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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."
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.
TFA is light on technical detail. Even Chinese firewall is ineffective against tor's latest steganographic transports. But even basic tor is hard to block, at least outgoing traffic.
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
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.
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.
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?