Internet/Media Blackout in Venezuela. SEVERE humanitarian crisis.

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The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night – and the International Media Is Asleep At the Switch

Francisco Toro / 14 hours ago

San Cristobal on Tuesday night

Dear International Editor:

Listen and understand. The game changed in Venezuela last night. What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden.

What we have this morning is no longer the Venezuela story you thought you understood.

Throughout last night, panicked people told their stories of state-sponsored paramilitaries onmotorcycles roaming middle class neighborhoods, shooting at people and storming into apartment buildings, shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting. People continue to be arrested merely for protesting, and a long established local Human Rights NGO makes an urgent plea for an investigation into widespread reports of torture of detainees. There are now dozens of serious human right abuses: National Guardsmen shooting tear gas canisters directly into residential buildings. We have videos of soldiers shooting civilians on the street. And that’s just what came out in real time, over Twitter and YouTube, before any real investigation is carried out. Online media is next, a city of 645,000 inhabitants has been taken off the internet amid mounting repression, and this blog itself has been the object of a Facebook “block” campaign.

What we saw were not “street clashes”, what we saw is a state-hatched offensive to suppress and terrorize its opponents.

After the major crackdown on the streets of major (and minor) Venezuelan cities last night, I expected some kind of response in the major international news outlets this morning. I understand that with an even bigger and more photogenic freakout ongoing in an even more strategically important country, we weren’t going to be front-page-above-the-fold, but I’m staggered this morning to wake up, scan the press and find…

Nothing.

As of 11 a.m. this morning, the New York Times World Section has…nothing.

NYTimes – nothing

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The Guardian’s World News has some limp why-are-you-protesting? piece that made some sense before last night’s tropical pogrom, but none after it.

The Guardian: Fluff

So…basically nothing.

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The BBC is still leading its Latin America section on a Leopoldo story, as though last night had been just business as usual.

BBC – Would you guess a sort of pogrom took place in Venezuela from looking at that?

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CNN is also out chasing the thing that was the story in the old Venezuela:

CNN: Your breaking news is broken.

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Al Jazeera English never got the memo:

AJE: NPI

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Even places that love to hate the Venezuelan government are asleep at the wheel:

Et tu, Ailes?

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The level of disengagement on display is deeply shocking.

Venezuela’s domestic media blackout is joined by a parallel international blackout, one born not of censorship but of disinterest and inertia. It’s hard to express the sense of helplessness you get looking through these pages and finding nothing. Venezuela burns; nobody cares.

Let me put this clearly. Y’all need to step it up. The time to discard what you thought you knew about the way things work in Venezuela is now.

Quico

(Damnit, there’s just no way to stay retired in these circumstances…)

February 20, 2014 in Politics.

[kn_andre]

Politics and Power ... Two Things that can Make Or Break a Nation .... Pity whats going on in the World now ... Cheers for sharing ...

[VileTouch]

terrible :( indeed there are no news about it anywhere. stay safe there. getting the word out is key

[jackieo]

The real sad thing is how many people are completely asleep and unplugged from reality!

( and have no clues as to whats the real deal here, and have no desire to even pose the questions, they just take the spoon-fed propaganda fed to them by the state run media, and think its a happy day...)

Both at the street level and the mind level.

And now we have a society that has unplugged itself from the global consciousness while evil forces play out.

This, at the same time as Kiev is struggling with a false revolution posed by the globalist elite powers.

Is it a co-incidence? That these two events are happening simultaneously? I think not!

The public has only so much time in a day and only so much "mental real estate" to devote to these issues and would rather not "think of the dark mean things" and just go about life thinking its a happy day while the earth crumbles out from beneath them.

We are living in dark dark times !

Edited February 22, 2014 by jackieo

[jackieo]

The level of disengagement on display is deeply shocking.

Venezuela’s domestic media blackout is joined by a parallel international blackout, one born not of censorship but of disinterest and inertia. It’s hard to express the sense of helplessness you get looking through these pages and finding nothing. Venezuela burns; nobody cares.

Let me put this clearly. Y’all need to step it up. The time to discard what you thought you knew about the way things work in Venezuela is now.

Quico

(Damnit, there’s just no way to stay retired in these circumstances…)

February 20, 2014 in Politics.

Bravo! I could not have said it better myself, Sir! :) I commend you on this reporting style! :)

Awesome Post Avitar! Keep The Faith! Stay Strong My Friend ! :showoff:

What is needed here is some journalistic integrity, trepidation, and fortitude,

and not just the copy & paste mentality of covering the so called "news" events put up for consumption by the globalist-elite state-run-media lap-dogs. (msnbc, cnn, and yes, even fox, etc, et al)

Things are happening so fast, it takes some out-of-the-box-thinking and connect-the-dots-thinking

to truly and dynamically understand and comprehend whats really happening, and WHY things are happening.

The state run media complex is lying on a daily basis! its astounding! Lies by OMISSION!!!!

ONE MUST SEE PAST THE HEADLINES AND DIVE DEEPER INTO THE MOTIVATIONS OF THE GLOABAL ELITE!!

George Soros and company....need I say more?

(( If one doesn't know who he is, and what they stand for, and the threat he/they pose to the global consciousness, and safety,

then one needs to do their homework before covering news events, and factor that into the equation, Straight up, end of story.))

Edited February 22, 2014 by jackieo

[kn_andre]

Photo: AP Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks next to a painting of the late Hugo Chavez, during a news conference at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Feb. 21, 2014. Speaking Friday to international media, Maduro called out what he said was a "campaign of demonization to isolate the Bolivarian revolution."

SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (AP) — The violent protests that have roiled Venezuela's major cities and challenged its socialist government have their roots in a little-known incident on a college campus in a city far from the capital.

Just over a week before the Feb. 12 opposition rallies across Venezuela, students at the University of the Andes in San Cristobal in the border state of Tachira were protesting an attempted rape of a young woman on campus.

The students were outraged at the brazen assault on their campus, which underscored long-standing complaints about deteriorating security under President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.

But what really set them off was the harsh police response to their initial protest, in which several students were detained and allegedly abused, as well as follow-up demonstrations to call for their release, according to students and people who live in the city of San Cristobal.

"It was shocking not just to students but to all of San Cristobal," said Gaby Arellano, a 27-year-old student leader who has been involved in the national opposition campaign. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back."

The protests expanded and grew more intense, drawing in more non-students angry about the dismal economy and crime in general, which led to more people being detained. Students at other universities decided to march in Caracas and the protest movement became a nationwide campaign when prominent opposition leaders decided to get involved.

The main rally on Feb. 12 in the capital turned violent, resulting in three deaths from gunshots and then the jailing of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Now, protests that continued throughout the country Friday, and are particularly fierce in San Cristobal, rarely, if ever, mention the attempted rape.

"I'm protesting because of the insecurity, for the scarcity and the abuse of power that we have been experiencing," said Maria Garcia, a 30-year-old mother in the Los Agustinos neighborhood of San Cristobal, where patrolling soldiers have strung coils to control protesters who lob rocks and Molotov cocktails. "I'm tired of waiting five or six hours in line for a kilo of flour."

Today, as the anti-government movement has snowballed into a political crisis, the likes of which Venezuela's socialist leadership hasn't seen since a 2002 coup attempt, San Cristobal remains a hotbed of unrest. Protest rallies are expected throughout the country on Saturday.

The government on Thursday said it would send paratroopers to aid hundreds of soldiers already in place to restore order and the president has said he would consider imposing martial law in the area. Maduro, it should be noted, has a very different version of events in San Cristobal, which is in the western state of Tachira that borders on Colombia.

Maduro says the city is under siege by right-wing paramilitaries under orders from former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who dismisses the allegation as an attempt by the Venezuelan leader to distract people from an economy beset by shortages of basic goods and inflation of more than 56 percent.

Maduro said Friday that San Cristobal Mayor Daniel Ceballos, a member of the same party as Lopez, would soon join the jailed opposition leader behind bars for fomenting violence. "It's a matter of time until we have him in the same cold cell," Maduro said.

Residents on Friday tried to resume their normal activities as the smell of burnt trash still lingered. Public transportation has yet to be restored, many stoplights are out and students are gearing up for what they promise will be an extended fight. As warplanes buzz the sky, there is also widespread resentment of the heavy troop presence.

"Why is the president sending these troops here? As far as I know, the military is supposed to protect Venezuelans, not attack them," said Jose Hernandez, a 31-year-old construction worker. San Cristobal, a rural city 400 miles (660 kilometers) from Caracas, would seem an unlikely place to be at the center of a national crisis. But with its disproportionately large student population and longstanding cultural and economic ties with its more conservative neighbor, it has long been an opposition stronghold.

The state of Tachira, of which San Cristobal is the largest city and capital, was only one of two where opposition candidate Henrique Capriles defeated Hugo Chavez in 2012 presidential elections. Last April, residents of San Cristobal voted nearly 3 to 1 in favor of Capriles in the race against Maduro to elect Chavez's successor.

Its independent streak may have to do with its isolation, said Arellano, who grew up in Tachira. "I think people in Tachira have always stood against abuses and being trampled," she said.

Source : https://www.mail.com/int/news/world/2669044-venezuelan-violence-roots-obscure-incident.html#.1258-stage-subhero1-3

[truemate]

Venezuelan Beauty Queen Shot Dead at 22, Is Latest Victim of Political Unrest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZjkCoGXM1k

Tragedy has struck Venezuela yet again after a local beauty queen died of a gunshot wound on Wednesday.

Genesis Carmona, 22, was reportedly attending a protest on the street in the central city of Valencia when she was shot in the head by an unidentified gunman on Tuesday. She was rushed to the hospital on a motorcycle, but later died in a clinic.

Carmona's death is the fifth fatality that has resulted from political unrest in the South American country as opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who was imprisoned on Tuesday after turning himself in, continues to urge supporters to protest Venezuela's socialist government and President Nicolas Maduro.

Edited February 22, 2014 by truemate