Chavez to control internet?

The latest from the insanely-deranged, terrorism-supporter, dictator-loving, drug-trafic-allowing, coup leading, militaristic, Venezuelan kingpin is just laughable: he says internet ought to be controlled: I'd say bring it on MoFo! Now some may perceive my words as inappropriate. Some may think that having CANTV (Venezuela's telecom company) under his thumb, Chavez can easily filter what sites can be accessed from the country. In theory he could, but bear with me. Cuba, widely known as one of the countries where internet access is most restricted, has not been able to stop the blogging phenomenon by Yoani Sanchez and the like. Cuba, a failed state by all counts, lacking modern infrastructure, with an appalling and half dysfunctional telecom network, with one of the most efficient repressive and intelligence apparatuses, and with a technology-impaired population that can hardly afford mobile phones, has not been able to make the slightest of dents in the flow of information from the island onto the web with the advent of blogs, twitter, sms, etc.

Venezuela’s mobile penetration, on the other hand, has passed the 100% milestone, positioning itself well above the Latin American average. And I shall quote further: "Venezuela’s per- capita use of smart phones outpaces Europe’s, according to Research in Motion Ltd., BlackBerry’s manufacturer." Now does anyone with an iota of brain really think that Chavez, and the bunch of incompetent thugs that work for him, will be able to somewhat affect the flow of information to and fro the web? Mind you, over the years I have been able to, singlehandedly and without much resources, trash nearly all attempts Chavez's sycophants have made to establish a half decent chavista online reputation. In whatever particular subject pertaining to Chavez / Venezuela I have failed to shed an independent light on, my fellow Venezuelan bloggers have done an equally fantastic job, of their own, at exposing "the turpitude" of chavismo, as Daniel says. Miguel gets constantly quoted by Bloomberg and other financial publications, Quico writes every so often for international 'liberal' media, Pedro gets replies from the OAS Sec Gen, and this is only a handful. Nelson Bocaranda has more than 115,000 followers in his twitter account (@nelsonbocaranda) and retweets regularly updates of mine, while Alberto Ravell, former CEO of Globovision and Chavez's favourite punchbag lately, has got another 100K followers (@albertoravell).

Pardon my language here, but these fucking thugs have no clue about what they're getting on. They protect ETA and FARC terrorists all right. They have turned Venezuela, for all intents and purposes, in a criminals' Eden. They can bring an octogenarian creep, who has probably never written a blog in his life, from Cuba all they like. But from there to control internet? They have got to be taking the piss, for this is not forcing cable companies to drop a TV signal, as they did with RCTV. Internet has got its own life, and it's unstoppable, as all dictators are only too aware.