The NEW New York?

I read a very interesting post from Baghdad Burning today. She started out telling a story about her local grocer who sets up a roadside stand each day, selling to all of the people on the street. He is quite an intelligent man, always up for political talk as well as local gossip. I found this part to be especially poignant:

"I shook my head and sighed. 'So do you still think the Americans want to turn Iraq into another America? You said last year that if we gave them a chance, Baghdad would look like New York.' I said in reference to a conversation we had last year. E. gave me a wary look and tried to draw my attention to some onions, 'Oh hey- look at the onions- do we have onions?' "

I am so addicted to reading this blog because it gives me a portal to a world that I can hardly imagine. Yes, my uncle is serving there at Camp Victory (soon to return home!), but that is only one side of the story. He gets an Americanized view of it all, from the food in the mess hall to the attitudes on the street. There's no way he could get an objective view -- the Iraqis for the most part resent the hell out of Americans, and of course they act differently around them.

But this blogger, she lives there -- day in, day out, she sees what is going on. The way she writes is very straightforward and easy to follow, while at the same time makes such an impact.

"I feel like I have my finger on the throbbing pulse of the Iraqi political situation every time I visit Abu Ammar. You can often tell just how things are going in the country from the produce available at his stand. For example, when he doesn’t have any good tomatoes we know that the roads to Basra are either closed or really bad and the tomatoes aren’t getting through to Baghdad. When citrus fruit isn’t available during the winter months, we know that the roads to Diyala are probably risky and oranges and lemons couldn’t be delivered."

I think I might explore this more in-depth for my final presentation for my online journalism class. In today's set of presentations, I discovered that another blogger in the class chose to present on political bloggers as well, and covered a lot of the topics which I outlined in my powerpoint presentation. Ah well, I guess doing it all over will be good for me -- real world experience, if you will.