Cuba Getting Internet Upstream Via Venezuela

An anonymous reader writes "Seems like Cuba is working around the US internet embargo by teaming up with Venezuela: A confidential contract released yesterday on Wikileaks reveals Cuba's plan to receive internet upstream via an undersea cable to Venezuela, thus circumventing the enduring embargo of the US, denying Cuba access to nearby American undersea cables and overcoming the current limits of satellite-only connectivity. The connection, to be delivered by CVG Telecom of Venezuela, is to be completed by 2010 and will provide data, video as well as voice service for both the public and governmental services."

Comments

Surprised?

[chill]

I figured they arranged for something like this years ago.

Re:Surprised?

[DaedalusHKX]

What amazes me is WHY would the USA government have been involved in such socialistic crap such as embargoes, rather than letting the citizenry sample the good and bad of all and choose for themselves. Unless of course, one notes that a citizen is another term for a "loyal subject"... an "oath of citizenship" is the same thing as the "oath of fealty" once was.

Amusing, yes, very amusing. Too bad it takes all of us so long to learn all this.

Re:Surprised?

[baldass_newbie]

the USA government have been involved in such socialistic crap such as embargoes, rather than letting the citizenry sample the good and bad of all and choose for themselves

I don't think the USA gets a choice in what the good people of Cuba see or don't see. I think the Cuban government does and jails those who try to shine the light.

Re:Surprised?

[tomhudson]

Well, considering the Bay of Pigs, the attempts to assassinate Castro, and all the other plots, maybe it's time for the US to formally renounce such stupid behaviour.

Then again, I don't think pigs are going to fly any time soon, either ...

Re:Surprised?

[DaedalusHKX]

You probably haven't noticed all the restrictions in place to travel to Cuba, have you? USA nationals/citizens are denied a LOT of the freedom they are proclaimed to have. Technically if our government was OUR government then it wouldnt' distrust us to make up our own minds about "good" or "evil", would they?

Re:Surprised?

[gnick]

tomhudson

I think you misspelled Jimmy Carter.

But I agree - The embargo is idiotic. We (the U.S.) screwed up the same way in Iran. The people liked us shortly after the revolution and blue jeans and MTV could have really made for a good relationship, in my arm-chair general opinion. (Disclaimer - the notion that the general populace liked the U.S. comes from a single native Iranian who was teaching a Programming Patterns course that I attended, and I chose to believe him. Fell free to correct me.)

Cuba is similar - Give 'em YouTube, uncensored Google, porn, Wikipedia, streaming reality TV and show 'em the stuff that a lot of people in the world enjoy (for whatever reasons). It'll do a lot more good than what we've tried so far...

On a side note, if you're willing to drag a floaty toy to the beach and paddle your ass to Florida, I say we turn our heads and let you stay - You're obviously more dedicated to being an American than most of the folks that were born here.

Re:Surprised?

[Darkness404]

Hmmm... Lets see... Which is the better way to get rid of a dictatorship A) don't allow any material into the country that tells of a better life or B) Flood Cuba's shores with artists, with musicians, give them Google, and the Wikis, give them /., blogs, The Pirate Bay, give them an uncensored internet and things start working themselves out. Think of it this way, if after we nuked Japan, we didn't help rebuild, and still called it evil, Japan would have most likely rebuilt a dictator-style empire. But we didn't do that, we gave them animation which turned into Anime, we gave them our technology which was taken and now Japan is a leader in technology. We could have done the same with Cuba, but instead we preferred to call names and run and hide.

Re:Surprised?

[techno-vampire]

Cuba is similar - Give 'em YouTube, uncensored Google, porn, Wikipedia...

Exactly. give them what Jerry Pournelle calls "weapons of cultural mass destruction" and let those weapons do their job. Within a few years, either the Cuban government will lighten up, or the people will throw them out when they realize how much better their lives could be. People are only willing to put up with repressive regimes if they don't know there's anything better out there, which is why countries like Cuba, Iran and North Korea limit the amount of information about the rest of the world that their people can get their hands on.

Re:Surprised?

[Darkness404]

They didn't need it until recently because until recently very few people were allowed to even have Internet (or cell phones or many types of things that allow people to communicate with the outside world). Remember this is Cuba we're talking about, not some free Socialist utopia...

But honestly, if you are going to control people, the internet would be an excellent tool to have. Think about it, educate people in public schools that you go to *insert government controlled website here* to search for everything. Use that to give people propaganda, and replace popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo with Cuba-controlled ones that look like Google and act like Google but only searches the government sites. For just about anything else, just put a generic error such as a "time out error". The best way to control the public isn't to make it look like they have such a horrible life, but that they believe they have the best life out there so there is no use trying to find a better life.

Re:Surprised?

[jcr]

Cuba's credit is so bad (due to refusal to pay contracts

Is it refusal to pay, or simply lack of funds? Cuba's economy has been a basket case since the Soviets collapsed and quit propping them up.

-jcr

Re:Surprised?

[compro01]

46 years ago. Just 20 years before that, you were in a little shooting & bombing war with a little place called Japan.

Fast-forward to today and how much of the tech sold in the US was developed in that country?

FFS, you're now friendlier with the country that was controlling those missiles than you are with Cuba!

Re:Surprised?

[sumdumass]

Some of them were land owners. Some were regular peasants. When Castro took control, he did so violently. He wasn't a freely elected president who decided to stay over.

Also, there was/is a lot of persecution on the people who saw the free market system as a good system. These people were locked up in jails and when Reagan was in office, many of them as well as their families were thrown into make shift rafts at gun point and told what direction to go if they wanted a chance to live. There have been some other things too. Like in the 90's (94-95) when Clinton upped the embargo when cuba had another mass exodus.

The thing is, the people of Cuba are old enough to remember living in a free and democratic Cuba or have heard first hand stories about it. Cuba was a very prosperous country back in the day. When presented with an opportunity to leave, quite a few of them jumped on inner tubes or whatever and left. They held on to what little American money there was in hopes of being free again. It wasn't until recently that Cuba outlaws it's use in the country.

Re:Surprised?

[Adult film producer]

You can't indict the u.s. health care system for lower life expectancy among americans. Its not the fault of the system that americans stuff their faces with double whoppers meals, super-sized coca-colas and serving sizes at restaurants that could feed a horse. No matter what medicine or treatment is available those people will die a lot sooner than a cuban.

Re:Surprised?

[aproposofwhat]

the people of Cuba are old enough to remember living in a free and democratic Cuba or have heard first hand stories about it.

Free and democratic?

Under Batista?

GTFO, moron - Cuba was neither free nor a democracy before the revolution, and the major factor in delaying democracy in Cuba has been the US embargo and the failure of successive US regimes to engage the Cubans diplomatically.

Re:Surprised?

[mjwx]

The US didn't give Japan animation, they've been able to draw pictures for centuries before the US even existed. Films and photography were made in Japan prior to world war 2. The US didn't give a lot of technology to Japan, Japan reversed engineered a lot of it and even recreated some technologies from observation. Saying that the US gave modern technology is an insult to Japanese engineers and scientists who laboured to create modern Japan, especially since the Japanese planes and warships fielded in WWII were technologically superior to those fielded by the United States (the US had superior numbers, resources and on occasion, training).

Re:Surprised?

[Gideon Fubar]

I'm sure you'll be welcome here in Australia, tho i hear that welfare and healthcare are even better in some EU countries.

I also think that a balance is probably a better approach.. taking the good aspects of Capitalism and Socialism and working them together.. So businesses are free to trade, medical care is catered for, and people who can't get work don't starve to death.

It's a pretty weak simile, but i see a country as roughly like a person. If they want to stay active they have to stay healthy.. expecting them to take care of it themselves is like expecting your cells to organize themselves so you have Olympic-level fitness on demand. Pretty much the same goes for education..

Re:Surprised?

[Augusto]

In Cuba, there is basically no real freedom of expression or any respectable level of political organization that doesn't toe the government line.

The "visit Cuba" thing is kind of sad, foreigners love to vacation in Cuba and often forget (or don't even care) that these places are can not be enjoyed by the locals.

http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

Re:Surprised?

[orzetto]

I'd love to find a country that's figured out how they should be balanced and needs a MSEE grad with PM experience that can look past a late-night semi-inebriated /. post...

Norway. It's also the most peaceful place in the world. I lived there until March, I moved since I got a one-of-a-kind job elsewhere. That's still a place I would recommend, though. The health care system is universal, tax levels are supposed to be the highest in the world, but that's not true: they are high for the rich bastards, I never paid more than 29.5% of my income and my last salary was about $7500 a month before taxes.

And, yes, they are desperate to find people there. With the current oil prices their economy is on the way up, but you cannot improvise engineers in a few months, so chances are you can find a job there fairly easily. They also have movies/TV in original language (mostly English) and most people speak decent English too, so you are not completely lost in a foreign country until you learn Norwegian. Norwegians are also efficient as Germans, but without the rudeness; pretty nice people to work with.

Re:Surprised?

[Stooshie]

I can't remember the quote exactly, but Tariq Ali, talking about Iraq, said something like:

... If we give each and every family a new house, car and job, it would be far more effective and would cost a lot less ...

Re:Surprised?

[mastropiero]

United Statians, not Americans. Americans as in Ecuadorians, Colombians, Venezuelans, Brazilians, etc have the freedom to visit Cuba.

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that US Citizens can't go to Cuba is because there would be too many demonstrations outside Guantanamo Bay which would force the closure or US' torture chambers...

Re:Surprised?

[xaxa]

You can't indict the u.s. health care system for lower life expectancy among americans. Its not the fault of the system that americans stuff their faces with double whoppers meals, super-sized coca-colas and serving sizes at restaurants that could feed a horse. No matter what medicine or treatment is available those people will die a lot sooner than a cuban.

Because most healthcare is paid for by taxes in the UK, techniques to prevent people getting ill are used. For instance, free vaccinations, monitoring of babies/children's health, screening for cancers, STI checks, diet advice, stop-smoking stuff, etc.

Also, if you have to pay to see a doctor, you're less likely to go, and any problem you have might get worse. If you don't get free advice during pregnancy your child might be less healthy (infant mortality is quite high in the USA).

Re:Surprised?

[0xdeadbeef]

In Cuba, there is basically no real freedom of expression or any respectable level of political organization that doesn't toe the government line.

So, it's just like China and Saudi Arabia, countries on which we are so dependent our economy would fail if we ever decided to embargo them.

Re:Surprised?

[hey!]

Back in the late 60s, when I was a kid, I went with my friend to visit his uncle, who was a WW2 combat vet. He was dirt poor, living in a filthy one room apartment, because he couldn't hold down a job. He was a nice guy, but you could see why he couldn't keep a job. Underneath the niceness, there was this layer of craziness that was continually bubbling. It wasn't a scary kind of crazy, it was sad, and haunted. Employers tried to help him out, but he was unreliable.

It was like he had one eye focused in the present, and one twenty five years in the past. What he was looking at were war atrocities, which would have been bad enough, but they were atrocities committed by soldiers on our side. When they happened, he couldn't accept what his eyes were telling him, and he continued seeing and not accepting those things every day of his life. He was proud American, and nothing could ever shake that, which was what made the shame inescapable.

This is what history is made up of: Details that inevitably don't fit into the big picture, even if that were the truest possible big picture. It was the Germans who committed atrocities, so an atrocity committed by Americans doesn't fit. When we hear of something that doesn't fit, we set out to disprove it, or failing that justify it. If you can't disprove or justify it, you just have to accept it. If you can't accept it, you become a little crazy.

Still, that doesn't mean the big story about the greatest generation going to war to save civilization isn't true, or at the least the truest way of fitting everything together in a nutshell. There will alway be details that don't fit. Some of them will be horrific or tragic, some ironic, and some just inexplicably perverse.

It's hard to say which was the bigger 20th C story, the fight against fascism or the struggle to hold the line against Soviet style communist totalitarianism. But the cold war was a much longer, generational story and so is messier. I'd say that on the whole the saving the world from Communism story is true, but there are enough contradictory incidents to turn that view on its head if you want to. The radicalization of Iran by undermining its secular democracy, for example. Vietnam, for example. Cuba is a rich source of paradoxes.

A lot of what we did in the Cold War looks now like mistakes, although we'll never know for sure on all of them because there's alway those bits that don't fit. Certainly some of the things we did were at least grossly unfair to some of the people involved.

Accepting this doesn't make the big story untrue, it just means that we should learn from them and try to do things better next time. What's the point of history, otherwise?

Re:Surprised?

[elrous0]

Trying to shine the light? You mean like this guy?

Considering the behavior of Cuban dissidents in the past (multiple attempts to overthrow the government or assassinate Castro, terrorist attacks targetting civilians, etc.) I would throw their asses in jail too. Do you think if a group from outside the U.S. kept coming in and trying to overthrow the government, bomb markets, and kill the President that we'd just let them run around free?

Fuck that trash down in Miami. Just contrast their behavior with that of actual Cubans during the Elian Gonzalez scandal for a good look at who the real scumbags are in THAT fight.

Re:Surprised?

[elrous0]

Correction. Americans don't hate Cuba. Only bitter old Republicans and bitter old Kennedy Democrats hate Cuba. They hate it because Castro dared overthrow their corrupt puppet Batista, then refused to play ball with them and let their big businesses keep exploiting the Cuban people for cheap labor. They hate it because Castro had the audacity to refuse to die when they tried multiple times to kill him or overthrow him. They hate it because the Republican Party chose to get into bed with a bunch of Cuban exile trash down in Miami just to win some elections. And, most of all, they hate Cuba because Castro DARED to stand up to the money and might of the great U.S. empire and the Cuban people DARED to support him in that stand.

Most Americans have absolutely nothing against Cuba at all. If the embargo were ended tomorrow, the island would almost certainly enjoy a brisk tourist trade from U.S. citizens.

Could someone tell my why we have the embargo?

[WhoIsThePumaman]

Are those sneaky Reds still trying to use their communism-infused cigars to persuade people to become socialists? Are we still angry over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion? Or do we just have a raging hard on for the nostalgic cold war?

Re:Could someone tell my why we have the embargo?

[jonwil]

The embargo exists because if the embargo was lifted, there are a lot of Cuban ex pats in Florida and elsewhere that would vote the other way as a result. And because the system in the US is so screwed, those votes are enough to change the outcome of elections.

Re:Could someone tell my why we have the embargo?

[dbIII]

There's also the sugar situation. Lift the embargo and there will be pressure to buy cheap sugar from Cuba instead of using expensive corn syrup - so it would upset the sugar and corn lobbies.

The whole continuing embargo thing is childish spite that hurts both countries and still doesn't stop some imports. A Cuban cigar even turned up in an unexpected place in the White House a few years ago.

Re:Could someone tell my why we have the embargo?

[mpe]

The embargo exists because if the embargo was lifted, there are a lot of Cuban ex pats in Florida and elsewhere that would vote the other way as a result. And because the system in the US is so screwed, those votes are enough to change the outcome of elections.

Kind of a bit like US policy towards Israel. Not that there is that much real diversity in the the US Political system in the first place. So even if the "other lizard" got in it probably wouldn't make much difference to the average American anyway.

Re:Could someone tell my why we have the embargo?

[jonwil]

In the ideal system, everyones vote would be treated equally (and everyone would be required to vote) and government would do what the majority wants instead of listening to minorities like sugar farmers, Cuban ex pats, Conservatives who think that Janet Jackson should be locked up for what happened on the Super-Bowl or whoever else.

No more "I am in a marginal seat/district/area so the politicians are more likely to care about what I want" vs "I am in a safe seat/district/area so the politicians are less likely to care about what I want". No more "Because decided to support , I am going to get a bunch of people who dont normally give a rats ass about politics to vote for the other guy" type action groups (the compulsory voting would make one-issue-voting-groups a lot less effective)

Cold War left-overs

[shimmyshimpson]

The US embargo is stupid anyway. It's got more to do with keeping the Florida ex-cuban population happily voting Republican than anything else.

Seems like Micheal Moore got it right.

Re:Cold War left-overs

[longacre]

Let me get this straight: an embargo that was begun by a Democratic White House and continued through several more Democrats presidents, and even expanded by yet another Democrat less than a decade ago (Clinton closed some loopholes in 1999) is a Republican conspiracy?

Uphold the Embargo!!!

[germansausage]

We must uphold the embargo. Its the only way small impoverished Communist nations like Cuba can be brought to heel. We must never allow trade with communist countries, or buy their goods. Except China.

Re:Uphold the Embargo!!!

[servognome]

We (the US) have some grand proclamation (I forget the name) that states "There will be no communists in our hemisphere. Stupid yuppies, get of our lawn and take your damn governmental ideas with you." That's a direct quote, I think.

No they (the Cuban exile population) is rabidly against Castro and the communist government of Cuba.
We (the rest of the US) think, "Meh."

Who do you think the politicians will listen to?

Can you smell what the rock is cooking?

[gandhi_2]

I'm sure there will be some accidental ship-anchor-cable-cutting to be completed in 2011.

This whole situation with Cuba is tiresome

[93 Escort Wagon]

If Florida weren't such a politically important state and the Floridians that held positions of privilege under Batista weren't so vocal, the US would have normalized its relations with Cuba long ago (and don't blame Bush for this one - both parties are equally to blame). Castro was a tin-pot dictator; but you can't convincingly argue that the situation for the average Cuban is somehow worse now than it was under Batista.

I realize there was concern about the Soviet Union using Cuba as a springboard to threaten the mainland US (and yeah, I know about the Cuban Missile Crisis); but that connection died about 20 years ago. The world has changed. Fidel is gone, and Raul has even undertaken some small reforms.

If we (the US) really want to rid the world of this small, tiny bastion of communism, we should engage them rather than embargo the island. Stop giving the Cuban rulers an enemy to unite the people against, and let the free market show them why they should dump their tired old system.

This embargo doesn't make sense

[Barbarian]

Wouldn't a great way to spread democracy in Cuba, be to try to get the fastest, highest speed internet to their citizens, so they can hear about all the terrible deeds of their government?

Re:This embargo doesn't make sense

[Darkness404]

Or, as I stated in a previous post, it would make it a whole lot easier to control people. Think of it this way, educate in all the schools that you search the web with *insert government controlled website here*, that only searches government-approved sites. Now, some person is bound to know about other search engines such as Google, so you take Google, and rather then having a Google search, you use the same search as the government-controlled website one, only it looks like Google, repeat for all other search engines. Now, block all websites you don't want people to access, however rather then "This page has been blocked by Cuba" you add in a complex error message that the average citizen will think that the site is down or something like that. A person is much more likely to try to get around a block than to deal with an error message.

Re:This embargo doesn't make sense

[Grey Ninja]

Look how well that's worked for Americans. =P

Upstream today, downstream tomorrow.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I could see these arrangements changing in the not too distant future. Cuba is old news, and it's widely believed that as soon as Castro is gone, Cuba is going to be flung wide open to American tourism, trade, etc. Meanwhile, our buddy Hugo Chavez is working really really hard to get the United States to hate Venezuela as much as possible (he'd be the real monkey boy if Ballmer didn't do that trick so much better).

So what could happen in a few years is that the Internet embargo for Cuba will be lifted, but a new one will be placed on Venezuela ... and that big undersea cable will find its primary use in the other direction.

Re:You know...

[belmolis]

Exactly. It's not like the US embargoes other countries that are just as undemocratic or worse. How about Saudi Arabia: no religious freedom, no democracy whatever, nothing resembling a real legal system, no freedom of speech, and no rights for women at all, not to mention the massive export of bigotry and funding for terrorism? How about Equatorial Guinea, whose dictatorship would be funny if it weren't so pathetic? Funny how the US didn't boycott Chile under Pinochet, or Greece under the colonels or Haiti under Duvalier. Of all the countries with undemocratic political systems, can anybody seriously believe that Cuba is in the same league as North Korea?

Mod Parent Up, Please.

[Bieeanda]

Sure you've got some old cold war hawks still raging against the international threat of communism, but by and large it's to keep a large, cohesive voting bloc in a politically strategic location happy. It's hardly affecting other Americans, so there's little reason to ease up on the embargo.

Applies to ALL embargoes

[mi]

Technically if our government was OUR government then it wouldnt' distrust us to make up our own minds about "good" or "evil", would they?

This is an argument against all embargoes and other economic sanctions. There is no difference — in principle — between banning you from going there yourself (propping up the regime with your tourism money), banning you from selling them shoes, and banning you from selling them advanced military technology. A free citizen — it can be argued along your lines — ought to be free to make their own decision. And free shareholders of a bank ought to decide, whether or not freeze a particular account. Etcaetera.

So, are you against all embargoes?

Or only against those, which target regimes you sympathize with (admit it, you own a Che Guevarra T-shirt)?

Wanted to Launch? No.

[Chrisq]

I am sure that nobody actually wanted to launch them. The fact that the USSR had submarine-launched nukes slightly after that and never gave any indication that it wanted to unilaterally strike the USA proves that.

In fact for a long time the USSR had a "no first nuclear strike" policy when NATO did not.

I think it was the psychological bargaining power of having missiles so close to the USA that they wanted.

Re:Wanted to Launch? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget the US had it's own missiles in Turkey, right on the border with the USSR. Cuba wanted some security after Bay of Pigs and the USSR saw a way to get parity with the US by having missiles located equally as close. I can't blame them for that, can you?

It's no secret now that the US dismantled it's missiles in Turkey as part of the agreement to end the crisis, so the USSR at least got something they wanted.