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."

Comments

There are few things more annoying

[JoshuaZ]

There are few things more annoying than finding something impressive or good about someone I dislike and consider responsible for a lot of people suffering. I'd love to hear about how Castro hates the internet and considers it to be a series of tubes filled with lies. But using it to keep track of the news in detail across the globe? That's something that many people his age simply cannot or will not do. Stupid facts messing with my preconceptions again...

Re:There are few things more annoying

[odies]

Uh, first of all he is ex-president. What threats of his powers are you talking about? Secondly, the cuban laws are about spreading (ie. writing) information that harms the social norms or national security. Ah, national security. Isn't that why US also wants to take down Wikileaks?

Being a non-american and having lived in many different countries, it's sometimes really weird how US people so often think every other country is the root of evil and only US is good. You know, it's of course impossible that US government might want to paint a worse picture of their enemies than what they actually are! It's not even only Cuba.. It's China, Russia, North Korea, whatever country with different views, culture and society.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[JoshuaZ]

Being a non-american and having lived in many different countries, it's sometimes really weird how US people so often think every other country is the root of evil and only US is good. You know, it's of course impossible that US government might want to paint a worse picture of their enemies than what they actually are! It's not even only Cuba.. It's China, Russia, North Korea, whatever country with different views, culture and society.

And being an American, it is sometimes really weird how non-Americans have this strange view of Americans that makes us into a monolithic hive mind with views that actual Americans generally don't have. Yes, most Americans probably consider the North Korean government to be evil. That's a government which systematically abuses and starves its residents. Most Europeans probably have similar attitudes about North Korea. And I'm pretty sure that most Americans don't see Russia or China as at all in the same category as North Korea. And the notion that Americans think that there's something deeply wrong with "whatever country with different views, culture and society." I doubt that Americans think that about most European countries or Japan or India or Brazil or many other places.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[isilrion]

while most people in his country aren't allowed to do so because it would threaten his power

Actually, the "official" reason is that the US limits who can we get bandwidth from (by owning or threatening those who own the fiber around the island), so we can only get it at ridiculously high prices. I think the total bandwidth for the whole country is about 230Mb/sec download, 100 upload.

I don't believe that is the only reason (clearly, censorship is a big one - I had to censor many things in the name of "lack of bandwithd" even after I proved that it would have a negligible effect). But the "official" reason, by itself, is enough to restrict nearly as much as Cuba does. It's also disgustingly hypocritical that the US gives the Cuban government such a perfect justification for their censorship.

Who knows, maybe with the cable to Venezuela the Cuban government will show the world (and the Cubans) that the US was the only responsible for the lack of internet access in Cuba. I would be very surprised if they did - but I doubt they'll be intelligent enough to see how it would benefit them.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[hey!]

Rope and tree? Hard to say. Maybe if the government is overthrown by Cuban expats living in the US, but not surprisingly these are the most extreme critics of Castro. Cuban residing in Cuba might be sick of the regime, but it is unlikely they hate it as much as US expats do. The proportion of people who have a positive view of Castro is bound to be higher in Cuba than in US, which is a haven for the regime's most bitter enemies.

In any case, you have to look at the specific nature of the overthrow. If it were a military coup, Castro's fate would depend on what is most useful to the junta: co-opting Castro or castigating him. If the government were to fall apart under popular unrest, chances are Castro would spend the balance of his retirement in Venezuela.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we be honest about something here?

Here's something I'd like to see some statistics on.

1. How many deaths is Fidel Castro responsible for?
2. How many deaths is George Bush responsible for? Or even, your average US president?

I have a feeling you're not going to like the answer. Why is it always that when some "other" guy (maybe someone who pissed off powerful American businessmen in the late 1950s) is a tyrant, a violent thug, and when we do it, we're heroes?

Re:There are few things more annoying

[_Sprocket_]

And the notion that Americans think that there's something deeply wrong with "whatever country with different views, culture and society." I doubt that Americans think that about most European countries or Japan or India or Brazil or many other places.

Cultural uniqueness is not an excuse for all behavior. If your culture has unique customs and traditions - please let me study them. If it has unique foods - please share some with me (I enjoy regional food even more). But if your culture is wrapped up in behavior that I find detestable, even within my own country, then I'm going to have a problem with it. And I'm entirely unapologetic for that.

I find one of Cuba's most influential political figures talking about how open the Internet is while having set up a system that limits access to that freedom to his own people entirely hypocritical. I have the same problem with that attitude in the US. A spade is a spade. But I didn't buy in to the "freedom fries" thing when France refused to help deal with Iraq - in fact, I was rather bemused by a lady at a local grocery store who noted that I shouldn't be buying French brei during the time (whether the French were motivated by a desire for peace or fear of losing their investment in arming Iraq is another conversation). If that makes me an Ugly American, then so be it. Although I would consider myself a different breed than those who would, say, demonize Japan because of their sushi or because they don't (as a nation) worship the right god.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[ultranova]

I'd love to hear about how Castro hates the internet and considers it to be a series of tubes filled with lies. But using it to keep track of the news in detail across the globe? That's something that many people his age simply cannot or will not do. Stupid facts messing with my preconceptions again...

If Castro was stupid or unable to adapt he'd never been able to take power, much less keep it against constant attempts of the US to oust him. Most people his age are not former victorious guerillas.

Your problem is confusing ability and character.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[VanGarrett]

Cubans used to grow very strong tobacco, and a great deal of their cigar rollers regarded themselves as artisans-- since they took a great deal of pride in their work, they produced very well-rolled cigars. Combine that with good tobacco with an unusually high nicotine content, and you get a cigar which is widely regarded as being among the best.

It is my understanding, however, that Cuban tobacco is not as strong, now. Also, a great deal of Cuba's foremost cigar-producing families fled Cuba, when Castro took over.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct.

Cuba is cut-off from the Internet thanks to the US embargo. They cannot lay down fiber from Florida to Cuba. Currently only Satellite internet is available on the island. Internet is unavailable thanks to the bandwidth limits (hence unaffordable), not because "Cuba is evil". Cell phones were also banned in the past because there were not enough cell towers to provide coverage. Now, more cell towers built, cell prone available.

Anyway, high speed undersea fiber connection from Venezuela is in the works. Yeah, that's another "pinky regime". Funny how it takes socialists/communists to spread information while US can only transmit their propaganda via Radio Free America. Personally, I would have hoped that US would drop the embargo and allow companies to provide fiber internet access from Florida to Cuba. At least then Cuba would no longer be able to hide behind "it's US's fault via embargo" tag line.

Maybe US is still butt-hurt about Bay of Pigs fiasco and some rich dudes losing their playground with Batista. All the embargo is doing is strengthening Cuban resolve against US. But then what do I know.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[Sepultura]

Americans have been pumped full of negative propaganda about Castro (& Cuba) for as long as many of them have been alive. The fact is he's done some good, is loved in some parts of the world, and has done bad, and is hated in some places.

In that way he was like many other "leaders" in the world today.

However, he hasn't had to worry about getting votes, so when he made a decision he didn't have to give a shit what anyone thinks of it. That meant less manipulating the public to get their favor and improve his image.

That's where he differs from most leaders in our western, democratic world. Politicians here still do what's in their best interests but they bullshit the masses into believing they care about them more than themselves. You may argue democracy would be better for Cuba nut to argue Castro is more malevolent than the average sociopath that gets into politics is to ignore the facts.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[GeodesicGnome]

I agree with JoshuaZ. I'm an American who is glad there are other voices out there besides our own. America has a lot to offer, but could also learn a lot from other countries if we could just put aside this nutty idea of "American Exceptionalism". Seems like no politician can be elected in America these days who doesn't claim that America is better than everyone else and Americans are just the best of the best.

Re:There are few things more annoying

[sarhjinian]

It's not decades: the US still keeps it's boot on Cuba's proverbial neck.

Recall Helms-Burton, which was passed a little more than a decade ago. It's one of the reasons why Cuba cannot get so much as a leg up: the US will penalize, quite heavily, any company that does business in Cuba and makes use of pre-revolution assets.

Just for the record, this means just about anything in Cuba: agriculture, technology, people, anything. No corporation can do business in Cuba without risking serious penalties if they also wish to do business in the United States. This means that no one can open a mine, export sugar, fruit or tobacco, operate in a pre-1960 building, etc, etc.

It certainly means that American telcos can't run a pipe from Florida or Texas undersea. As a result, Cuban connectivity, post-Soviet, requires traffic to take backwater paths halfway around the planet via rinky-dink companies who are not and will never operate in the US.

So how, exactly, is Cuba ever supposed to do better if it can't sell so much as a sugar cube to the United States?

Interesting, isn't it, how the US will bend over backwards to do business in China or Russia, or with any number of right-wing despots all over the world, all of whom have far worse human rights records, claiming that "trade will set them free!" but get all "Think of the poor oppressed citizenry" when it comes to Cuba. You'd never think that Florida was a swing state and that both parties fall over themselves to cater to a bunch of noisy expats, the most powerful and noisy of whom were equally nasty people, but under Bautista instead.

Now, all this said, the Cuban government would probably filter and snoop on their citizen's internet traffic (they probably do now, and it's probably easy, considering the bandwidth to the whole country is exceeded by that offered to some condos in New York), but how is this different from bastions of western democracy like, oh, Australia or the UK. Or to use a less extreme example, China.

Posting for Team Stupid

[damburger]

Is it possible that Fidel is simply not aware of the state of the country he used to run? Is it possible this has been the case for a long time - possibly even longer than he has been publicly seen to be an invalid?

Re:Posting for Team Stupid

[reeley]

just a slight question. Have you actually been to Cuba, if so, did you go out of the tourist areas and talk to the locals? From your comment, I suspect that you did not. Yes, the country is quite closed and controlled, but it is no where near as bad for the people as outsiders like to make out. There are a great many have nots in the UK where the divide between what you have and what they don't is a great deal greater than it is in cuba. Not saying that everything they do is right, I am just commenting that not everything they do is wrong. Just as a small matter of historical interest, perhaps you could read up on the history of their revolution and how 10 American Billionaires managed 99.8% of the total GDP of cuba, and how the locals starved pre the revolution to line the bank rolls of those 10 Americans. Do you still want to drink Bacardi now?

Re:Posting for Team Stupid

[aoeuid]

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.

Not surprising

[Bullfish]

Considering that he maintained power for years by strangling information, that he is a student of this kind of open information is not at all surprising. Know your enemy! He wants others to have it so it might destabilize them, but in Cuba. not so much

Just proving out the reality of Communism

[LynnwoodRooster]

All people are equal, just some are more equal than others!

Wait until he gets his hands on WoW....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until he gets his hands on WoW....

He should get back to the core cigar compentcies

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Fidel Castro consumes 200 to 300 news items a day on the World Wide Web.

He was much cooler, when he was consuming 200 to 300 cigars a day.

The next report will be that he is living in his mom's basement . . .

meanwhile, in the free capitalist Europe/USA

[FuckingNickName]

In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest,

Swastikas.

norms of good behavior,

Porn.

the integrity of the people

Terrorism Act 2006.

or national security."

Assange.

Being rich in America is like being rich in Cuba: life's cool. Meanwhile, being poor in America is like being poor in Cuba: life sucks. In the latter case, what differs is the handout you get and who you can get away criticising sufficiently loudly.

Re:meanwhile, in the free capitalist Europe/USA

[petrus4]

Being rich in America is like being rich in Cuba: life's cool. Meanwhile, being poor in America is like being poor in Cuba: life sucks. In the latter case, what differs is the handout you get and who you can get away criticising sufficiently loudly.

Go to work, send your kids to school.
Follow fashion, act normal.
Walk on the pavements, watch T.V.
Save for your old age, obey the law.

Repeat after me: I am free.

Re:I'm surprised...

[damburger]

Cuba has many problems but malnutrition doesn't seem to be one of them. According the CIAs own statistics (in their world factbook) Cubans have a similar life expectancy to Americans; this couldn't possibly be true in a nation with system-wide poor nutrition.

Free WiFi at Havanna University.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

So that means...

[CreamyG31337]

He's probably reading this?
Hi from Canada!
Send some cigars!

Re:I'm surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually have a longer life expectancy than Americans or Canadians now, and similar infant mortality rates to Canada (much lower than the US). They're also tied with Iceland as the only two countries in the world with a 100% literacy rate. While you're at it, check out Cuba's environmental record, which is stellar.

Cuba is an example of a revolution that went right. The only people who lost were Batista and his murderous thugs (who incidentally seized power in a coup in 1952, sparking MANY popular uprisings, including Castro's July 26 Movement) -- They fled the country with as much of the state's coffers as they could carry just before Che took Santa Clara. The only way that Cuba could have done better would have been if the Americans hadn't instituted a 50 year blockade.

Internet penetration and the embargo

[ciguanabo]

I was always critical of the cuban government because of their internet censorship and regulation. However, in a recent interview Fidel Castro gives an explanation about why the restrictions are necessary. Basically, because of the US embargo, Cuba cannot buy the materials required for a broadband connection (any company that sells hardware to Cuba would be fined). The internet that is available at the moment has to go through a satellite instead of through a fibre optic backbone. This makes the connection much more expensive and slower. According to Castro, it is due to this technical restrictions that the government has to prioritise who can access the internet and who cannot.

I am not entirely convinced by this explanation, although maybe someone who knows more about the costs and speed of these types of connections can say whether it makes sense. Ideally, any connection that is available should be accessible to anyone at, for example, libraries. I'm not sure whether this is possible in Cuba right now (anyone that can describe the current situation in Cuba?).

The article also mentions that Cuba is building a submarine connection through Venezuela, which is aimed at solving the "internet shortage".

Re:He's a Dictator, not President

[mspohr]

I have never seen the US government trying to paint a bad picture of any truly democratic country, meaning a country with freedom of expression, multiple party political system, and regularly scheduled elections with different parties alternating in power.

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.

Re:He's a Dictator, not President

[jbssm]

Has they did in Iran. Most Americans don't know, but the fact that Iran has this shitty regimen now is that USA and UK overthrown an democratic elected secular government in 1953 because the prime minister of Iran at the time nationalized the oil industry of the country.

How free&happy&healthy is capitalist Europ

[Paul Fernhout]

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? :-)

He seemed like a nice guy to me.

[gedw99]

I met him when i was there in 2000.
He flew down in his Helicopter into this village i was in; out of the blue and did a speech etc.
i was there with a Brit and a Yank and we asked if we could meet him and we did.
Mainly talk about Capitalism being evil etc etc.

small world eh ...

Re:He seemed like a nice guy to me.

[CodeBuster]

I'm sure that under the right circumstances Joseph Stalin would have been a charming guest at a dinner party, but that didn't make him a nice guy or excuse his crimes.

Re:He's a Dictator, not President

[Scrameustache]

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.

Re:I'm surprised...

[Scrameustache]

Boy, some people just buy the propaganda, hook, line, and sinker. The Cuban government has the motivation and the means to lie about those statistics.

The Cuban government has the means to make the CIA website say what they want? Wooooooow...