The Machinery of Night

Posted 3:40 PM by Angie Schultz

Salam Pax on CNN

Oh my goodness! They just mentioned Salam Pax on CNN Headline News. They called him a "mysterious observer". This was in their teaser at the half hour mark; they haven't actually done the report yet.

UPDATE: OK, the segment's run now, at 5:30pm Central. This was on their "Hotwired" segment, Erica Hill reporting. They said that Salam is providing "compelling reports", and noted that "Salam Pax" is Arabic and Latin for "peace". Said that Salam is a 29-year-old architect (which I didn't know, must not have read that post). Many people have wondered whether he's for real, they said, but mentioned Diane's efforts to validate his identity (such as it is). I think they said the two had an "online relationship", which is technically true, but generally construed differently.

They showed pictures of the webpage (the latest post, unfortunately none of the ones he's put up with interesting pictures), and gave out the URL. Hill read it wrong (spelling it out dear_read rather than dear_raed), but they put it up correctly on the screen. Moments later they verbally corrected the spelling.

I never discovered whether he found Raed. I thought this was a "missing" friend, but some posts I read indicated that he was just abroad, and recent posts speak of Raed wandering around town with Salam and another friend.

Up at the Headline News site, the last "Hotwired" segment they have is March 12.

UPDATE II: By the way, Hill said the word "blog" without bothering to explain what that meant. We're now officially obsolete.

UPDATE III: I meant to say that I hoped Saddam's goons have their hands full with other matters at present, with no energy to spare hunting Salam down.

UPDATE IV, 3/25/03: Now the BBC has gotten in on the act. Their tech reporter did some digging on Salam's email headers.