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Venezuelan Regime Censoring Twitter
First time accepted submitter Saúl González D. writes "After two days of massive protests, the Venezuelan government has finally taken to censoring Twitter. Users of Venezuela's largest ISP CANTV, which is owned by the government, are reporting that either Twitter-embedded images will not load or that Twitter will fail to load at all. I am a user myself and can confirm that only Twitter is affected and that switching to the Tor browser solves the issue. As news of the protests are not televised, for most Venezuelans Twitter and Facebook are their only means of obtaining real-time information.
Despite a progressive worsening of civil and human rights, governments of the world have shied away from directly labeling Maduro a dictator or demanding the OAS' Democratic Charter be activated. Will open censorship be the tipping point?"
Despite a progressive worsening of civil and human rights, governments of the world have shied away from directly labeling Maduro a dictator or demanding the OAS' Democratic Charter be activated. Will open censorship be the tipping point?"
Sí, sí, en Venezuela hay MUCHO MUCHO PETROLEO!
Once the government can start ceasing private assets "for the greater good," they can start taking away a lot more than just physical goods "for the greater good." People in that country are already emigrating en masse, it's only a matter of time until the iron curtain rises.
And by the way, for anybody who still thinks that restricting imports through tariffs and other measures is a good idea for the sake of improving domestic job creation, you'll want to take a good solid look at Venezuela's recent history in the last few months where they've made it extremely difficult to buy foreign goods, and this:
http://guardianlv.com/2014/02/...
When they say imports and domestic production rise and fall with one another, this is what they're talking about.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
The Western world has long learned that, if you want to dominate people, you don't directly stop them from speaking - instead, you lie to them a lot, you shout louder than them, and you use the excuse of "private property" to excuse the fact that half a dozen firms own several hundred media outlets, including all mainstream media.
If you silence people, it's "totalitarianism" - if you drown people out, it's "the market".
And, as the Arab spring showed, Twitter made people feel good for a while, but the final result was as reactionary as anyone actually paying attention to the political arena expected.
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Despite a progressive worsening of civil and human rights, governments of the world have shied away from directly labeling Maduro a dictator
Why should they call an elected president, for incompetent he were, a dictator.
In latin america we have had our own share of US sponsored dictators, they were no good but in that time we celebrated them. Now looking back to what happened, we know it can allways get worse.
If you are in a parlamentary system, you disolve the government.
If you are in a presidential system you wait for the next election...
The damages of a destitution aren't worth for the people.
This story seems to be heavily politically skewed. I notice on Telesur that Chavez'es party claims that their Twitter account has been hacked and the opposition Twitter accounts are all running.
When did Slashdot get in the "regime change by spreading false news" business?
Given widespread censorship on TV etc, how fair were the elections, really? How fair will be the next ones?
A country can have elections and still be a dictatorship. Case in point: DPRK. You even get three parties to choose from!
Funniest was when Fox news reported about a decade ago that Hugo Chavez, then president of Venezuela was corruptly redirecting the countries oil royalties to feed and educate the poor in the rural regions. So corrupt!! at least to crazy right wing lunatics of course.
And democratically elected too. Doesn't suit you if you are from the extreme wealthy who want to turn Venezuela back to your luxury feifdom!
On the other hand, freedom of the press belongs to the owners of the presses.
Still, this recently passed UK Parliament bill puts such heavy restrictions on anything seen remotely as political campaigning that, as far as I'm concerned, we might as well now be living under a dictatorship as far as freedom of political speech. (And I say that as someone whose family was brought up under a dictatorship, where at least there was no illusion of choice to waste time celebrating.)
"Why should they call an elected president, for incompetent he were, a dictator."
Because he sought and accepted an "Enabling Act", letting him rule by edict. Just like his predecessor Chavez. And Hitler.
Chavistas made of Venezuela their luxury feifdom. Top chavistas are a new class named "boliburguesia", a variant of kleptocracy. And elections per se mean nothing. You hold your legitimacy with your deeds and words.
or landfill, So what's worse?
The sad part is that it was not true. Instead the money was wasted in bribes and corruption.
vote for Pedro
First, it is not "massive protests", it's the typical (for Venezuela since 1999) protest of the wealthy minority opposing the Bolivarian Revolution, despite dozens of electoral victories of PSUV and allies (ratified by various international observers). And it is violent protests, like when Capriles contested the elections of Maduro, in both cases there has been PSUV supporters _killed_ by the opposition. The opposition also assaulted public building, like Chacao municipality or Caracas metro system (this time), or schools and hospitals (when Maduro was elected).
On the broader picture, the opposition isn't at its first violent attempt to oppose the democratically elected government. For those who don't remember it, in 2002, the same opposition did a military coup attempt, in which Pedro Carmona (the leader of business federation) briefly took power, suspended the Constitution and constitutional guarantees, dissolved the Parliament and the Supreme Court, imposed martial law, closed the public TV station and many independent local TV channels (like Catia TV). Capriles, the current leader of the opposition in Venezuela, was personally involved in supporting the coup, including in a violent assault against the Cuban embassy in Caracas.
Those protests aren't done by "students", they are done by a rich elite refusing to lose their privilege, and not stopping at any means (including violence, murder, and military coups) to undermine a legitmately elected and always re-elected government. They are fascists, as shown by how they behaved (suspending all constitutional guarantees and dissolving all democratic institutions) when they briefly took power in 2002.
As for the media, before listening to all the lies about "censorship", you should remember that the media in 2002 actively participated in the coup attempt, manipulating footage to pretend that Chávez supporters opened fire on the opposition, while in reality it was sharpshooters from the opposition killing Chávez supporters from the roof of on hotel. There is a very good documentary on that topic, "The Revolution will not be televised", that was made by Irish filmmakers who happened to be in Caracas during the events. I advise strongly everyone to watch this documentary before supporting the "opposition" in Venezuela and criticizing the attitude of the Venezuelan government towards the media. In most countries of the world, including Europe or USA, if media did half of what they did in Venezuela, there would have been prison sentences.
Finally, for the Twitter "censorship", the PSUV Twitter account was hacked recently, and Twitter is not cooperating the Venezuelan government to help them track the authors of that infraction. While no one knows (yet) all the details of what is going on between the Venezuelan government and Twitter, it's way too early to call about "censorship" in that context, it may very well be just a way for the Venezuelan government to pressure Twitter to cooperate in tracking the authors of a penal infraction.
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Socialism should have been left on the ash heap of history. I really don't know why people keep thinking it can work or how these so-called 'charismatic' leaders are able to convince so many that water isn't wet in the process.
The elections in Venezuela are the most scrutinized in the world. US delegations, European Union and United Nation delegations report they've been given nothing but complete access. None of these international observers have reported abuses. The USA on the other hand, does not allow foreign observers.
Forbes.com, hardly a communist front writes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/05/14/venezuelas-election-system-holds-up-as-a-model-for-the-world/
Headline: "Venezuela's Election System Holds Up As A Model For The World"
Now, if you research the voting system in Venezuela, they have voting machines which are running open-source code, so the code they are meant to be running is public knowledge. USA voting machines are manufacturer's secret and the companies are mostly own by Republicans.
All Venezuelan voting machines internal storage is encrypted using encrypted keys, where each major political party and the Electoral commission only have part of the key per machine. That means nobody can tamper with the machines during the election cycle, and all hard-drives can be cloned and save for analysis later. Each machine not only stores a tally of all votes, but it spits out a paper ballot which the voter can check that it matches his vote. Each machine has a box for the paper ballots, so these are also hand-counted to ensure that each machine's electronic storage also matches the paper ballots cast. So, to be valid, the decrypted voting machine's hard-drives MUST match the paper ballots, after each party delegation reveals their keys for each machine. This ensures that simple "ballot box stuffing" can't trick the system, nor can simple hacking of the machines.
They also allow all local parties and foreign governments to present observers at each of the voting stations. These local party observers are involved in every step of the counting and validation process.
Factually false, if you look at actual economic data. e.g.:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-chavez-administration-at-10-years-the-economy-and-social-indicators/
"The Chávez Administration at 10 Years: The Economy and Social Indicators."
Among the highlights:
The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually.
Most of this growth has been in the non-oil sector of the economy, and the private sector has grown faster than the public sector.
During the current economic expansion, the poverty rate has been cut by more than half, from 54 percent of households in the first half of 2003 to 26 percent at the end of 2008. Extreme poverty has fallen even more, by 72 percent. These poverty rates measure only cash income, and do not take into account increased access to health care or education.
Over the entire decade, the percentage of households in poverty has been reduced by 39 percent, and extreme poverty by more than half.
There have been substantial gains in education, especially higher education, where gross enrollment rates more than doubled from 1999-2000 to 2007-2008.
Over the past decade, the number of social security beneficiaries has more than doubled.
Real (inflation-adjusted) social spending per person more than tripled from 1998-2006.
USA voting machines are manufacturer's secret and the companies are mostly own by Republicans.
And yet those machines, they keep electing Democrats! And the republicans are now in a struggle in many formerly automatic red states, whereas the Democrats have easy victories in dozens of states.
This is not what's happening.
The so-called "protests" are ultra-right neo-nazi groups being helped by Colombian paramilitaries in order to manipulate the public opinion. It is exactly the same shit that's happening in Ukraine right now.
1. There has been no violence from the state
2. There has been no censoring, no repression and no dictatorship as western world likes to believe
3. Ultra right groups (a Golden Dawn clone from Greece) are causing mass riots in the states that are governed by right wing parties
4. The leader of the protests is fascist student with high ties to Colombian neo-nazi groups
Some links (spanish):
1. http://radiomacondo.fm/2014/02/15/pueblo-venezolano-se-congregara-en-la-capital-en-contra-del-fascismo/
2. http://radiomacondo.fm/2014/02/14/mas-de-60-portales-web-del-gobierno-venezolano-afectadas-por-ataques-ciberneticos/
3. http://laradiodelsur.com/?p=246048
4. http://laradiodelsur.com/?p=245897
5. http://laradiodelsur.com/?p=245911
6. http://laradiodelsur.com/?p=245961
7. http://laradiodelsur.com/?p=245929
8. http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2014/02/15/pueblo-venezolano-se-congregara-en-la-capital-en-contra-del-fascismo-6039.html
9. http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2014/02/14/gobierno-venezolano-descarta-censura-a-medios-internacionales-4038.html
10. http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2014/02/14/colombia-lamenta-hechos-violentos-en-venezuela-1162.html
11. http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2014/02/14/gobernador-del-tachira-asegura-que-paramilitares-colombianos-se-han-sumado-a-las-protestas-estundiantiles-en-la-region-4671.html
12. http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2014/02/14/manipulacion-de-imagenes-y-guerra-psicologica-en-venezuela-y-las-redes-776.html
Yeah lots of people flee the country and riot in the streets when their benefits triple and GDP is booming.
Meanwhile the US Regime continues murdering people throughout the world with impunity.
Isn't that term usually reserved for dictatorships 'we' don't like, e.g. Syria? The Venezuelan government was democratically elected.
Some of the money may have gone to a good cause. Lots went to bad causes, earning the "corruption" label. (The mob does a good deed once in a while too.)
And of course, nationalizing the industry killed the goose that laid the golden egg, so in the long term, even the "good cause" was unsustainable. And in the socialist paradise, that "long term" took all of five or six years to turn to crap.
That's the problem with parasites; eventually they kill themselves after they kill off their host.
Life is not for the lazy.
I would even hazard to postulate a one-party government is lacking in democratic principles...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It's actually a difficult issue, since pre-Chavez-era Venezuela was noted for having one of the most corrupt judiciary systems in Latin America. Chavez was elected with a promise to do something about that.
You can't clean up corruption without getting rid of the corrupt people, but the media treats any member of the Venezuelan judiciary actually charged with corruption since Chavez as blatantly political. How do you fight endemic corruption without actually removing anyone who is corrupt?
So tired of people with agendas fucking up a good thing.
Anyone have a link to a site we can move to that's halfway decent?
It's time to use twister ! decentrlized twitter : http://twister.net.co/ !
Please just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a dictatorship. That's soooo freaking CNN shit
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With chavez we were doing pretty good, but after he died things took a U-turn in a matter of months. To make a long story short, the incompetent bureacracy that Chavez helped grow but ruled with an iron fist was free of the leash, so the economy in particular became the part most affected by inexperienced politicians.
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In case the use of scandalous language like "ultra-right" (is that even a common English expression?), "neo-nazi" and "Colombian paramilitaries" hasn't tipped you off, check the "sources" this AC provides:
* Radio Macondo: praising FARC, Ché Guevara, marxism. Mocking Obama, the Colombian gov't, etc.
* Telesur: propaganda agency founded and led by Venezuela's former minister of Communications and Information Andrés Izarra, funded by the Venezuelan gov't.
* La Radio del Sur: part of the "Sistema Bolivariano de Comunicación e Información"; Chávez on the marquee and in half of all headlines.
And of course, and uncompromising stance: no censorship, no repression, gov't is giving out puppies; demonstrators are all fascist meanies.
So, paid shiil or just fanatical?
Here's a test from the state-owned ISP (CANTV) mentioned in TFA:
$ for host in lapatilla.com pastebin.com anonymouse.org; do ping -w 3 -c 4 $host; done
PING lapatilla.com (141.101.113.240) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 141.101.113.240: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=133 ms
--- lapatilla.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 133.576/133.576/133.576/0.000 ms
PING pastebin.com (190.93.241.15) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- pastebin.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2014ms
PING anonymouse.org (193.200.150.137) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- anonymouse.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2016ms
La Patilla is a popular opposition news site (slow but not actually blocked). Pastebin was used to distribute the links to some leaked emails last year. Anonymouse is quite popular with opposition Venezuelans trying to circumvent actual or perceived blockings.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Don't worry. Censorship is only bad if it can be blamed on the evil conservatives. As long as the beloved socialist communist high godkingforlife of Venezuela does it, it's "for their own good," so it's ok. This is all normal. Censorship, robbery, oppression, and monarchy are just fine as long as it's done by someone you like. So ok, I get that you're just fine with a dictator with absolute power as long as he's someone you're fond of. Now what happens when the dictator dies and the torch gets passed to someone you don't? Oh wait, that's in a far away country, so it's not your problem. Just an odd curiosity for you to read about on the internet. Sure sucks to be them huh?
Right. And Russia grew at 20% per year after the revolution. Except that it didn't. Those are what are called lies.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
My computer, perhaps?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Well, to be fair, one way or another any presidential system has some sort of instrument to rule by edict in case of emergency... Some presidents respect it and only use it in case of emergency. Some don't give a shit about it and use it constantly.
When Hitler was just elected, he wasn't a dictator yet... Then things got ugly.
Venezuela is just about the safest place for dissidents in Latin America, not the worst. For a start, consider "reporters without borders", they're a US-funded "freedom" lobby group. Very anti-communist.
Read their headlines about Colombia:
https://en.rsf.org/colombia.ht...
Now read their headlines for Venezuela:
https://en.rsf.org/venezuela.h...
The Colombian journalists problems are all murder, threats, intimidation by pro-government fascist death-squads.
The Venezuelan journalists problems are more along the lines of politics and bureaucratic red tape. And those are the WORST abuses that Reporters without Borders can highlight about Venezuela.
I don't know much about the threats on Colombia's journalism but I can tell you a few things about Venezuela. Trust me or call me a liar at your discretion:
* There are laws regarding "truthful and opportune information" and making "disquieting" and "destabilizing" speech a felony. Of course, no definitions for these fuzzy adjectives.
* Detention and/or beatings by military and govt-friendly gangs; it is not unusual for both to confiscate the memory cards and tapes. There's some mention of this in the RSF link you posted.
* One columnist was fined heavily for writing one of his pieces as a letter to Chavez's young daughter. Mind you, he didn't attack her in any way - he sympathized with the burden of being Chavez's daughter.
* The main opposition TV station, Globovisión, was accosted with fines (a recent amount was 10% of their gross revenue) for everything from donating airtime to broadcasting "disquieting" spots by NGOs. Eventually the station claimed being financially inviable and was sold to friendlier investors with a new editorial line, which has caused most reporters, interviewers and anchors to resign over the last year.
* In the months after the telecom regulator discretionarily revoked the broadcast license to another station, the gov't summoned the owners of two other stations with a milder but also critical stance. One became neutral-favorable, and the other came just short of a lap-dog.
* I hope you're aware about the tight controls on currency exchange. Well, every newspaper is facing a heavy shortage of currency for importing newsprint except state-sponsored and friendly ones. Maduro himself has yelled in public "not a single dollar more for the bourgeoisie!".
Now, ask yourself since Colombia is so much WORSE than Venezuela in protecting journalists, why do you never hear a peep in the media about how bad it is? Perhaps because there is no oil there?
*Ahem*
Oil - production: 588,000 bbl/d (93,500 m3/d) (2008 est.)
Oil - consumption: 267,000 bbl/d (42,400 m3/d) (2007 est.)
Oil - exports: 294,000 bbl/d (46,700 m3/d) (2008 est.)
Oil - imports: 12,480 bbl/d (1,984 m3/d) (2005)
Oil - proved reserves: 1,323,000,000 bbl (210,300,000 m3) (1 January 2008 est.)
Economy of Colombia
And oil shipments from Venezuela have been always on time, in spite of all the rhetoric.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Well atleast the news about fucked up the normal people are in Russia has stopped. Now it is only news how fucked up Russian leaders are but it seems that there is no intrest to how ordinary people are doing in new capitalist Russia.
Dictators love to pretend that their people actually love the oppressive government. So elections are quite a common sight. However that doesn't mean the people have any real say. Sometimes it is done like it was in Iraq, where there is only one choice and people are forced to go vote anyhow. Sometimes it is done like in Iran where the elections themselves are mostly left alone, but an unelected body (the Assembly of Experts) determines who gets to run, and the real power doesn't lie with the elected representative. Sometimes it is a case of using violence, bribery, intimidation, etc to keep opponents form running and/or people from voting for the opposition.
Regardless, elections don't mean "free". Dictatorships often like to use elections as a smokescreen. Indeed if you look up Venezuela on Freedomhouse you see they rate the country as only partially free and the press as not free.
If I were a citizen of Venezuela, I think I would be rather unnerved by the lack of things like toilet paper in the stores. It may well have been a "luxury fiefdom" before Chavez, but after his "fixes" it became an economic and political ruin.
I was not disputing that the election procedure itself is fair. But for elections to actually be fair, the people casting votes have to be exposed to the positions and platforms of all candidates - which is kinda hard to do in a country where most mass media is basically taken over by the government. It's exactly the same in Russia - it's not the electoral fraud that sets the outcome of elections (though it also happens), it's the government control and censorship of the media.
You also need an independent press, and you need government regulatory agencies to add in the cost that capitalism and democracy miss such as clean air and water.
So a little like the fascist British regime, then.
Just quote an unknown person saying whatever and you can lie to your heart's content with no accountability.
I meant the commie revolution. Not the orange one.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If you cut out the anti-Chavez BS, you find that the crime rate over there dropped by a factor of 1000 after the masses had their guns removed.
Maybe the gun lobby is hiding something?
I guess that rules out calling Hitler, a democratically elected politician, a dictator.
A democratic election does not prevent the elected individual from being a dictator.
jajajajajajaja that pathetic Venezuelan fascist right is the unique twitter accounts that are affected in Venezuela are the government that are sent to hack by opocitores .... Hubba balls a little more to see if obama sends you a visa for you to go to the united states that if there is freedom of aya esprecion invecil ajajajajjaja that are jajajajajajajajajas forgive my English translator google
jajajajajajaja que patética es la derecha fascista venezolana las unicas cuentas de twitter que se ven afectadas en venezuela son las del gobierno que son mandadas a hackear por los opocitores.... Chupale un poquito mas las bolas a obama para ver si te manda una visa para que te vayas para los estados unidos que aya si hay libertad de esprecion ajajajajjaja que invecil eres jajajajajajajajajas