Aranfoolcaytar

Update 2006-10-19:
Look no further, friends:

There is Riverbend!
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A bandwagon is quickly becoming apparent in the blogosphere: People are worrying about Riverbend.

These bandwagons, of course, are self-amplifying - the more people post about it, the more widely the worry spreads, leading to even more posts. So this amount of fear doesn't need to mean much. It could just be people scaring each other. Add this to the fact that Riverbend has frequently had blackouts of electricity and connectivity, leaving people waiting for weeks, and the whole situation is less bleak than it appears.

But I can't persuade myself of that. Even after the third or fourth time of posting "Where is Riverbend?" and then sighing in relief at the next post, the fears are immediately back.

Did she get kidnapped by the new religious brigades? Imprisoned by the Americans? Murdered? Even if nobody harmed her intentionally (and goodness, the world and especially that country is full of people who could and would love to do so if they found her) she could have been a bystander in one of the constant assassinations and bomb attacks. Or "friendly" fire at a checkpoint.

What she did and is hopefully still doing is amazing. She is risking her life and sanity to publish independent journalism in the most dangerous country to do so. People spit at her from all sites for their own agendas; she writes on.

As the result of a discussion on an online forum, I once got the following private message by someone in an apparent case of mistaken identity (he thought I was Riverbend... amusing).

hey fuck you ass hole. suck my american cock you douche bag. i hope you go to hell for making america look bad, faggot

This gave me an insight into the kind of things that actually reach their intended recipient (and, of course, into the intelligence of the average Bushist. But that's not new). And she never gave up blogging.

I just hope that nothing happened.