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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Faurot who wrote (34107)	1/3/2004 8:44:20 AM
From: Rick Faurot	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

US military personnel blocked from accessing Electronic Iraq Jo Wilding, Electronic Iraq, 1 January 2004 A fluorescent orange cigarette end tumbled down the street like a single bead from the occasional necklaces of fairy lights put up for new year, shaken loose by the force of the bomb, gunfire echoing in its aftermath. It was close enough this time, at the expensive Nabil restaurant on Arasat. Why? I don't know. People say, because it's expensive, people from the CPA go there, but of course Iraqi people go there too. "What do you call those people?" Omar asked. "I mean, they are not the resistance. They are killing more Iraqi people than Americans. The ones who attack the CPA, of course they are the resistance, but why are they bombing restaurants and killing so many Iraqis?" Mohammed was the same, full of sadness, unable to understand. How does this random killing undermine the occupation. The last couple of days there have been attacks on convoys of humvees which have killed an undisclosed number of American soldiers and at least one Iraqi child each time. "It is chaos. No one has control now." Again the Iraqi people are caught between violent forces over which they have no control. Long crushed between Saddam and the violence of sanctions, now they are trapped between US military and the armed opposition. Of course when you invade a country you have to expect people to fight back but, whichever side you are on, it's not legitimate to be careless with the lives of innocent bystanders and civilians. The US responds with mass arrests, detention without charge and collective punishments as in Samara where about 100 men were rounded up from all the buildings surrounding one which was damaged in a bombing a couple of days ago. Midnight was celebrated, nonetheless, with gunfire, flares and fireworks and Hamoudi's news that they are waiting for confirmation that his wife is pregnant with their first child. Web administrators in one of the military bases in Baghdad have blocked access to the Electronic Iraq website. They do this for sites deemed "unnecessary", including those of "advocacy groups", which they've decided that eIraq is. Any soldiers reading may be interested to know that, unless they've also blocked Google, you can still get access to blocked sites by clicking on the cached version of the site, essentially a giant mirror of the Internet. This was a trick we learnt just before the war, shortly before the Iraqi government discovered it too and firewalled Google as well. If they do block Google then you'll have to do what the Iraqis did and develop some hacking skills, unless of course you accept that there are certain things which, for the good of your country, you simply can't know or think about. electroniciraq.net