Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Strikes Back at Critics With His Own Blog

(March 22) -- If you can't beat them, join them.

Just days after Hugo Chavez vowed to tighten online restrictions, the Venezuelan president is taking a new approach to the Internet and starting a blog of his own.

"I'll be communicating with millions, and not just in Venezuela, but the whole world," he announced Sunday morning on his talk show, "Hello Presidente."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez looks at a Magellan notebook computer in September 2008.

Francisco Leong, AFP/Getty Images)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez looks at a notebook computer in 2008. He announced Sunday that he would start blogging as a way to counter his critics. "The Internet is a trench in the struggle," he said.

Something had to be done. In the past year, Chavez's political opposition has filled the country's blogs with anti-government commentary and used social media sites like Twitter to organize against the government.

"The Internet is a trench in the struggle, because there's a conspiracy current building up," Chavez said. "It's as if they had a gun, a cannon."

In August 2009, Chavez dubbed Twitter a "new agent of terror" after a massive torrent of tweets under the tag "freemediaVE" criticized his government for censoring Venezuelan media.

And earlier this month, Chavez seemed to be at his wits' end with social media after a Venezuelan blog erroneously reported that a senior aide to the president had been assassinated. Chavez was so infuriated that he called for Internet controls.

"We have to act. We are going to ask the attorney general for help, because this is a crime," he said on March 13. "I have information that this page periodically publishes stories calling for a coup d'etat. That cannot be permitted."

The new blog, however, represents a clear about-face for the president. According to The Wall Street Journal, Chavez will be blogging from the presidential palace in Miraflores, where he will write about new legislation and address his critics.

Chavez isn't the only leader grappling with the Internet's massive reach and its hard-to-censor content. China and Iran also are struggling with social media, which seem to have a penchant for democratization.

Over the weekend, Chinese officials were angry over Google's threat to leave China after the company claimed the government had sponsored cyberattacks against the search engine.

"Whether [Google] leaves or not, the Chinese government will keep its Internet regulation principles unchanged," the official wrote in a column for the Xinhua News Agency. "One company's ambition to change China's Internet rules and legal system will only prove to be ridiculous."

And in Iran, it's widely known that the political opposition has used Twitter to organize protests against the government.

With his new blog, though, Chavez may be signaling he's planning on taking a somewhat different tack. The Venezuelan president seems to be seizing an opportunity to spar openly with his political opponents on the Web. "It's going to be a battle, indeed," he said Sunday.

His detractors have already thrown the first punch. At the Venezuelan site, El Chigüire Bipolar, which Gawker called "Onion-inspired," writers have started a satirical version of Chavez's blog called "Hugo Candanga." And the English-language blog Caracas Chronicles welcomed the president into the lion's den Sunday with this greeting: "Welcome, Hugo! This is going to be great fun."