Monday, August 23, 2004

Unconfirmed Identity



Okay it is officially 100% unconfirmed. Salam Pax is non-confirmedly back, non-confirmedly online and non-confirmedly in Baghdad/Najaf. Yeah really, with great color coordination and a non-confirmedly sexy flak vest. Okay well i'm biased and i love that shade of orange except that ever since Guantanamo coordinates started producing prison jumpsuits in it i'm starting to wonder if next seasons summer range ought to go pastel instead.

Anyway this post's production credits; to ihath for spooky prescience, to F. in Amsterdam (whoever you are) for the un-confirmed original link, to khalid for not confirming it, and to Jeffrey who loves linking things without verifying his source material and like a dog who can't put down a schtick will probably never let me forget that he posted about this before i did. No credit to me. I deserve a big fat kick up the bum for not confirming things and for not checking my hotmail junk folder. Note; if you use hotmail check what junk it's filtering out, god may be trying to get through to not confirm stuff. Oh, one last little credit to Jeff Jarvis for being hopelessly sceptical. What would the web be without such vigilant cynism.

And remember, you never heard it confirmed here first.

Posted by Hello

6 Comments

#8/23/2004 03:13:00 am Assalam Aleikom Anonymous Anonymous

Like Jeff Jarvis, I was wary of this new blog claiming to be written by Salam Pax -- especially because it popped up right after Ihath lamented his absence. I said I was suspicious and asked my readers to evaluate his blog and compare notes.

Then, two nights ago, around 12:10 AM, I happened to be listening to the BBC when I heard a live interview with Salam Pax in Najaf, exactly where the blogger claiming to be Salam Pax said he was headed to. That was the first bit of evidence suggesting the blog's authenticity.

Of course, there was the sentence structure and lexical choices in the blog itself. I won't bore you with the history of textual criticism, but a few passages revealed the unmistakable "fingerprint" of Salam Pax. If it were the work of an imposter, I reasoned, they would have to possess a very high degree of mimicry, one rarely found in the blogosphere.

Anyway, here is what I wrote on my comments pages yesterday:

I've read the blog and it really sounds like Salam Pax. His brand of humor is kind of like a fingerprint.

>There is a very big area in the city which is called “Chawader” which means tents, this is what it was. These were people who came with very little money to the city, mainly from the southern Shia areas and the government didn’t give a fuck to what was going on down there. It quickly became a slum. And don’t even think about upward mobility if you are from there. The moment people hear you are from there they wrinkle their noses and look somewhere else.

>They take us to the mosque to show us what they received as donations from Falluja; I was made to film a guy on crutches holding an RPG launcher. He says he was injured in the hip during the “first Sadir Intifada” and G is taken to photograph a kid sitting in a wheel chair holding, yup you guessed it, an RPG launcher.

>I don’t get the thing these people have for RPG launchers. The kids there, they don’t have little plastic guns to play with like you would expect from all good kids of guerrilla fighters but they carry home made RPG toys. Bless them.

See what I mean?

Anyway, check it out. I've probably read all of early blogs and I read the book that came out. I was suspicious at first but now I really think it is indeed Salam Pax.

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#8/23/2004 04:52:00 am Assalam Aleikom Blogger ihath

I am glad I am not the only one who thinks this is spooky.

 
#8/23/2004 03:51:00 pm Assalam Aleikom Blogger emigre

ha Jeffrey!

gotcha. notice how i posted a link to your blog in the production credits. this is so that people can click on it and go diectly to your weblog, yes your, weblog. nifty huh. this saves you the trouble of moving your copy & paste finger and spamming my comments.

 
#8/23/2004 06:32:00 pm Assalam Aleikom Anonymous Anonymous

Emigre,

Oh Lord, how low can you go? This is nuts. I explain my reasoning concerning the question of the authenticity of Salam Pax's blog and because I copied a short section that I had already written on my own blog you charge me with spamming?

Whew!

Your hairbun might just be a bit too tight today.

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#8/23/2004 06:57:00 pm Assalam Aleikom Blogger emigre

Jeffrey

i am the limbo queen, i can go as low as trolling my own blog and lower. heh. love baiting you, buddy.

;)

 
#8/23/2004 07:11:00 pm Assalam Aleikom Anonymous Anonymous

Emigre,

Okay, that's cool. Good response. I'm smiling as I type this.

You're an Aussie, right? Can you explain to me how a country of around 20 million has such a kick-arse (pathetic attempt to clean up my language) sports tradition?

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