How the US government welcomes an anti-Castro terrorist into its midst.
After all, it’s only terrorism when “they” do it to “us”.
Tag Archive for 'cuba'
Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, held without charge in Guantanamo Bay for over six years, speaks out after his release from the American gulag:
Cuba is seemingly changing after decades of state repression (small steps, perhaps, but an encouraging start):
The Cuban president, Raúl Castro, today lifted restrictions on ownership of mobile phones.
Castro’s move was another indication that he is prepared to grant more freedom to the island’s residents.
The right to own mobile phones had been restricted to the employees of foreign firms or those holding key posts in the communist-run state.
Some Cubans had evaded the ban by asking foreigners to sign contracts in their names, but mobile phones remain relatively uncommon in Cuba compared with the rest of the world.
Other positive developments here.
My following article appears in today’s ABC Unleashed:
Fidel Castro controlled Cuba for nearly half a century. His rule was defined by defiance and dictatorship, brutal repression against dissidents and the management of an immoral American embargo. Free speech has always been the Achilles’ heel of the regime.
During my visit to the island last year – researching a book on the internet in non-democratic countries – I saw a population that craved access to the outside world.
Web and mobile phone penetration is the lowest in Latin America. I met computer students who studied the internet, but couldn’t access an unfiltered system. Cyber-rebels are increasingly challenging this information apartheid. I talked with hip-hop kids who loved gangsta rap they saw on satellite television. They cared little for revolutionary thought. Being able to buy consumer goods such as ipods was far more important.
It was a similar pattern across the globe, as I travelled from Egypt to Iran, Syria to Saudi Arabia and finally China.
The internet was playing a leading role in citizens talking to government and often challenging its archaic rules. Some simply wanted to meet boys and girls online. Others loved downloading pirated films and music. Only a handful craved political engagement.
A growing number of repressive regimes are experiencing the “Dictator’s Dilemma” defined in 1993 by Christopher Kedzie as “having to choose between open communications (encouraging economic development) and closed communications (controlling ‘dangerous’ ideas)”.
China maintains the world’s most effective internet censorship, dubbed “The Great Firewall” or “The Golden Shield Project”.
Tens of thousands of people are employed to monitor web traffic. Western companies such as Cisco, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have willingly assisted officials in their goals and sensitive subjects such Taiwan, Tibet and democracy are routinely excised.
Over 210 million Chinese netizens – with 200,000 more going online for the first time every day – are leading a massive shift in the country’s relationship with central power, both allowing the regime a unique way to gauge public opinion and an opportunity for others to challenge corruption and pollution.
Although China is preparing for the likely onslaught of international pressure during the August Olympics over its human rights violations, the Communist nation is only the most infamous example of internet censorship.
Iran, especially under the leadership of hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has led a purging of journalists, dissidents, prominent women and unionists.
Although the country’s online culture is arguably one of the most robust in the Middle East – and I met many bloggers there who bravely challenged the mullah’s grip on power – Western companies are contributing to the country’s isolation.
Yahoo and Microsoft quietly removed Iran from the country lists of their webmail services last year, claiming US sanctions forced their hand. My investigations suggest that these moves were probably a pre-emptive buckle, fearful of Bush administration sanction. Google’s Gmail service still features Iran on its country list.
Internet censorship is becoming a key human rights issue around the world, highlighted by leading NGOs and the European Union.
In a new book titled Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Policy, writers Ronald Deibart and Rafal Rohozinski remain optimistic that despite the best efforts of many dictatorial regimes, “it seems apparent that no one agent will be able to dominate cyberspace entirely, but many will be able to push technologies, regulations, and norms that affect it.”
I spent time in Saudi Arabia with leading blogger and activist Fouad al-Farhan. He is a Muslim moderate who campaigns for the establishment of democratic institutions in the US-backed dictatorship. He was arrested in late 2007 and remains imprisoned for unspecified “crimes” but sources suggest it is because he campaigned for the release of jailed activists.
Farhan’s writings provide an invaluable insight into one of the most repressive nations on earth.
Cinemas and music concerts are banned. Women are not allowed to drive or work in most industries. He told me about the ways in which some of his friends and families wanted to embrace gradual change while others desired going to Iraq and fighting the American “invaders”.
Without bloggers in Saudi Arabia, we would have little idea of the nation’s true state.
The internet will not automatically democratise all societies or bring Western-style reform. Many bloggers and activists I met across the world hoped for the exact opposite.
Its uncontrolled unpredictability has proven to the mainstream media that local voices will usually trump their own superficial understandings.
Cuba is changing and for the better:
Cuba has eased restrictions on the sale of computers, DVD players and other electrical goods, in the first sign of economic liberalisation since Fidel Castro retired last month. The appliances will go on sale immediately and be available to anybody who can pay…
The internet revolution is coming to Cuba.
Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, February 20:
There’s been predictably little interesting discussion in the United States of Fidel Castro’s retirement as Cuba’s commandante en jefe, maximo etc. That’s because in the U.S. political mainstream, Cuba policy has for a generation been grotesquely disfigured by a collective kow-towing — yes, collective, it was that craven Mr. Clinton who signed into law the Draconian Helms-Burton act that made it infinitely more difficult for any U.S. president to actually lift the embargo — to the Cuban-American Ahmed Chalabi figures of Miami, still fantasizing about a day when they’ll regain their plantations and poor people of color will once again know their place. But let’s not for a moment forget the mirror-image of that view so common on the left, where Castro’s patent fear of his own people and reluctance to trust them to debate ideas and options (much less hold competitive elections that, in all probability, he’d have easily won) is strenuously rationalized on the basis of the CIA’s repeated efforts to kill him. (Sure, they repeatedly tried to kill Castro, and Washington might like to manipulate Cuba’s politics given half a chance, but those are not sound reasons to imprison economists or avoid discussing policy options even within the Communist Party.)
What fascinates me, however, is the guilty pleasure with which so many millions of people around the world revere Fidel Castro — revere him, but wouldn’t dream of emulating his approach to economics or governance. People, in other words, who would not be comfortable actually living in Castro’s Cuba, much as they like the idea of him sticking it the arrogant yanqui, his physical and political survival a sure sign that Washington’s awesome power has limits — and can therefore be challenged.
The retirement of Cuba’s long-time dictator Fidel Castro is welcome news. He’s been in power for decades too long, never understanding that authoritarianism is the enemy of stability and peace. The US embargo has been nothing short of futile. Changes may be afoot.
It should signal a change in policy from Washington, though probably not for a while, and Jewish groups remain pleased, noting his pro-Palestinian positions.
I couldn’t but note the irony of the regime releasing Castro’s statement in the online version of the newspaper Granma. For a government that has actively restricted access to the internet for its citizens, this move highlights that the news was designed for an international audience. The vast majority of Cubans have never seen a web-enabled computer.
Australian New York based documentary producer Eva Orner, discussing her recently Oscar-nominated film Taxi to the Dark Side about the “war on terror” and torture:
It’s really important that we’ve made a film basically suggesting that [the Administration] are a bunch of war criminals and that they should be accountable. What they’ve done is outrageous. They’re messing with the rule of law. They’re messing with habeas corpus. They’re messing with the Geneva Convention.
The film has caused controversy around the world, and rightly so. The Discovery Channel has even decided not to screen the documentary because it’s apparently afraid of the subject matter.
Orner is also a friend. Her film deserves to win.
The perfect place to display contempt for the legal procedures at Guantanamo Bay.
Take your mind back to Cuba, in the 1990s, and the introduction of the internet:
In 1995, the Republic of Cuba received a Class B license from InterNIC, the US-based cooperative that registers servers joining the Internet, effectively giving the Cuban government an address in cyberspace. In October 1996, the revolution connected full-time to the Net, an event trumpeted in Granma, the nation’s slowly shrinking official newspaper. The Cuban régime issued a statement declaring access to the Internet a “fundamental right” of the Cuban people, and the hundred-odd computer clubs around the island prepared for its arrival. Shortly after, the government quietly changed the rules, making it virtually illegal for ordinary Cubans to buy a computer. You can study email; you just can’t actually use email.
One decade on, as my forthcoming book examines, Castro’s regime remains opposed to dissenting views.
“Violation of US policy”? Pulease:
In an apparent violation of U.S. policy, Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar were asked by a U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia “to basically spy” on Cubans and Venezuelans in the country, according to Peace Corps personnel and the Fulbright scholar involved.
“I was told to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers I come across during my time here,” Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Schaick told ABCNews.com in an interview in La Paz.
The American administration, especially Reagan’s, specialised in tormenting Latin America.
The digital awakening of a continent continues apace (despite the continual faltering of Cuba):
The Dominican Republic has the second-highest technology level within the CAFTA trade pact, according to the second annual Latin Technology Index from Latin Business Chronicle. The Dominican Republic ranks ten among the 20 countries surveyed, but is ahead of all CAFTA countries except for Costa Rica. The Dominican Republic has the fifth-highest Internet penetration in Latin America and ranked tenth in terms of broadband penetration, 13 in wireless penetration and fixed telephony penetration. However, the country did not do too well in terms of PC penetration - the second-lowest rate in Latin America. Only Guatemala had a lower PC penetration rate.
This is the first year the Dominican Republic is included in the index. Other new entries include Cuba and Haiti, which ended up in the last and second-last spots on the Latin Technology Index. Cuba has Latin America’s lowest Internet, broadband and wireless penetration rates and the region’s sixth-lowest PC and fixed telephony rates.
Chile again tops the list, thanks to having Latin America’s highest Internet and broadband penetration, the second-highest wireless telephony penetration, the third-highest PC penetration and the fifth-highest fixed telephony penetration.
The Decider speaks:
“The socialist paradise [Cuba] is a tropical gulag.”
Oh, the irony.
A few years ago, Amnesty head Irene Khan called Guantanamo Bay, the US base in Cuba, the “gulag of our times.”
Yes, Bush believes in human rights, freedom and democracy. Shame about the over one million dead in Iraq.
