Cuba and Super WiFi

20 thoughts on “Cuba and Super WiFi”

• ‘Moses’ writes about the high costs Cubans must pay to LEAVE Cuba – costs for an exit visa, for a passport and for a medical exam to receive an exit visa, finding this a justification for supporting the US blockade?

  This is a justification for a US blockade that brings hardship to 11 million Cubans?

  From Americans’ perspective, obviously, who are encouraging emigration of Cuba’s youth in order to bring down Cuba’s government.

  Having erected his ‘straw dog’ that costs for emigrating from Cuba somehow represent an outrage, ‘Moses’ claims we are either “stupid” or “intellectually dishonest” to “justify these migration policy abuses by the Cuban regime on the Cuban people by blaming the embargo.”

  Who wrote that? Shape up ‘Moses’, please, in your desire to make propaganda points, you are even more out to lunch than usual. Getting desperate, perhaps?

• ‘Susan L’ repeats another familiar refrain emanating from US propagandists. The goal is still the same – to shift responsibility for Cuba’s economic problems onto its government and off of the US blockade that every country in the world – save the US and Israel – condemns.

  It goes like this – the situation is hopeless, the blockade “could last another 50 years. So, what can Cubans do?” Cubans should “just take the blockade as a given and go from there.” “Nobody has been able “to do anything about. It’s just not in our power.”

  It’s advice from an American hoping to demoralize Cuba’s citizens, encouraging them to give up, trying to accomplish what the US blockade has been unsuccessful in accomplishing – overthrowing Cuba’s government.

  Unknowingly, I’m sure, ‘Susan’ takes on the role of two notorious figures in history – Tokyo Rose, whose broadcasts were intended to disrupt the morale of Allied forces listening to them and Lord Haw-Haw, broadcasting from the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda that attempted to discourage and demoralize Allied troops and the British population and to suppress the effectiveness of the Allied war effort through propaganda, and to motivate the Allies to agree to peace terms leaving the Nazi regime intact and in power. [Wikipedia]

  Both were trying to accomplish through propaganda what the Japanese and Germans could not achieve otherwise. There certainly does seem to be a similarity to what ‘Susan L’ is attempting here.

  ‘Susan L’ argues that Cubans should do what they can do – change their government – and forget about what they can’t change – getting the US to lift the blockade. To continue with my previous metaphor, if your car won’t run because there is no gas and you cannot obtain any gas, you should do what you can – clean the spark plugs, for instance. The car still won’t run, however.

  The flaw in ‘Susan L’s argument is the same flaw in Tokyo Rose’s and Lord Haw Haw’s propaganda. She writes, “neither you or many other people who oppose it, myself included, have been unable to do anything about. It’s just not in our power.”

  Aside from ‘Susan L’, who throws up her hands and gives in rather too quickly I think, the certainty the blockade will continue for much longer is not obvious for the rest of us. There are many factors in train that indicates changes are coming – changing demographics in the US, the state of the US economy, the new reality in every country in the world as to what the US actually represents.

  It does sound like the Cubans should stay tuned and not drop out, especially on the advice of an enemy propagandist.

  ‘Susan L’, writing that the “number one aspiration of [Cuba’s] youth is to leave” without noting the role the US is playing is a distortion, to say the least. A writer for the Christian Science Monitor puts into perspective the role the US plays in encouraging them:

  “Aren’t there millions of people the world over who also have good reasons – perhaps even better ones – to flee their country for ours? Are Cubans the most miserable people on the planet, or is there added – and significant – reason that contributes to so many making the decision to defect (or emigrate)? Cuba policy wonks know the answer to this question, and it causes us to gnash our teeth and pound the table for emphasis – to make sure the listener is actually listening.”

  “Cubans may arrive in the United States by any means (yes, including illegally), and not only walk free in our country, but they will receive government adjustment assistance (intended for refugees, though they don’t have to actually prove they are refugees), be eligible to work, and have the right to a green card after just one year. What other illegal immigrant group gets this sort of treatment in the United States of America? Certainly not Haitians or Afghans. Not Iranians, North Koreans nor any other group that could make a case for it.”

  And the record continues playing, unbroken.

• If you can justify why Cubans must pay 150 cuc for their ¨tarjeta blanca¨ with respect to the US embargo, or why Cubans must pay 55 cuc for a Cuban passport, or 420 cuc for a medical exam to receive their exit visa, I will be first in line to protest against the embargo. Keep in mind that the average monthly salary in Cuba is less than 14cuc- Either you really are stupid or you are being intellectually dishonest if you are trying to justify these migration policy abuses by the Cuban regime on the Cuban people by blaming the embargo. These are simply ¨moneygrabs¨ intented to punish those Cubans who have the audacity to want to leave Cuba.

• Lawrence, you continue with the same broken record. The blockade is the product of many corrupt interests that neither you or many other people who oppose it, myself included, have been unable to do anything about. It’s just not in our power. It could last another 50 years. So, what can Cubans do? That’s what the interesting question is. According to you the only thing to do is continue the same failed siege mentality policies that have led to an aging country (or revolutinary paradise if you like) where the number one aspiration of its youth is to leave. Those policies can be changed by Cubans, with or without US permission. Without stopping to speak against it, just take the blockade as a given and go from there. That would allow you to get beyond the scratch on your record.

• “Discussion about corporate turf wars in the internet” are, obviously, very much relevant to Cubans, seeking to join the internet world, as they are to the existing internet community.

  Writing that “all Cuban TV, radio and print media is controlled by the government” indicates an ignorance that ‘all TV, radio and print media in your country are controlled by corporate entities highly wedded to government agendas, effectively ‘wedded at the hip’. They service their bottom line agendas – what’s good for them. The common good is not a part of their agenda.

  You go on about what is common knowledge about what exists in Cuba relating to internet usage , presumably to deflect from what was in the New Scientist article – the role US corporations are playing in compromising what the internet represents.

  There was much more in the New Scientist article that I didn’t write about in order to keep my comment short.

• Yep, I ‘get it’ and I’m sure everyone else has as well. Once again, a US propagandist is avoiding the simple logic I continually point out – dropping the blockade will allow us to see what ‘internal blockade’ Cuba’s government may be responsible for.

  Of course “Cubans have the ability to change their internal policies”. The question is WHY would they until they know what their government is like when it is not under a state of siege.

  You obviously don’t want them to know – afraid of something? The US must be, otherwise it would drop its blockade. I feel it isworried Americans will learn a few things about alternatives to capitalism – catching the ‘Cuban flu’.

  You would LIKE the discussion here to only be “about Cuba and what Cubans can do with their situation, independent of the US keeping up its blockade.” Of course you would like to restrict the discussion to your terms so we won’t see the elephant in the room.

  It’s like trying to figure out why your car won’t start without checking to see if there’s fuel in the tank first.

  It’s only logical, ‘Susan’. Time to up your game, I think.

• I could assume ‘Mark G’ is ignorant of details about the effects of the blockade but from his past comments, and the familiar phrases he uses in this one – verbatim out of the US propagandists’ handbook – I know he is not.

  Let’s first note that this is yet another example of the writer avoiding the simple logic I continually point out: dropping the blockade will allow us to see what ‘internal blockade’ Cuba’s government may be responsible for.

  US propagandists alternate between claiming the US blockade has little effect, attempting to trivialize it, insisting on calling it an ’embargo’, as the ‘Mark G’ comment illustrates, and admitting it has caused hardship for the Cuban people but not as much as a so-called ‘internal blockade’.

  When I write the obvious – the US blockade needs to be dropped before we can judge the truth of this claim, the propagandists revert back to trivializing the blockade.

  Now that we have a clear picture of what ‘Mark G’ represents, let’s look at what he writes. His strategy is to attempt to prove there is no effective blockade by concentrating on the ‘leaks’ – holes in the blockade. This is equivalent to a plumber saying your toilet is not blocked because some sewage is getting through and the bowl eventually drains.

  ‘Mark G’ concentrates on the ‘holes’ and avoids the blockages. Let’s look at what he avoids. Since I started doing research in order to come to terms with the US propaganda posted in comments on HT, I have learned a great deal about what the blockade represents. After that, I vowed never to use the term ’embargo’ again when writing about the US blockade of Cuba.

  This is some of what I have learned:

  The latest tidbit was the Helms-Burton Act states that ships docking at Cuban ports are not allowed to dock at U.S. ports for six months, making it expensive to transit the Panama Canal for Cuba alone without being able to go on to east coast US cities. It also means there will be infrequent deliveries.

  Before that, I learned from ‘Griffin’ about how the US blockade has targeted Canada’s largest investor on the island, Sherritt International. It has barred the company’s senior management and their families from entering the United States, causing businesses to remain cautious about investing on the island.

  I’ve also focused on the continuous string of overseas companies being fined by the US for doing business with Cuba. ING Bank is one of the latest, having to pay a record $600 million fine, presumably requiring it to sell of its Canadian banks. It also closed its branch in Havana.

  The new Democratic administration, claiming a philosophy of change, has not only resulted in no fundamental change in the policy of the blockade, it has ramped up the fines..

  The list of companies fined is too long to give here. There are dozens of fines every year. Some are:

  – $5.75 million fine on the banking group Australia and New Zealand Bank Group, Ltd.

  – $536 million – Credit Suisse Bank

  – $US2 million – Swedish subsidiary of the chemical company Innospec Inc., based in Delaware, for selling a gasoline additive to Cuba.

  Examples germane to this topic of companies that are curtailed in doing business with Cuba are:

  Mozilla Corporation, supplier of the Firefox Internet browser, excluded Cuban users from a programming competition.

  SourceForge, a center for the development of software that controls and manages various free software projects, blocked access to countries on which the United States applies unilateral economic sanctions, among them Cuba.

  On 8 March 2010, the Treasury Department Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced new regulations on internet services for Cuba allowing certain internet services to individuals in Cuba. However, the OFAC document leaves it quite clear that it does not authorize:

  – Direct or indirect export of Internet services for senior level officials of the government of Cuba or the Party.

  – Direct or indirect export of Internet services or telecommunications transmission facilities (such as satellite connections or lines for that purpose).

  – Direct or indirect export of server services that are not for supplying personal communications and services to register domains (for example, extensions: net, edu, gov, etc).

  – The use of Internet services for business purposes.

  Another commenter, ‘EK’ posted some extremely revealing facts:

  – US companies are not allowed to buy products that contain Cuban components in certain quantities (such as steel that contains Cuban nickel, or sweets that contain Cuban sugar).

  – Companies worldwide cannot sell products to Cuba if they have more than a certain percentage of US components. There have, for example, been cases of car manufacturers in Asia that cannot sell their cars to Cuba because they contain a certain quantity of US components.

  – Banks from anywhere can suffer sanctions if they permit Cuban accounts or trade with Cuba. Because of this, the country has to pay more for its international transactions. Banks are threatened to not be able to operate in the US if they maintain business with Cuba. Of course, most companies would opt for keeping trade with the US because of its far bigger economy.

  – Cuba can not trade with European, Asian or Latin American companies if only a small part of the company is owned by US capitals. It is difficult for Cuba to buy components for buses, cars, ships and so on, as well as high technology, as at lot of these products are offered by companies where US ownership interests are involved.

  And there is much, much more. Just ask and you shall receive it. Yet ‘Mark G’ characterizes the blockade as “fictional”. Some folks seem to easily lose sight of what’s real, especially propagandists.

• External blockade? Every other country in the world including mine (Canada) is more than willing to trade with Cuba. And in doing so they’re not running a gauntlet of US warships and fighter jets enforcing a completely non-existent “blockade.”

  In terms of the US trade and travel embargo, it’s got to be the leakiest one in human history with broad exemptions for food, medicines, remittances, family travel, and so-called education trips. To bypass the travel restrictions, all non-Cuban US citizens have to do is to book a flight via a third county like Mexico or Canada (thank you Uncle Sam). The embargo is almost as fictional as the blockade but too many US politicians still think its good politics to placate anti-Castro hardliners in the swingiest state of them all – Florida.

• Lawrence, you are really out there on cloud 9 with your harping on what other people should do about the US blockade. You would have surely said the same kind of thing to internal critics in the USSR in the Cold War days. It’s dissapearence was all the fault of the US, there was nothing that country could have done on their own. You don’t seem to understand that Cubans have the ability to change their internal policies with or without the US changing its foreign policy (and don’t hold your breath on that happening no matter what you, Moses and Griffin do). The discussion here is about Cuba and what Cubans can do with their situation, independent of the US keeping up its blockade for another 50 years. GET IT!

• The point I keep asking, that ‘Griffin’ and his ilk keep avoiding replying to is, it is necessary to drop the external blockade so we can see if there is an internal blockade. Avoidance of the point is obviously significant – there is no valid reply possible.

  Instead, ‘Griffin’ insists on going on about an internal blockade, writing, “It’s perfectly obvious what the internal blockade is,” listing a number of things, all from his perspective of course, that he feels is a blockade, like a “ban” on free enterprise. An equivalent to the “ban” on socialism in his country that the American government is “free to lift” at any time ?

  The logic that ‘Griffin’ and his ilk are at extreme pains to avoid is straightforward. From the beginning moments of the triumph of the Revolution, the US imposed a blockade on the island, instigating a state of siege that Cuba’s government has had to contend with ever since.

  There is no way of knowing what the government would be like if a siege mentality was not in effect. Eliminating the blockade, allowing the state of siege to disappear, is the obvious way to judge if there is actually an “internal blockade”.

  Instead, ‘Griffin’ and his ilk insist on writing about “internal blockades” without acknowledging the effects of the external one.

  I leave it to Cubans to see what “Griffin’ and his ilk represents.

  “Discussion about corporate turf wars in the internet” are, obviously, very much relevant to Cubans, seeking to join the internet world, as they are to the existing internet community, despite your claim otherwise.

  Writing that “all Cuban TV, radio and print media is controlled by the government” indicates an ignorance that ‘all TV, radio and print media in your country are controlled by elite corporate entities highly wedded to government agendas, effectively ‘wedded at the hip’. They relentlessly service their bottom line – what’s good for them. The common good is not a part of their agenda.

  You rant on about what is common knowledge about what exists in Cuba relating to internet usage , presumably to deflect from what was in the New Scientist article – the role US corporations are playing in compromising what the internet represents.

  There was much more in the article that I didn’t write about in order to keep my comment reasonably short. Do you want me to post more?

• “End the external blockade and we will see what the internal ones are.”

  It’s perfectly obvious what the internal blockade is. The Cuban government bans free speech, free elections, freedom of association, free travel, labour freedom, free enterprise and limits freedom of religion.

  The Cuban government is, of course, free to lift these bans anytime.

• That’s an interesting article, but the author makes some erroneous conclusions. For example:

  “Then there’s Adobe’s Flash software, “which most PCs support and most websites use to run graphics and other multimedia, and even entire apps. Flash is prohibited in all Apple apps, for security reasons – which means that the iPhone browser cannot display a large portion of the internet. That creates a private, Apple-only ecosystem within the larger internet.”

  The inability of Apple OS to run Adobe does not create a private Apple-only ecosystem. The reverse is true. The result is that Apple bans itself, and it’s users, from Flash content. Non-flash content is still visible to Mac users, and non-Mac users can still access websites which use Apple’s alternative to Flash, HTML5.

  Still, discussion about corporate turf wars in the internet are irrelevant to why Cuba has such limited internet connection and extensive censorship.

  Back to Cuba: the fact that the Cuban government fears free communication among the Cuban people is obvious. That’s why all Cuban TV, radio and print media is controlled by the government. Various countries with serious concerns about free communication have taken steps to limit & control the internet inside their borders: China, Saudi Arabia and Iran are three well known examples.

  To quote Wiki on Cuban internet censorship:

  “The Cuban internet is among the most tightly controlled in the world. A special permit is required to use the Internet and all e-mails are intricately monitored.[7] Cuba has been listed as an “Internet Enemy” by Reporters Without Borders since the list was created in 2006.[37] The level of Internet filtering in Cuba is not categorized by the OpenNet Initiative due to lack of data.[38]
  …
  Reporters Without Borders suspects that Cuba obtained some of its internet surveillance technology from China, which has supplied other countries such as Zimbabwe and Belarus. However, it should be noted that Cuba does not enforce the same level of internet keyword censorship as China.[7]

• Same reply I posted to Michael. See above.

• I agree Michael, it is an interesting question. One would expect the government to come up with at least an excuse, however feeble. That’s the way it’s done in my country.

  The Marxist-Leninist model that the government is following always belives in being positive. Providing lame excuses are not part of its style. Just telling the truth is part of NO government’s style, especially mine and notoriously, what the US habituall practices.

• Your reputation for loving simple explanations is legendary. So I’ll keep it simple. Read my comment below. Capitalist institutions are hardly lovers of free communication as attested to in the New Scientis article.

  End the external blockade and we will see what the internal ones are.

  That should be simple enough to understand.

• Fernando,

  I agree with you, the war on technological development is lost. Looking at what the industrial revolution has led to, I sometimes wonder if those English workers, the Luddites, were right in trying to stop it. Much of technology has ended up causing more harm than good.

  But, as you wrote, there is a feeling that if we don’t keep up, we “will be swallowed by a black hole” and that “trying to remain isolated in a bubble is as utopian as destroying those industrial-age machines.”

  Yes, Cuba “continues to lag behind.” In the sixties, Toronto lagged behind the rest of North America in not getting rid of its streetcars. The car was king. Now, thinking has turned around, public transportation systems are back in favour and networks are being rebuilt. Toronto has the largest streetcar system in North Americad, thanks to ‘lagging behind’.

  Maybe Cuba can find benefit in being Johnny-come-latelies to the internet scene. This thought is inspired by an article I read recently in the UK science magazine, New Scientist, titled, “The rise of the splinternet” along with a related article in the magazine.

  A security software company employee is quoted saying, “The days of the internet as we used to think of it are ending”. The article states, the net “is being balkanised by huge corporations. Technology giants such as Google, Apple and Facebook are dividing the net up into “walled gardens”, fenced off from each other by proprietary technology, intellectual property laws” and the preferences have expressed, knowingly or unknowingly.

  The article states problems are coming from an “unexpected quarter – in fact from some of the very names we have come to associate most strongly with the internet’s success. The likes of Apple, Google and Amazon are starting to fragment the web to support their own technologies, products and corporate strategy.”

  “Google, for instance, has attracted the scrutiny of the US Federal Trade Commission, which last month launched an antitrust investigation to determine whether the company’s search results skew towards businesses with which it is aligned and away from its competitors. And as millions of people buy into Apple’s world of iPads and iPhones, they are also buying into Apple’s restricted vision of the internet. The company tightly controls the technologies users are allowed to put on those devices.”

  Then there’s Adobe’s Flash software, “which most PCs support and most websites use to run graphics and other multimedia, and even entire apps. Flash is prohibited in all Apple apps, for security reasons – which means that the iPhone browser cannot display a large portion of the internet. That creates a private, Apple-only ecosystem within the larger internet.”

  “A similar kind of balkanisation is evident in Google’s Android mobile-phone operating system, Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, and Facebook’s networks, which are completely walled off from the rest of the internet.”

  “Should we care?” the article asks. “The problem is that this concentration of power in the hands of a few creates problems for resilience and availability. From an engineering standpoint, the downsides to this are the same things you get with monoculture in agriculture. Ecosystems without genetic variation are the most vulnerable to being wiped out by a single virus. Similarly, as more of us depend on ever fewer sources for content, and get locked into proprietary technologies, we will become more susceptible to potentially catastrophic single points of failure.”

  Back to Google’s selective searches: “If you allow Google to personalise your search results, they are skewed towards what it thinks you would like to see – which may not be what you need to see. Google+, the company’s social network, makes a similar promise to capture how we feel about relationships. Will we end up talking only to who it thinks we should, rather than whoever we need to? We should be vigilant for signs that our relationships, like our search results, are “filter bubbled” – or we may find we have created digital dictators in our own image.”

  Governments, of course, can restrict internet access in other ways besides not making it available, filtering what can and cannot be accessed – what Cuba’s government is accused of doing. Once that hurdle is jumped successfully, Cubans are faced with powerful capitalist forces that are out to control the net for their own profit-seeking purposes.

  So, yes, I believe opening the internet Pandora’s Box is inevitable. Hopefully Cubans, by ‘lagging behind’ will be more aware of the pitfalls and come out ahead in the end. Knowing what you are letting yourself in for has to help.

• Why no internet in Cuba? The simplest explanation makes the most sense: the Cuban government fears open communication among the Cuban people and they see free communication with the rest of the world as a threat to regime security. This part of the internal blockade the Cuban government imposes on the people.

• Luis, intellectually, your explanation makes sense. However, there are several nodes in Havana which are fully prepared to connect to the fiber optic Venezuelan cable that are still operating at Web 1.0. ICRT, Instituto Cubano de Radio y Television, where my wife worked until recently, is one example. I don´t believe the lack of internal infrastructure is the problem. If it were, why doesn´t the MINCOM say so?

• Hallo Luis,
  but the question is, if this is true, and I think, it could be true, why the government doesn’t explain it to the people?

• “For more than a year the underwater fiber-optic cable that was promised to increase Cuba’s connectivity by 3,000 times should have been in operation. However that still hasn’t happened, and the leadership of the Ministry of Communications refuses to explain why.”

  And what about the internal infrastructure for this bandwidth to be available for end-users? I cannot believe I’ll have to repeat myself for the f* third time: the simple installation of ONE fiber-optic cable would never, EVER ‘magically’ turn Cuba into a technological wonderland if there’s no suitable internal backbone infrastructure!

  http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=74442

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