"Splog" Sting Shows Slipping Standards

Reporters in India donned outrageous costumes and in return for paying bribes, easily succeeded in getting 11 members of parliament in India to pose stupendously dumb queries during the official "question time." That's a portion of official proceedings also familiar to observers of the British parliament. The International Herald Tribune has more.

Footage from hidden cameras shows the members of Parliament willingly accepting, grabbing the money or instructing the reporter to stuff it under a cushion on a sofa. The lawmakers then duly went ahead and submitted most of the requested questions - apparently oblivious to the nonsensical content. "Is the government planning to make automatic the long procedure of permission for SSIs to import new technologies such as Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Blogrolls, Splogs and Hitcounters automatic?" "Has the ministry lifted the 1975 ban on 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?"'

...Sting operations are becoming routine on Indian television, as rival channels struggle to boost their ratings. No sooner had the dust settled on this episode than a second station began screening footage of another set of six members of Parliament (including one unfortunate man targeted by both stings) apparently caught on camera demanding kickbacks in exchange for granting lucrative development projects to a different, fictitious organization. Once again the lawmakers were filmed negotiating fees with unabashed determination.

.....Most interesting was the jaded response these dramas elicited from viewers. If people were shocked, it was less at the politicians' readiness to sell themselves than at the low prices they were demanding for their services - as little as $200 a question....Corruption is so routine in India that eyes glaze over when the subject is raised....A...study showed that almost a quarter of India's 545 members of Parliament face criminal charges - including allegations of rape, murder and extortion....The governing Congress Party has recently come under fire for its alleged role in the UN oil for food scandal. And Foreign Secretary Natwar Singh resigned amid allegations that he benefited illegally from the scam.

I like how the reporters in the first case used somewhat obscure blog-related terminology.

A "splog," BTW, is a spambot blog that automatically gathers and publishes links to Web content with certain key words, like say, "Miami Beach," or "weight loss," or "mortgage." While some descriptions of splogs insist that all content is fake advertorial, I've seen firsthand that legitimate blog posts such as my own - on certain specific topics - are sometimes linked to by splogs and blended in with lower-grade advertorial links to create a patina of legitimacy. Anyway, splogs are multiplying at a fast pace and are one reason you should never take seriously the clueless newspaper citations that Technorati is now tracking XX million blogs. Up to 22 percent of new blogs are splogs, according to a Technorati source in the above-linked article.

Those deep thinkers in the Indian parliament were oh so ready to accelerate government permissions for splogs in return for baksheesh. This despite new splogs already sprouting by the minute, globally. LOL. At the very least, Indian MPs must hold to a higher standard of plausibility in bribery.

Maybe someone should start an actual human-operated blog, which intelligently filters and posts links to all news reports including the words "corruption" and "India." Might be useful to have all the latest in one place, huh? If you know of, or find such a site, let me know.

TECHNORATI TAGS: INDIA, CORRUPTION, PARLIAMENT, SPLOGS, BLOGS, BLOGOSPHERE, TECHNORATI

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 30, 2005 11:06 AM