
Venezuela's Internet Crackdown Escalates into Regional Blackout - 1zq
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/venezuelas-net-crackdown-escalates
======
rafaelm
I think the internet is back up in most parts of the country, I have some
friends in Tachira and it seems that things are back to normal, for now. The
govt keeps running small tests like last week when they blocked twitter images
for a couple of hours and last night in Tachira.

Meanwhile, there is a complete media blackout. Local TV channels are being
censored and are not informing what is going on in the country. Our only means
of information is the internet, mostly twitter. This causes a lot of
misinformation unfortunately.

Last night , while there were protests everywhere in Caracas and the rest of
the country the president went on TV live to talk (all the channels have to
stop regular programming and have to transmit whatever he is saying), the
National Guard with armed government supporters went out and cracked down hard
on all the protestors:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmzfwqczZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmzfwqczZw)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbdzBYjAug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbdzBYjAug)

I have friends in other areas in Caracas that had to sleep on the floor
because of constant shooting from the streets up to the apartments.

------
acd
Lets help them be able to read free information with modem dial uplinks,
satellite uplinks and mesh wireless networks.

[http://www.meshnetworking.org/further-reading/current-
projec...](http://www.meshnetworking.org/further-reading/current-projects)
[http://tidepools.co/](http://tidepools.co/)
[http://servalproject.org/](http://servalproject.org/)

Mesh Firmware for Ubiquity network
[http://commotionwireless.net/download/routers](http://commotionwireless.net/download/routers)

OpenBTS is a Unix application that uses a software radio to present a GSM Um
interface to handsets and uses a SIP softswitch or PBX to connect calls
[http://openbts.org/](http://openbts.org/)

~~~
wslh
Elias Levy (Aleph One) is originally from Venezuela. I don't know if he is
involved in politics there.

------
higherpurpose
You'd think that after 10 or so such major protests in the past few years, the
dictators would learn not to repeat the same mistakes everyone else did before
them. Someone should write a "10 commandments" of sort for how dictators
should react in case of major protest.

Maybe do what American presidents do: promise major changes and _tell them
everything they want to hear_ , and then do cosmetic changes at best over a
long period of time, until people forget about it. That strategy seems to work
pretty well in US, and it seems to pacify almost everyone.

It should certainly be much better than doing drastic stuff like shooting at
protesters and cutting off their communications "to make them stop". That
always makes the situation worse and forces the protest to escalate and even
become violent.

~~~
pessimizer
Maduro isn't a dictator, he's the democratically elected head of a weak
government. The government had been run as a cult of personality, that
personality died, and the professional class smelled blood.

These protesters are ultimately demanding that the police shoot more people,
not fewer. They feel their country is spinning out of control, and needs a
strongman to save it. Paging Dr. Pinochet?

~~~
skrebbel
I know nothing of the issue, so please educate me, but isn't Maduro the one
who currently controls all media and just shut down his people's acces to the
internet? Sounds pretty dictator-y to me.

~~~
davidw
As far as I understand it, he is democratically elected, but the government
doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances. The stuff about the
protesters wanting a military strongman sounds like biased propaganda.

~~~
pessimizer
What exactly do the protesters want, then? Other than Lopez to be president.

As far as I can tell, they want law and order because of the rising (and
terrifying) levels of violence, and they don't want their Bolivars to lose all
of their value.

Pretty traditional stuff. Foreign investors can't wait for Maduro to be
toppled, because that means the shop is open again. The protesters are going
to have an unlimited source of monetary support and friendly foreign press.

>the government doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances

Citation needed.

------
yread
I saw this post yesterday

[http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180977](http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180977)

It shows how leaders of opposition are using images from protests from Egypt,
Bulgaria and other places as if they were from Venezuela

~~~
wslh
What are you trying to say? You can check more than one...

i) Maduro's government is right and the opposition wrong?

ii) The opposition is [even partially] right but they are using the wrong
methods?

iii) Maduro's government is not using propaganda as a way to gain the favor of
the people?

iv) Other. Please elaborate.

~~~
zimbatm
OP provides an interesting fact. There is no need to extrapolate more meaning
than what's given: that there is media manipulation going on. To answer to
your points more data points would be needed.

~~~
guard-of-terra
The fact is either irrelevant to discussion (in which case it is off-topic) or
it isn't (in this case we have to extrapolate more meaning to link those two).

~~~
pessimizer
Or the listener can decide how relevant it is, because this thread is about
Venezuela, the protests, and the internet, and the fact is about Venezuela,
the protests, and the internet.

Every fact shared isn't required to be an explicit part of a marketing
campaign, is it?

edit: it's depressing that this whine is floating above video of police
actually kicking unarmed people in the head and (possibly) shooting at
cameramen.

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andrewcooke
if anyone is still reading this thread, i found this link had a pretty good
description of what i happening (i don't live in venezuela, but i do live in
chile and the link below sounds reasonably consistent with the kind of thing i
have heard about the unrest here - it sounds believable to me).

[http://feministing.com/2014/02/20/toward-a-nuanced-
feminist-...](http://feministing.com/2014/02/20/toward-a-nuanced-feminist-
discussion-on-venezuela/)

ps despite the title it doesn't have much to do with feminism - it's a pretty
general article.

------
gmjosack
Interestingly my girlfriend has been using What's App to communicate with her
family in Venezuela cheaply throughout the last week since they've been unable
to get any news. It's really sad to see the government act this way and
hopefully the realize that they're causing a lot of unrest in their citizens.
It's always inspiring to see citizens standing up to the government in all
these other countries. you see some protests in the States but it never feels
near the scale.

~~~
kaonashi
When you're under full assault from the US intelligence agencies, sometimes
you overreact.

~~~
tsotha
I doubt the US is involved. What would be the point? It's been obvious for
years eventually the government would run out of other peoples' money and fail
to deliver basic services. Once you start in with price controls the end is
near.

~~~
kaonashi
They've been involved for years… they're going to sit this one out?

~~~
tsotha
What evidence do you have the US intelligence agencies are involved in
Venezuela?

~~~
kaonashi
Are or were? Were, there's plenty. Are -- well we're talking about a covert
agency, no?

~~~
tsotha
What is the _latest_ incident you can document involving US intelligence
agencies and Venezuela?

~~~
kaonashi
Document? Going by Wikipedia
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pliers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pliers).
Venezuela.info has quite a bit of info going back a decade or so.

The point of the comment is not to definitively state anything, merely
conjecture. If you'd like to debunk said conjecture, feel free; but asking for
documentation seems beside the point.

------
gadders
But Venezuela is a democracy and Hugo Chavez was a democrat and man of peace!

~~~
pmelendez
I can't tell if you are being ironic or not, but just to remind the people who
can take your post seriously, that Chavez and his group commanded two
unsuccessful coup d'etat attempts, that is hardly something that a "man of
peace" would do.

~~~
gadders
I am being ironic. He was lionised in the left-wing press in the UK when he
died, and was a friend of our ex-London Mayor Ken Livingstone. In reality, he
is no better than Castro.

~~~
at-fates-hands
You can also toss in Michael Moore and Hollywood:

[http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130308/hollywood...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130308/hollywood-
liberals-hail-chavez-defiant-tradition)

"Sean Penn sat grim-faced at Hugo Chavez's funeral Friday -- one of a clutch
of Hollywood stars who lionized the late Venezuelan leader, in defiance of
America's fierce antipathy to his regime.

Following a long tradition of Hollywood liberals, Penn was joined by Oliver
Stone, Danny Glover and documentary maker Michael Moore in lauding the
charismatic Venezuelan president after his death this week."

~~~
gadders
This is the Sean Penn that tied his then wife (Madonna) to a chair and beat
her. What a prince.

------
Thiz
If your government shuts down the internet

Keep calm

And shutdown your government

~~~
d0
Remove the keep calm bit and you're there.

~~~
Zikes
Yeah, there's probably no calm way to stage a coup.

------
etanazir
Syria, Sudan, google bus stop, Ukraine, Venezuela, ... who's next?

~~~
alisson
Brazil is a bet

~~~
diego_moita
You dream. There are elections this year and current president Dilma is a
strong favorite.

The protests in Brazil are fizzling. The poor never took part on them and the
middle class left them because radicals (black-blocs) turned it too violent.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Protests on that scale only happen when the economy goes downhill like it did
in Venezuela, because the igniter of those kind of protests is, usually, the
middle class.

Last year's protests didn't escalated into impeachment because despite blatant
corruption and bad government spending, the current government represents the
left and that means any movement against it doesn't have the support from the
intellectual elite or the media. In fact, the protests started largely as a
left movement, asking for _more_ government (lower/free bus fares means more
taxation elsewhere), and gathered _more support_ after the clashes with the
military police (which is still seen as a product of the authoritarian
conservative right of the 60's).

Unless the economy in Brazil tanks and the insatisfaction increases
_massively_ , protests against the government will be limited to anarcho-
extremists. Until then this incompetent bolivarian left will keep brainwashing
the population, invoking the shadow of the authoritarian right to stay in
power.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Based on the last ten years of coverage of Venezuela in the US media, I no
longer believe the hype.

------
lacion
i am baffled by the faith most people here have about electronic elections.

this being hacker news and all there is too many people claiming
"democratically elected"

