Return of the Oppressors

Yes - in my still anonymous country of residence, Blogspot is once again being blocked.

It is possible that the paranoid control-freakery of the government has been energized by one particular potentially subversive comment on one particular blog, and that this is the reason for suddenly denying us the whole vast panoply of Blogspot blogs; but I haven't yet heard of any such reason, not even at the level of rumour or wild conjecture.

It is often a mistake to expect a reason out here. Instead of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, this is very much the country of The Random, The Illogical, and The Obtuse.

The last such interruption of service miraculously 'corrected' itself after just a few days; and we frustrated bloggers were left to speculate that the fine young men in the Net Censorship Division down at Kafka Central had simply been playing with some of their new filtering 'toys' and had forgotten to reset all the switches afterwards.

As you can see, I am not in fact prevented from blogging by the present 'block' - since posts to Blogspot are made via Blogger, which is still freely accessible. Nor am I prevented from viewing my finished work - or from reading the few other blogs for which I have developed a fondness - because the pages of Blogspot are easily reached via proxy services like Anonymouse and Proxyline.

Unfortunately.... these proxies do not give you access to any pages with a sign-in feature: so I can't currently read or respond to any comments that any of you might leave me.

Please do not let this dissuade you from commenting! I will catch up with you all one day, I promise. (An increase in the number and diversity of commenters has been one of the more pleasing signs of 'progress' with my blogs over the past few weeks. We've even had chaps look in from places like Kathmandu and Kerala in the last few days! I hope this momentum is not now going to dwindle away again...)

Does anyone happen to know of a "secure proxy", or something similar, which might allow me to access the 'Comments' pages on Blogspot? I have been canvassing all my 'Net Nerd' buddies, but haven't received any answers as yet. [If you do know, please e-mail me. At present, I CAN'T READ YOUR COMMENTS ON HERE!]

[Ooooh - CORRECTION: Yes, you can just tell me in a 'comment', if you like. I had forgotten that all 'comments' are forwarded to one of my e-mail boxes!!]