Baghdad bloggers: Anyone else notice?

[Norquist Nemesis]

I have Riverbend, Raed, and a few others bookmarked. But Riverbend hasn't posted since 6/28 and Raed a bit later. I've bookmarked about 5 bloggers and they've just...stopped!

Has anyone else noticed this or is it just my tinfoil hat?

Is there a blackout? Any news?

[NMDemDist2]

1. yes I have noticed and yes I have wondered n/t

[TXvote]

2. Maybe it's burnout

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64088,00.html

[leftofthedial]

3. handover

sovereignty

[seventhson]

4. Maybe free speech is illegal now for our soldiers

Iraq national security and all etc

Maybe they are not allowed to just write down their thoughts anymore in that newly free country for anyone else to read.

Slaves were punished for reading and writing too once in America

[leftofthedial]

18. Iraq, post invasion, is the shining beacon of Murkan fascism

for all the world to see.

[Sweetpea]

5. You would think in a population of 25 million

somebody would be blogging somewhere.

[seventhson]

6. or in a population of six billion

only one corporation had the contract to keep tabs of everyone's political and religious beliefs and heritage in Nazi Germany:

the same wonderful corporate folks who run what you are typing on right now: IBM.

the Bushzis control everything

expect the BIGGEST LIES and the most outrageous diversions

and evil

expect it

it is to be expected from these wounded jackals/vultures and parasites

[ronabop]

9. IBM? lol!

I'm on a Mac. Routing through an alcatel. Going to a Cisco DSLAM. Popping out on juniper backbones.

Free yourself from the X86 conspiracy! You don't have to use any of it!

Oh... wait.... my Mac uses an IBM PowerPC CPU.

Damn. Nevermind.

-Bop

[IronLionZion]

12. haha

Apple doesn't make much of anything. You may have an IBM hard drive too and your ISP may have some IBM servers.

[Columbia]

7. Try these

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/

http://iraqataglance.blogspot.com/

http://www.roadofanation.com/blog/

http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/

http://hammorabi.blogspot.com/

[Norquist Nemesis]

8. Thanks! I'll check those...

but I still wonder about the one's I've been following.

[Sweetpea]

10. I was reading the iragata glance blog

the part I find interesting is they are striving for free health care.

[qanda]

13. Could it be because

They've always had it? Just asking.

[Sweetpea]

14. No

According to the post, the elites received great health care under Saddam. But it looks like the last post was last year.

[qanda]

17. I have no doubt that the quality of health care was uneven, but

My question was whether they received free health care. I really don't know, but I thought I heard it somewhere.

[hedda_foil]

11. These are all relatively pro US

Which reinforces the probability that the bloggers who aren't on board with Allawi have been shut down.

[sandraj]

15. I've noticed it too

Riverbend wrote in her blog that it's beastly hot over there right now, and electricity is sporadic:

"Excuses, Excuses...
I have had neither the time, nor the inclination, to blog lately. The weather is, quite literally, hellish. The heat begins very early in the morning with a blazing sun that seems unfairly close to our part of the earth. You'd think, after the sun has set, that the weather would be drastically cooler. This is not the case in Baghdad. After the sun has set, the hot sidewalks and streets emanate waves of heat for several hours, as if sighing in relief.

The electricity has been particularly bad these last two weeks in many areas. For every four hours of no electricity, we get two hours of electricity. And while we should be taking advantage of these two hours to do such things as wash clothes, get the water pump going and blog, we find ourselves sitting around in front of the air conditioner for a couple of hours of bliss, procrastinating and making empty promises to no one in particular."

Salam Pax hasn't posted since April 10, but maybe he's been involved in other projects (i.e., he wrote for the UK Guardian for a while).

[susu369]

16. Glad you brought this up

I've been especially concerned about Riverbend. I know she posted about being weary and without electricity but it's been such a long time since her last post. Hope she is okay.