What Fires You Up?

3/28/2003

 

Salam Pax - "Zipper It!"

From March 25 bloggers, Letter from Gotham and others:

Salam Pax: Zipper It! Joe Katzman

Meryl Yourish makes an excellent point in her email to me today. Many people have been reading Salam Pax's writings about the American airstrikes etc. on Where Is Raed? Please remember: this guy lives in a regime where torture and murder on the most minor pretexts are commonplace. Don't offer details beyond "lives in Iraq" if you write about him, and if any brain-dead reporters or bloggers happen to do so in the next little while, don't link to them.

Saddam's hard boys are kind of busy right now, which means their time to track someone like him down is limited. Flood the net with too much information, however, and you could help make the job easy enough. Remember what these mentions do to Google rankings.

Oh, and "Salam," if you read this blog... the Iraqi regime is more brutal than most, but the usual M.O. in these situations is to begin surveillance. Sometimes directly, sometimes through family. My judgement of what has happened and what's to come says that this will take more than a few days - we're probably talking 2-3 weeks. Going off the air for a while would be a really good idea... no idea what things a desperate regime may find provocative.

You'll have lots of time to blog later.

Salam Pax, the world is thinking of you and your family. Be safe and survive.

* * * * * * *cobalt* * * * * * *

BJ 3/28/2003 04:50:00 AM

3/25/2003

 

There are finally enough reports in from all sources checking the story that "salam pax" is real and has started blogging again. There are long posts today that are interesting to read and sad, of course. When I want to get the latest on him and those reporting on his blog, I go to kartoo.comand type into the search "salam pax" +bloggers. It shows a map of blogs that are reporting and commenting on the "Where is Raed?" story. I was able to look into Paul Boutin's blog update today and it was worth the read. He has a number of still images captured from Iraqi satellite TV. He also put directions into his blog for viewing Iraqi TV on your own system! Good grief! All this reality - hard to take at times. Cobalt wishes her son was not entering the military so soon - middle of May and he begins with Basic. Am picturing the stories of the American POW's and all those wounded and killed and it comes "home" to me. The pilot of the helicopter that crashed last week with so many US and UK soldiers - he was from the city I am currently living in! And what is with the US soldier that rendered the grenade attack on his fellow soldiers??? Insanity prevails.
*******cobalt*******

BJ 3/25/2003 07:05:00 PM