opinion The directive goes out from MCMC to TMNet and other ISPs operating in Malaysia - they are to block access to RPK's news site, Malaysia Today .

Very quickly, RPK gets wind that his readers in Malaysia cannot gain access to his news site. In response, he sets up mirror sites and gets word out through Malaysiakini , the blogosphere and the major Malaysian mailing list nodes.

Sure enough, most of his regular readers get wind of this and are able to access his site again. The blogophere erupts against the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission and the Barisan Nasional government. Malaysia Today is once again accessible and worst still, for the BN, its actions have raised the ire of the blogosphere.

This recent episode captures the essence of the BN's attitude towards the Internet - they just don't 'get' it.

It would be an understatement to say that the BN leadership, as a whole, has little inkling as to how public opinion is shaped and how political news is disseminated in cyberspace. Its attitude towards bloggers, blogging and the blogsophere, for one, has been reactionary, erratic and inconsistent.