Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
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.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
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.
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.
The opposite of progress is congress
I'm sure there will be some accidental ship-anchor-cable-cutting to be completed in 2011.
THL phish sticks
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?
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
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.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
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!
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time