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Cuba Jails US Worker Handing Out Laptops, Cellphones
eldavojohn writes "An American citizen working as a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development has been arrested for giving away laptops and cellphones in Cuba. The intent was to enable activists to connect with each other and spread information of what's happening inside Cuba. From the article: 'Cellphones and laptops are legal in Cuba, though they are new and coveted commodities in a country where the average worker's wage is $15 a month. The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year; they are used mostly for texting, because a 15-minute phone conversation would eat up a day's wages.' A Representative on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the arrest was 'no surprise' while a human rights watch group cited a report outlining the Cuban Criminal Code offense of 'dangerousness,' which is most likely the one for which this individual was detained. There is at present no way to contact the individual nor official word on why he was detained." The article quotes an actvist with Human Rights Watch who said that "any solution to the contractor's case would probably be political" and that "the Cuban government often provokes a negative reaction in the United States just as [the two] countries begin to move toward more dialogue."
just like the US would were some foreign government trying to overthrow our government.
"Raul Castro's government has relied in particular on a provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that allows the state to imprison individuals before they have committed a crime, on the suspicion that they might commit and offense in the future. This "dangerousness" provision is overtly political, defining "dangerousness" as any behavior that contradicts socialist norms. The most Orwellian of Cuba's laws, it captures the essence of the Cuban government's repressive mindset, which views anyone who acts out of step with the government as a potential thread, and thus worthy of punishment."
Reading this, it's no wonder to me that I walked out on the movie Minority Report about 10 minutes in, because it's exactly like that. My sympathies to the poor bastard and his family, they'll probably never see him alive ever again.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
> Well, we do business with China and Saudi Arabia. Just Saying....
Yea. Which is why I'd like to see us get off the imported oil habit to the point we could tell the House of Saud to pound sand.
And some of us objected to MFN status for China based on their horrid human rights record. Too bad the 'progressives' formed an unholy alliance with the big transnational corporate interests on that issue.... But no we probably can't just treat China as the total pariah they would be in a more perfect world. People who say size doesn't matter are just deluding themselves.
Democrat delenda est
He's not only an agitator, he's an employee of a known CIA front company, Development Alternatives Inc, which worked in Venezuela on the failed coup. Last year Congress designated $40 million to "promote transition to democracy", i.e. provoke dissension, and DAI was the prime recipient of that money. Afraid that I can't feel very sorry for someone who knowingly attempts to rile people up so that they can get shot down in front of cameras.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I am sure the American view of a free way of life means a corporate monopoly on the tourism industry, corporate corruption of the politicians to serve their needs, the creation of class inequality, and "servant" status for the natives like in most of the tropical destinations Americans go to.
Because the Cuban governmental monopoly on the tourism industry, corrupt politicians enriching themselves at the direct expense of the people, vast inequality between the nomenklatura and ordinary peasants, and forced labor in the sugarcane fields for schoolchildren is so much better. ....
In two cases, a one-party dictatorship took control of an island with a history of colonial exploitation and an agriculture-based economy. It happens that both islands are at about the same latitude, and both are subject to tropical cyclones. In both cases, the island was off the coast of a country ideologically hostile to it, which imposed a thorough embargo on its goods. In both cases the island received support from a superpower for three decades, which then was seriously reduced.
Socialism has left one poor, and it has no imminent prospects of democratization. Capitalism has made the other one wealthy, and it completed a full transition to multi-party democracy thirteen years ago.
China is very large, and parts of it that you probably didn't visit are very very poor. Technology of any sort, including cell phones, are rare in those parts. Talking to coworkers in China, I got the impression that they're considered rich because they have jobs that pay 1/2 of what I get, and they're all within Beijing.
I really don't know why Michael Moore got so much credit over Cuba's free health care system; their country is falling apart structually, industry is failing and their economic ways have even taken to capitalist style when he had to stick his foot in his mouth over the farming incident when socialism collapsed on their dream world.
Oh wait, it's Americas fault for the embargo and a man who stayed in power for 30+ years and than hands it off to his brother. As bad as it was with the Mafia running things in little Havana, living standards and economy was better than. Mafia did a better job than the 'Castro empire'.
If getting locked up for trying to show people the 'truth' and not a filtered censored version is a crime, than these people should be rewarded the humanitarian award.
The weak spineless cowards around here will claim that the same sentence would be handed to them if they tried that in America, except the argument doesn't work because it is really fundamental human rights at work. So I don't know why some around here try to justify it.
Were the people criminals who hide Anne Frank?
Wow, do you have to work hard to stay so ignorant of what is really happening? The US has tortured several THOUSAND people, both at Guantanamo and Baghram as well as at the illegal Black Sites in other countries, dozens of whom have died under that treatment. We send tens of thousands to be tortured **FOR** us to other countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan (where boiling people to death is still practiced). This is not hush-hush stuff, it's widely reported even by Faux News and the Washington Post, and a number of congresscritters openly applaud it from the floor of the Congress. How is it that you are under the impression that there were "3-4 guys 8 years ago"?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
If you can't see the difference between planning and executing a plan to kill people, and giving people communication devices so they can know the truth, you are hopeless.
If the DAi is a front company for the CIA, as has been announced, then I'd imagine they were doing this for more reasons than spreading the truth. If anything they would be building a list of disaffected citizens to use later. It seems pretty obvious we don't have all the facts, as they say, truth is a three edged sword.
It really illustrates how easy it is to believe anything about your enemies once you regard them as "morally bankrupt animals."
"It also says it opens the door to arbitrariness, and it was used in that way by the USA and all the others. Cuba shouldn't be bashed for using the same."
So please, if it's such a perfect example of the US doing the same thing, point to the cases where people were arrested for it rather than simply required to identify themselves. Go on.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Really? According to Duverger, majoritarian systems will always lead to 2-party systems, and Downs has shown that, in majoritarian systems, the 2 parties inevitably gravitate towards the center of the political spectrum in terms of ideology. G. Bingham Powell shows that majoritarian systems have greater levels of accountability, because in the lack of coalition governments it is easy to identify who made what decisions. He also shows that majoritarian systems are more representative of the values of the median voter. And, as long as the state utilizing the 2-party system has universal suffrage (as the US does), and has a large number of government positions that are open to competition (again, as the US has), then it in fact IS a democracy (or to use the technical term developed by Dahl, a polyarchy). Sure, you may sound all hip, cool, and so "against the system" by saying that 2-parties systems as democracy is "propaganda", but when you are put up against scholars who have studied and written on this subject for decades, your assertion falls completely apart. The sad part is that it was modded +5 Insightful when everything about your response was completely wrong.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
If you only look at cost, sure. Except that the US costs the most because we train the best doctors, have the best research institutes, and develop most of the new medicines -- all of which cost a metric shit ton of money.
If you'd rather pay less and have crappy treatment, be my guest. I'm crazy enough to think it's worth spending more money if it means I get top of the line medical treatment.
Yah, you go on believing that. The real reason it's so expensive is not because of expensive doctors, but because these days your chief national product seems to be lawyers.
I wonder if it's possible to base an entire economy on constantly suing one another...surely if you fudge the numbers enough it'll work?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.