After Gil Scott-Heron.
Or, as my friend Non likes to call him, Lung Scott-Egret (or the variant B and I like: Lung Pict-Egret). From the UC Berkeley J-School's intellectual property weblog comes Revolution is not an AOL keyword.
categories: x-syndicate
5:17:36 PM 
say what []
Instapundit has his doubts about the identify of Raed. His comments prompted me to echo him, though:
These are very interesting posts, but the question isn't so much is Glenn real, or in Tennessee. It's whether he's really an ordinary American as he claims, or something else (conceivably, on either side). And that's much harder to know. That's the issue with intelligence -- facts are easier to figure out than motivations, but motivations usually matter as much as discernable facts.Glenn points to Jason Kottke's discussion of Raed.
categories: metablog
4:54:48 PM say what []
So, as I mentioned a while back, Textpattern reports on what happens when you ping Weblogs.com. Ordinarily, you see this message:
Article posted
Weblogs.com says: Thanks for the ping. We checked and found that the “x-ism” weblog has changed, so it will appear in changes.xml next time it is updated.
(The link, though, is rendered as raw HTML, as I gather that Textpattern either decodes or reencodes it.)
If you post again within five minutes, when your blog software tries to ping Weblogs.com again, the message changes. Again, Textpattern reports it this way:
Article postedCute, huh?
Weblogs.com says: Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every five minutes. It’s cool that you’re updating so often, however, if I may be so bold as to offer some advice—take a break, you’ll enjoy life more.
categories: metablog x-syndicate
4:18:18 PM say what []
This was in my inbox this morning:
Subject: in Erbil for an hour
I'm back to Erbil city since half an hour ago to check out on the house, we are now in a small village in the mountains that is one hour and half far from Erbil.. its a big crowd in a house that belongs to my brother-in-law's sister ... few family are stuffed in few rooms, so inconvenient but it is fine.. at least safe! the city is pretty much empty and you can feel how vacant it is! it makes me sad to see that! but yet there are policemen in the city that makes you feel things are under control yet! thanks God!!
we are listening to the news all time, if there are power then through TV otherwise a radio can do! anxiety and worry is the atmosphere all day time !!
Seems the war pace is too slow than expected.... people all are disappointed about that.. we wished the war to be faster than that to get back to usual life... to see an end to war fear... to get in touch with rest of family and beloved people and see how are they! as longer this war will take time as worse people's situation will get to! people are making jokes saying that seems Saddam will finish up US and Bush this time!! We all know it must be hard to make this war fast ending.. there must be lot difficulties and so on... but people here got fed up and wish it to get to an end.. a good ending that a day we will wake up and Saddam is no more there and we can start a new life!
Baghdad is not in a good shape! we already knew that in war time no one is allowed to leave home unless very high emergency cases and that will be managed by special units assigned to every neighborhood by the governement... streets in Bagdad are empty and people are terrified of the big blasting sounds.. I wonder how are my little nieces in Baghad!! they must be terryfied! :(
Well.. thats its for now, I'll try to write once again when I visit erbil to check on houses.. I hope this Internet to be working then as it does now!
Keep safe and say hi to B for me.
categories: x-syndicate
12:17:37 PM say what []
Late last year I had been encouraging Delshad to start a blog, but he has been on the move most of the time since then. Yesterday he wrote from Erbil:
Dear Xian,
I'm now Erbil and most possibly move to some village or town far from here... I really don't like to do that nor my family or the whole people in Kurdistan but we have fears from chemical weapon use against us or even bombed by Saddam if the American troops are inside cities.. there are lot risks to fear and we can't jeopardize... I'll see if we can stay here, I don't like leaving home and going to somewhere else !!
I was reading the blogs, it's really interesting and I would love to have one, but I don't think I can update it at all in the recent period, I don't think I'll have access to Internet at all till things will settle down here. I think you don't know that I am back to work but in a different city's office and I am back to Erbil now to join family as we are living an emergency case and most staff left home for that case.. I was supposed to be one of the key staff to stay till last moment but thanks Allah they realized I can't be away of my family in such hard days and let me go!!
Maybe when I'm back to work when first light ray shows up after the war I will start up a blog to let the people out there know how is it down here!
I'll keep in contact soon when I can... thanks for
your good wishes.. thanks.
Delshad
I hope he does...
categories: x-syndicate
12:17:29 PM say what []
Here's the message I got from Delshad on Tuesday, sent to all his online friends:
Dear friends,
This is just a very short note to tell you that I'm now leaving back to Erbil where then I will go with the family to some village - seems the war is already starting and the family needs me to be there with! I think I will not have access to Internet for sometime till this risky situation is over and things get settled somehow!
I'll write back to you all again once I get access to internet. Thanks for your support all the way .. thank you all.
Lot hugs to you all.
Delshad
categories: x-syndicate
12:17:22 PM say what []
Long story short, I have a friend in Iraq named Delshad. He is a Kurd and he lives in northern Iraq, in the northern no-fly zone. Last fall he was trying to get out of the country, but only got as far as Syria and then returned.
With the war on, I thought I'd post some excerpts from some of his messages to me, just to add his voice to the cacophony online as well as to give people a glimpse of life on the ground in Iraq.
Here's part of what he sent me in January when he had to give up on his attempt to get out of the country.
categories: salonika x-syndicate
12:17:16 PM say what []
