It's been a long week

Let’s say stupid things.

I’ve just been reading Meeting signals pressure on microblogs from the China Media Project. It’s about the new State Internet Information Office and its antics. This paragraph is classic Doublespeak

At yesterday’s meeting, Wang Chen emphasized that “[we] must thoroughly apply a series of guiding spirits of the central Party in regards to internet construction, development and management, keeping to the guiding principle of ‘positive use, scientific development, management by rule of law and ensuring safety’ …” Wang said the government must “thoroughly give play to the positive role of microblogs in serving society, taking concrete steps to develop and manage [them], working together to preserve a healthy and orderly online communication order, serving the overall work of the government and the Party, and serving the masses.”

Which is basically saying, “We must utterly control everything to the sub-atomic level as usual”. Don’t even get me started on “management by rule of law”, which means “application of the law when it suits us and neglect of the law when it doesn’t”. “Microblogs serving society”? I think it really means, “microblogs serving the imperial government”.

The impression I have of Weibo and Twitter is that they go where the Zeitgeist of the moment takes them. But Nanny will want millions of posts which say, “I’m sorry to hear about the rail crash. I know the government is working hard to deal with the matter.” I can imagine the poster now with the three kinds of proles (factory workers, peasant farmers, and migrant workers) standing fanned out with monotone rays of sunlight behind them, and the main caption reading, “The Internet: Safe, Dull, Anodyne”.

I don’t know whether this is going to mean more frustrated expats as even less of the Web becomes viewable or whether the main focus is on the Intranet.

While WordPress is out, I don’t know what Live Journal is. It doesn’t seem to be out, and a website I found this morning, which monitors whether websites are up or down, had it performing solidly. I can only wonder if this has something to do with Freegate and the way it operates, but I’m not sure. LJ doesn’t like me visiting whether I use Freegate or not.

Not sure that WordPress is out of the woods itself. The tabs on the composing page weren’t doing what they, and when I tried some editing, they behaved in the same fashion.