Friday, March 21, 2003

Thanks Adam for finding this indelible image war comment #1. Today's comment on the war in Irak: [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 2:41:51 AM    Comment [] Is the Baghdad Blogger for real? Paul Boutin says 'probably' "fact-checked the Iraqi blogger" [Daypop Top 40] A: Probably. Speculation continues that Dear Raed, the weblog of a young man in Baghdad who posts under the name Salam Pax, is a hoax, perhaps even a disinformation campaign by the CIA or Mossad. A month after Computerworld published a story quoting a "terrorist" who turned out to be a one of their former writers pranking them, it would be foolish not to wonder. [...] A traceroute on Salam's most recent originating address got as far as Transtrum, a unit of the Lebanon-based ISP TerraNet. Requests for further routing info from Transtrum went unanswered, but senior network engineers who looked at the headers for me in the US think they're legitimately from Iraq. Details on Iraq's network can be found in this Salon story by Brian McWilliams, the same hacker/journalist who duped Computerworld and cracked the "send email to Saddam" mailbox on Uruklink. - Salam's blog is hosted in Santa Clara, California, at a high speed co-location facility along with the rest of blogspot.com. This seems obvious to Net veterans, but an MSNBC article's wording misled some readers into believing the site is served from Iraq. Salam posts his blog remotely using Blogger's editing software on a PC. That means blogspot.com (aka Pyra, now a division of Google) has IP records of his previous posts in their log files. No luck getting them yet. - Yes, blogspot.com was one of the domains blocked by Iraqi network administrators in January, possibly in response to Slammer. But Salam and other Iraqis know how to use Web proxies and other tricks to get around the blocks. - Salam Pax is a pseudonym composed of the Arabic and Latin words for peace. But he has signed what may be his real name in personal correspondence to another blogger. - At least one American has received a package from Salam, apparently mailed from Jordan where the titular Raed (a friend for whom Salam says he originally created his weblog) lives. - Salam posted this morning to say BBC reports that state radio had been taken over were false. He was right about that. In the end, it's still a matter of faith. Yes, I think he's really in Baghdad. And so far, he's still alive and well. 2:39:09 AM    Comment [] Josh in Kurdistan's hilarious & true observations of US media on the ground The Media. So Syria threatened to kill the official who had given them permission to cross the border, and that got CNN to move. [The Other Side] [...] There a lot of serious, professional journalists here, several of whom were here (or other parts of Iraq) for the first Gulf War and a few of whom are real experts on the region. There are also a lot of clowns. The worst offenders, naturally, are American TV. A sample of what they[base ']ve done: Last fall, CNN came to Kurdistan through Syria, which used to be the easiest way to get here. Syria gives you a two week visa, and you have to be in and out of Kurdistan in that time. CNN, however, apparently decided it wanted to stay longer. Syria wants to keep decent relations with Iraq and Iraq didn't like CNN being in Kurdistan, so it asked Syria to kick them out, and Syria did, but CNN refused to go. So Syria threatened to kill the official who had given them permission to cross the border, and that got CNN to move. Then Syria closed the border to all journalists. And, this is according to a local who worked with CNN, president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud Barzani personally appealed to the president of Syria to let CNN [^] but no one else! [^] cross the border again. This made the rest of us unloved hacks have to go through a much more difficult procedure to get in through Iran. Now CNN, and several other American TV networks, have hired government press officials at salaries much higher than their government pay to work exclusively for them. These are the people that everyone has to use to get an interview with government officials, and now you have to hope they have enough time to pity you and help you out while they[base ']re taking a break from carrying ABC[base ']s tripod. I[base ']m told this is somewhat of a standard practice in these situations, but that doesn[base ']t make it any less distasteful (not to mention a violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act). One night a couple of weeks ago I couldn[base ']t get to sleep because of the sound of a truck idling loudly in the street below my window. It was unloading sandbags into the breakfast room of the hotel. The next day, following the trail of sand, I saw that it led to the fourth floor of the nine-floor hotel, the one rented by FOX. They have covered every window with sandbags, and a reliable source tells me they paid $5000 for this. Unless they[base ']re expecting Erbil to become another Sarajevo or Beirut (a scenario very far from likely) it[base ']s not clear what exactly they[base ']re protecting themselves against. And I can[base ']t imagine what the people below must think, having survived several wars in the past decades. Now FOX has spearheaded an effort to militarize the whole hotel, shutting off the surrounding streets and, they tell us, when the coalition troops come we will have American and British military guards in the hotel. Why doesn[base ']t this make me feel safer? While there are some assorted anti-American elements here, journalists are not at the top of their list. But soldiers sure will be! And now that there will be some here, right smack in the middle of the city rather than on the base far out in the country, the hotel will be a much juicier target. Thanks, FOX! 1:09:50 AM    Comment [] I'm addicted to this Kurdistan journalist's blog This is Josh Kucera's weblog, called The Other Side. It is the first thing I've seen of the so-called "warblogs" that actually IS a warblog, meaning real reporting from a person ON THE GROUND in a dangerous place. More dangerous than I would like to think, as I watched on CNN tonight as air raid sirens went off about 40 km from Erbil. What Josh is doing is even more sobering to me when I hear that CNN has more than 600 journalists working in the Mideast, covering the Iraq war, but only DOZENS in Kurdistan. Most of the CNN folks are sitting tight in safe places, or places marked safe inside dangerous zones. I will have to quote in here the great post Josh did on the presence of the TV media in Erbil too. It is very funny. When I think of what the blog idealists promise with grassroots journalism in this social movement, I mostly hear talk talk talk. They say they scoop traditional media. They say they can blog things live. They show it by blogging their favorite tech conference. Whoo hoo. Here's a clue: it is a very small cadre of journos who actually spend all of their time covering tech conferences. Most of them are busy beating out their stories the hard way. Oh, and this post of Josh's below, about the exodus from Erbil? I read it on his blog several HOURS before CNN and other sources started filing their stories. I sat down at work that day, read Josh's blog, and then started in on my daily tasks with the tv monitor on near my desk as always. I didn't see this story cross until much later that afternoon. Not that traditional stories are what Josh's focus is on. He has to file those for money. In this blog, his accounts are personal, immediate. And I just think that is so fucking cool... Miasma War Panic in Erbil. Today is the first official day of war panic in Erbil. Yesterday everything looked much like it has since I got here. Today many shops are closed, there are fewer cars in the street and people tell me their neighbors are fleeing the city for towns further towards the Iranian border. My translator's family all left for their hometown of Koy Sanjak, which is closer to the Iraqi lines but which they feel is less of a target. Shopowners are emptying their stores, putting their stuff in more secure locations in case there is looting during the war. Most people... [The Other Side] 1:04:30 AM    Comment []

© Copyright 2003 Miasma. Last update: 25/3/03; 11:33:21 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.