Venezuelan president slams Twitter anew

[Zorro]

Source: AFP

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro Saturday argued that Latin America needs to be "liberated" from Twitter after he charged the US-based company of attacking 6,600 accounts including his own.

"We must achieve independence, and we have to think about deep and radical ways we can free ourselves from multinational corporations (like Twitter) that control social media," Maduro said at a meeting of his ministers.

"Let's prepare ourselves to liberate ourselves from you," Maduro said, proposing to work with Mercosur (the Common Market of the South), Unasur (Union of South American Nations) and the ALBA -- a group of leftist allies of Venezuela -- on how to fight back against the microblog.

Maduro, who has regularly made wild anti-US claims since coming to power this year, said late Thursday that the alleged attack was conducted in concert with social networks to provoke unrest and suspend upcoming December 8 municipal elections.

Read more: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/news/19655539/venezuelan-president-slams-twitter-anew/

---

Manuro's on the warpath again, now fighting for the people against the relentless Twitter onslaught.

Glad to see he has his priorities in order.

[MyNameGoesHere]

1. It could have been our secret courts ordering twitter to

close the accounts. I mean at this point in time I would be more inclined to believe a buffoonish leader over our own government/corporations. We aren't exactly a beacon of openness and honesty anymore.

[boomersense]

9. We are a pariah state............nt

ddddd

[Archae]

2. Looks like Maduro hates one particular aspect of Twitter...

Free speech.

[Democat]

3. Let's prepare ourselves to liberate ourselves from you, free speech

He wants to determine what people should be allowed to say? That's freedom?

[christx30]

10. And people in this very thread

are supportive of him. That's awesome.

[MyNameGoesHere]

11. And there it is.

I support an idea. Just like we support Obama even when he does the dumbest things. I believe in the liberal views of Obama, and deplore the ones that would have produced the "war criminal" moniker at the previous president.
I support the Bolivarian revolution and its ideals. I can't help there is a buffoon as president, more than I can help it that Obama sometimes makes we say "what the fuck is he thinking?"

You support an idea, the man or woman leading it will almost assuredly be a disappointment.

[christx30]

12. Human leaders are always a disappointment.

That's why I prefer them to have as little power as possible. You give a buffoon too much power, he could hurt you.

[Comrade Grumpy]

4. Can you please explain your obsession with this guy?

This compulsive need to deride and ridicule?

Do you have something against Venezuelan leftists?

Do you have something against people who have hope for the Bolivarian Revolution?

I really don't get it. No other country seems to get this special treatment. There have been decades of civil war, mass murder, and mass forced displacement of populations right next door in Colombia, and you're posting about Maduro's Twitter tirade? Really?

[Zorro]

5. Care to comment on the contents of the article?

Or does maintaining situational awareness of events affecting a key supplier of oil to the US who also happens to be a declared adversary of no interest?

[dharmamarx]

16. Corporate control of the Internet is bad

Any serious defender of free speech ought to be worried about the amount of control that Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc have over our ability to communicate. Richard Stallman, (the dude who basically came up with the idea for both Linux and Wikipedia) for instance, has also been a technical adviser to Venezuela. Stallman is, of course, famously (and correctly) critical of the corporate control of the Internet and software. A few years ago, the Venezuelan government actually came out with Bolivarian computers that ran GNU/Linux. But I suppose, Stallman is a crazy enemy of free speech, too, right? He must be telling people not to use Skype because he's a Stalinist. It's not surprising that these concerns seem "wild" to the hacks at Yahoo, but they pale in comparison to the bull that our politicians routinely spew about the rest of the world.

[Ranchemp.]

6. Instead of attacking the OP,

how about addressing what the article is about, mainly a nutjob removed from reality?

[dharmamarx]

15. Exactly. The belligerent anti-Chavista sentiment of a lot people on this site is fascinating

I think it's due to a combination of things:
1) American exceptionalism: USA is perfect, therefore anyone who criticizes must be "crazy".
2) White racism: criticism of the US from a non-white country is especially upsetting to the American exceptionalists.
3) Red Scare legacy: Socialism cannot work b/c Soviet Union blah-blah-blah, but here projected at the Chavistas for daring to revive the dreaded s-word. Unfortunately a lot of older so-called "progressives" were raised on this red scare garbage and it's now in their blood.
4) Third World Elites: Unfortunately, the US is also a magnate for disgruntled rich immigrants from poor countries. Venezuela's alliance with Cuba also ticks off the right-wing crazies in Miami so I think we now have a alliance of privileged brats from different third-world countries collectively whining about losing their stuff to poor people.
5) American ignorance about class inequality in the rest of the world: A lot of American liberals don't recognize that the people now claiming to be oppressed are from the same economic class that filled these countries up with slums. Rather, they assume that all third world countries are dictatorships and that everyone from the global south must be poor so if they hear a rich person from the global south complaining about government repression, they immediately assume this person is having their "human rights" violated by a dictator.
6) The Capitalist press: the for-profit media system in the US is advertising dependent, and thus inherently hostile to anyone who mounts a serious critique of capitalism.

I'm particularly fond of the schizophrenic quality of the criticisms of Venezuela. The new rage is to whine about violent crime in Venezuela as if it's something new. (The country has long been crawling with guns and infested with coke trade from Colombia; in fact, the police were the people who traditionally ran the Venezuelan coke trade). The usual implication of this rhetoric is that we need a more authoritarian government that is tougher on crime, but the old criticism was that the democratically elected government was secretly a dictatorship! I think these contradictory points unite in what these people really want: a right-wing authoritarian government that keeps the rich foreign capitalists and wealthy Venezuelans happy and the poor "monkeys" in-line. The American right used to spew this crap about violent crime in the 70s and 80s; they blamed it on the supposed erosion of values caused by the Left in the Civil Rights and women's movements. Something similar is at work here.

[loudsue]

7. Well, he has the right idea about stopping these powerful multinational corporations

They are farming everyone's information so that there is absolutely no privacy. If the USA is spying on Merkel, you can damned well guarantee they have Maduro's government under a microscope, figuring out how to put the government of Venezuela in a blender and turn on the switch.

I don't think he's paranoid ENOUGH.

[sharp_stick]

8. Maybe he saw another

ghost of Chavez in a tweet.

[polly7]

13. Wow, this IS big news!!!

Let's see what else he's doing:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110823464

among other things ....... but we can't be hating on the man and all those millions who support him, if we only see only what can be used for entertainment, right?

[tiny elvis]

14. compare to reports sans editorial 'wild anti-US claims'

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/01/venezuelan-pres-maduro-accuses-twitter-of-attacking-his-account/
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_11_03/Venezuela-s-Maduro-seeks-to-free-South-America-from-Twitter-4650/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10139
and previously
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/14/nicolas-maduro-twitter-hacked_n_3082036.html

how did aus yahoo dig this out of AFP?
i cannot find it on AFP's site in english or french
rawstory's article is from AFP and has no strange opinion inserted