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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."
"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.
In the U.S., you can't be charged with a conspiracy to overthrow government willy-nilly. Just because you do something, and declare that your ultimate reason for doing so is "overthrowing the government", doesn't make it sufficient. Case in point: if you print a bunch of Marxist propaganda leaflets explaining Marx economic theories of exploitation, and hand them out to people on the streets, you won't be jailed, even if you walk down to the nearest police station and tell a cop that your leaflets are intended to bring closer the revolution.
Now, if your leaflets contain explicit calls for violent uprising, then you may be charged. But this isn't what happened in this case. Furthermore, a country may well be within its rights to forbid distribution of certain items that it seems as harmful on its territory, and may equate a crime of distributing those to incitement of riot. For example, in North Korea, it is, apparently, illegal to own, assemble, or provide anyone with a radio that is not locked into the government frequency. We may argue whether such laws are good or bad, but the point is that they are laws, written on the books - you know that you're not supposed to do that, or else you face penalties. In a similar vein, Soviet Union had a written law for "anti-Soviet propaganda", and that's what you'd be charged with if you smuggled Solzhenitsyn into the USSR.
In this case, however, the guy apparently didn't broke any written law: he merely distributed laptops and cellphones, which are legal to both possess and to transfer to another person. I'm sure Cuba has some of its own "anti-communist propaganda" laws, but so long as he didn't provide any materials that could be considered that preinstalled on those laptops/cellphones, it shouldn't be applicable to him, either.
So the fundamental problem, as I see here, is that Cuba didn't consistently apply rule of law in this case. It's one thing if a state has oppressive laws on the books (U.S. itself still has plenty, and just a few years ago had absolutely barbarous stuff such as anti-sodomy laws); I can still familiarize myself with the laws of that particular state before coming there, and know what I can and what I cannot do (or decide that I cannot abide by those laws, and therefore not come there in the first place). It's much worse when there are things that aren't codified in laws, but doing which can still lead to legal prosecution and harsh penalties, with no way to find out in advance as to what they may be.
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.