| Salam Pax, I hope you’re safe |
Salam Pax is becoming an online celebrity, and I’m not even sure he knows that. The past 24 hours I’ve been getting lots of email about him, and even was contacted by several journalists. Salam, I just hope you’ll get out of this hell which is Baghdad right now alive and well, with all your family and friends ok, too. Then, you’re going to handle a huge amount of attention.
Thanks to Jim Ancona, from Boylston, MA (USA) for sending me an updated copy of Salam’s front page. If you have difficulties reaching his site, like I have, you can check out my local ‘mirror’.
Ho, and to all you journalist who worried if salam is real or not, in addition to taking my word for it, you can check out Paul Boutin’s investigation. He did a real research and tracking to confirm this.
BTW, if you’re up for a little laugh about the crrent and past of the Iraq war, you just HAVE to get Between Iraq and a Hard Place which was broadcased on British channel 4. I believe you can find a better version on kazaa/emule etc. then the low quality video you get on the official site.
PS - Seems some journalists now asks if I’m real. Jeez, some people just watch too many Martix reruns.
Update: Noticed on Imshin that you can load Salam’s site by using http://dearraed.blogspot.com. Great, maybe I’ll be able to remove the ‘mirror’ page soon.
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Hi,
I found you via Letter From Gotham. I’ve been reading Salam’s blog for several months. It never occurred to me that he might not be for real until someone else mentioned it then I considered the possiblity that he might be a fake but not for long because he just seems real to me. I don’t have any actual evidence other than instinct but (not meaning to brag) I think I have good instincts for things like that. I feel that if he was a fake it would be so obvious no one would have ask.
I worry about him being so well known. I wish journalists would just shut up about him. Don’t they realize the danger they could put him in? Or don’t they care?
Yea I know what you mean. Salam already took down his site once after being mentioned at Reuters.
I keep having second thoughts about placing this ‘mirror’ page, but it currently turns out that half the world CAN access it. Seems some DNS servers (which also cover my region, so it seems) cant redirect to the site.
I hope the whole war will be over soon, and who knows. Maybe there won’t be a need for him to hide when Saddam is gone! Holding my fingers crossed…
It appears that Iraqi internet is set up so that internally it is a regular IP network using the private IP address ranges of 10.x.x.x. Everybody in this private IP network has no external IP address and must use the Iraqi state sponsored proxy server at 62.145.94.220. The proxy machine runs Windows 2000. Many domain names resolve to these internal addresses and link to them on the internet. They also use piss poor ways of overcoming placing these internal address links on the internet by having one link that resolves to an internal address webmail.uruklink.net[10.0.0.16], and another mail.uruklink.net[62.145.94.16] for external connections.
The site http://www.uruklink.net/ is down, but http://uruk.uruklink.net/ is up. These addresses used to point to the same place. This leads me to believe that the military is enguaging in some type of DNS-based attack to disable Iraqi Internet News. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/06/iraq_geeks/index1.html
Salam has either lost power/this internal IP network has been disabled/phone lines knocked out(do they use dialup, what is the connection with arabsat?)/whatever. This is definately a problem inside the borders of Iraq. Personally, I hope he is just in hiding from the "shock and awe."
Interesting: http://62.145.94.40/ There are "levels" in Iraqi party/military hierarchy?
62.145.94.40 is a cisco router, levels = user priv level
Any speculation on what the "4567" post was all about on Salam’s blog? It disappeared after a short time March 21. Anyone else see it?
Salam, Allah help you & all Muslims I want to know only what is your opinion about this war, do you think that the war is only way of you & your peoples freedoms
to SALAM
i hope you are doing okay in Iraq now, i just hope you provide us more info about the war with picture of humanitarian violents against people of Iraq, consider this as your way against the US INVASION. what do you think Cipax, do you think SALAM heard or see the messages ??
There is a Talk of the Town item about Salam in the current issue of The New Yorker. It gives out even more details about him.
Given his statements about his government, I have no doubt that he would be in big trouble if they find him.
I, too, hope he is safe and that we can hear more from him. With a little editing, his blog would make an excellent book (forgive my old media way of thinking).
His recent continued silence may just be the better part of valor (i.e. saving one’s own ass). But I’m hoping it’s just technical problems, family situations, dirty laundry (literally), or some other semi-mundane reason. My worst-case scenario has the Iraqi government not being particularly aware of him until the war started, and then deciding he was a definite PR liability, and then. . .I don’t want to go there (and I can imagine Rumsfeld doing something similar, for similar reasons).
I hope you will be back, Salam, but as a fellow atheist, I certainly don’t want or need a martyr. But I also fully expect you have no interest in becoming one! Watch your ass. I don’t know if you realize how important you’ve become. And I think you will have a very bright future as a writer, if you can get thru this particularly shitty period of world history intact. Take care.
You know, who or what Salam is has become irrelevant. A real human
being is behind this ‘name’. He
is the voice of countless other
innocents trapped in Baghdad.
Maybe it is a blessing that this
is happening. Maybe WAR and its
horrors will become more real for
Americans and the world. While
we worry about them, let’s all
try to prevent more of this in the
future.
SALAM/PAX/PEACE
I hope he is safe.