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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.
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
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.
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
If you've ever met anyone from Cuba they will tell you that the outside world is nothing like what they are told on the news. How is that not propaganda?
The CIA isn't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They're trying to ferment a violent government coup. Once a U.S. puppet is in place, you can kiss this free communication goodbye again.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If you've ever met anyone from America they will tell you that the outside world is nothing like what they are told on the news. How is that not propaganda?
I have met people from the U.S. Other than Fox News viewers-- most of whom, as far as I can tell, have never left the U.S.A.--many of them are reasonably well informed about the rest of the world, know people who have immigrated from other countries, and very often have travelled to other countries.
So I call BS on your post.
--on the original topic, I will say that I think that this is what the U.S.A. SHOULD be doing. Skip the CIA bullshit and the invade-other-countries bullshit and the sell-guns-to-groups-overthrowing-governments-they-don't-like bullshit. Support freedom of information? Yes, I can get behind that.
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.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I'm not American, and as someone who knows a few Cubans, I can tell you most of the country isn't like the tourist zones.
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.
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Can confirm as a Canadian. I have travelled there, and there are two distinct countries in Cuba.
One that tourists are allowed to see (which extends off of places like Veradero to cover good portions of Havana and anywhere which tourists travel for experiences like river excursions and the like)
The other one contains the people of Cuba who have zero contact with foreigners, and zero access to US currency which drives the black market down there.
Neither of them is really adequately portrayed in North American media because neither of them serve to advance the narrative that the media is content with pushing. Either "Castro is evil, his people need us to give them freedom" or "These people live idylic, peacefull lives, free from the trappings of Western modern society, and they are happy with their lot in life".
The reality is far more nuanced that either of those sound bites.
That's the case in most of the world. The non-tourist areas are always poorer, friendlier and have much better food than the resort areas.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin