River on the Outside
Well, it's time for yet another post about my favorite Iraqi poster girl -- actually the only one -- though I've never seen a picture of her and don't even know her name, except "Riverbend," as she refers to herself on her often interrupted weblog, Baghdad Burning.
As has happened several times, she is again missing from the Internet airwaves, or should I say computer wires? She hasn't posted anything since October 22, close to five months ago. At that time she and her family had left Iraq and were in Damascus, Syria, along with a million and a half other Iraqi refugees, and also including two and a half million more who have fetched up in other countries. This was after the actions of the Bush bandits five long years ago, to the tune of the leader announcing that the move would bring freedom to all Iraqis, and instead, among many other dire consequences, it led to four million of the Iraqis fleeing in fear of many kinds out of their beloved land, site of the world's first ever civilizations.
As always I wonder what River and her family are doing. I'm confident they're still alive. If Iraq couldn't get them -- and it had plenty of chances -- then how could Syria or anywhere else? But these things can have minds of their own.
The other day Juan Cole, the best source I know of on the situation in Iraq, especially since Riverbend left, moaned the lack of news reports on the still high levels of mayhem in Iraq, and he called on the webloggers to take up the slack. So, immediately I felt personally responsible.
Just kidding.
Earlier in my weblog career I used to post on Iraq regularly. At least I believe I did . I think my recent lack of Iraq postings has partly been because first Riverbend was talking of leaving and then she actually did so. She and the way that she and her family were courageously existing in the heart of the Iraq maelstrom for over four years furnished a personal connection that could easily be felt by those on the outside, as if she were a close friend, and I was far from being the only one that she affected that way, even if she made it clear that she had absolutely no use for Americans.
But that doesn't mean that I don't read Cole every day and check out his daily litany of death and destruction, which is so large and continuous that you have to wonder how Iraq could possibly still be standing. By now half the population must have been found by police in mass graves. Yet a lot of them are still bustling about and toughing out things there as best they can. Twenty-four million must be too many to be easily eradicated by their cousins or by foreign bombers and gunfighters.
Riverbend is probably a Sunni, if she is anything. I say that because I don't remember her being critical of Saddam Hussein or of the Ba'athists. And that must've been why she and her folks had to finally give up and leave Baghdad, because the majority Shi'ites have been busy driving the minority Sunnis out of their neighborhoods.
I hope that River hasn't had to hock her computer yet and soon can get close enough to some amperes to learn that people are still thinking of her, and so she can tell us more of how things look now from the outside. That can be as illuminating as the view from inside the burning belly.
If you don't read anything else today, check out the last two posts on her weblog, the one I mentioned and the one before.
As has happened several times, she is again missing from the Internet airwaves, or should I say computer wires? She hasn't posted anything since October 22, close to five months ago. At that time she and her family had left Iraq and were in Damascus, Syria, along with a million and a half other Iraqi refugees, and also including two and a half million more who have fetched up in other countries. This was after the actions of the Bush bandits five long years ago, to the tune of the leader announcing that the move would bring freedom to all Iraqis, and instead, among many other dire consequences, it led to four million of the Iraqis fleeing in fear of many kinds out of their beloved land, site of the world's first ever civilizations.
As always I wonder what River and her family are doing. I'm confident they're still alive. If Iraq couldn't get them -- and it had plenty of chances -- then how could Syria or anywhere else? But these things can have minds of their own.
The other day Juan Cole, the best source I know of on the situation in Iraq, especially since Riverbend left, moaned the lack of news reports on the still high levels of mayhem in Iraq, and he called on the webloggers to take up the slack. So, immediately I felt personally responsible.
Just kidding.
Earlier in my weblog career I used to post on Iraq regularly. At least I believe I did . I think my recent lack of Iraq postings has partly been because first Riverbend was talking of leaving and then she actually did so. She and the way that she and her family were courageously existing in the heart of the Iraq maelstrom for over four years furnished a personal connection that could easily be felt by those on the outside, as if she were a close friend, and I was far from being the only one that she affected that way, even if she made it clear that she had absolutely no use for Americans.
But that doesn't mean that I don't read Cole every day and check out his daily litany of death and destruction, which is so large and continuous that you have to wonder how Iraq could possibly still be standing. By now half the population must have been found by police in mass graves. Yet a lot of them are still bustling about and toughing out things there as best they can. Twenty-four million must be too many to be easily eradicated by their cousins or by foreign bombers and gunfighters.
Riverbend is probably a Sunni, if she is anything. I say that because I don't remember her being critical of Saddam Hussein or of the Ba'athists. And that must've been why she and her folks had to finally give up and leave Baghdad, because the majority Shi'ites have been busy driving the minority Sunnis out of their neighborhoods.
I hope that River hasn't had to hock her computer yet and soon can get close enough to some amperes to learn that people are still thinking of her, and so she can tell us more of how things look now from the outside. That can be as illuminating as the view from inside the burning belly.
If you don't read anything else today, check out the last two posts on her weblog, the one I mentioned and the one before.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 12:02 AM
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