, let me know.
posted by Al at 10/27/2002 10:29:00 PM
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