Cuba to keep Internet limits after fiber optic cable

Source: AFP

Cuba will continue to limit Internet access even after a fiber optic cable linking the island with Venezuela comes online in 2010, a top official said.

The new cable is 1,550 kilometers (960 miles) long and will dramatically increase the island's level of connectivity, according to officials.

"We believe that the most responsible policy is to privilege collective access" to the Internet, said Boris Moreno, deputy minister of computer science and communication.

Nevertheless, there is a desire for "larger number of citizens to have Internet access," technical and economic conditions allowing, Moreno told the daily Juventud Rebelde.

Read more: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090207/tc_afp/cubaitinternetvenezuela

It's changing everything. That's the one thing the Bush administration couldn't control, and it's the one thing that was instrumental in bringing them down after only 8 years, starting strongly in the 6th year.

Of course they don't want their citizens to have free flowing internet access.

But it's just a matter of time. Bad Ass Dictators are rarely followed by anyone as strong as they were. Look at how much has been relaxed with Fidel's brother Raul. One has to be the ultimate psychotic control freak to be a dictator. Not everyone has that gene.

Mexico is free. But, like in the US (only more obvious) the government is entrenched in the hands of a few elite who have held power for generations. The fundamental problem with Mexico, and most Latin and South American countries is the long history of the few exploiting the many, creating economic disparity where the poor are oppressed by the obscenely rich. This long standing trend has been crumbling in the last few years and will continue to do so.

If they had wide access to a free internet it would happen much faster.

Like Cuba. :eyes:

Castro took over through a coup and set himself up as the Dictator. The power is in his hands, not in a party system full of rich people. He took the property of the rich and upper class and persecuted THEM, forcing them to leave the country.

Show me where Mexico's President, and President has done that.

And don't confuse my ideas that Mexico and Cuba are criticism of one and not the other. Both countries have major problems and are corrupted by a group at the top. They're just not the same kind of corruption.

:nopity:

on edit: (Just so you know, I've lived in Cuba and have relatives there.)

And I don't disagree with your sarcasm about persecuted rich people or the fact that the poor are poor and miserable.

Cuba's 'government' and Mexico's 'government' are not the same.

that was founded by members of the same ruling party

Like Cuba

s

What the hell does my quote have to do with two countries who are both oppressive to the population? In one country the Dictator oppresses all the people. In the other country the higher class obscenely rich oppress the poor. Did you think I was defending them just because I explained that one is a Dictatorship and the other is not? On the contrary. I was only pointing out that oppression comes in many styles and traditions.

entrenched power for generations in the hands of a few elite would apply to Cuba as well. namely El Commandante and Hermano Raul.

who just seems to want to live forever. Raul doesn't seem to exhibit the same vision of self grandiosity that big brother Fidel has. With a little luck we're seeing the end of Cuba as we've known it and the end of the US/Cuba sanctions crap.

My experience of Cubans is quite good. They have an indomitable spirit. I hope to live to see them break truly free because of it. They have much to offer the world.

bag men in Miami.

thats all.

Which I know you support ending.

Let's call the Castro's "bluff".

I'd like to see the governing style of the last 80 years in Mexico end too. And I think it will, eventually

policy. their time will come to an end about the same time. Sure I support ending sanctions. Just as I support ending repression on individual liberties. I am more concerned with the latter though and see no need to do the Castro hermanos any favors. If lifting the sanctions is so important to Cuba and the Castro regime is truly interested in doing what is best for their people then they can take the first steps towards a normal relationship with the US.

:sarcasm:



Remember the Maine!

---

Well, we agree on one thing. End the sanctions.

what are you worried about when the Castros' time is up? Take over by the Unied States??

With a little luck we're seeing the end of Cuba as we've known it and the end of the US/Cuba sanctions crap.

I don't support your statement.

I don't think you know Cuba all that well, and I certainly don't want Cubans to lose everything they've done so much heavy lifting to achieve. I am pulling for Cuba to continue moving forward, which they will be able to do with or without the US sanctions - but they would do better without them.

I assume you can speak for yourself too and you're welcome to it.

So you have no idea what I said do you. You just assumed I said Cubans would lose everything when the Castros go. Your support is meaningless because it's out of context and pertains to nothing.

With a little luck we're seeing the end of Cuba as we've known it ....

By "we're" and "we've" I assume you mean you. What is it you want to see when you say "the end of Cuba as we've known it".


What I know of Cuba is precious. I don't want any of it to "end".

a

premature.

I would rather be exploited by Fidel Castro than to be exploited by Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, José López Portillo, Miguel de la Madrid, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, or Felipe Calderón.

Castro has done a far greater job of leadership and administration than any of those hand-picked interchangeable dictators Mexico has to put up with.

Castro has had great successes in education, health, nutrition, and almost any quantitative measure you can take of the well being of the people. And his people by and large like him for it. According to the CIA, Castro enjoys strong support from about 3/4 of the country.

Mexico does have more billionaires than Cuba, though.

Just saying. This story is about the internet and access to it. You're trying to steer the topic into left field

This story is hardly the definitive word on internet access in Cuba.

It does pint out, however, that Cuba has been essentially cut-off from the WWW by the US sanctions. So, as it turns out, the single most responsible party to lack of Cuban internet access is the US - by A) impoverishing their economy by a targeted system of extraterritorial sanctions, B) denying Cuba's connection to Cisco's Caribbean fiber optic trunk (that's why Cuba has had to wait for the Venezuela to Cuba cable).

you said,

"...Cuba has been essentially cut-off from the WWW by the US sanctions. So, as it turns out, the single most responsible party to lack of Cuban internet access is the US - by A) impoverishing their economy by a targeted system of extraterritorial sanctions, B) denying Cuba's connection to Cisco's Caribbean fiber optic trunk (that's why Cuba has had to wait for the Venezuela to Cuba cable)"

And I have no disagreement with that.

But Cuba and Mexico are world's apart in their 'governing' style. One is a Dictatorship where the Dictator-guy has all the power. The other is a laughably called Democracy where the elite have the power through controlling the party system. A rather exaggerated (maybe) example of our government's two party system.

In post 6 you scold a poster for steering the thread away from the fiberoptic internet connection Cuba will be able to connect to in 2010 (hopefully).

Now you are responding with the same derailing topic as the poster you scolded. A comparison of Mexican and Cuban representational systems? Jeez.

:shrug:

which anyone who is a little knowledgeable knows are ignorant lumping of all countries in the same dictarship pile. Cuba and Mexico are not the same. Period. Neither one of them has anything to brag about either.

Jeez.

Don't know what's taking them so long.. They have the internets.

:sarcasm:

country and still rip off 85% percent of the people.

Mexico's internet access didn't do shit for there last two stolen elections.


Do you think it was the internet that inspired the Bolivian people to say "Fuck you!" to the international capitalist so called neo liberal mafia and their local contacts?

I don't think it was.

I will say that the Zapatistas made great use of the internet. But they had to do a lot more than type their way to freedom. Some of it involved showing up in touristified San Cristobal de las Cases (among many other locals) with weapons.

to research, universities, and business. If the embargo is lifted, there will be more bandwidth to go around.

"Because of the US trade embargo, Cuba connects to the Internet via satellite. The government says the limited bandwidth forces them to "prioritize" Internet access for "social use" purposes, with universities, companies and research centers prioritized."

wow-Orwell would be proud of your double-speak

lol

check this out

but I'm sure you'll slam the source


http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19335

our media says, we'd have hundreds if not thousands of reports that couldn't be traced back to right wing nutcases funded by our government.

We don't have those reports.

you can do a google search on Cuba repression. although it would be difficult for Cubans to post about repression on the internet when the government is repressing the internet.

I know the RWers stake their claim to the swill smeared by rsf, but they have an agenda too, when it comes to Cuba. Exactly like the other two main often cited foundations that RWers paste links to as if they're god's honest truth, they have none of their own people in Cuba.. they get their Cuba reports from the very same Cubanet paid "independent" reporters. Miami based Cubanet is also funded by a couple of Scaife foundations (are real circle jerk of disinfo they've got going on, first producing fake info then creating/funding the disinfo distribution networks, aka: srf, ai, hrw), plus funding from the NED, the International Republican Institute, the CANF, Luis Posada and other anti Cuba terrorists and terrorist backers.

Cubanet's reports that these foundation use are the "some people say" type of reporting RWers cling to on Faux News, produced by anti Castro paid operatives in Cuba.

people understand that Cuba is a repressive regime

the only ones who don't understand are people who support this totalitarian regime

they might understand but choose to ignore the facts

speak for themselves.

Democrats who have been acquainted with RSF for many years know what they're up to. Claiming there are "commies" lying in wait trying to discredit a fine group like RSF is pitiable.

Here's one article which gives good coverage of the situation, although it's a couple of years old by now:

Cuba, the Internet and Reporters without Borders

Clearly, Reporters without Borders (RSF) has a limitless obsession with Cuba. For several years now, this organization has carried out a sadistic disinformation campaign against the Caribbean island and its government. Recently it deliberately manipulated the words that Ramiro Valdés, Cuban Minister of Communication and Information Technology, delivered at the XII International Conference on Computer Science in Havana February 11, 2007, where more than 600 delegates came from 58 countries <1>.

Manipulation of Ramiro Valdés’ words

“Communications Minister Ramiro Valdés, said on February 12, 2007 , that he considered the Internet as a ‘tool for global extermination’ and, that it was imperative to control this “cruel weapon.”’, RSF writes <2>.

In fact, the Cuban minister never said anything of the sort, as can be easily proven by looking up his speech. He denounced the bellicose and repressive use that Washington makes of the Internet in order to spread war propaganda in favor of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and to “increase the control over governments, businesses, and people, including its own population.” Valdés emphasized: “the Pentagon, without any shame, has declared its intention to add a fourth army to the specialized forces of conventional war. To the classic ones: earth, sea, and air, it has now added cyberspace,” aware of the growing importance of this space for alternative expression <3>.

To the contrary, he pointed out that “information and communication technologies will also be at the center of this integrationist movement of the area.” Valdés stigmatized the unhealthy way the United States uses the Internet -- not the information tool that is the Net. He insisted on the fact that it was “essential to find strategic alliances to confront the hegemonic attempts in this new battlefield” which threaten the “sovereignty of our peoples”. “These technologies can be used to create a mechanism of global extermination, but paradoxically, despite the known risks that they entail, they are essential in order to continue advancing along the paths of development” <4>.

Valdés never described the Internet as a “wild weapon”. He evoked the metaphoric way that “the wild colt of the new technologies and be tamed and infocommunications put at the service of peace and development” and not war, as is the case of the United States <5>. In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense announced November 2, 2006, the creation of a Cyberspace Operations Command of the Air Force in order to strengthen electronic war since, according to Lieutenant General Robert Elder who commands this force, “there is, undoubtedly, a lot of interest in utilizing cyberspace as a battle field ” <6>.

The actual statements of the Cuban Minister

Thus, RSF’s manipulations are clear. The organization directed by Robert Ménard attributed words to Valdés which he never said. In addition, it carefully conceals the Cuban minister’s real, clear and unambiguous statements about the Internet. I have some here: “The Internet is not only allowing sectors silenced by the big media to express themselves, but also spreads important messages in favor of crucial issues for humanity such as peace, protection of the planet and justice, to name only three. True communities are created for exchange, solidarity and cooperation in the most varied fields of human knowledge <7>.

Valdés pointed out that “the Internet could become a vehicle for carrying out a cultural and educational revolution that promotes knowledge, that promotes education, culture, cooperation, and solidarity, together with ethical and moral values that this new century requires, advocating the most noble human sentiments, discarding inhuman, selfish, and individualist conduct imposed by the capitalist system, with the United States at the head” <8>.

The RSF “report” about the Internet in Cuba

In regards to the Internet in Cuba, “Reporters without Borders pointed out that Cuba’s delay on the matter of the Internet is a consequence, above all, of the wish of the government to control the circulation of information in its territory. With less then two Internet users per every 100 inhabitants, Cuba is among some of the most backwards countries on the matter of the Internet. It is by far the worst in Latin America – Costa Rica is 13 times better—and is at the level of Uganda or Sri Lanka” <9>.

These claims of RSF aren’t derived from a meticulous and comparative study of Internet development throughout the world. No, it only deals with an arbitrary allegation which is not based on any research and which is completely disconnected from reality. No international organization has ever given such figures. Once again, RSF is content with rehashing the U.S. propaganda against the Caribbean archipelago.

A different reality

In Cuba close to 2 million children and adolescents have daily access to the Internet in their schools, all equipped with a computer classroom provided with the latest generation of materials. In Cuba, 146 schools exist in distant regions of the country at which only one student attends and all have a computer laboratory. There are also free community computer clubs in every municipality, used by thousands of people. One mere, ordinary question: if the Cuban government wishes “to control the circulation of information in its territory”, why would it spend several millions of dollars to universalize the access to computers and the Internet? <10>.

RSF carefully minimizes the main constraint to development of the Internet in Cuba, which are the ruthless economic sanctions that the United States has imposed on the country’s population since 1960. Cuba couldn’t connect to the Internet until 1996 since before a clause from the economic blockade impeded having access to the international network controlled by the United States. But the Cuban access is conditional because of the Torricelli law, which stipulates that each megabit bought from a U.S. business, needs to have previous approval from the Department of the Treasury. All violators are subject to extremely harsh sanctions. Furthermore, it must be remembered that more than 80 percent of Internet traffic passes through U.S. servers <11>.

On the other hand, the United States denies Cuba the use of its fiber optic submarine cable which surrounds the archipelago. Thus, the island is obliged to connect via satellite, which reduces the speed of communication and quadruples the price. For a small country from the Third World, isolated for close to half a century, the effects are not negligible. In the same way, Cuba is obliged to procure new technologies through third countries because of the economic sanctions, which substantially increases their price. Nor can it be forgotten that the United States produces close to 60% of the software of the world and that Microsoft controls the operating systems of 90% of the computers on the planet <12>.

RSF deliberately censors this reality. How could it be otherwise with an organization financed by Washington through a CIA front group—the National Endowment for Democracy? Can one expect anything different from an entity that receives tens of thousands of dollars from the Cuban extreme right such as, for example, “ Center for a Free Cuba”, directed by Frank Calzón, the same former director of the Cuban American National Foundation, a terrorist organization responsible for numerous attacks against Cuba? <13>

RSF never has denounced the fact that Washington uses the Internet to inflict sanctions which can carry ten years of jail for its own citizens who commit the unpardonable crime of traveling to Cuba and who buy their ticket on the Internet. Several travel agencies who offer tourist packages to Cuba saw their Internet sites blocked in the United States. RSF never has been moved by such an attack on freedom of expression and never has condemned the economic sanctions against Cuba <14>.

RSF’s other “objective report” about the Internet

More:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6741

I'm still going with Reporters Without Borders

your site seems a little bit tinfoily

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11968

Obama Appointments: CFR, Bilderberg and Trilateral Commission

anti-Israel

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=theme&themeId=3-a whole list of anti-Israel articles and not one condemning Hamas or the Palestinians for their attacks on Israel; guess using suicide bombers and launching rockets is oaky with them

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11790

Global Research Editorial Note

This report points to the unequivocal support of Israel by the Cabinet of President Elect Barack Obama. No diplomatic avenues are contemplated.

even more tinfoily

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11137

Fidel Castro: "Al-Qaeda terrorists engineered in order to advance Bush administration's agenda "

August 1, 2006
International Republican Institute Grants Uncovered
Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups

By DIANA BARAHONA and JEB SPRAGUE

British press baron Lord Northcliff said, "News is something that someone, somewhere wants to keep secret, everything else is advertising." If this is true, then U.S. government funding of Reporters Without Borders must be news, because the organization and its friends in Washington have gone to extraordinary lengths to cover it up. In spite of 14 months of stonewalling by the National Endowment for Democracy over a Freedom of Information Act request and a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED has revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute.

The NED still refuses to provide the requested documents or even reveal the grant amounts, but they are identified by these numbers: IRI 2002-022/7270, IRI 2003-027/7470 and IRI 2004-035/7473. Investigative reporter Jeremy Bigwood asked Morillon on April 25 if her group was getting any money from the I.R.I., and she denied it, but the existence of the grants was confirmed by NED assistant to the president, Patrick Thomas.

The discovery of the grants reveals a major deception by the group, which for years denied it was getting any Washington dollars until some relatively small grants from the NED and the Center for a Free Cuba were revealed (see Counterpunch: "Reporters Without Borders Unmasked"). When asked to account for its large income RSF has claimed the money came from the sale of books of photographs. But researcher Salim Lamrani has pointed out the improbability of this claim. Even taking into account that the books are published for free, it would have had to sell 170 200 books in 2004 and 188 400 books in 2005 to earn the more than $2 million the organization claims to make each year ­ 516 books per day in 2005. The money clearly had to come from other sources, as it turns out it did.

The I.R.I., an arm of the Republican Party, specializes in meddling in elections in foreign countries, as a look at NED annual reports and the I.R.I. website shows. It is one of the four core grantees of the NED, the organization founded by Congress under the Reagan administration in 1983 to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been devastated by exposure by the Church committee in the mid-1970s (Ignatius, 1991). The other three pillars of the NED are the National Democratic Institute (the Democratic Party), the Solidarity Center (AFL-CIO) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (U.S. Chamber of Commerce). But of all the groups the I.R.I. is closest to the Bush administration, according to a recent piece in The New York Times exposing its role in the overthrow of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide:

"President Bush picked its president, Lorne W. Craner, to run his administration's democracy-building efforts. The institute, which works in more than 60 countries, has seen its federal financing nearly triple in three years, from $26 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2005. Last spring, at an I.R.I. fund-raiser, Mr. Bush called democracy-building 'a growth industry.'" (Bogdanich and Nordberg, 2006)

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/barahona08012006.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reporters Without Borders Unmasked
May 27, 2005 By Diana Barahona

When Robert Menard founded Reporters Without Borders twenty years ago, he gave his group a name which evokes another French organization respected worldwide for its humanitarian work and which maintains a strict neutrality in political conflicts ­ Doctors Without Borders. But RSF (French acronym) has been anything but nonpartisan and objective in its approach to Latin America and to Cuba in particular.

From the beginning, RSF has made Cuba its No. 1 target. Allegedly founded to advocate freedom of the press around the world and to help journalists under attack, the organization has called Cuba "the world's biggest prison for journalists." It even gives the country a lower ranking on its press freedom index than countries where journalists routinely have been killed, such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico. RSF has waged campaigns aimed at discouraging Europeans from vacationing in Cuba and the European Union from doing business there ­ its only campaigns worldwide intended to damage a country's economy.

The above is not a matter of chance because it turns out that RSF is on the payroll of the U.S. State Department and has close ties to Helms-Burton-funded Cuban exile groups.

As a majority of members of Congress work toward normalizing trade and travel with Cuba, the extremist anti-Castro groups that have dictated U.S. Cuba policy for 40 years continue working tirelessly to maintain an economic stranglehold on the island. Their support for RSF is part of this overall strategy.

Havana-based journalist Jean-Guy Allard wrote a book about RSF's leader (El expediente Robert Ménard: Por qué Reporteros sin Fronteras se ensaña con Cuba, Quebec: Lanctí´t, 2005) which lays out the pieces of the puzzle regarding Menard's activities, associations and sources of funding in an attempt to explain what he calls Menard's "obsession" with Cuba. On April 27 this year the pieces began to come together: Thierry Meyssan, president of the Paris daily, Red Voltaire, published an article in which he claimed Menard had negotiated a contract with Otto Reich and the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) in 2001. Reich was a trustee of the center, which receives the bulk of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The contract, according to Meyssan, was signed in 2002 around the time Reich was appointed Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere for the Secretary of State. The initial payment for RSF's services was approximately 24,970 euros in 2002 ($25,000), which went up to 59,201 euros in 2003 ($50,000).

Lucie Morillon, RSF's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on April 29 that they are indeed receiving payments from the Center for a Free Cuba, and that the contract with Reich requires them to inform Europeans about the repression against journalists in Cuba and to support the families of journalists in prison. Morillon also said they received $50,000 from the CFC in 2004 and that this amount was consistent from year to year. But she denied that the anti-Cuba declarations on radio and television, full-page ads in Parisian dailies, posters, leafletting at airports and an April 2003 occupation of the Cuban tourism office in Paris were aimed at discouraging tourism to the island.

More:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/6182

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reporters Without Borders

~snip~
Funding Sources

Robert Menard, the Secretary General of RSF, was forced to confess that RSF's budget was primarily provided by "US organizations strictly linked with US foreign policy" (Thibodeau, La Presse).

* NED (US$39,900 paid 14 Jan 2005)
* Center for a Free Cuba (USAID and NED funded) $50,000 per year NED grant. Contract was signed by Otto Reich
* European Union (1.2m Euro) -- currently contested in EU parliament
* Rights & Democracy in 2004 supported Reporters Without Borders-Canada <1>

"Grants from private foundations (Open Society Foundation, Center for a Free Cuba, Fondation de France, National Endowment for Democracy) were slightly up, due to the Africa project funded by the NED and payment by Center for a Free Cuba for a reprint of the banned magazine De Cuba." <2>

Principal focus of RSF activities

* Cuba
* Venezuela
* Haiti

~snip~
Otto Reich connection

"The man who links RSF to these activities is Otto Reich, who worked on the coups first as assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, and, after Nov. 2002, as a special envoy to Latin America on the National Security Council. Besides being a trustee of the government-funded Center for a Free Cuba, which gives RSF $50,000 a year, Reich has worked since the early 1980's with the IRI.'s senior vice president, Georges Fauriol, another member of the Center for a Free Cuba. But it is Reich's experience in propaganda that is especially relevant." <4>

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reporters_Without_Borders

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From DU poster donsu:

donsu
Tue Mar-22-05 01:45 PM
Original message
questions about Reporters Without Borders funding

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0319-25.htm

Government Funds Color Press Group’s Objectivity

Over the past year, U.S. news stories about press freedom increasingly have cited the work of a Paris-based organization, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières, or RSF). Indeed, despite its small size and lack of high-profile principals, Reporters Without Borders has achieved nearly the same name-recognition as the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which can boast of having Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw on its board of directors.

-snip-

But RSF, unlike the CPJ, is heavily funded by government grants, raising questions about its objectivity. And a closer examination of the battles RSF wages—and those it ignores—strongly suggests a political agenda colored by its choice of patrons. Unfortunately, the organization appears unwilling to address such concerns: RSF’s New York representative, Tala Dowlatshahi, terminated a telephone interview when asked if the organization had applied last year for any U.S. government grants other than one received from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Most notable, perhaps, is the group’s obvious political bias in its reporting on Haiti. RSF expressed its support for the Feb. 29, 2004, Franco-American overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the same time that it received 11% of its budget from the French government (€397,604, or approximately $465,200 in 2003). According to Haiti-based journalist and documentary film-maker Kevin Pina, the organization selectively documented attacks on opposition radio stations while ignoring other attacks on journalists and broadcasters to create the impression of state-sponsored violence against Aristide’s opponents.

-snip-

Reporters Without Borders also has gone after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for allegedly threatening the private media. The conflict between the Chávez administration and the media goes back to before April, 2002, when Venezuela’s four private television stations actively aided and abetted a military coup against the government. On the night of the coup, following months of broadcasting anti-Chávez speeches and calling for a “transitional government,” media mogul Gustavo Cisneros’s station hosted meetings among the plotters—including would-be dictator Pedro Carmona.
-snip-
--------------------------------

follow the money, where it goes, where it comes from

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:ERhvdaYaHioJ:www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php%3Faz%3Dview_all%26address%3D104x3322710+Reporters+Without+Borders+funding+United+States&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Criticisms

The impartiality of Reporters Without Borders is not universally accepted. A significant amount of funding (19% of total) comes from certain western governments and organisations.<2><3><4> However, RWB has openly criticized Western countries for their treatment of reporters (e.g. the United States' occupation of Iraq).

Some people sympathetic with Cuba are highly critical of an apparent RWB anti-Castro bias. Lucie Morillon, RWB's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on 29 April 2005 that the organization receives money from the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba ($50,000 in 2004), and that a contract with the US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich, requires them to inform Europeans about repression against journalists in Cuba. However, the organisation has denied that its campaigning on the issue of Cuba - in declarations on radio and television, full-page ads in Parisian dailies, posters, leafletting at airports, and an April 2003 occupation of the Cuban tourism office in Paris - were related to the payments.<5> 1.3% of total funding come from this source.<2> In addition, RWB receives free publicity from Saatchi and Saatchi, a member of the world's fourth-largest marketing and public relations conglomerate, Publicis Groupe. It has been noted that a major Publicis client is Bacardi, which has been at the forefront of financing anti-Castro groups.<6> A judge stopped the organization from using a copyrighted image of Ernesto Che Guevara.<7> RWB has been described as an 'ultrareactionary' organization by the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma. // Castro is an Iberian word coming from Latin castrum, a fortification. ... April 29 is the 119th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (120th in leap years). ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Otto Reich Otto Juan Reich (b. ... Saatchi & Saatchi is an advertising agency founded by brothers Maurice (now Lord Saatchi) and art collector Charles, most famous for their campaign on behalf of the Conservative Party before the 1979 UK general election and for the adverts for British Airways and other state owned interests privatised by the Conservatives... The current version of the article or section reads like an advertisement. ... Che Guevara Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (May 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader. ... Granma is the ship that transported the fighters of the Cuban Revolution to Cuba in 1956. ...

Some critics find RWB's reporting of press freedom in Haiti during and after Jean-Bertrand Aristide presidency suspect, arguing that it is biased due funding from the United States.<8> This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Reporters Without Borders have called on the US government to free two journalists it said were being unjustly held at a US prison in Iraq, and at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba.<9> However, some critics find it questionable that this was only mentioned in 2006. They also claim that RSF supported the invasion of Iraq, even celebrating the illegal bombing of the ministry of information, a civilian target, whitewashed the U.S. killing of Telecinco Cameraman Jose couso and Reuters Cameraman Taras Protsyuk, and have remained silent about about AP Journalist Bilal Hussein who has been imprisoned by occupation troops.<10> However, this is contradicted by statements made by the RSF.<11><12>

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Reporters-Without-Borders

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reporters without integrity

Lauren Carroll Harris
22 June 2007

Reporters Without Borders (RWB). The name, modelled on that of humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), conjures the idea of an organisation that monitors global standards of press freedom, offers insightful and hard-hitting investigative reports on world conflict and defends the safety of courageous journalists in war-torn countries. One would imagine that such an organisation would lend its support to one of the few countries in the world that is taking major leaps in democratising the media by breaking the existing monopoly of corporate domination.

And surely, an organisation that claims to laud truthful press coverage would denounce the actions of a television station — Venezuela’s Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) — that participates in a coup against a democratically elected government. In April 2002, a US-backed military coup was launched against the government of President Hugo Chavez. RCTV broadcast opposition calls to overthrow the Chavez government; encouraged viewers to participate in a demonstration that was part of the coup strategy; banned pro-Chavez coverage during the period of the coup; falsified footage of government forces firing on demonstrators (which was used as a justification for the coup); and refused to report Chavez’s April 13 return to power on the back of a mass uprising led by the poor, instead running soap operas and films.

Instead, RWB is at the forefront of the right-wing media war against Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. Indeed, the political lines of the US government, the US-backed Venezuelan opposition and RWB coincide exactly.

RWB is purportedly non-partisan and independent. However, it receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the International Republican Institute, both of which are financed by the US Congress. Last year, information obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act revealed that RWB had received funds over at least three years from the IRI, linked to US President George Bush’s Republican Party.

In April 2005, RWB secretary general Robert Menard admitted: “We indeed receive money from the NED. And that hasn’t posed any problem.”

More:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/715/37122


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Wikipedia:

~snip~
Funding

~snip~
Some of its funding (19% of total) comes from North American and European governmental organisations, among them the American National Endowment for Democracy (NED).<7><8> According to RWB president Robert Ménard, the donations from the French government account for 4,8% of RWB's budget; the total amount of governmental aid being 11% of its budget (including money from the French government, the OSCE, UNESCO and the Organisation internationale de la francophonie).<9>

Both the NED and the Centre for a Free Cuba are funded by the US Government. However, Daniel Junqua, the vice-president of the French section of RWB (and also vice-president of the NGO Les Amis du Monde diplomatique), claims that the NED's funding, which reachs an amount of €35,000 <4>, does not compromise RWB's impartiality.<9>

~snip~
Controversy and campaigns

~snip~
Relationship with Otto Reich

Lucie Morillon, RWB's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on 29 April 2005 that the organization has a contract with US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich, who signed it in his capacity as a trustee for the Center for a Free Cuba, to inform Europeans about the repression of journalists in Cuba.<14>

The Otto Reich link has been controversial: when Reich headed the Reagan administration's Office of Public Diplomacy in the 1980s, the body partook in what its officials termed “White Propaganda” – covert dissemination of information to influence domestic opinion regarding US backing for military campaigns against Left-wing governments in Latin America.<15> An investigation into the Office’s activities by the US Comptroller-General found that under Otto Reich it was engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities".<16>

In 2002, Reich was appointed to the visiting board of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,<17> which was formerly known as the School for the Americas, and described in 2004 by the LA Weekly as a “torture-teaching institution”.<18> According to Amnesty International, the School in the past has produced training manuals which advocated torture, blackmail, beatings and executions.<19>

Reacting to Otto Reich’s appointment to the visiting board, School of the Americas Watch said, “Reich on a board charged with monitoring the human rights integrity of an institution as notorious as this one is like the fox guarding the henhouse. His appointment to this position exposes the rubber-stamp character and hypocritical function of such a board…The underlying objective of both the school and Mr. Reich is to continue to control the economic and political systems of Latin America by training and arming Latin American militaries.”<20>

According to critics, Reich has a “Stalinist-type contempt for press freedom”.<21> In the 1980s it is alleged that he conducted sex smears against journalists critical of the Contra rebel group in Nicaragua.<21> Reich himself has joked about his attitude to criticism - in 2002 in mock indignation he joked that opponents had "said that I can't make rational decisions because of my ideology. Well, they are not saying that anymore, because I had them all arrested this morning."<22>

Under the contract signed with Reich, Reporters Without Borders received $50,000 in 2004 from the Center for Free Cuba.<23>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders

:eyes:

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Thank you for the info, Judi Lynn.

during Batista's time:


Sign says, for non-Spanish-speaking DU'ers, "Stop killing our children."

These were mothers in Santiago de Cuba marching down the street to meet
US ambassador Earl Wilson to ask him to intercede with US-supported
brutal dictator who had been having their sons, suspected to be leftists,
tortured, mutilated, killed, and thrown out around Santiago de Cuba, and
their bodies hung in trees there.


Here are two photos of Santiago de Cuba in the present!

http://www.contrast.it.nyud.net:8090/photos/adriano_mestroni/Photos/Cuba/Santiago/Santiago%20.jpg

http://artfiles.art.com.nyud.net:8090/images/-/Marc-Pokempner/Santiago-de-Cuba-Print-C10071566.jpeg

I'm impressed

You lose your job, or get your hours/pay cut, you have to cut your high speed connection or might have to go without any ISP at all.

Pretty much the same in Cuba. If you can afford it you can have internet access.

now defunct US/Cuba policy message board (formed to handle traffic for the Elián Gonzalez discussion) had to pay a horrendous bill just to use the internet at that time. Possibly it has changed since then, but her cost was the same as if she was spending that time making long distance phone calls.

I was astonished when she discussed this with one of her good friends there, who also had lived in Argentina.

A lot of Americans are profoundly ignorant of conditions elsewhere.

Anyone who posted at CNN might remember her as "Maria Lamoretti."

Long, long DU lurker here. This is my first time posting. Hope it works.

I have been in email contact with a Cuban professor for about four years. Met him when he was invited to an international-law conference sponsored by a university in northern Florida. The Miami Mafia was able to block him from attending and speaking at the conference. We put him up in our home in South Florida for a few days until his scheduled return to Havana. Last month he send us a New Year's greeting and saying that he hoped the Obama administration would put an end to "el bloqueo criminal." He is a very intelligent man and a true "caballero."

:hi: Judi, I remember "la Lamoretti" and her $400-$500 monthly bills to be able to post on the Elian forum. I too was floored when she told us that.

Oh, I was the "Mirabal" on that forum. Remember Shoobs, Neil A., saywhat, dejadecuentos? Those were fun days slugging it out with the Miami gusanos. I am still in regular contact with Neil and he cannot wait until the day when Uribe gets the boot in Bogota.

the one with whom she spoke most often.

Was thinking of you very recently. Wondering if you still go to your home in the mountains.

I remember how cold Maria said it got that winter in Argentina. I had no idea it ever got that cold there.

Reading your two's comments started me wanting to know what it was I had never been allowed to know before about that country. I have read so much and haven't scratched the surface yet since those days.

Same about Colombia and Neil.

My eyes were only opened on these events at that time, it opened a whole world to me, and I thank god it did. I had been so profoundly ignorant before then.

Sure, remember Shoobs. His and others' (C.M's) comments regarding Chile got my attention, too, in a hurry. I saw an editorial article by Shoobs somewhere a year or two later. Maybe the L.A. Times. Can't remember. Recognized him immediately.

This is absolutely wonderful. I nearly fainted when I made the connection. Wow. Oh, wow! Do you think Fidel Castro ate Elián Gonzalez all gone like the Miami posters prophesied he would before he got sick? Sure don't miss BeatriCE or whatever her name was.

What an occassion. Have thought of you and the others so often. I HATED it when CNN shut down their message boards.

So glad you've posted here. Your comments would only enhance the conversation. Will be back later.

Thank you so much for mentioning you'd posted here. I had completely missed it, due to being away. I would grind my teeth to the gumline if I had found out too late!

if that is to keep freepers out, great

at least Cubans will be able to beat the system while north koreans are generally beaten for picking up a cell phone that is found on the ground after a balloon trip from the south