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Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq

Posted by kdawson on from the blood-bombs-and-bullets dept.

jemevans sends us a link to his nonfiction tale of two California cypherpunks who went to Baghdad to seek their fortune and bring the Internet to Iraq. A much abridged version ran in Wired a while back. From the original: "Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company's transactions 'drug deals' — but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old."

9 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Frist Post! by Ubuntu+is+my+God · · Score: -1, Troll

    I'd sign up for that ISP!

  2. Re:Running any infrastructural project... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Gee, thanks for that nugget of wisdom. Got any more? Like, "It gets hot in the dessert"?

  3. Camel jockeys can suck my dick by lick+mi+ballz · · Score: -1, Troll

    niggerz

  4. Re:Need employees by MoralHazard · · Score: -1, Troll

    Hey, flamebait--who let you in here? Anybody got some mod points for this dick?

  5. old, old "news" by br00tus · · Score: -1, Troll
    The first paragraph of this article says "Ryan Lackey...is 26 years old." Which is the age he was in this 2005 Wired article. So this article is not news, it is two years old.

    The article says he was just married - this guy is a war profiteer vulture, I hope the next article I read about him is how his car ran over an IED, possibly winning him the 2007 Darwin Award, a big component of which of course is that he can not breed and will be weeded out of the gene pool.

  6. Re:Need employees by sortius_nod · · Score: -1, Troll

    Why don't you just invade... ahem... "liberate" his house? you know, the right winger solution to everything...

  7. Re:Running any infrastructural project... by Varun+Soundararajan · · Score: 0, Troll

    In Iraq, Sites bomb you.. :)

  8. That's what it's all about for US companies by vandan · · Score: 0, Troll

    First, the army goes in and smashes everything up.

    Then, so-called 'entrepreneurs' enter the country ( only those with US security clearance, mind you ), and 'reconstruct' the place, many using US taxpayer money. Of course there are many crimes to this process, but one major one is that this prevents Iraqis from being able to pull themselves out of the hell they got bombed into, as all the development is by foreigners, and therefore all the profits are exported. All the materials come from outside the country - there is no stimulation for the local economy, and meanwhile unemployment sits at 80%.

    These 'entrepreneurs' deserve to be blown to pieces by a roadside bomb. They should get out of the country and allow the Iraqis to rebuild, on their own terms, with their own labour, using their own materials, and creating their own assets.

  9. Re:Sensational by meringuoid · · Score: 1, Troll
    You will never hear about these, because "150 Iraqis die in a car-bomb blast" is more sensational than "15 Iraqi children have their sight restored due to help from US military doctors".

    You'd prefer it if the media dwelt on the n people saved from blindness, rather than the 10n people killed? Strange priorities you have there.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.