Al-Jazeerah does give a platform to Iraqi dissidents, but they also do ask tough questions of, e.g. Sadr's representatives. Anyway, there are no grounds under the interim constitution (which guarantees freedom of speech) for the government to close the offices of a news organization. It is not an auspicious start for the new Iraq, and these kinds of measures, once taken, become foundational.
Juan Cole notes that the new "democratic" Iraqi government is attempting to ban (jam?) Al-Jazeerah's satellite signals. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.
Speaking of banned, both Sprint and T-mobile (see full entry) customers claim to have been shut out of the txtmob sms service during the RNC. Of course, I don't know if I missed any txtmob messages, but I felt like I was getting a lot of them. I never did hear from the Seahorse Liberation Army (I was anonymously asked to join) but maybe I was supposed to, and I didn't get the message. I'll keep you updated if I find anything out.
Txtmob.com is licensed under the Creative Commons GPL, but I can't find a link to download the code. Please comment if you find it, I'd love to see what makes it tick.
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