Occasional Tales

The yin and yang of blocking. I've just been over to Danwei where the news is that at least from Chengdu and Beijing blogspot is unblocked, but blogger is allegedly inaccessible. Previously, you've been able to post to blogspot even if you can't read it afterwards unless you use a proxy. The Internet Paranoia Squad are going to need to sort that because hordes of foreigners are going to want to post on their blogspot blogs while they're here. (Not to mention Live Journal and any other blogging services which are still off the menu.) Although things relaxed a bit immediately after the earthquake, local paranoia is apparently trying to prevent people from discussing the destruction of schools during the earthquake (although I've yet to see whether schools really were disproportionately affected or whether this belief has been coloured by parental hysteria). I was expecting something like this to happen eventually. The pattern is the usual one. The Party lets the peopl...

But for how long? I discovered, although somewhat later than everyone else it seems, that YouTube has been unblocked. Obviously, Nanny thought it was safe to let the hordes back again because all those video clips of the Old Man from Tibet getting knighted by Ayatollah Dubya will now be blocked as an individual group. Besides, the boys in Zhongnanhai were probably missing videos of girls doing the nearest thing to X-rated material that YouTube will allow to be posted. Huh. That was odd. Posting glitch. The offending culprit seemed to be Далай Лама in English letters. Perhaps there were just technical problems unless blogspot has also been unblocked.