Blogger has been worryingly glitchy today.
It might just be some random problem of my computer or my local connection, but I easily get paranoid about such things as: Blogspot blogs being unavailable (even temporarily) via Anonymouse; Blogspot blogs being (even temporarily) unavailable on Firefox (via the cunning re-routing 'hack' popularized by Yee); Blogger itself being (even temporarily) unavailable for the creation of new posts. It is tempting to suppose that this is the Kafka Boys flexing their claws, toying with us like a cat with a dazed mouse, as a prelude to an intensified Internet clampdown around the end of the month.
It probably doesn't help that Blogger is now part of the Google empire. Last year, the whole Google operation (including G-Mail) in China got closed down for a week or more around the beginning of June, and there was severe disruption and slowing of connection speeds for a full month. Several guys at the American IT company where I used to work (this was not actually the armourers of government censorship here, Cisco - although some of them had previously worked there) confidently maintained that this was not directly the result of a 4th-June-related government crackdown but of an opportunistic 'denial of service attack' (probably orchestrated, they speculated, by Baidu, the leading player in the Chinese search engine market) that took advantage of the keyword filters being imposed in regard to the events surrounding that date. An intriguing, plausible-sounding conjecture.
It's 18 years ago this year. The new kids starting at University this September were born in that year. I think that makes it, potentially, an especially resonant anniversary. And, of course, it's only one year till the Olympics. The CCP leadership are crapping their pants.
I don't expect anything to happen at all - by way of protest or remembrance, that is. More's the pity. But I do expect the government to do its damnedest to stop too many foreigners blogging from here over the next couple of months.
So, if I go silent for a while..... that will be the reason.
2 comments:
It's like the crazy girl in college, every time I think she's too unstable and I can't stay with her another day, we get a few weeks together when everything clicks and it's smooth sailing...then, trouble. I swear I'm going to leave, but I keep going back.
This is my relationship with blogspot, thanks to the Firewall.
Let the inanity began.
Of course, there is a theory that neurotic women are more fun in the sack. I don't think I subscribe to that myself.
Anyway, I'm not sure that Blogger is really giving us the 'good sex' to deserve our loyalty.
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