{"id":361,"date":"2009-05-27T18:37:21","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T18:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/05\/the-two-michaels-totten-and-yo.html"},"modified":"2009-05-27T18:37:21","modified_gmt":"2009-05-27T18:37:21","slug":"the-two-michaels-totten-and-yo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/05\/the-two-michaels-totten-and-yo.html","title":{"rendered":"the two Michaels: Totten and Yon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaeltotten.com\/\">Michael Totten<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelyon-online.com\/\">Michael Yon<\/a> are two independent journalists who travel to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle East hot spots (notably Lebanon) on their own dime, embed with the military, and strike out on their own with local guides, They then take amazing photos the likes of which you&#8217;ve never seen, and write incredible, cogent commentary and analysis. You might disagree with what they have to say but they make you think &#8211; and they make you <em>see<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They are worth your time. And they could use your support, if you like what you see. And I suspect you will, indeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Totten and Michael Yon are two independent journalists who travel to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle East hot spots (notably Lebanon) on their own dime, embed with the military, and strike out on their own with local guides, They then take amazing photos the likes of which you&#8217;ve never seen, and write incredible, cogent&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[121,474,26],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-read-this","tag-foreign-policy","tag-media","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>the two Michaels: Totten and Yon - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"the two Michaels: Totten and Yon - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michael Totten and Michael Yon are two independent journalists who travel to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle East hot spots (notably Lebanon) on their own dime, embed with the military, and strike out on their own with local guides, They then take amazing photos the likes of which you&#8217;ve never seen, and write incredible, cogent&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/05\/the-two-michaels-totten-and-yo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-27T18:37:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aziz Poonawalla\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"the two Michaels: Totten and Yon - City of Brass","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"the two Michaels: Totten and Yon - 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Aziz Poonawalla","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb","name":"Aziz Poonawalla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","caption":"Aziz Poonawalla"},"description":"Aziz Poonawalla is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}