When I read this morning that yesterday’s online media outages may have been targeting a single Georgian blogger, I immediately thought of the extensive reporting at The New Yorker of the violence against journalists in Russia (here and here).

I can’t help but wonder — given the Georgian-Russian conflict — if this outage fits within that context. Without knowing yet the source of the attacks, this may be evidence that when violence fails, powerful operatives in the region may resort to other methods of silencing their enemies.

It makes you question whether that Georgian blogger would be dead now if his enemies knew who he was? If it weren’t for his anonymity and choice of medium — the internet — we might have remained blissfully unaware of his plight. I think up until now most Westerners haven’t paid much attention to the violence toward the journalists of the region, but will the decision to bring down the entire Twitter and Facebook domain wake a sleeping giant?