Venezuela Shuts Down Internet, TV Stations To Stifle Protests

[Mike]

At some point, governments around the world are going to start learning that attempting to stifle free speech and communication via protests and the internet is almost always going to backfire on the offending government. Previous iterations of this plotline have been demonstrated in Ukraine, Egypt, and several other Middle East nations that participated in the so-called "Arab Spring."

Well, welcome to South America, governmental hubris, because there are now reports of the government shutting down the internet in Venezuela, where protests against the government and threats of toppling it have been raging.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation made note that Venezuelans working with several different ISPs lost all connectivity on Thursday of this past week. Users lost connectivity to the major content delivery network Edgecast and the IP address which provides access to Twitter’s image hosting service while another block stopped Venezuelan access to the text-based site Pastebin.

CONATEL director William Castillo suggests that the internet cuts were not due to the protests directly. CONATEL is the country’s media regulation network, and Castillo suggested via Noticias24 that online attacks were being waged. CONATEL, he suggests, blocked linkes "where public sites were being attacked."

Even though the attempt to shift blame for internet shutdown on outside hack attacks is a very common kind of government bullshit, it might just be believable, if only that same government wasn't also going around and shutting down television stations that were saying things the government didn't like. In the case of NTN24, a Venezuelan cable news channel, the government isn't even trying to pretend the shutdown isn't politically motivated.

Venezuela’s president said that a Colombia-based cable news channel was ordered to be removed from cable lineups in Venezuela because of its coverage of an antigovernment protest. President Nicolás Maduro said Thursday that the channel, NTN24, had tried to “foment anxiety about a coup d'état.” He said that he gave the order to pull the channel because “No one is going to come from abroad and try to perturb the psychological climate of Venezuela.”

No, no, of course not Senor Maduro, you're perfectly capable of perturbing the psychological climate of Venezuela all by yourself. As with Egypt, and Tunisia, and most recently Ukraine, this won't work. In fact, it's likely again going to have the opposite effect of provoking the protesters even more than they've been already. At some point the lesson will eventually be learned that in an era where free speech and citizen press have been expanded exponentially, attempts to shut both down won't be tolerated.

Perhaps President Maduro would like to speak with Viktor Yanukovych, if he wasn't in hiding from people on whom he attempted to put these exact same restrictions.

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[Picklock]

well, what you'll expect from "old" politician like that

they are not grown up in the time where Internet Freedom of Information's was a booming, they are grown up in the ages where movement made with printed papers and underground radio broadcast.. seriously when the ages where keyboard fighter dominates the world populations, the old politicians shown how stupidly clueless they are to deals with this kind of movement.

aside from that, Maduro should just step off from his office, go to Venezuela's socialist supporters and build his own force there. let alone the pro western and capitalist take over that country and let them do what ever they wish for....I'm not surprised if the first thing to do is privatizing the National Oil company.
and then let see do the such thing called "democratic changes" will eventually changes the things that the protester used as the claims for their movement.
because I'm already ready to rotflmao to see the results.(PS: the problems in Venezuela mostly caused by middle class that want to get richer and upper class that don't want to lost even a cent of their wealth)
cheers to the arabs


as for Ukraine....well I don't know about the citizens of EU, but to give billions of Euro to bailout Ukraine....seriously if I was citizen in one of EU country, I'll start my own protest to expel the EU leadership if it given!!!