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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 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
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.
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
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.
USAID is a funding agency and they don't "plan" these things.
Yeah, that's the CIA's job.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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
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
Indeed we do. Cuba, along with Puerto Rico and La Española (Dominican and Haitian Republics) were "given' (Read, sold to) as war spoils from Spain. Even though Cuba and La Española were in the process of independence from Spain, if not independent already (have to check that one out, memmory fails me; a bit hazy on that one, I admit). Puerto Rico had kick started its independence process also. Already we had gained Autonomous Powers from the Crown, the first step for independence)
I mentioned this because, if you do some research, after the war, congress passed a few laws "allowing" these states to continue their "independence" with a little but important "BUT". That was that the US reserved the right to impose its politics on these territories. Cuba and the La Española became all-included resorts for the US aristocracy and Puerto Rico became their major test field. Agent Orange was tested here in our backyard. Contraceptives were tested here and a whole lot of other stuff that keeps being uncovered all the time.
I am an American citizen by birth (I was born here in Puerto Rico after the US passed a law forcing the citizenship on us so they could legally use the selective service on our people. If you don’t believe me, seek out info on the Infantry Regiment 65 and Puerto Ricans in the US armed forces and the laws that were passed on that subject.) and tend to think of myself as an US American but I cannot deny the atrocities our government has committed in the name of democracy.
I say to hell with it. If a country wants to go fuck itself, we should let them be, IF and this is a BIG IF, the people of a country make an independent attempt to seek our help, then and only then we may try to give them DIPLOMATIC aid. Aside from that we should, as a country, keep our freaking fucking paws of their shit and let them live unhappily ever after. We have so much more pressing problems at home already without trying to solve problems offshore that we have not addressed properly ourselves.
Propaganda indeed. I am afraid that we are not as free and democratic a country as have been led to believe.
BTW, I have it in good faith (Cuban Friends and relatives that have LIVED in Cuba before and after the Castro takeover) that Cuba is not the slice of hell we have been pictured but is also far from paradise as some make it look. If left to market forces, the Cuban government will fall on their own. By placing so much attention to what they do, we only give them a moral stand point to continue baby crying to the UN. Drop the embargo and let the market take over.
What? A beutiful butterfly you say? And how exactly are you going to turn into a beutiful butterfly then?
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
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.