US urges Cuba to release 'spy suspect' Alan Gross

Source: bbc

American diplomats have called on Cuba to release a US citizen held since December without charge.

The release of Alan Gross, 60, was discussed during talks about migration in Havana, the US said.

Cuba's president has accused him of spying, but his family say he was distributing communication equipment to Jewish groups.
...
Cuban President Raul Castro has said Mr Gross used "sophisticated" communications equipment to help opposition groups in their role as "mercenaries" for the US, AFP news agency reported.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8524715.stm

What Was Alan Gross Doing in Havana?

Bonnie Goldstein
Contributor

02/11/10

snip

Although he entered the island on a tourist visa, Gross was not in Cuba for the exceptional bird watching. The 60-year-old family man, synagogue member, and former Obama supporter is a technology expert and federal vendor whose specialty is bringing satellite signals to remote locations. Though uninvited by his hosts, he was on Castro's island as an "independent business and economic development consultant" to Development Alternatives, Inc., a State Department contractor that hired him under a $8.6 million contract from the Agency for International Development. Since his arrest, reporters have asked at State press briefings about Gross' detention and his precise assignment in Cuba. Few details have been released other than he was there to assist "civil society organizations" to better communicate through technology.

snip

The New York Times reported the lone consultant had already visited Cuba several times under his subcontract when he was arrested. Early accounts of his efforts say he was there to help a small number of Jewish citizens in Cuba obtain "unfiltered access" to the Internet, The Miami Herald reported, but prominent members of the Cuban Jewish community claim they don't know Gross.

Though his bosses deny he is an intelligence agent, there has been a lot of mystery surrounding Gross' mission. For over a week after he was detained, his arrest was kept secret from the press and Congress. After reporters learned of his detention, his supervisor at DAI released this statement: "The detained individual was an employee of a program subcontractor, which was implementing a competitively issued subcontract to assist Cuban civil society organizations.'' It was not disclosed what companies competed for the job.

A State spokesman dodged questions about the American's arrest because, he said, U.S. consular staff in Cuba had not been allowed to speak with him. "Since we haven't met with him, we don't have a privacy waiver, so it's difficult for us to get into any more specifics on that case." Although envoys were finally allowed to meet with the contractor, specifics remain scarce.

snip

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/02/11/what-was-alan-gross-doing-in-havana/

check deeper into the story about who and what groups represented the Miami family.

I think there's more to this than we see on the surface. Why did he visit Cuba so many times? What exactly was he doing?

and stop trying to overthrow their government?

As it is now, the Cubans are well satisfied with their socialist system. Every profession and vocation and trade is fully represented by unions - whos reps make up the majority of Cuba's elected assemblies. Cuba is poor. Under US extra territorial sanctions that causes shortages and some discontent. Otherwise, according to even the CIA factbook on Cuba, Cubans overwhelmingly support their system of government.

---

Cuba has relations with every other country in the world. It can trade with every other country. To blame its economic woes on one country is silly. We should re-establish relations and trade with Cuba but the reason they are poor is because of a communist system.

The Helms-Burton Act prevents foreign companies from doing business with the US if they trade with Cuba.

Pretty messed up. Right?

But you are not. Most important countries (UK, Mexico, Canada, EU) passed laws of their own to counter act the law. Both Clinton and Bush signed waivers to enforcement of the law. I don't know if Obama has signed one. The law has had no real effect.

Clinton/Bush/Obama only waived Title III of the Helms-Burton law (and that codifies the ability of cuban expats to sue Cuba for the nationalization of their property in the US courts.

The Helms-Burton law forbid foreign companies, not countries, form doing biz in the USA IF they do biz in Cuba. Obviously, most multinational companies choose the vastly larger US market place over Cuba.

The law does have effect, that is just why the US OFAC has to approve applications for US businesses to get US license to sell to Cuba.

You are posting utter BS.

---

Canada, Mexico, and the UK all passed laws with both criminal and civil penalties on any company that complied with Helms-Burton. British Air, Air France, KLM and other European Airlines companies fly all the time into Cuba. Have they been shut out of the U.S. market? You just want a crutch to explain the economic failure of communism.

Because of Helms-Burton Bayer AG (a German drug company) can't sell Aspirin to Cuba w/o losing their access to the US market. That is why one can only find Aspirin in stores stocked by 3rd party resuppliers in Cuba - and its prohibitively expensive because Bayer can't sell directly to the Cuban Ministry of Health at a negotiated bulk price.

"Denial of Food and Medicine:
The Impact Of The U.S. Embargo
On The Health And Nutrition In Cuba"
-An Executive Summary-
American Association for World Health Report
Summary of Findings
March 1997

A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate half that of the city of Washington, D.C.. Even so, the U.S. embargo of food and the de facto embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system. The crisis has been compounded by the country's generally weak economic resources and by the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc.

Recently four factors have dangerously exacerbated the human effects of this 37-year-old trade embargo. All four factors stem from little-understood provisions of the U.S. Congress' 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (CDA)

1. A Ban on Subsidiary Trade: Beginning in 1992, the Cuban Democracy Act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba. This ban has severely constrained Cuba's ability to import medicines and medical supplies from third country sources. Moreover, recent corporate buyouts and mergers between major U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies have further reduced the number of companies permitted to do business with Cuba.
   
   
2. Licensing Under the Cuban Democracy Act: The U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments are allowed in principle to license individual sales of medicines and medical supplies, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons to mitigate the embargo's impact on health care delivery. In practice, according to U.S. corporate executives, the licensing provisions are so arduous as to have had the opposite effect. As implemented, the licensing provisions actively discourage any medical commerce. The number of such licenses granted-or even applied for since 1992-is minuscule. Numerous licenses for medical equipment and medicines have been denied on the grounds that these exports "would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests."
   
   
3. Shipping Since 1992:The embargo has prohibited ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after delivering cargo to Cuba. This provision has strongly discouraged shippers from delivering medical equipment to Cuba. Consequently shipping costs have risen dramatically and further constricted the flow of food, medicines, medical supplies and even gasoline for ambulances. From 1993 to 1996, Cuban companies spent an additional $8.7 million on shipping medical imports from Asia, Europe and South America rather than from the neighboring United States.
   
   
4. Humanitarian Aid: Charity is an inadequate alternative to free trade in medicines, medical supplies and food. Donations from U.S. non-governmental organizations and international agencies do not begin to compensate for the hardships inflicted by the embargo on the Cuban public health system. In any case, delays in licensing and other restrictions have severely discouraged charitable contributions from the U.S.

Taken together, these four factors have placed severe strains on the Cuban health system. The declining availability of food stuffs, medicines and such basic medical supplies as replacement parts for thirty-year-old X-ray machines is taking a tragic human toll. The embargo has closed so many windows that in some instances Cuban physicians have found it impossible to obtain life-saving medicines from any source, under any circumstances. Patients have died. In general, a relatively sophisticated and comprehensive public health system is being systematically stripped of essential resources. High-technology hospital wards devoted to cardiology and nephrology are particularly under siege. But so too are such basic aspects of the health system as water quality and food security. Specifically, the AAWH's team of nine medical experts identified the following health problems affected by the embargo:

1. Malnutrition: The outright ban on the sale of American foodstuffs has contributed to serious nutritional deficits, particularly among pregnant women, leading to an increase in low birth-weight babies. In addition, food shortages were linked to a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands. By one estimate, daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent between 1989 and 1993.
   
   
2. Water Quality: The embargo is severely restricting Cuba's access to water treatment chemicals and spare-parts for the island's water supply system. This has led to serious cutbacks in supplies of safe drinking water, which in turn has become a factor in the rising incidence of morbidity and mortality rates from water-borne diseases.
   
   
3. Medicines & Equipment: Of the 1,297 medications available in Cuba in 1991, physicians now have access to only 889 of these same medicines - and many of these are available only intermittently. Because most major new drugs are developed by U.S. pharmaceuticals, Cuban physicians have access to less than 50 percent of the new medicines available on the world market. Due to the direct or indirect effects of the embargo, the most routine medical supplies are in short supply or entirely absent from some Cuban clinics.
   
   
4. Medical Information: Though information materials have been exempt from the U.S. trade embargo since 1 988, the AAWH study concludes that in practice very little such information goes into Cuba or comes out of the island due to travel restrictions, currency regulations and shipping difficulties. Scientists and citizens of both countries suffer as a result. Paradoxically, the embargo harms some U.S. citizens by denying them access to the latest advances in Cuban medical research, including such products as Meningitis B vaccine, cheaply produced interferon and streptokinase, and an AIDS vaccine currently under-going clinical trials with human volunteers.

Finally, the AAWH wishes to emphasize the stringent nature of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Few other embargoes in recent history - including those targeting Iran, Libya, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Chile or Iraq - have included an outright ban on the sale of food. Few other embargoes have so restricted medical commerce as to deny the availability of life-saving medicines to ordinary citizens. Such an embargo appears to violate the most basic international charters and conventions governing human rights, including the United Nations charter, the charter of the Organization of American States, and the articles of the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of civilians during wartime.

American Association for World Health
1825 K Street, NW, Suite 1208
Washington, DC 20006

~~~~~
Thanks, Wilms, for being a person who DOES make the investment of time and discipline needed to have a true picture of the subject you're discussing, and for NOT having EVER been one of the people who come here to deal in disinformation, hoping to further befuddle the childish, and shallow people who WON'T bother to inform themselves.

People can always rely on your comments and your judgement. I know I do.

Their "unions" are there to protect and enforce the government, not their workers.

Maybe their "government" is "them".

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/democracy_in_cuba.htm

The crisis which broke out in eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. only served to further highlight the significance of the changes already being brought about in Cuba based on its own experience. After having carried out changes to rectify problems in the economy and political process, another move was initiated for the 'perfeccionamiento' of, amongst other things, the political process. Once again not only was it the party which catalyzed the sentiment of the people to deal with this issue, but it was this organization and its leadership which was most adamant in insisting that the people vent their feelings and opinions so that the party can deal with the problems adequately. Gail Reed, in her book on the fourth party congress, provides an account of how the call of the party for the congress was distributed massively amongst the people for discussion, but was almost immediately followed by an abrupt halt. This did not take place because issues were raised which may have irked the party and the leadership, as the prevailing prejudices would have it. On the contrary, the party was disappointed that not enough open, frank, pluralistic debates and discussions were taking place. The party was not interested in discussion for the sake of formality. And so the call and the procedure was re-issued by the party declaring that "...the limits of discussion cannot be fixed beforehand... Our Party should understand that the call’s discussion has a dual purpose: on the one hand, it is a real consultation, where people can express different views; and on the other hand, it is a process of political clarification.... What is needed is a dialogue, a confrontation of ideas, where the most convincing, best argued and defended, win out."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0968508405/qid=1053879619/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-8821757-1670550?v=glance&s=books

---

http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991223866&Language=EN

More here:
http://www.icftu.org/list.asp?Language=EN&Type=ALL&Country=CUB&Order=Date

edit: more recent link, with a link to the collection

List of Ratifications of International Labour Conventions
Cuba
http://webfusion.ilo.org/public/db/standards/normes/appl/appl-byCtry.cfm?lang=en&CTYCHOICE=0160&hdroff=1

--

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ctUyIubxIicJ:lib.ohchr.org/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/Session4/CU/CSC_CUB_UPR_S4_2009_CubaSolidarityCampaign.pdf+US+congress+meets+with+Cuban+trade+unions&hl=en&gl=us&sig=AHIEtbSw0n1lBTQyAdaKdHrgP5Tt7BAGAA

---

Spiffy.

Carmelo Díaz Fernández, 63 years old. President of the Unión Sindical Cristiana and Deputy Director of the Centro Nacional de Capacitación Sindical y Laboral . 16 years’ imprisonment.

Miguel Galván Gutiérrez, 38 years old. Member of the executive committee of the Centro Nacional de Capacitación Sindical y Laboral. 26 years’ imprisonment.

Pedro Pablo Álvarez Ramos, 53 years old. General Secretary of the Consejo Unitario de Trabajadores Cubanos . 25 years’ imprisonment.

Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, delegate from the Consejo Unitario de Trabajadores Cubanos in the province of Havana. 26 years’ imprisonment.

Nelson Molinet Espino, 37 years old. President of the Confederación de Trabajadores Democráticos de Cuba . 20 years’ imprisonment.

Héctor Raúl Valle Fernández, 35 years old. Vice-President of the Confederación de Trabajadores Democráticos de Cuba. 12 years’ imprisonment.

Iván Carrillo Hernández. Member of the executive committee of the Confederación Obrera Nacional Independiente de Cuba . 25 years’ imprisonment.

http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991218325&Language=EN

Got any confirming links to the hearsay in your link? What are the sources they use? Cubanet?

No listing or documentation of the actual charges against them. Just innuendo. Were these some of the "75" busted a couple of years ago for being mercenaries of the declared enemy of Cuba (the US gov)?

More info please.

Thanks.

---

http://www.google.com/search?q=cuba+arrests+union+organizer

Sure, some of them were likely charged with being "agents of the enemy" (or whatever), as that's a typical charge that oppressive Latin American regimes have used to justify their atrocities... regardless of the regime claiming to be left, or right, or whatever.

Cuba.

They are paid operatives of the enemy of Cuba - at minimum acting as unregistered agents, but undoubtedly on the payroll of the state (the USA) that seeks to overthrow the Cuban government.

And Cuba shouldn't protect itself from this illegal activity by associates/employees of an enemy that is behind numerous terror attacks against Cuba?

Get real. The US, and any nation, has the right to protect itself from terrorism from known and declared enemies, and external overthrow. Just as Cuba has that right also.

---

Regardless of whose "payroll" somebody is on, I consider it criminal to silence those participating in, or enabling, political speech. It doesn't matter if their (the speaker's) goal is oriented towards theocracy, social democracy, totalitarianism, monarchy, etc.... silencing political speech is a form of domestic terrorism, usually committed by a nation upon its citizens.

Merely shutting down such speech is enough of a reason to "overthow", or reform, any nation that participates in it. Cuba and the US have *no* rights to protect themselves from free speech, IMNSHO.

Keep in mind that Cuba's so called "dissidents" are on the direct payroll of the declared enemy or on the payroll of Miami based terrorist groups, whom have attaced Cuba numerous times in the past.

You seriously think that the security agencies of a nation not be used to prevent terrorists from forming terrorist cells/networks who's intention is to bring down the representational government by whatever means including violence? A state and groups with a renown history of such activity?

Hmmm. OK. Gotcha.

---

Violence is the tipping point, but I don't hold the US up as having any excuse for suppressing purely political speech. It's wrong in Cuba, the US, anywhere it happens.

But not only does Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and O'Reilly enjoy free speech, now the corporations themselves have that right.

What sometimes seems like free speech is often paid for speech.

TPTB have often attempted to control the pulpit, the press, etc., in every major form of political system, leaving people at the whims of the major players in media... hence, people starting their own organizations to counter existing organizations.

November 29, 2004

AFL-CIO’s Dark Past (4)

U.S. Labor Reps. Conspired to Overthrow
Elected Governments in Latin America
By Harry Kelber

~snip~
To counteract the spread of communist ideology throughout the hemisphere, the AFL Executive Council in January 1946 appointed Serafino Romualdi as its official representative in Latin America, who would work for the eventual establishment of an anti-communist labor federation to rival the CTAL

Romualdi was an Italian anti-fascist, who had fled Mussolini’s Italy to come to the United States and join ILGWU’s Italian local 99 as editor of its publications. He came under the approving eye of ILGWU David Dubinsky, who felt Romualdi was well suited to take on the role of anti-communist roving ambassador for the AFL throughout Latin America, since he had traveled to most of the countries and was knowledgeable about their unions and leaders.

In April 1947, Romualdi met with Spruille Braden, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin Affairs, who fully agreed that “increasing dangers that Communist influence in Latin American labor unions represents to the security of the democratic institutions in the Western Hemisphere and specifically to the security of the United States.”

Braden said that the attitude of the State Department toward the AFL’s efforts to combat Communist aggression “will from now on be not only sympathetic but cooperative.” It was clear that the State Department, for reasons of its own, would be an ample source of funding and assistance for whatever campaign Romualdi would undertake.

With the urging of the AFL, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) created the Inter-American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT) in January 1951, with a provision that unions identified as being under the direct or indirect influence of the Communist Party would be excluded. To ensure that U.S. labor would dominate ORIT, Romauldi, the AFL’s representative in Latin America, was chosen as its director.

At the founding convention, AFL’s George Meany, who was elected as a vice president, strongly asserted that no economic help would be given to any government that supported Communism or sympathized with the Soviet Union.

AFL’s Romauldi Was Long-Time CIA Agent

Romauldi, it turned out, was “the principal CIA agent for labor operations in Latin America,” says Philip Agee in his book, “CIA Diary.” Agee worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as a field officer in Latin America for most of a dozen years. Romauldi had ties with the CIA even before he became the ORIT director and continued to serve the spy agency into the early 1960’s.

In 1950, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected president of Guatemala on a program of agrarian reform in a country where wealthy families controlled most of the land and its resources. What angered Meany was that Arbenz, no Communist himself, had included several Communists in his government and supported the left-leaning Guatemalan trade unions. But his anger boiled over, as did the State Department’s, when Arbenz began expropriating the land holdings of the United Fruit Company.

A military coup, organized and financed by the CIA with Meany’s blessing, toppled Arbenz in June 1954 and replaced him with Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who issued a decree outlawing all trade unions, not only leftist organizations.

Romualdi, who was in Guatemala during and after the coup, concedes that employers, with the connivance of the government authorities, had resorted to wholesale dismissals of every active trade unionist whom they classified as “agitators.” He says, “I found out that in the Ixcan region, workers were being paid 50 cents a day and were forced to work 81 hours a week.”

Despite the torture and death of thousands of Guatemalans by right wing terrorists in the two years following Col. Armas’ takeover of the government, Romauldi still insisted that “the President himself meant well and was at heart favoring the rebirth of a healthy, free and independent trade union movement.”

More:
http://www.laboreducator.org/darkpast4.htm

Yes, even the unions haven't been safe from being used as proxies for bigger ideological struggles.

Almost forgot. He's also a JOO!

But, by all means, send a letter to the editor.

Maybe too much?

Check your dosage. Really. :hug: Your posts are even more whacked than usual.

:hi:

The two-story house looks like any other in Potomac's Fox Hills subdivision -- a colonial with wood and brick trim, a mezuzah on the front door and a dark blue sedan parked in the driveway, sporting an "Obama '08" bumper sticker.

The only thing missing is the man of the house: Alan Gross.

He's locked up in maximum-security Cuban jail, his immediate fate uncertain. Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, has publicly accused the Jewish detainee and member of Montgomery County's Am Kolel congregation of working for U.S. "secret services," made up of what he called "agents, torturers and spies."

Gross, 60, heads the Joint Business Development Center LLC, a Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit that according to its Web site (which apparently was pulled this week) "provides practical 21st-century solutions to business, government, associations and humanitarian aid organizations, globally."

JBDC has worked in nearly 60 countries. Among its accomplishments, according to the site, "continued support for humanitarian activities in Cuba, Palestine and Israel."

In communist Cuba, Gross, who was detained Dec. 4 and whose name was revealed by sources on Dec. 12, reportedly was working with the island's tiny Jewish community, helping it access the Internet and providing technical assistance to help its 600 to 1,000 mostly elderly members communicate with each other and with Jews overseas. The community thrives on substantial donations from U.S. and Canadian Jewry.

more...

From the link that Behind the Aegis provided ..

But secrecy seems to shroud Gross's detention both in Washington and Havana -- with some wondering just how kosher his activities were in an island ruled by the Castro regime since 1959.

The detainee's wife, Judy, declined to discuss her husband's detention and would not provide a photograph of him. According to informed sources, she has had some brief conversations with her husband. Her sister, Gwen Zuares, president of the American Sephardi Federation, also declined comment.

-

Likewise, officials at the Cuban Interests Section -- the regime's equivalent of a Washington embassy -- refused all comment on the case.

Tuesday's El Nuevo Herald newspaper in Miami quoted Adela Dworin, the leader of Cuba's Patronato Hebreo Cubano, a leading Jewish organization in Cuba, as saying she has no knowledge of Gross.

According to informed sources, Gross, who had been the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington's director of commerce and professions, 1981-1985, had traveled to Cuba several times, distributing humanitarian aid and cell phones to political dissidents under a contract with Bethesda-based Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI).

---

and it is shameful that the CIA will recruit innocent civilians to do their dirty work.

Seems more like a mercenary to me.

Can't have a free press, ya know, that might cause problems.

But sure. YOU can make believe if you want.

No cover story needed, if the "crime" is enabling free speech. The current regime considers that to be subversive, i.e. spying. As I posted below:

"Only government employees, academics and researchers are allowed their own Internet accounts, which are provided by the state, but only have limited access to sites outside the island. Ordinary Cubans may open e-mail accounts accessible at many post offices, but do not have access to the Web. Many got around the restrictions by using hotel Internet services.

But a new resolution barring ordinary Cubans from using hotel Internet services quietly went into place in recent weeks, according to an official with Cuba's telecom monopoly, hotel workers and bloggers.

There was no official announcement of the change. Cuba has the lowest rate of Internet access in Latin America."

More at:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-cuba-internet-cutoff-050709,0,4376220.story

Just like the USA.

Read the Sun Sentinel article. Its about non-hotel guests hijacking tourist hotel Wi-Fi. And they have the chutzpah to say its a government "crackdown". LOL

---

"Internet use is only for foreigners for the time being," said a worker at the Hotel Nacional's business center. "According to a new order from ETECSA only foreigners can surf the web at hotels.""
and
"Reinaldo Escobar, the husband of popular Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez and a blogger himself, said he was recently denied use of wireless Internet service at the Melia Cohiba Hotel."

Cubans aren't allowed access, whether or not they're registered guests.

edit:typo

Just like hotels here in Florida.

Otherwise (despite the misleading headline) ....

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/tech/main592416.shtml

E-net is the largest of a handful of Internet providers in Cuba
-
E-net customers who do not have the dollar phone service can keep accessing the Internet with the ordinary phone service with special cards sold at Etecsa offices, the letter says.

Plus, there is free internet access at most all Cuban libraries.


Been there. Seen it.

---

Oh, and nice selective quoting. I wonder why you left this incredibly damning tidbit out?

"E-net is the largest of a handful of Internet providers in Cuba all of them heavily monitored and controlled by the government."

First you say that there is no access to the internet in Cuba.

I provide a link that refutes your ignorant claim.

Wow. You mean the handful of internet providers (that you claimed don't even exist) have to register with the government in Cuba? Cubans have to pay for it? Sorta like in the USA?

You're batting a very low average in your whack-a-mole accusations you're pulling outta your ass. :dunce:

You know nothing about Cuba. Period.

---

Please post the links.

In general, Cubans can't afford the per hour costs of internet due to the very limited bandwidth there (because of the Helms-Burton law that prevents Cuba from connecting to the Cisco owned Caribbean trunk).

They have better things to spend their money on than i-net fees for chat rooms debating RW knuckle draggers.

The real "chat rooms" in Cuba are the nomination sessions and accountability sessions for all elected representatives. Cuban TV has a national show called "the round table" that is pretty much a nightly televised discussion akin to the debates here on DU - but more informed on Cuba related issues than most DUers are (especially you).

Of course, you never having been there to see for yourself, if would take actual experience in Cuba to understand this.

---

Indeed.



Odd that we never get any of our Canadian posters posting from hotels when traveling to Cuba.

The Cubans on that truck "raft" were not eligible for legal US immigration visas due to criminal records. The US interests section has to do a background check on the applicants for the over 20,000 legal US immigration visas offered to Cubans. The truck rafters were denied a US visa by the US gov.

The US's Wet Foot/Dry Foot policy allows any and all Cubans - no matter their criminal record - rape, child molestation, violence, or the fact that they were denied a legal visa - to enter the US if they get here by any means, legal or not.

That is just the reason that you see Cuban rafters. US policy allows an avenue for even disqualified applicants to enter to US illegally and become instantly legal. This US policy in unique to Cuban illegal entrants. Even if they are disqualified for a legal visa, the US's Wet Foot/Dry Foot policy and Cuban Adjustment Act allows, even encourages, Cuban felons to enter the US and be freed on the streets of Miami within 24 hours.

This US policy is for Cubans only - no matter their background or the fact they were denied a legal immigration visa.

Haitians or any other Caribbean national is deported back to their homeland.

Cubans are offered over 20,000 legal visas per year - more than any other nation. Not all are even applied for.

But you knew that - being a Cuba "expert*" 'n all.

---

:eyes:

Well at least they have a future in classic truck restoration. Would get a good price on in the US market.

And by the way, when are you moving back to paradise?

There are many legitimate reasons for the US gov to deny an applicant - not necessarily a hardened criminal. A criminal conviction. Conviction of domestic abuse. Conviction for drug trafficking. Delinquent in child support. Violent crime. These are examples. Keep in mind that it is the US interests section in Havana that does the background checks.

The truck rafters were given a special dispensation by the US gov in that they were allowed to re-apply when their story was all the rage in the MSM. They were denied visas by the US again, due to their criminal records.

The topic was being researched and discussed here on DU during the events mentioned.

Cubans found on seagoing ('51 Chevy) pickup
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=31230&mesg_id=31230&page=#31277

--

--


Old discussion on another topic being discussed here ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2729086&mesg_id=2731457

The only "restrictions" are against pirate IPs supplied by the US interests section & illegal internet accounts created by other persons in Miami.

To use the internet in Cuba one must sign up with one of the registered (as in: legal) Cuba-based IPs using one's own ID. Of course, these accounts are expensive due to the limited bandwidth access that Cuba has to the internet (due to the US's extra territorial sanctions).

The restrictions referred to in the OP article are against pirate/illegal internet accounts. In Cuba the access and use of the phone system for internet connection requires an extra fee above and beyond what simple phone-only users pay for phone service.


The phraseology of the article in the OP is simply and purely anti Cuba BS.

Yes Cuba has to monitor some connections, because there is a long history of real acts of terrorism committed against Cuba with aiding and abetting by certain US funded "dissident" groups within Cuba who use pirate/illegal/fraudulent internet accounts.

As the US government is stepping up actions to overthrow the Cuban system of government (as it is) using mercenary "dissidents", then Cuba steps up the restrictions on the pirate i-net accounts set up by the declared enemies of Cuba (the US and certain Miami based terra groups).

---

"First you say that there is no access to the internet in Cuba."

Nope, nowhere did I say that. Unencrypted, government authorized and monitored, limited access is available, as is access for the wealthy and well connected. Feel free to correct me and tell me where I said that that there was "no access to the internet", or words to that effect.

"You mean the handful of internet providers (that you claimed don't even exist) have to register with the government in Cuba?"

That's part of it. Unlike in the USA, internet access there is regulated, and registered, and monitored, with means in place to preclude basic privacy and encryption.<1>

"Cubans have to pay for it? Sorta like in the USA?"

*Unlike* the USA, where providing free WiFi to others is a legal and common practice in restaurants, hotels, from private homes, bars, coffee shops, etc. Internet access in the USA is more communistic than in Cuba, in a rather ironic twist of fate.

<1> Some of this stupidity *has* been the fault of the US, which for years inhibited exports of encryption technology. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassenaar_Arrangement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States

And that would be prudent policy given US history.

You apparently feel supportive of that type of thing. We know.

Kind of a human rights thing, regardless of the ideologies.

Of course, regimes that want to exploit and isolate their people have a real need to avoid such things, because education and communication encourages independent thinking.

who backed a bloodbath in Central America.

Some free speech there, with entire villages of Mayan indigenous people tortured and massacred during lengthy seiges of their tiny towns, the people forced to watch their neighbors, children, parents, spouses tortured, raped, and BRUTALLY abused and slaughtered right in front of them, before their own murders.

Always look forward to your weighty words on American policy concerning Latin America.

I imagine all those dead Mayan people are free to say anything they want from beyond the grave now. God bless you.

Nice combination of false dilemma and guilt by association you have there.

Of course, if there *had* been more speech, more media, more people able to talk, the 40's-90's massacres couldn't have been kept as hushed up, or consistently distorted by media owners and ideologues for their own ends.

Too bad you can't seem to agree with open media, or education and communication, because of a boogyman agreeing with such things too. Must suck to have such limited options.

He reveled in it, flourished in it, and it has continued AFTER Reagan.

I'm not sure why it has continued as long as it has, maybe it's part of the human identity.

That being said, I was using a 40's-90's scope to point towards cold war mentalities acting as a dominant force to justify atrocities.

Michael Collins, a program associate at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank, said that DAI "received a lot of unwelcome attention" when it was accused of helping finance opposition groups involved in the failed 2002 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez -- a staunch ally of the Castro regime.

"Other projects in Iraq and Afghanistan have led some pundits, such as whistleblower and former CIA agent Philip Agee, to believe that the organization is used as a front for the CIA. That is not to say that the DAI employee arrested is indisputably a spy, but the fact that American officials admit that he was distributing cell phones and computers, as well as other communications equipment that might have been restricted, will raise eyebrows regarding the motives his trip to Cuba."

John McAuliff, executive director of the New York-based Fund for Reconciliation and Development, says there are a number of "oddities" about the official U.S. explanation of Gross's activities in Cuba.

"A highly regarded international NGO called ORT is credited with the excellent and substantial computer program assisting the Jewish community in Cuba. Unless they are being funded by DAI/USAID, which seems unlikely, the story given out about Mr. Gross's activities merits further investigation," said McAuliff, cited in Progreso Weekly, a blog focused on Latin America. "Was he adding onto or hiding behind well-established credible work, or is this a cover story meant to confuse the debate over foreign assistance to dissidents?"

Sounds like the TV show Mission Impossible's "As always, should you or any member of the I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions."


Thanks for posting those paragraphs.

---

You're welcome. I'm not a big fan of the US Cuba policy.

How gross. :)

Their crime was their reporting on terrorist activities by Miami exile groups.

This would go a long way toward improving relations.

but couldn't remember their name as group.:thumbsup:

No? Oh, then the US shouldn't bitch about it. People might take the US seriously if it wasn't run by fucking hypocrites.

HAVANA (AP) -- Cuba scolded a top U.S. delegation Saturday for meeting with political opposition leaders following high-level immigration discussions, saying it proves Washington is out to topple the country's communist government.

---

Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, confirmed that a group of Cuban dissident leaders met with the U.S. delegation late Friday at the residence of the head of the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington keeps in Havana because it has no diplomatic relations with the island.

Such a meeting is not unusual when U.S. diplomats visit. But enraged Cuban leaders say the dissidents are not pro-democracy activists, independent journalists and organizers of political opposition groups, but paid agents of Washington planted to destabilize the island's political system.

In a statement published in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, the Foreign Ministry said U.S. leaders' meeting with dissidents was ''contrary to the spirit of cooperation and understanding showed on Cuba's part'' during the immigration talks and ''demonstrated anew that (U.S.) priorities are more related to supporting the counterrevolution and the promotion of subversion to destabilize the Cuban revolution than with the creation of a climate conducive to real solutions to bilateral problems.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/20/world/AP-CB-Cuba-US.html

You should spend some time reading some of the political literature from Florida's Cuban exile community. You will soon realize that their goals are to replace Cuba's socialist government with a Catholic theocracy in which abortion and LGBT rights would become a thing of the past. Their economic goals are to impose the same neoliberal privatization policies that have been a dismal failure across the world.

Most of the governments in pre-Revolutionary Cuba were anti-Semitic.

You can't have a cordial and cooperative relationship with countries whose governments you are constantly working to undermine.

I'm sorry, but pigs will fly before I spend any time reading the "political literature" of the Cuban exile community. Their economic goals are to own everything and be bigshots again. Infantile reactionary whining.

Mighty broad brush you have there.

and he left the racist riff-raff in Miami, which never accepted him, and returned to Cuba to instill reforms.

The rest of the Cuban-American rabble in Florida makes the John Birch Society look like the ACLU.

at which time _{George W Bush's} crew started threatening him long distance to force him to return. Ugly behavior from that group of dredges.

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo threatened by US for living in Cuba
Posted February 09, 2005

By Anthony Boadle | Reuters

A U.S. resident who had spent 22 years in a Cuban prison for opposing communism and returned to the island to work for democracy now faces a U.S. jail threat for violating travel restrictions.

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, a Cuban exile who returned in 2003, has been warned by the U.S. Treasury Department that he could be fined $250,000 or sent to prison for 10 years for staying in Cuba in violation of sanctions intended to isolate the government of Fidel Castro.

“They don’t understand: I am not a tourist in Cuba, I am an activist working to establish a legal space for an independent opposition,” Gutierrez Menoyo said on Tuesday in an interview.

“It is illogical. I’m here seeking freedom and the United States comes and tells me I face a 10-year prison sentence,” he complained.

More:
http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/eloy_gutierrez_menoyo_threatened_by_us_for_living_in_cuba/

(Not able to waste the space of one word, the reporter, Anthony Boadle opts to use the word "complain" to describe the process of stating what _Bush had done to Menoyo. These clowns are driven to mold our perception BEFORE we get a chance to think things over! So tired of their totally predictable sleaze.)

~~~~~~~~
Concerning the "exile" political insanity (clearly they refuse to "get a life" in the U.S., and obsess with controlling everyone else's politics), this is an article written back when Elian Gonzalez was being held prisoner by the Miami Mafia in Little Havana.

It awakened many people who were new to the subject of Miami "exile" politics.

It describes the typically combative behavior of a Cuban former politician toward a fellow member of his church congregation who held a different political position from his own:

Angels with Ice Picks
In one Little Havana church, there's no room for Love

By Jim DeFede
Published on September 21, 2000

Every Sunday for the past ten years, Art Buonamia and his wife, Marisa, drove from their home in Kendall to attend Mass at the Shrine of Saint Philomena Church in Little Havana. “They still do the Mass in Latin,” explains Buonamia, an Italian from New York who moved to Miami 34 years ago. “We grew up with the Latin Mass. It's a beautiful language.” Saint Philomena isn't a very large church. Fewer than 100 people attend Sunday services, Buonamia says, but its members are close.

All that changed, however, with Elian Gonzalez.

Following Easter Sunday Mass this past April, several members of the congregation, as well as a few outsiders, made speeches from the altar denouncing the federal government, which a day earlier had raided the boy's Little Havana home to reunite him with his father. Buonamia believed Elian's place was with his father, but he also understood it was an emotional issue and people would disagree. So he kept his views to himself.

But Buonamia could not accept having the church's altar seized to make political speeches against the United States. “The priest was hiding in the sanctuary at the time,” he recalls. “I asked him later why he would allow them to take over the altar like that. I said they shouldn't be allowed to do that. And he said, “There isn't anything I can do about it.' Which is true. He is afraid of them.”

The speakers were exhorting church members to march over to Elian's house to demonstrate. “If people didn't see you jumping up and down against the United States government, then it was perceived that you were against them personally,” he says. On his way out of the church that day, he told the priest, Father Timothy Hopkins, he wasn't coming back.

~snip~
Soon after arriving, Marisa Buonamia was accosted inside the church by Eladio Armesto-Garcia, a former Republican state representative, who served in Tallahassee from 1992 until 1994. He told her to move the RV immediately. She refused. “I told him: “This is a democracy,'” recalls Marisa, who hails from Panama. Next Armesto-Garcia confronted Buonamia.

“He was very agitated,” Buonamia remembers. “He starts screaming at me in Spanish that Jay Love is a homosexual and that I'm supporting homosexuals and that I have to get my RV out of there. I told him it is not important to me what he thinks. I'm here to go to Mass, and I asked him to leave me alone. He then screamed at me in church that he was going to beat the shit out of me when Mass was over.”

More:
http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/eloy_gutierrez_menoyo_threatened_by_us_for_living_in_cuba/

Gee, there are opposition parties in Cuba? The newest DU Cuba "experts*" tell us it isn't so.

Gee, I wonder why the opposition party heads aren't under arrest - as the latest of DU's Cuba "experts*" constantly mewl.

Elizardo Sanchez. Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo. Oswaldo Paya. All heads of opposition parties in Cuba. All operate openly in defiance of the current regime. Not arrested. Not in jail.


experts* = DU's contingent of Cubaphobes who've never set foot on the island, nor know much of anything about the island and its political structure - but yet they feel the need to post and repost uniformed BS and anti Cuba propaganda to mislead DUers.

---

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/08S413R9oPfWk/610x.jpg

Getty Images 18 months ago
Cuban opposition leader Marta Beatriz Roque speaks during a press conference, on August 26,
2008 in Havana. Roque demanded to be allowed to speak in the official media to reply
accusations from the government.

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0e7o5Bs5O7858/610x.jpg

Getty Images 32 months ago
Cuban government opponents Vladimiro Roca (R) and Marta Beatriz Roque, chat during a meeting
at the residence of Michael Pamley, head of the US Interest Office in Havana, 21 June, 2007.

http://www.voltairenet.org.nyud.net:8090/IMG/jpg/beatriz-roque.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_5Zhv0X_IiUw/RrJvFnXAezI/AAAAAAAABU0/6WAX2-dXLic/s400/bush-roque.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0eb83ps2Sq55A/610x.jpg
.
Getty Images 22 months ago
Cuban opposition leaders Marta Beatriz Roque (L) and Elisardo Sanchez talk during a press
conference after a political meeting, on April 10, 2008 in Havana.

Marta and her cronies are connected directly with Miami allies of air-liner bomber, mass-murderer, Luis Posada Carriles. She would be in prison were she an US American citizen who conspired with, took money from foreign terrorists.

the descendants of the MANY African slaves seized and taken to work on the Spanish plantations in Cuba.

They took all their prejudices with them when they left Cuba immediately after the Revolution and the same sense of entitlement, superiority has been festering among them in whatever neighborhood they infested in South Florida, New Jersey and a few small pockets scattered here and nthere.

You may recall hearing CANF spokesperson Ninoska Pérez Castellón exploded during the Elian Gonzalez drama when a newsman referred to the "exiles" as a "minority" group. She screeched at them that they were absolutely by no means a minority. (Back in Cuba her group was the big, loud, powerful fish in a very small bowl.)

http://www.gentiuno.com.nyud.net:8090/articulos/articulo8044/imagenes/24vide1.jpg http://www.latinamericanstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/posada/ninoska-novo.jpg

Ninoska Pérez Castellón

then we can talk turkey...
and pigs can fly...

and return Guantanamo to Cuba.

This was my first thought too.

There I fixed it for you.

that kidnaps and tortures, where assassination of American citizens is official policy, where there are fake elections, fake news and fake oversight. Where our service people are sent to fight and die for corporate profits. Where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs to outsourcing and their homes to foreclosure because Wall Street owns our government. Where the BFEE is still running Obama's State Department and his Pentagon.

And you're griping about CUBA?

Reality check please!

We've been in this thread before. I readily acknowledge the failings and follies of the US but you can barely acknowledge that Castro was a dictatorship who filled more then one mass grave. Why is that? Because you like the HC system over there?

"where assassination of American citizens is official policy"

How many people have disappeared into Cuban prisons never to be seen again?

"where there are fake elections, fake news and fake oversight"

Said while defending a country where political parties are not allowed.

"Where our service people are sent to fight and die for corporate profits."

How is that different then fighting for Russia's foreign policy or the wispy idea of a "revolution'?

"here hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs to outsourcing and their homes to foreclosure because Wall Street owns our government."

Yet Cubans assemble boats out of tires and wood to get here.

"Where the BFEE is still running Obama's State Department and his Pentagon."

Said while defending a country while one party and family have ruled for nearly sixty years.

Do you believe you'd have more liberty in Cuba then the US. Why don't we ever see any Cuban DUers? How many political-bitching boards are allowed in the workers paradise?

You would rather cling to cold war propaganda than do some genuine research on the topics you conjure - and then accuse others of supporting what you fantasize.

Childish. At best. My bet on you is per post payment disinformationist.

---

So there is no dark side to the workers paradise? It's heaven on earth?

Why aren't there any other political parties in heaven?

And they hate that. That's why our government still embargoes Cuba but trades with real violent and repressive governments -- not only that, but puts them in place as they just did in Honduras.

How many political bitching boards are there in Cuba? I have no idea. But I do know that our government has access to every character we type and that it has been instrumental in shutting down media outlets in other countries when it was in their interests.

As Americans, we have no moral high ground, zip, zilch, to criticize Cuba. Today our troops are going door to door in Marjah looking for males of a certain age just as they did in Fallujah. Please.

Can't attempt to any flaws in the workers paradise?

Are you that insecure?

LOL

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=109012



Remaining ignorant makes it easier to spew RW bullshit to other DUers - unless you're simply lying.

---

Leaders of the National Assembly.
Leaders of the Provincial Assemblies.
Leaders of the Municipal Assemblies.

All elected every 5 years.


You might want to inform yourself.

I urge every and all DUers who want to know some truth about Cuba's democratic process to please read this book,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0968508405/qid=1053879619/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-8821757-1670550?v=glance&s=books

---

Maybe next time it will be a computer where Fidel has had his engrams transferred to.

.. and waste DU's bandwidth with uninformed nonsense (for what reason, we can only guess).


As much as I don't like using wiki for Cuba info, this section is reasonably accurate....

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

Legislative power is exercised through the unicameral National Assembly of People's Power, which is constituted as the maximum authority of the state. Currently Raúl Castro — brother of former President Fidel Castro — is President of the Council of State, President of the Council of Ministers (sometimes referred to as the Prime Minister), First Secretary of the Communist Party, and Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Ricardo Alarcón is President of the National Assembly.

Also, FYI, there's no Santa or tooth fairy either.

---

.. will continue to be as puerile and useless as that.

---

means that you will win your marked deck/loaded dice via twisted logic.

Not in this game, I want a straight deck.

See? Democracy(?) works!

Everyone knows that world class health care and education and social infrastructure has to be forced on an unwilling populace.

Look at how the rest of the world has rejected them.


:dunce:

---

If they're so secure that those nice things are enough then where are the other political parties? Why aren't they allowed to have computers? It would be nice to see some Cuban DUers.....

Here are some of the major parties in Cuba. The union parties hold the majority of seats in the Cuban National, Provincial, and Municipal Assemblies.

http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en/cu.html

* Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) {Communist Party of Cuba}
* Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba (PDC) {Christian Democratic Party of Cuba} - Oswaldo Paya's Catholic party
* Partido Solidaridad Democrática (PSD) {Democratic Solidarity Party}
* Partido Social Revolucionario Democrático Cubano {Cuban Social Revolutionary Democratic Party}
* Coordinadora Social Demócrata de Cuba (CSDC) {Social Democratic Coordination of Cuba}
* Unión Liberal Cubana {Cuban Liberal Union}

---

:think:

Talk about dictator for life.

---

Which they've been doing for about fifty years now.

Stay the f---k out of Cuba.

Here's a scary picture of Dr Fidel Castro hard at work undermining all that is American.


-

And here is Fidel personally designing the next US financial meltdown.


-

Here's Fidel with another enemy of all that is good about mom and apple pie and America.


The "evil duo" plotting our demise.



Very scary stuff.

There is no greater fear for the safety of our nation than "infectious" socialism/communism.

---

together with the Africa National Congress. US loved apartheid back then because we needed South Africa for the chrome we used in our big American cars.

During the "revolution".

Would you imagine the American revolution didn't involve severity with people who tortured, murdered the US revolutionaries?

It would be good to learn more about the "no execution", "no repercussion for murderers" U.S. revolution, if you have any evidence available on that morally superior process.

"I'm ok with him murdering his way into a dictatorship because I like his politics."

"I know nothing about Cuba."

---

Willfully?

that even the magazine Bohemia carried photos of his execution after he was convicted in a public trial in which many witnesses testified against him?

Can't we just stand down and let brutal regimes arrest and jail people for the crimes of reading and writing?

http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/

OOOoooh. Big bad Cuba!!111!!


http://havanajournal.com/culture/entry/one-millionth-person-graduates-from-youth-computer-club-in-cuba/


:rofl:

---

Can you post it. I'd like to speak to some everyday Cubans.

what's up, just like all the Canadians, Europeans, Asians, Australians, and tons of Latin Americans who go there constantly?

Let us know what you actually learn about Cuba yourself, like some of the posters here who have been there many times.

Tourists have more rights than Cubans, making them a slave state.


Again.

married Cuban people, have Cuban relatives, etc., etc., ETC. and people who have been from one end of Cuba to the other end.

I've been acquainted with some of them since well before DU was ever online. I've trusted them a very long time.

You can tell character in people, and you can surely tell when it's missing.

Email them and tell them to start posting from Cuba.

Making the US a slave state, according to your logic.

I guess that most of the Caribbean nations are slave states also, because most Caribbean nations have strict rules governing/restricting natives and their uses of foreign owned hotels and casinos.

You know jack shit about Cuba (and all of the Caribbean islands too, it seems).

---

I need to spend thousands of dollars just to get to a message board? Weird.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-cuba-internet-cutoff-050709,0,4376220.story

"Only government employees, academics and researchers are allowed their own Internet accounts, which are provided by the state, but only have limited access to sites outside the island. Ordinary Cubans may open e-mail accounts accessible at many post offices, but do not have access to the Web. Many got around the restrictions by using hotel Internet services.

But a new resolution barring ordinary Cubans from using hotel Internet services quietly went into place in recent weeks, according to an official with Cuba's telecom monopoly, hotel workers and bloggers.

There was no official announcement of the change. Cuba has the lowest rate of Internet access in Latin America."

More at link.

And why don't we ever see some Cuban DUers?

Your agenda of disinformation is clear.

Cuba lifts ban on home computers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7381646.stm

Internet access remains restricted to certain workplaces, schools and universities on the island.

The government says it is unable to connect to the giant undersea fibre-optic cables because of the US trade embargo. All online connections today are via satellite which has limited bandwidth and is expensive to use.

---

Cafe service?

The US's Helms Burton law prevents Cuba from connecting to the Cisco owned Caribbean fiber-optic spine.

Cuba has very limited bandwidth due to this US restriction. Cuba's limited internet is prioritized for health care and educational infrastructures.

The more you repeat questions w/o doing remedial research the more it becomes obvious that you are being patently intellectually dishonest.

http://www.theworld.org/2009/10/14/getting-cubans-online/

MARCO WERMAN: So plenty of thoughts and opinions to blog about on this side of the Florida straits. But what about the other side. Robert Faris is research director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and perhaps there’s a blogastroika in Miami. What about in Cuba Robert Faris?

ROBERT FARIS: It’s certainly opening up a little bit. Those people that are able to find their way onto the internet are blogging out of Cuba but it’s very, very limited compared to almost any other country in the world. Cuba has very, very little bandwidth and is able then to ration its access to the internet and very, very few people have access to the internet as a result.

WERMAN: And what does it look like on the ground? I mean how do Cubans in Cuba get online now? Are there cyber cafes in Havana? Do they go to the international hotels to get access?

FARIS: A little bit of both. The access at the international hotels is one of the few points where you can get to the internet in its entirety but they try to keep Cubans out of there. They’re primarily for western visitors. There are cyber cafes and they have a much narrower version of the internet that’s available there. It’s mostly intranet within Cuba itself.

WERMAN: And what is the Cuban government’s official or stated position on internet access for its people?

FARIS: There’s a couple versions. One is they give access to their people as much as practical given their bandwidth. But that the reason more people aren’t online and aren’t accessing the internet at large is because of the United States policies towards Cuba and not the Cuban policies themselves.

Been there. Seen it.

---

This should be fascinating.

WERMAN: Well let’s take a real case example. We heard today that a small Miami-based company called TeleCuba Communications says it’s been granted a license by the US Treasury Department to install a fiber optic cable between Key West and Havana. And I guess they still have to get permission from the Cuban government. But what are your thoughts on that? I mean will Cubans actually have high speed internet and cable TV from Key West in a few years?

FARIS: I haven’t heard official word back from the State Department so I don’t know if they do in fact have authorization to put in a cable. If they have that’s a great leap forward and I would applaud that. What the Cuban government will do with that? I’m not sure. I think it will put them in an awkward situation in that they wouldn’t be able to blame the US government anymore if the US government dropped that policy of preventing fiber going to the island. There’s a few things they could do. They could provide people access to the internet and open it up to things. They could also install filters like we see in a lot of countries around the world. I guess the irony in all this is that there are so many high capacity cables that are running around the island of Cuba. The things going from the Caribbean to the United States, from the Yucatan in Mexico to the United States. These cables are just sitting off the shorelines of Cuba and they could have been tapped into many, many years ago.

It takes years to lay those cables. One is being laid from Venezuela. Google if you are interested.

As far as home access plenty do have a hookup, informal economy style.

Email is now available for free, but I'm not sure about the details.

The offer to set up a cable from Florida is fraught with political BS. It's not a realistic or sincere offer from what I recall, just like most "friendly" offers towards Cuba from the USA. As if they could trust it anyway...

I'd love to speak to some everyday Cuban people.

There's lots of lines running in the area, and the Venezuelan spar is lighting up soon...

http://en.kioskea.net/news/11984-cuba-to-keep-internet-limits-after-fiber-optic-cable

Blaming the US doesn't quite work if the largest pipe is to that "old Cuban enemy", Venezuela, does it?

http://www.google.com/search?q=Venezuela+Cuba+fiber+optic

He probably sees himself as some kind of freedom fighter and wants to help create more Yoani types.

Plus which he probably got some nice USAID funding for this joy ride and no one ever thought it would be perceived as an act of provocation or espionage.

Ha ha. The embargo also means that US agencies are uniformed about Cuba, and they screw up grandly.

The game is half incompetence, and half just leaving things as they are to suit those who gain economically (See USAID funding).

It's offensive that US officials would meet with dissidents when migration talks are at issue, no better point is that it is STUPID.

STUPID!! Cuba sees itself at war with the USA for good reason. Mr. Gross you are an idiot. Not a hero to anyone. We're FURTHER from good developments between the USA and Cuba BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPIDITY!!!

Anyway, they'll sort something out. Cuba would like the 5 back but Gross isn't worth that to the USA, not even a quarter of one of them.

- Al Queda funding operatives in the USA.

Al Queda has declared itself the enemy of the US government, and has committed atrocious acts of terror/murder against the US.

The US gov has declared itself the enemy of the Cuban government, and has committed atrocious acts of terror/murder against Cuba.

Is it possible for apologists of US state sponsored terrorism against Cuba to understand this parallel?

---

are morally equivalent?

Have you even been to Cuba?

Acts of terrorism committed by any group or nation are reprehensible.

The US has a long history of direct or sanctioned terrorism against Cuba(ns) in the form of assassinations and bombing campaigns (not to mention direct military attack).

Anti Cuba terrorist organizations operate openly in Miami. Infamous terrorist airline bombers Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch are celebrated heroes among the RW anti Castro diaspora that runs Miami - the City even going so far as to naming a street for Bosch, and having an official "Orlando Bosch day" celebration.


I'm not saying that Cuba and the US are morally equivalent. Cuba has not engaged in anti American terrorism.

---

Maybe you can get some of them to post here sometime. Or maybe they can post a feed from their webcam.

The immigrants coming from Latin America through Mexico, and from Mexico across the Mexico/US border ALL, should they survive the trip which KILLS HUNDREDS ANNUALLY, all get deported if caught.

THEY are not offered free instant legal status should they make it to the US without being intercepted, and they are NOT OFFERED free social security, offered free U.S. taxpayer-derived Section 8 Housing, food stamps, work visa, the opportunity to be legalized in one year, medical treatement, financial assistance for education, etc., etc., etc., the way Cuban immigrants are offered access to a full array of inducements to come here through the US "Cuban Adjustment Act."

People from other Caribbean islands, many whose life is absolutely unbearable, who live in constant fear, like Haitians are deported immediately. Some Haitians have immigrated to Cuba, where they live in large numbers, even having their own Haitian language radio station.

You're not fooling anyone.

When exactly are you going to travel south of the border?

But I you are knowledgeable enough about Cuba to know that many feelings of resentment are still in place. Many families lost everything when Castro’s thugs overran Batista’s thugs.

The healing will not take place until Cuba becomes a free country. I say end the sanctions as well. They sanctions should have come off when the Berlin wall came down, for they are a remnant of the Cold War.

USA prefers to have its citizens get raped by the health industry, or die for lack of care.

Is there freedom of speech in their medical system?

Universal Health Care...?

What good is that if you are living as a slave?

American "freedom" and "democracy" are empty slogans.

and the Cuban-American Freepers make the John Birch Society seem rational.

Forgive me, I do not understand.

Fascinating.

Google/check out adventures of Michael Meiring in the Philippines for a glimpse of what these NOC agents do.

They keep repeating the same slanted/straw-man questions over and over (a common disinfo technique) - no matter that they've been answered in the very thread they're posting to.

I'm sure that even marginally informed DUers see this pattern on the Cuba threads.

---

Next you will be suggesting we don't need HMOs or corporations or corrupt political parties.

.. the dissidents have more taste. The only ones would be the jineteros attempting to extract some fula (money) from the punto (dumb foreigner).

Those are well known internet ports for having secure, hard to tap, conversations, in case you didn't recognize them (as well as the web, which is trivial to sniff).

A country without secure, private, internet is a bad thing... without it, people like Sherman Austin get persecuted for political reasons.

edit: 80 is not secure

And access to plenty of bandwidth too. I think the free flow of ideas and commerce back and forth would be a good thing for everyone.

Satellite internet has been compromised for quite a while, and I'm betting their Venezuelan fiber pipe will be tapped before it's even lit. :(

But I only use encryption when I go to encrypted sites, like banks and things, cause I don't care, let them watch. I used to set up private networks and connections from home etc. with SSL and SSH, which are great products, but nowadays I don't care. I used to do administration, I can use tcpdump and portmap and other tools, but it's a boring job unless you have voyeuristic tendencies to start with.

I would think Cubans could get PGP or whatever the successor to that is now, though we had a story about some feeble government attempt to restrict access to source forge a while back. Gnu has a version of PGP. I would expect Gnu would be big in Cuban IT circles. But you can't do much without bandwidth. Dialup speed sucks anywhere you go.

It will be interesting to see what effect the Venezuelan fiber connection will have, not just on Cuba, but on the whole Carribean.

I bet Ahmadinejad is very proud of him. Hitler also accused jews of spying.

just one person who happens to be Jewish. He no doubt understood the risks inherent in committing espionage against another government.

Your framing of this event, is rather devious.

The Cuban government is not racist, and has always struggled against racial discrimination. If this US citizen is guilty of breaking Cuban laws, then Cuba has the legal right to try him. When you enter a sovereign country, you agree to adhere to its laws - if you do not, prepare to face the consequences.

Real howler there.

Can you say that with a straight face?

Here's a word to help you on your quest: Yanqui

In some parts of the world, particularly in Latin American countries, Spain and in East Asia, yankee or yanqui (phonetic Spanish spelling of the same word) is used sometimes politically associated with anti-Americanism and used in expressions such as "Yankee go home" or "we struggle against the yanqui, enemy of mankind" (words from the Sandinista anthem). In Argentina and Paraguay, and other parts of South America, the term refers to someone who is from the US and is rarely derogatory. In Venezuelan Spanish there is the word pitiyanqui, derived ca. 1940 around the Oil Industry from petty yankee, a derogatory term for those who profess an exaggerated and often ridiculous admiration for anything from the United States.

In what way is this a Cuban racist term?

Or "Mexican".
Or "Latino".
Or "Irish".

No one can arrest anyone who's Jewish if he doesn't want to be compared to Hitler?

Your world seems very simple, but odd.

You don't know jack shit about the Cuban Jewish community!

Read what Reporters without Borders says about them.

http://www.rsf.org/en-pays174-Cuba.html

And before anyone comes around to bash this organization as a CIA front or something, they are a Paris-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press which has also criticized the United States and other countries equally. But their analysis of freedom of the press in Cuba is scathing. In their press freedom index for 2009 they have Cuba rated as 170 out of a possible low score of 175. I am not proud to say that the US is 21 out of 170 and needs some improvement too, but it's nothing like that great worker's paradise of Cuba.

On edit, I meant this as a reply to the OP.