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ZunZuneo: USAID Funded 'Cuban Twitter' To Undermine Communist Regime
barlevg (2111272) writes "In a country where the government severely limits access to the world wide web, ZunZeneo, an anonymous SMS-based social network, drew more than 40,000 Cuban users at its peak, the Associated Press reports. On it, people shared news and opinions about music and culture. But what none of its subscribers knew was that the project was secretly funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), though a series of shell corporations and foreign bank accounts, and that its stated goal was 'renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society' in the Communist stronghold, hopefully leading to a 'Cuban Spring.'"
How terrible the US government is, using the concepts of a free exchange of ideas to overthrow another regime!
Well, ok, to be fair in the US, most of those free ideas are scams, but it's still slightly better than bombs and poisoned cigars.
Because doing anything like this ultimately is counterproductive if found out.
Considering the nature of Cuban propaganda, it will use this, whether it's true or not, as another banana skin to hurl at the US foreign policy.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The private sector is not synonymous with "society".
A democratic state (which neither the US nor Cuba is) is precisely "society".
The US government working at the behest of the Cuban American National Foundation is wearisome, but helping Cubans communicate is actually a good thing. An improvement over arming drug dealers at least.
USAID is suppose to be an aide organization. The moment they have to start laundering money they have gone off the reservation and entered CIA territory.
There is a place for clandestine operation to work against regimes we don't like, that is why we have a foreign intelligence agency, CIA. Our government is completely out of control and way to large this is just more proof!
Not only that it completely undermines the mission of USAID to have it associated with these type of shenanigans; its supposed to be about soft power, its supposed to be about building trust. Here we have one more department with in the government demonstrating laws don't matter, not ours and certainly not any other sovereigns. Shameful...
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Probably this was to put the cubans in the NSA files too, because their stupid government censure them (instead of spying them). Uncle Sam can fix that for you.
Martin - Dattabank
But winter is coming...
The government already has the CIA for this stuff. It was amazingly dumb of USAID to start doing the CIA's job. The head of USAID should resign followed by a full investigation.
But that won't happen because the government has stopped caring about appearances any more.
And this is why Twitter does not need to be profitable to be in business. The investors are shell companies working for other governments, hoping they will cause a US spring.
...from reason, sound behavior & mores. Slashdot, won't you, piece of self-similar faggot, just disappear? Of course not, the mass, being governed by entropy, is bound to self-destruction, hence you shall remain a favorite. For a time.
Didn't one or more of the people accusing Julian Assange of criminal conduct work for USAID?
It's funny how butthurt they are about Cuba and how much effort they put into overthrowing Castro. It's like they don't have any bigger problems.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And what are they doing to correct the balance of power between the state and society in the US?
What about the balance of power between the rest of the world and the US state?
Because the rampant spying and ignoring of the Constitution means telling other countries what to do makes you hypocritical bastards.
USAID is a funding agency and they don't "plan" these things. They are more like VC's. This evil "scheme" to enable communications and collaboration in Cuba with the hopes that it would help them move towards an open democracy was pitched to them and the "documents" were created by the founders of the network not "evil" USAID operatives.
This is sensationalist journalism trying to get eyeball ad revenue during hoopla about Snowden disclosures. And in so doing is going to make it difficult for other aid projects that focus on freedom and communications to get funded for fear of "bad press".
U.S. government, CIA, and old Batista cronies once again tries to overthrow Cuban government by any means necessary, film at eleven!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
its stated goal was 'renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society'
We should worry about renegotiating the balance of power in our own country before worrying about another foreign nation. Many elites in our government are guilty of many crimes, yet they walk freely. Meanwhile, Fidel sits around and smokes cigars all day, and that's a reason to go after him?
Relevant news: On Democracy and Orchestrated Overthrows in Venezuela and Ukraine
The National Endowment for Democracy has been seen working behind the scenes in Ukraine, Venezuela, Turkey...
Also check out operation Gladio: secret networks of far-right groups orchestrating false-flag and other attacks against communist or any other left-wing movements in Europe, since WWII. 1992 BBC documentary (bad quality though) "killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof"
This shit comes back to bite you, erodes US credibility.
USAID is suppose to be an aide organization.
Like many U.S. NGO's, it's a front...
NGO stands for "Non Government Organization". USAID is not a NGO.
http://www.usaid.gov/who-we-ar...
As I read the article, it seems to say that the USAID helped set up social networks in Cuba that weren't controlled by the government. That sounds like a good thing to me. I'm puzzled why any /. readers would object to this.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
we need someone to create a site for free and open communication to undermine the American regime
it seems to say that the USAID helped set up social networks in Cuba that weren't controlled by the government. That sounds like a good thing to me. I'm puzzled why any /. readers would object to this.
Because the goal isn't to set up social networks, it's to start a violent coup and ultimately reinstall a U.S. puppet government in Cuba. These social networks are just a means to a slimy end.
Why do I care about the purported goal-- what we should care about is what they were actually doing, which was setting up a social network independent of the Cuban government. That's a good thing.
The stated goal, in any case, was not "to start a violent coup." I don't know if the US government even knows what it wants (Cuban policy seems to nearly zero priority in the US, outside of south Florida)-- but the quote from the article was "its stated goal was 'renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society' ".
Rephrasing that to make it say "let's start a violent coup" is rather distorting. "Renegotating the balance of power between state and society" sounds like a good thing-- in the US, too.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There has been more than 600 documented attempts against Castro alone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro
Also, check operation mongoose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Project
The US is *still* doing this crap, presumably to cater to the folks who were for the dictator Batista, or the Mafia, who's still pissed at loosing all the money from those casinos?
Why is the US so in bed with China, if those in the "intelligence community" (for values of each of those words approaching zero as a limit) are so desperate to bring down China?
I want my tax dolars wasted on this back.
mark
That's why we should be more interested in what they do than what they say.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm unclear if this article is supposed to raise righteous anger at some evil by the old USA. But this sounds exactly like something we should be doing to promote our views, and probably a lot more effective than any threats or insults.
is alive and well. The Americans will stop at nothing to conquer the world. "Freedom" and "democracy" are merely code words for slavery at the hands of the Americans. I praise Cuba for their continued heroic resistance to the evil imperialistic power literally in their backyard. They've shown that the world will not simply bow down to American power like the Americans want.
If you want to end communism in cuba put a mcdonalds and a walmart in havana and wait about a month.
lose != loose
It is fair game for any other country to try to create an American Spring. Great. Pinnacle of freedom.
Way back when, while a corrupt Cuban government was allowing US companies to rape the island and it's people, there was a "Cuban Spring". The people were spurred to overthrow a malignant regime and seek freedom. Didn't work out so great because at the time Communism was deemed a viable political model for a free people, but that's life.
So now it's many years later, win hearts instead of continuing the antagonism. Right now the little subversions and embargoes mean innocent people get hurt say: participating in the subversions and getting caught, dying in the ocean in a bid for freedom, or suffering from a lack of goods. Instead, establish diplomatic bridges that will in time yield exactly what you want, another Cuban Spring, only this time without bloodshed because you will have swayed the Cuban leaders not just the masses.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.