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Venezuela Is Blocking Access To the Tor Network (theverge.com)
An Access Now report finds that Venezuela has blocked all access to the Tor network. "The latest block includes both direct connections to the network and connections over bridge relays, which had escaped many previous Tor blocks," reports The Verge. From the report: According to network metrics, Tor access in Venezuela had recently spiked in response to recent web blocks placed on local news outlets. Unlike previous blocks, the latest restrictions could not be circumvented by using a censorship-resistant DNS server like those provided by Google and CloudFlare. For many Venezuelans, Tor seems to have been the only way left to access the restricted content. "This is the latest escalation in Venezuela's internet censorship efforts, as it blocks higher-profile sites with more sophisticated methods," said Andres Azpurua of Venezuela Inteligente, in a statement provided through Access. "This is one of their boldest internet censorship actions yet."
Isn't Tor supposed to be still uncrackable? And if not, can't the resistance use the Telegram app, which so far has held up against the Iranian religious police?
China is providing all the network hardware to Venezuela for deep packet inspection (among other things) in exchange for no-bid infrastructure projects. That's how they're getting this done.
These "projects" are just the government handing them money for work that never gets done. It's an escape path for the elite once the shit really hits the fan but until then their primary focus is exfiltrating enough resources from Venezuela to maintain their lifestyle.
They shipped these devices to Venezuela about 10 years ago and it's taken the inept government this long to put them in.
It's rumored that they "funded" these infrastructure projects to the tune of $100m but exact numbers are impossible to get as the constituent assembly has ruled that all government contracts are state secrets.
This is why I run a tor relay node. Everytime I hear about something like this, it reminds me that tor is used by people in countries like this to bypass censorship.
OK, I really run it because of the EFF's tor challenge where I got a free T-shirt, but that's the reason I've kept it running after the challenge was over.
Socialism works just fine. Just ask Norway, Germany, France and Canada. But if you're entire country's basic systems fall apart and the rest of the world decides to punish you with sanctions for no particular reason (besides maybe not liking your system of economics) then no amount of socialism can save you.
LOL except all the countries you list aren't socialist, they just have more government services than the U.S. and less freedoms.
Venezuela isn't dying from sanctions, for heaven's sake they are sitting on the worlds largest verified oil reserves and they can't even provide gas for their own use. That's from the government seizing the means of production and the people who made it work going ok lets see how you operate a refinery.
Or perhaps it was when the government decided to imprison bakers to solve their bread shortage ?
Or maybe it was from the government trying to control the currency exchange rates, so no one could actually pay for any imports ?
no it was the bad old capitalists and their sanctions. / facepalm
"they just have more government services than the U.S. and less freedoms."
Not sure we have "more" services, maybe better or more efficient ones is more accurate.
And on freedoms I'd maybe agree, because it's possible we have less of a freedom to abuse other citizens.
Which country ?
Not sure we have "more" services, maybe better or more efficient ones is more accurate.
Really can't formulate a specific response without knowing what you mean by "WE"
Freedoms are easy. All the named nations have certain shortfalls there. Freedom of speech is a nearly non existent right in all the named countries, freedom of association as bad as it has gotten here is still better, the right to defend yourself ? You have judges in Europe trying to force kitchen knives to be duller. Freedom to advance yourself economically ? well the U.S. is number one for economic freedom once again having just beaten Hong Kong.
We are kind of low on the freedom to leach off your fellow citizens though. It's not that we haven't tried it, the Jamestown colony did nearly starved to death, the shakers tried it, theyre gone, the Amana commune tried it, they are an appliance corporation these days. Just never seems to work at best people abandon it as a bad idea, at worst they won't admit the idea is wrong and you get tragedy.
I seriously doubt that access to the entire set of hidden bridge nodes has been blocked. These nodes are not advertised, and I am assuming that they do not appear in the public consensus documents.
The distribution points of the bridge node IP addresses were likely blocked. If and when Tor users find new bridge nodes by some means or other, they will be able to access the network again.
Communism and socialism fail with humans just the same as capitalism and pretty much any pure 'ism'.
Power accumulates. Checks and balances can slow this, but if there isn't an active effort to deconstruct the accumulation, then all you are doing is slowing the process and the process tends to result in rapid deconstruction of the accumulated power via revolution (whether bloody or not) and the replacement of the old with something that differs only in detail. A kind of boom and bust cycle that only looks like progress.
In the 'real world' people and societies are motivated by a mix of selfishness and altruism; co-operation and competition. Some lean hard one way, some the other. A mix of both, with a dynamic equilibrium seems to produce the most stable forms of government/organisation that results in the best outcomes for the most people.
Socialism and communism can and do work with humans - when it's limited to areas where this is suitable and useful (like infrastructure and utilities or services) and where it's kept in check with regulation or even limited competition. Capitalism works with humans in much the same way - with regulation and oversight, limitations to protect society and by not allowing it in areas where monopolies are harmful or extracting a profit reduces the overall benefit to society. Some communism doesn't scale past the family/neighbourhood. Same with capitalism. Some is only useful at larger scales, but again, needs to be regulated, monitored and kept in check.
Observing that communism/socialism fails is trivial. _Everything_ fails.
In Canada I think a lot more people have more freedom to choose better educational opportunities and better medical services
Is that why Florida is a medical tourism destination for Canadians ? Well I guess you have the freedom to leave the country to get yourself healed.
Education ? Hmmm are you saying you have better universities than the U.S. ? because the logical implication if not, is that you have a better chance of picking from worse opportunities.
t depends on perspective, look at disparity levels, the US is way ahead when it comes to higher economic classes leaching on poorer economic classes.
Oh you mean the way your privileged class wrecked Ontario ?
http://business.financialpost....
"Have you looked at Ontario finances? We're on the verge of going broke to the same extent as Greece."
Greece has a debt to GDP ration around 180%, and Ontario's is around 40% ?
Ontario is a province and as such doesn't take most of the tax revenues while Greece is a country and as such its national government takes a much larger share of the taxes paid by its citizens. California at its worst point (which only lasted about a year) had about $50B in debt which is a debt to GDP ratio of around 5% which is bad for a US state. So its apples and oranges comparing Greece to Ontario. Certainly any province or state (or other sub-national government) shouldn't have more than about a 10% debt to GDP ratio and that's being very generous (it should probably be about half of that). So Ontario being 40% is certainly quite worrisome.
The real problem with a debt of that size is that you won't possibly be able to pay it back over the duration of the bonds so it will be rolled over. And since the debt to GDP ratio is sky high, those interest rates will be high which causes the debt to be harder to pay off. This causes a vicious cycle of larger debt and higher rates leading to default. This is a bad deal and the World Bank and WTO are often and rightly criticized for trapping poorer countries in this same cycle but in those cases it was the lenders suggesting the loans in the first place. In the case of Ontario (and Greece), they did it to themselves.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Is that why Florida is a medical tourism destination for Canadians ? Well I guess you have the freedom to leave the country to get yourself healed.
The US has countless people whose only medical treatment is the emergency room. Countless more with insurance programs that won't let them touch the kind of care medical tourists come for. Most the rest our burdened by substantially by our care costing so much compared to the rest of the world. I guess your income is high enough to take advantage of that great care tourists want, congrats. Not being so well off myself, I'd rather have Canada's system.
Oh you mean the way your privileged class wrecked Ontario ?
If you think that's even in the same universe as how the rich exploit people in the US, you really need to move out of that cave.
And universities... sounds like you want to compare top to top, where the picture outside of that is once again very different.
The US is only the best for the most privileged.
Yeah! It is well known that Communism is the declared enemy of Socialism. See National Socialism and how those people felt about commies.
Just as German Socialist politician Julius Leber how the Nazi's felt about Socialists.
Firstly the NSDAP was 'socialist' in the same way the that the Democratic Republic of Korea is 'democratic.' Don't be fooled by branding.
OK, it's not exactly that simple: there was the Strasserian tendency within the NSDAP which could be described as 'socialist', and certainly as 'anti-capitalist.' But remember Hitler personally objected to the inclusion of 'Sozialistische' in the name NSDAP, when the DAP re-branded. At that time, of course, Drexler not Hitler was the head of the party, so Hitler just had to work with the name he got. And it is also true the early DAP and NSDAP policy documents contained socialist-like and anti-capitalist points. However, all that changed once Hitler took over the party, and despite the 'S' being maintained, the party quickly became avowedly anti-Socialist, as Ernst Röhm, among others, was to discover to his peril.
Hitler also became a huge supporter of the giant German corporations, who of all the institutions of German society, were the only significant ones to escape Gleichschaltung (whereas 'Socialism' means, in the first instance, the socialisation of the "means of production"). Unlike the current Venezuelan regime, he knew better than to kill the proverbial goose. To call the Hitler-led NSDAP "Socialist" is simply wrong.
Secondly, far from Communism being the "declared enemy of Socialism," note that Communist Parties, where they have come to power, have generally set up "Socialist Republics." You may recall the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics centred around Russia, which was, throughout much of the C20th, a not insignificant state run by a nominally 'Communist' party. Why?
Because according to Marxist theory, Socialism was the transitional state required for the accomplishment of Communism. Thus a Capitalist revolution (from Feudalism) was necessary to establish modern productive forces and create both the wealth necessary to enable Socialism and the Communism to be born, and also to create the industrial working class, who would be humanity's saviour.
Socialism, for which Marx described the distribution of wealth as "to each according to their contribution," was supposed to be a state run by this working class (the 'universal' class, for owning nothing they did not have the interest in out competing any other concern, as capitalists were doomed to do), which was to pave the way for Communism, where humanity reached a social adulthood where the apparatus of the 'State' was no longer necessary, and the state simply faded away. The distribution in this stateless Communist society was instead to be "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" (ie. FOSS extended to all goods and services in society). And note needs also includes that which allows people to express their ability, so, to stretch out the FOSS conceit: society would see to it that software developers are supplied with hardware concomitant to their requirements as well as an lmitless supply of Mountain Dew and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (or Peoples Dew and Peoples Doughnuts as they would then be called ;).
In any case, I'm not entirely convinced Venezuela is on this ineluctable road to paradise.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Thank you for your reasoned reply. I particularly like the use of 'moron'. Very classy.
My first sentence makes it clear that I'm generalising about all systems. Making a distinction between communism and socialism may be useful in a different context, but here it's pure pedantry.
That 'socialism has never been implemented' is a form of the 'no true scotsman' fallacy. Meaningful observations can be made from attempts to implement socialism, from elements of other forms of government that have had strong socialist elements and from limited implementations of socialism either in terms of scale or scope.
Your 'argument' uses the 'true socialism has never been implemented' phrase which is usually used to dismiss a criticism of socialism. You apparently lack the ability to do more than ape the form and deliver an ad-hominem in passing. You've managed to pack name calling, an ad-hominem and a criticism of tone into one sentence. That's the bottom three in terms of Paul Grahams hierarchy of disagreement. An impressive performance.
How about you make a contribution to the discussion and criticise the idea I expressed, or offer one of your own?
Freedoms are easy.
No they'e not. You're getting dangerously close to "freedoms are only what's explicitly listed in the constitution".
It's kind of amusing that the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world continually trumpets about "how free" it is.
You have judges in Europe trying to force kitchen knives to be duller.
No you don't.
Go dig out proof for that, I'll wait. ...
OK, well done! You found the Daily Fail article on a retiring judge who as a private citizen in his retirement speech said he thought it would be a good idea.
Freedom to advance yourself economically ? well the U.S. is number one for economic freedom once again having just beaten Hong Kong.
Economic freedom: if you start rich, you can get richer easily! For the other 99% social mobility is the rather better measure and the US is about on a par with the UK in that regard, much worse than the scandinavian countries. There if you're born poor you're much more able to do something about it.
The best freedom isn't much use if it's only afforded to those who can pay.
We are kind of low on the freedom to leach off your fellow citizens though.
Unles you're a company! Somehow you've arranged a system where your healthcare costs over twice as much as other developed nations and has worst outcomes in for mose cases. And the insurance companies are massively profitable.
Oh and then you have those massively profitable monopoly telcos with poor services which have managed to legally ban reasonable competition in many places.
And so on and so forth. There's plenty of leeching in the US, and a lot of it is done by companies.
SJW n. One who posts facts.