No country for ‘Og men

Even though I should have expected it, finding my access to the WordPress admin portal of the ‘Og blocked in China came as a shock! The issue of this censoring by Chinese authorities is well-documented on a WordPress page (that was accessible in Shanghai as well) and I will not go into details: this has been the case for several years and other bloggers’ sites are similarly censored, often permanently. However, I also found it curious that I could still read WordPress blogs, including mine, and hence see my successful attempt at posting my slides for O’Bayes 2011 by email. This easy if partial bypassing of the unavailable admin portal somehow proves both the capacity for causing trouble and the lack of coherence of the censoring services… Another illustration of this incoherence was provided by the on-line availability of an article I read at Shanghai airport in Le Monde discussing (in a bizarre way!) the censoring mechanisms in China. (The great title for this post was suggested by Alessandra Iacobucci, in an ironical hommage to Cormac McCarthy!)