THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY FR0GCAST SYSTEM

 

Had this been an actual emergency, I wouldn't be blogging this, and you wouldn't be reading it. 

Back to our regularly scheduled program,

This is dF

THE WAR ON LIVEJOURNAL

There has been talk about LiveJournal, the DDoS attacks and the exodus of some users to Dreamwidth, Blogger and other sites not currently on the Kremlin hit list (or whoever is behind it).

Personally, I can’t be too hard on LiveJournal, partly because it’s not their fault they’ve been singled out for attack, and partly because I know enough about DDoS attacks to know that whatever safeguards you put up to defend against them or mitigate their impact, if someone wants to take you offline badly enough, they can and will do it, even if just for a little while, unless you have the resources of, say, a major ISP.

Also, the revelation that the wave of attacks is apparently targeted at Russian bloggers posting political stuff makes it hard for me to abandon LJ on general principle.

Okay – the fact that I’m a paid user who just renewed his account a week ago is also a factor. So it’s not like I’m being noble about this or anything.

Anyway, back when a lot of people were convinced LJ was going to go belly up when SixApart sold it to SUP, some people defected to Dreamwidth, or set up accounts there just in case. I’ve had my own account here (or rather there),  for a couple of years now, though the only thing I’ve done with it is create a backup of my current LJ (and my previous LJ, so it’s my entire bloggery career all in one place – hurrah!). And one good thing to say about Dreamwidth is that it enables easy crossposting to LJ (provided yr not crossposting embedded videos – it seems a little flaky on that score, but it’s manageable. Also, cross-posting user icons seems to be out).

So, the obvious solution seems to be to broadcast from Dreamwidth and keep both blogs running that way. Which is what I’ll be doing – at least for a little while, to see how it works. From the reader’s POV, you won’t notice the difference apart from the little cross-post notifications.

And it goes without saying that if yr on Dreamwidth, you can add me at any time.

Carry on.

Business as usual,

This is dF

SECRET WARS (JASMINE EDITION)

ITEM: President Obama signs a secret order authorizing covert US govt support for rebel forces in Libya seeking to oust Muammar Gaddafi.

Reportedly.

I’m as clueless as the next guy, but I’ve been waiting for this shoe to drop. The US has a long history of meddling and scale-tipping via the CIA, and it seems unlikely an exception would be made for Libya, previous business deals notwithstanding. Which is probably why this story isn't exactly setting the media on fire. "We're secretly assisting one side of a civil war to tip the balance of power? What else is new?"

In fact, if we’re going to be entirely honest here, when the wave of protests spread from Tunisia to Egypt and other countries around the region, my inner Conspiracy Theorist Fan nudged me and said, “Dude, you KNOW that secret CIA agitators are at least partially behind these, right?”

Because why not, right? If you wanted regime change in the Middle East, and you wanted something more subtle (and infinitely cheaper) than a full-scale kick-ass invasion, why not get the locals to do it for you? Tap into that discontent under the surface and get the ball rolling.

Sure, there’s a million ways it could go wrong, starting with the likelihood that no one at the CIA speaks good-enough Arabic to pass for local. But then the Bush Posse was gullible enough to believe that Iraq 2 would be done and dusted in six weeks.

Anyway, regardless of how the Jasmine Revolution actually started, I figure it’s a given that we were always going to rely on more than no-fly zones and sweet talk to get Gaddafi (Khadafy? Qadaffi? Quadaffy?) to leave town. So it’s no surprise we’ve got the CIA on the case, and I’m sure when the dust settles, everyone will deny responsibility and then the documents will be declassified in 50 years (or published on WikiLeaks by Thanksgiving).

Because that’s how we get things done around here – behind closed doors.

Hey, what could possibly go wrong?

License to kill,

This is dF