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Fidel Castro, Internet News Junkie
pickens writes "The LA Times reports that 84-year-old Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro consumes 200 to 300 news items a day on the World Wide Web. In a recent interview he called Web communication 'the most powerful weapon that has existed' and extolled its power to break a stranglehold on the media by 'the empire' and 'ambitious private groups that have abused it' adding that the Internet 'has put an end to secrets.... We are seeing a high level of investigative journalism, as the New York Times calls it, that is within reach of the whole world.' Well, not the whole world. Cuba has the lowest level of Internet penetration in the Western Hemisphere (lower than Haiti), plus severe government restrictions and censorship affecting those who do have access. In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest, norms of good behavior, the integrity of the people or national security."
I'm totally surprised that they brought up the oppression of the people of Cuba in this article. Pleasantly so. If they'd have brought up the deaths and forced emigration that have been going on for even longer than Castro has been in power, then they'd really have something.
Regardless, Castro is a scumbag murderer. The sooner he and his family exit power, the better.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I find it kind of strange that so many claim not to have Internet Access in Cuba.
Last time I was there, I had my laptop with me. I sat outside the physics building at the University of Havanna, and used the free Wifi. No problems connecting to the internet. Tad annoying that everything had to go through proxy-servers, but with the extremely limited bandwidth, not very strange that they want caching.
Didn't find a single censored website. https worked wonderfully well too.
Do a little research on the US CIA backed military overthrow of democratically elected Allende in Chile (1973). Not only did the US "paint a bad picture" but they instigated (CIA) the overthrow of the government and installed a military dictatorship. This was not the first of the last time this happened but it is a good representative example.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Read Castro's writings before you mod this comment down... Much of his ramblings sound like run of the mill Prison Planet paranoia.
At least everyone in Cuba have access to medical care.
http://www.hr676.org/
On your points:
"Go to work,"
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
"send your kids to school."
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/
"Follow fashion,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-consumerism
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
"act normal."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"Walk on the pavements,"
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about (shows how unusual that is)
"watch T.V."
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/
http://www.tvturnoff.org/
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"Save for your old age,"
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html
"obey the law."
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
"Repeat after me: I am free."
http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
Any more? :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
There is nothing impressive or good about a dictator enjoying something useful while denying it to the people he oppresses. Do you realize that in 2009 Cubans were allowed to own cell phones and personal computer (with a government permit) for the first time ever? Even so, the access to the Internet is practically non-existent except when it comes to senior party members. Having the power to keep 11 million people in darkness as a matter of policy is evil pure and simple, nothing good about it.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I have never been to Cuba, but I know that getting out of the tourist areas and talking to the locals is not as easy as you think.
A tourist agent once tried to sell me a trip to Cuba. Among several matters we discussed was transportation. He told me tourists are not allowed to drive cars in Cuba, the only way to rent a car is getting one with a Cuban driver.
There is no problem with a foreign tourist renting a car in Cuba or driving around by themselves. The rental cars have a different coloured plate so the cops know you're tourists and will pretty much leave you alone. There are restrictions on the movement of Cubans throughout the country, I don't know what they are exactly, but white people in a rental car can pretty much pass freely through any checkpoint when crossing state lines or on the outskirts of the cities, usually without stopping. But if you're carrying any Cubans or other Latino people, they should probably duck.
Also, if you are a decent person and willing to stop, it is pretty hard not to have any contact with the locals since hitch-hiking is extremely common on the island, and the locals will not think twice about jumping in the car with you if you let them. Whether they actually talk to you or not depends on the person. My own experience is that soldiers and young women might not say a word to you, not that that stops them from jumping in your car to catch a ride, but guys and older people will talk to you if you engage them and let them know you're just normal people on vacation cruising around their island for fun and to get to know their culture and country. If you're nice and willing to finance it, you can even organize a pig roast or something and party with the villagers. But it helps, of course, if you speak decent Spanish. This is my experience as a Canadian, anyway (we are freely allowed to travel to Cuba). But, in honesty, I found it very hard to communicate in Spanish in the resort areas, where it seems like they have certain people fluent in English who are authorized to mingle with the tourists, and the others are probably under direction to not acknowledge any Spanish coming out of the mouth of a white person beyond the extreme basics, like "una cerveza, por favor!". I had a hard time being understood in the resort areas, but off resort, cruising around, picking up hitch-hikers, miraculously most people seemed to understand me just fine.
Although the CIA certainly was involved in both cases, it's not correct to say the US caused either of these coups. They did not cause the government to fall, it was already falling in both cases, all the CIA did was to make sure it fell in the direction they wanted.
You have it all wrong. First of all, go read about IRAN CONTRA, that will tell you that they did indeed, along with the brits, engineer that coup from A to Z. It's not a zany conspiracy theory, it's a well documented fact.
Secondly, you list the result of black ops (sabotaging production etc) as things the CIA isn't responsible for, which is just plain blind.
There isn't any proof that the CIA was involved in Chile, no smoking gun besides their exact modus operandi, but Iran was declassified, it's written down, you just have to go read it.
You can't take the sky from me...