Folks, and paging Alec J. Ross –
— Dudes, this is getting old and making me um throw up! After a quick and sweet goodbye, she’s gone.
A Daring Adventure
— Is this a demonstration of the State Department’s 21st Century Statecraft at work?
— Wow!
— Now I have to add this blog to the Foreign Service Blogmetery. See the lower left hand sidebar of this blog, please. Yes, unfortunately, the blogmetery is growing. Most of them died under suspicious circumstances. There’s a serial blog killer around, and I think there is more than one.
— Say, who are you folks going to eat for lunch, tomorrow?
In order for a blog to survive 21st Century Statecraft (and Alec J. Ross knows about this), you have to write it in Chinese so that nobody knows what the heck you are saying. Just look at the “Wild Geese” blog written by two Chinese contractors working for the Bureau of International Information Programs at http://blogs.america.gov/mgck/. There’s no English translation so nobody at the State Department knows what they’re really saying or how they’re saying it. It’s like it’s a secret blog lurking in the shadows of America.gov, a website that was archived last year.
Just Sayin’ … Wow! thanks for the link. I wonder who clears the blog posts on Wild Geese? I think one blog post says a Chinese candidate is running for president in Iowa on a one-child and common ownership platform. No more 1% or 99%. But I can’t vouch for my own translation since I’ve already exhausted all my Chinese learned from the sci-fi series Firefly. Fascinating, a secret blog lurking in the shadows … I gotta check out with OIG what would be their measure of success on this one.
US Embassy Beijing website (http://beijing.usembassy-china.org.cn/usintro.html) mentions Wild Geese in English but no English translation of what the blogs say. China Desk is in the dark. IIP Chinese blog team acts like a renegade group of nativists (IIP is remnant of former USIA) with former PRC nationals calling the shots on what gets written for blog posts. Most of what they write is a waste of taxpayer money (good luck with OIG on that one). State’s “partnership” with the fiery anti-American Chinese “Global Times” news portal (http://blog.huanqiu.com/?316055) strains credibility. They’re too willing to submit to Chinese censorship. China blocks VOA but not IIP. Too cozy for comfort. See South China Morning Post article on jailing of Chinese writers http://topics.scmp.com/news/china-news-watch/article/Pen-is-subject-to-the-sword. Gan bei! It’s business as usual.
OMG! I may have to put that up on the front page of the blog. If the China Desk is in the dark that’s pretty bad. All IPP stuff has Enlgish translations, why is this allowed to exist over the dead body of America.gov?
You know annoys the heck out of me is that we are never told why a blog has been shut down. In this case, in particular, I really have no idea why–I followed Daring and she didn’t seem that controversial to me. Is the idea to keep us all in suspense? Who’s next? Not that it’s keeping me up at night. My spouse is close to retirement and thank heaven for that.
This is suspense theater. The idea is it could be anyone. Any blog is a potential victim of the serial blog killer. That’s the ugly truth in the shadow of State’s 21st century statecraft.
Boohoo. I can’t even see it. It is locked up tight. Well, we were all told early and often that working at State (or being an EFM) was not consistent with the First Amendment.
V – My memory is fuzzy now but I must have been absent during that briefing. I think I’ll blame the Chinese Pandas, poor sods with no First Amendment either and for good reasons.
One of my groups agrees that places like Iraq, China, and Russia are not places where you can speak your mind and still expect to be part of the club. I guess is was fortunate that blogging didn’t exist when we were there.
Bloggers have been put in jail in Iran and Vietnam; harassed in Egypt as well as in the small principality of the Department of State. But I heard that embassies are not democracies, so there.