Some weird things have been happening to my blog….minor, but worth recounting.
First. A week or two ago, my blog was suspended because of a huge amount of spam that got sent my way. That happened just after my first posts questioning the Gupta trial verdict. Not to worry, I told myself, can happen to any blog. Of course, in five years, it’s never before happened to my blog….
Second. A video that I had posted on my blog was deleted….I didn’t delete it. Then that video shows up posted on a friend’s blog. The exact same thing happened last year, with another video that I didn’t delete either, which someone deleted from my blog.
OK. Petty harassment.
Third. I opened my admin panel and found someone else added as a user. I didn’t add the person’s email. So I deleted it. Next day, another user was added. I deleted it again.
Fourth, I make a habit of searching my name to check blog comments or follow ups. When I click the tab BLOGS on the side of the search, the top link these days is to Veterans Today, where an error notice pops up saying an article apparently written by me has been taken down. I’ve not written anything for VT since February 2011 and only wrote a few pieces for them, anyway. I asked them whether there was anything with my name on it on their site these days, they said no. So this is a google cache that someone is sending to the top of blog comments, for some reason.
Fifth. My blog posts show up in searches of Rajat Gupta, usually in the first two pages, sometimes quite high up. In the last few days when I clicked on them, I found they were all set to private. I haven’t set any of those posts to private.
It’s possible that when updating the entire blog might have gone to private a few times, but why would individual posts change to private without my doing anything?
The posts that changed to private were all controversial ones:
One about Chomsky being for taxes for other people, but not for himself.
One about gold holdings by different countries, showing that India and China have much less than the developed countries and suggesting neo-colonial motives in manipulation of gold and currencies.
One about Goldman knowing all about Galleon and Gupta being a patsy ( a recent one)
Since I blogged, they’ve all been changed back. But I took screen shots, so it’s not imagination or paranoia.
And a few other things.
I noticed at least one mainstream paper in India responding almost point for point to concerns about the trial I’d raised in my blog.
And then there was the Tahrir Square video on Gurcharan Das’s blog, which, as I said, was on the home page when I blogged it, and then the next day was hidden.
The internet, friends, is not an unalloyed force for good.
No more than TV was. It is not instant liberation, as naive people like to say it is.
Heartwarming to say things like that. Not terribly true.
Something is good only in proportion to the motives with which it used.
The many well-intended people who use the internet do make it a force for good.
Unfortunately, the net is also teeming with intelligence operatives, criminals, sting-operations, fakes, frauds, and police-state busybodies, who do not ever let really spontaneous interchange take place. They must have a thumb on the scales and rig the deal. They must manage the outcome so it goes in their favor….
Or supports their agenda.
Part of which is to lull people into a false sense of power and security on the net, so they put all their information out there. This is do-it-yourself surveillance. 24/7 and updated by the second.
Radical transparency is the carrot. The internet kill-switch is the stick.
Either way, the donkey moves forward.
And when one donkey moves forward, so do all the others.
The net appeals to the herd in us.
Internet herds are no less herds because they are electronic. Think about the electronic trading that stampedes the market this way and that.
The internet may liberate us.
Equally, it may enslave us.
Right now it’s 50-50.
These days I’d say all bets are off.