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Venezuela's Government Blocks Access To Wikipedia (haaretz.com)
Haaretz (with contributions from Reuters and the Associated Press) reports:
According to NetBlocks, a digital rights group that tracks restrictions to the internet, as of 12 January, Venezuela largest telecommunications provider CANTV has prevented access to Wikipedia in all languages. The internet observatory told Haaretz the ban was discovered by attempting "to access Wikipedia and other services 60,000 times from 150 different points in the country using multiple providers."
Roughly 16 million people have access to the internet in the South American country ravaged by poverty and now facing a political crisis as leader Nicolas Maduro attempts to cling to power following a highly contested re-election last year. Wikipedia receives on average 60 million views from the country every month.
According to NetBlocks, the ban was likely imposed after a Wikipedia article listed newly-appointed National Assembly president Juan Guaidà as âoepresident number 51 of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,â ousting Maduro from his presidential status on Wikipedia... Alp Toker, the head of NetBlocks, explained to Haaretz that the block followed a string of controversial edits on the Spanish-language article for Guaido as well as other related articles.
Long-time Slashdot reader williamyf identifies himself as "a Venezuelan in Venezuela." He reports that "The method used seems to be to intercept the SSL handshake and not a simple DNS block," adding "the situation is developing."
In May of last year the government declared a "state of emergency" that authorized the government to police the internet and filter content, rights activists reported Monday. They added that now Venezuela's new leaders plan to introduce legislation requiring messaging service providers to censor content, and implementing other so-called "content security" measures.
Roughly 16 million people have access to the internet in the South American country ravaged by poverty and now facing a political crisis as leader Nicolas Maduro attempts to cling to power following a highly contested re-election last year. Wikipedia receives on average 60 million views from the country every month.
According to NetBlocks, the ban was likely imposed after a Wikipedia article listed newly-appointed National Assembly president Juan Guaidà as âoepresident number 51 of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,â ousting Maduro from his presidential status on Wikipedia... Alp Toker, the head of NetBlocks, explained to Haaretz that the block followed a string of controversial edits on the Spanish-language article for Guaido as well as other related articles.
Long-time Slashdot reader williamyf identifies himself as "a Venezuelan in Venezuela." He reports that "The method used seems to be to intercept the SSL handshake and not a simple DNS block," adding "the situation is developing."
In May of last year the government declared a "state of emergency" that authorized the government to police the internet and filter content, rights activists reported Monday. They added that now Venezuela's new leaders plan to introduce legislation requiring messaging service providers to censor content, and implementing other so-called "content security" measures.
always goes full censorship.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That's how we do it in the Soviet USSA.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and...
You are welcome on my lawn.
That everyone who shouts "Socialism is a great idea", has to ignore.
Groups of people (and in fact individuals too) can do good and bad things. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys". Everyone is a bit of both, some more of one, some more of the other.
Wake up! A 5 second Google (fake news even) search will tell you the opposite is true. Despite that, our glorious Wikipedia will say that despite being banned, poor gun control is part of the increase in violent crimes since the 2012 ban, as if that makes any sense.
This sounds like domain fronting would get around the block: Connect to a different site hosted behind the same load balancer, establish a TLS connection with the other site's domain name, then use the correct host header for the HTTP request inside the TLS connection. That's how Signal got around Russian attempts to censor them.
We are at a point where there is simply no excuse to be a Socialist.
At this point there's no excuse to NOT be a socialist. Just look at what happened in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Not really, because it is possible to count the places its working too. You can be socialist and fiscally responsible, or socialist and fiscally irresponsible (Venezuela). Look at somewhere like Norway, a social democracy with very high levels of social welfare spending etc, driven by natural resources. They have saved the money and not just spent it all as soon as possible. Obviously Norway had a different starting point, but look at Bolivia too, right next to Venezuela, also has natural resources, also a socialist democracy, but has been more fiscailly conservative and used money to diversify and invest in the economy rather than just using it for social welfare spending.
You can understand why a poor country's people see all this oil money and demand it gets spent on the people now. A clever government would spend it on the people later.
When socialism works the capitalist side of the economy is also healthy, so we seem to forget that there is a socialist underpinning that enables that.
Zimbabwe has been a dictatorship for decades, it is not capitalist at all.
Sweden, Norway and Denmark aren't socialist. The only reason they amassed the wealth to experiment with some of their social programs is due to their capitalist past and abundance of natural resources for export, and those experiments are quickly failing.
From ... socialism? Right?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In modern society how could a government ban guns without also banning the information to build them?
I suspect a lot of firearm enthusiasts here have heard of the Model 1911 pistol. They would also know why it is called that. It's because the design was adopted by the US Army in the year 1911. Same with the Model 1897 shotgun and Model 1917 revolver. And for machineguns with model numbers 1917, 1918, 1919, and 1928. This is technology that is over 100 years old or soon will be. These were weapons that were likely designed under the light of oil lamps, mass produced by steam powered machines, and long before any computers. People in this time likely didn't have telephones but they could order a machinegun from the Sears and Roebuck catalog by mail.
To keep people from building their own firearms from scrap metal and common metal working tools means a government that is so overbearing that if someone so much as attempts to melt down some lead fishing weights that a government stooge will know about it.
Now just imagine how easily it would be for a nation of free people to arm themselves in an age of $1000 CNC mills, 3D printers, internet, and freedom of movement. There is no gun control without people control. The government cannot disarm the people without also controlling the movement of information, materials, and people.
Building a machinegun might not be so easy that a caveman could do it but it is easy enough that people with oil lamps and steam power could. To disarm people means denying them access to the most basic of technology. That's how North Korea has kept itself as the largest open air prison on Earth, by denying the people access to any information other than what the powers that be approve of first.
Venezuela did not get anything right here. They disarmed the people by denying them the most basic rights of freedom of movement and communication.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Pretty sure I'm just feeding a troll, but I'm not sure where you're getting any of those statistics, considering crime has been increasing in Venezuela since Slashdot was founded.
Those countries aren't socialist though. If you don't believe me, take it from the mouth of their Prime Minister. Up until Trump's tax cuts, they also all had lower corporate tax rates than the United States. Sweden has loads of charter schools, which are obviously a well known feature of socialism.
Those countries aren't socialist though
Venezuella is also not socialist. They don't have a centralized planned economy. They instead have a capitalist system with a weak central government that uses income from export to maintain handouts.
Wake up! A 5 second Google (fake news even) search will tell you the opposite is true. Despite that, our glorious Wikipedia will say that despite being banned, poor gun control is part of the increase in violent crimes since the 2012 ban, as if that makes any sense.
Is this the wikipedia article? Because on balance, it indicates that the increase in violent crime is due primarily to robbery, mostly motivated by severe food shortages.
It is true that their gun-control initiative has not been successful: only a small fraction of all guns in the country have been destroyed, most from involuntary seizures. Venezuela is still swimming in guns, and the people are desperately hungry. Claiming the murder rate went up because of a gun ban is a specious argument.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Are you suggesting that trying to replicate a factory-built firearm by hand is easier than to simply smuggle the factory-built firearm?
Ezekiel 23:20
Think of all the insight the Venezuelan people could have added to the pages of food, healthcare, security and Communism.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Exactly, its a failed oil-opolist economy run by a cabal. Hardly socialism by any real measure, but they had some socialist literature/propaganda a couple decades back and Fox News types never update their tiny mainframes.
Venzuela's problems began when the government started taking over the country's profitable industries. They have massive petroleum resources yet their oil companies collapsed when the state took them over. That's socialism in action.
We really need to get back to bashing the USA.
Building arms en masse, especially the old ones, requires massive resources not the least of which is steel and energy. When you're poor and starving, you're not going to waste your energy on building a gun. Hence why governments come for your guns first and then let you starve - people that aren't starving aren't motivated to keep their guns starving people aren't motivated to get their guns.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Sorry, but you don't seem to know what you're talking about. The government took over the economy and the current result is not only predicable, it was predicted by those opposed to socialism, i.e. "For more than a decade people opposed to the government of Venezuela have argued that its economy would implode." was written in 2013.
Those in favor of socialism went on and on about how wonderful Venezuelan socialism was for people.
A "weak central government" doesn't nationalize huge parts of the economy, including all the most essential industries, like Venezuela had. That's (coincidentally, I'm sure...) when those industries then fell apart and stopped being able to produce nearly as much. A "weak central government" doesn't set wage and price controls with rationing and trying to make the government the sole provider for food.
All the attempts at having the government run the economy have ended the same way. It's not something which is even controversial among economists anymore. It's been proven by repeated experiment.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
It was the Venezuelan government's attempt to quash a small edit war about who's the (legitimate) president, waged on the articles on Venezuela and President of Venezuela. AFAIK the blocking was implemented only by the state-owned ISP, which serves a large majority of domestic connections by virtue of being the only landline phone company.
Anyway seems they gave up on it, yesterday or early today:
openssl s_client -connect en.wikipedia.org:443
CONNECTED(00000005)
depth=2 OU = GlobalSign Root CA - R3, O = GlobalSign, CN = GlobalSign
verify return:1
depth=1 C = BE, O = GlobalSign nv-sa, CN = GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - SHA256 - G2
verify return:1
depth=0 C = US, ST = California, L = San Francisco, O = "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.", CN = *.wikipedia.org
verify return:1
---
Certificate chain
0 s:C = US, ST = California, L = San Francisco, O = "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.", CN = *.wikipedia.org
i:C = BE, O = GlobalSign nv-sa, CN = GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - SHA256 - G2
1 s:C = BE, O = GlobalSign nv-sa, CN = GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - SHA256 - G2
i:OU = GlobalSign Root CA - R3, O = GlobalSign, CN = GlobalSign
---
Server certificate
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
subject=C = US, ST = California, L = San Francisco, O = "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.", CN = *.wikipedia.org
issuer=C = BE, O = GlobalSign nv-sa, CN = GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - SHA256 - G2
--- .... ....
No client certificate CA names sent
Peer signing digest: SHA512
Peer signature type: ECDSA
Server Temp Key: X25519, 253 bits
---
SSL handshake has read 3515 bytes and written 403 bytes
Verification: OK
---
New, TLSv1.2, Cipher is ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305
Server public key is 256 bit
Secure Renegotiation IS supported
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
No ALPN negotiated
SSL-Session:
Protocol : TLSv1.2
Cipher : ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305
Session-ID:
Session-ID-ctx:
Master-Key:
PSK identity: None
PSK identity hint: None
SRP username: None
Start Time: 1547943159
Timeout : 7200 (sec)
Verify return code: 0 (ok)
Extended master secret: yes
---
DONE
In case it happens to you, there's several mirror sites:
https://en.wikipedi0.org
https://wikipediaproxy.org
https://www.wikiwand.com
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
They instead have a capitalist system
I suppose it's all privately owned right up until the government decides to nationalize it.
This started in jun 2018. Before that, the censorship was based in simple DNS manipulation, afterwards they implemented some form of deep packet inspection, which also attempts to block TOR (fixed by using obfuscated bridges).
Censorship has been going for a few years. It started with media sites, extended to porn sites, at some point they put pastebin because someone pasted a political message, and now this.
They did back down on pastebin and wikipedia (this is coming to slashdot way late).
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
No, I'm saying that to disarm the people means both restricting movement, restricting communication, restricting the private ownership of the means of production, and that people must be constantly in fear of the government searching their homes, businesses, and their persons.
It's not a matter of which is easier, producing weapons or smuggling them in, only that to disarm the people means denying them of all the freedoms we currently enjoy in the USA.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Again, nobody argues that Venezuelan government is stupid and the result had been predictable from the start. I'm arguing that Venezuela is NOT socialistic in the classic economic sense - they don't have a Soviet-style planned economy where the government allocates all the resources and controls the production.
Just nationalizing stuff is not enough. For example, Norway government owns (most of) Statoil but this doesn't make their economy planned. The prices in Norway are set by the free market and the government is simply a player on it. Amazingly enough, this describes the current Venezuela as well - the government there doesn't own most of the industries (except for oil), most of the goods are produced by private enterprises that can't function because the government is screwed up.
In contrast, back in the USSR, the government was actually producing most of the goods and managing their supply. There were basically no private enterprises (except for individual farmers).
You can't just use "socialism" as a bogeyman that describes everything that you dislikes (including taxes, healthcare or the Internet).
Mussolini was at one time the head of the Socialist party in Italy, and was a follower of Georges Sorel. So pointing to Mussolini and pretending he was somehow the opposite of socialist or communist is a bit bizarre. That's kinda like:
Republicans do this ...
And Reaganites don't?!
Fascism is what happens when socialist meets reality. Socialism is a fiction book has an imaginary race of people with no instinct for self-preservation or self-interest. Real people try to take care of themselves and their families, so fascism is required to force socialism on them.
Most of Venezuela economy is still privately owned although reliable numbers are hard to come by. This still makes them capitalist.
So does this mean that Venezuela has proven capitalism to be bankrupt?
The majority of property in the USSR was privately owned; are you claiming the USSR was a capitalist country?
In Venezuela, the government has either nationalized or heavily regulated most industries. Food, necessities like toilet paper, education, housing, land ownership, clothing... Almost all aspects of the economy are controlled by the government.
Trying to pretend that a non-nationalized store that can only buy from government approved vendors, at government approved wholesale prices, and can only sell to government approved customers at government approved prices is a privately-owned part of a capitalist economy is nonsensical.
"Venezuela is NOT socialistic in the classic economic sense - they don't have a Soviet-style planned economy where the government allocates all the resources and controls the production."
That is EXACTLY what the Venezuelan gov't has done for the past 20 years. You are either ignorant of history or flat out lying.
Building arms en masse, especially the old ones, requires massive resources not the least of which is steel and energy.
I can agree to that, if perhaps only in part.
Here's where I disagree, I mention those 100 year old weapons as an example of how far back in technology people would have to be driven to deny them the ability to make any kind of firearm we'd recognize as "modern". The Model 1911 has undergone a number of revisions since it came out, improving comfort, safety, accuracy, durability, and so on. For the most part it's largely unchanged and could be mass produced with anyone that has access to 120 year old technology.
What we have today though is new materials, new manufacturing processes, and therefore the ability to make firearms with an ease not possible 100 or so years ago. In World War II there were efforts to make firearms far simpler to manufacture, such as the M3 "grease gun". The M3 was made largely of stamped steel pieces that were welded or riveted together. The only machined parts were the bolt face and barrel. What this means is that it's quite likely to mass produce modern machineguns with not much more than a brake press, welder, and lathe.
Give people time and they will figure out how to make vital parts from softer materials than steel like brass, aluminum, plastic, and wood. Such weapons already exist in the form of the nearly ubiquitous AR-15 rifle, most every handgun on the market today, and even going back to brass frame revolvers from before the American Civil War. You can argue on if a Reconstruction Era weapon is "modern" or not, the point is that the designs from then are not all that different from today. It's quite possible to use the designs and materials from 150 years ago and combine that with design and manufacturing updates since then to mass produce very lethal weapons and not need massive resources or energy.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If you can't tell Norway and France apart, perhaps you need to stop being so obsessed with other people's anal sex, and learn a little about Europe.
There are estimates that about three million people have fled the country because of how bad it is there. That's closing in on about 10% of the population in the last three years. All of this economic interference from the government has made it impossible for many people to live in Venezuela.
So does this mean that Venezuela has proven capitalism to be bankrupt?
You would have to explain why countries like Vietnam and China that instituted capitalist reforms to move away from their even more socialistic policies have seem massive growth instead of downward collapse. Shouldn't the U.S. which is also a capitalist country have collapsed in a similar manner to Venezuela? Why aren't Hong Kong and Singapore the most deplorable little capitalist hellholes on the planet given that they some of the freest markets on the planet?
Because on balance, it indicates that the increase in violent crime is due primarily to robbery
Venezuela has the 3rd highest homicide rate in the world. 1st and 2nd are El Salvador and Honduras, USA is 90th.
None of those things are socialism. Private capitalist companies being contracted by the government to build things and provide services is different from the government becoming the means of production.
Didn't both of those countries have a sharp drop in gun crime when they too passed firearms bans recently?
No, of course not. Neither did Venezuela.
Do you really believe that criminals in a violent country, or their potential victims, are going to obey a "ban"?
You can't sodomize a cucumber
In Soviet Russia, cucumber sodomizes you!
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
As I said before, people keep saying that Slashdot does finally delete posts. If that's the case, why not simply have a script that catches this swastika stuff. There are easily regex parts of it that no legitimate user would ever use. Can code it in 50 seconds.
As far as I know just having the Swastika in ASCII like this on so many posts now could make Slashdot considered illegal in Germany as per the "Wolfenstein" rule.
The majority of property in the USSR was privately owned
This is incorrect (I lived in the USSR, btw). People did not own real estate (ANY real estate), all the enterprises were also state-owned. The only private property was personal. By my classification the USSR had been truly socialistic.
In Venezuela, the government has either nationalized or heavily regulated most industries. Food, necessities like toilet paper, education, housing, land ownership, clothing... Almost all aspects of the economy are controlled by the government.
They are not. Food in Venezuela is produced by private farmers and most of the toilet paper is imported (although local production is picking up). The problem is the mismanagement of the currency by the government that basically makes any productive activity impossible.
As far as I know, the only remaining socialistic country is Cuba. They are not doing that well, but their economy is stable.
Costa Rica has turned out to have a pretty good Governmental system over the last 25 years. Of course, they are heavily capitalist, setup as a Republic much in the mold of the US (an Executive, a Congress, an independent judiciary), and maintain strong ties to the US (to the point that the US dollar is an official currency there). All those other countries that had "People's Revolutions" end up as the shitholes of oppression and terror, where you have to feed your daughters birth control pills so when (not if - when) they are raped they won't get pregnant...
Considering how badly the government has screwed up the parts that it nationalized [bloomberg.com] perhaps the small bits of private enterprise (and black markets) are probably all that's keeping it afloat.
Or maybe: "Even the small remaining amount of capitalistic imperialism is keeping Venezuela from restructuring its economy". This is actually true, the government can't set prices for individual goods because people will immediately exploit it. Not unprecedented, btw, it happened before in Berlin just before the Wall.
You would have to explain why countries like Vietnam and China that instituted capitalist reforms to move away from their even more socialistic policies have seem massive growth instead of downward collapse
Because capitalistic economy tempered with socialistic policies actually works much better than pure dog-eat-dog capitalism?
I agree with your description of Norway. You're misinformed about Venezuela. They've nationalized at least oil, steel, aluminum, cement, gold, iron, farming, transportation, electricity, food production, banking, paper and the media. By nationalized, I mean that the government publicly announced their nationalization and directly controls how the groups involved act, rather than private owners.
From a story which is 5 years old, the number of private companies in Venezuela was 14K in 1998. In 2011 it was 9K. The government has been identified as running over 500 state-run industrial entities, at least 70% of which are losing money.
Is Venezuela 100% socialist? No, but they're mostly socialist in terms of government direction of the economy and they were being lauded as a wonderful example of how great socialism could be by people who are pro-socialist before their economy finished falling apart, which makes it much tougher to suddenly decide they aren't socialist anymore.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
You have never been to any of those countries, have you.
If you had been, and met their people, you would understand that they are very VERY far from socialist countries.
But no, you prefer to be ignorant of facts in support of your cause, I suspect.
Denmark officially calls itself "Social Democracy", one of their major parties is even called that ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
You somehow think that "socialism" means "everything bad" (up to and including earthquakes). It's not.
communism is the (closest) opposite of capitalism
No. You're inventing your own definitions. "Communism" as defined by Marx is basically an utopia that is not achievable right now. What you're thinking about is a planned economy which _is_ the opposite of capitalism. Historically planned economy was called "socialism" but that's a misnomer.
Socialism is a VERY different beast, Socialism is a system where the state takes capital from people who are judged to have too advantaged, and given by those who are judged to be disadvantaged. Socialism is by definition unstable, as the resources it takes from do not last.... It is the social equivalent of everything people are turning away from these days - consumptive behavior.
Incorrect again. Socialism as practiced in successful countries results in disadvantaged people becoming productive members, thus INCREASING the total amount of capital.
Meanwhile, true unconstrained capitalism results in monopolies, asset bubbles and race to the bottom yielding de-facto slavery. Last century the US was saved first by direct socialistic intervention during the Depression, then by the WWII artificially inflating the demand and finally by strong socialistic after-war policies (GI bill, government-funded Interstate system, Medicare, etc.).
Denmark is NOT a planned economy, but it's a socialist country.
Bernie is an idiot, or maybe he just knows idiots like you will take his word on things. Those countries are capitalist with a few more socialist programs than the US. This is also why their tax rate is approaching 80%. They are quickly turning into the same shithole as Venezuela, and every other country that has ever embraced socialism before them. Fuck socialism.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
That's quite good. I think I am going to steal it.
Not that it has anything to do with the current discussion, but just so you know: Sweden avoided invasion by the Nazis and managed to rescue a fair number of their intended victims in the bargain.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
There is something Denmark would like you to know:
https://www.thelocal.dk/201511...
Forbes explains it further:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...