Word: samizdat
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During the Cold War, Soviet bloc dissidents had to rely on primitive printing technologies to reproduce samizdat literature in tiny quantities. Today's dissidents living under authoritarian regimes around the world can disseminate their message world wide with the click of a mouse, through blog postings and viral videos. And, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in a recent speech, the United States plans to champion their cause by enabling unprecedented freedom of speech on the Internet, in defiance of all political censorship...
...Also like People Power, many of these latter-day protests have profited from the power of communication to mobilize. Back in 1986, some 1 million marchers who flooded the now iconic Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) were summoned by samizdat radio stations that broadcast a political call to prayer. During the recent mass protests in the former Soviet bloc, it was thumbs tapping out cell-phone text messages that brought crowds onto streets. This year in Iran, Twitter and other social-networking sites have served as the carrier pigeons of incipient revolution...
...addresses scribbled down by a Francophile friend who loved the City of Light so much he practically commuted there from New York. Among the musts were places like Berthillon on the Ile St. Louis and the bistro Chez Georges. For years I passed that list around like samizdat. The idea of tapping into the experiences of globetrotters inspired this special supplement to TIME. We asked Louis Vuitton's Antoine Arnault to share his favorite destinations (one is Roppongi Hills, Tokyo). Peripatetic tennis star Maria Sharapova emphatically recommended the first-class flights on Emirates for their private rooms and candy...
That sort of change wasn't talked about from the podium much, and not at all by Obama. At best it was smuggled in like samizdat poetry in speeches like the one by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, another of the young black innovators. "Democrats don't deserve to win just because Republicans deserve to lose," he said...
...away, a common practice in a country with little regard for legal due process. Authorities also took more from the home than just the comedian. They took his computer, which contained video files of the plight of Nargis survivors. In addition, the security forces seized two DVDs. One was samizdat footage of the diamond-encrusted 2006 wedding ceremony of Than Shwe's daughter; the film highlighted the life of privilege led by the country's ruling elite, even as many Burmese struggle to fill their bellies. The other video was a bootleg of the latest in the Rambo film series...