The Cuban Memory Stick Underground 427
circletimessquare writes "The NyTimes has an aticle describing how students and others in Cuba have taken to passing around media on memory sticks, as this is the only way they can get around state-controlled media. Also driving this phenomenon is the fact that there are so few places to get on the Internet. In Old Havana there is only one Internet cafe; getting online there for an hour costs 1/3 of the average Cuban's monthly wages. Local entrepreneurs get the memory sticks from European friends, since they are scarce to find in Cuba through normal channels, and expensive."
Re:sneakernet (Score:5, Insightful)
But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society w/ (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Must be evil capitalist counterrevolutionaries (Score:4, Insightful)
Because there are no capitalist counter-revolutionaries in Cuba of course.
What always amuses me is that people decry the reactionary left-wing government of Cuba without seeing it in the wider context of the history of Latin America and the Caribbean in the 20th century, during which the US made a point of launching vicious attacks on every progressive left-wing government in the hemisphere by organising strikes, spreading propaganda, sponsoring coups and terrorists, and occasionally direct military force. The repression of the Cuban regime is a result of a Darwinian process that has weeded out every left-wing government in the region that didn't shoot or imprison anyone and everyone who even might be on the CIA payroll.
Yeah, the Castro brothers aren't exactly nice to those who disagree with them - but thanks to the actions of America there is literally no way their social programmes could've been implemented if they were not prepared to run the country as a dictatorship. Western democracies such as Britain have reacted in a similar way when faced with extreme outside threats.
Donate old memory sticks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Want to bring down the Cuban government? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:1, Insightful)
With that said, it's hard to deny that Cuba is doing some things right in regards to their healthcare system. For example, according to both the UN & the CIA world factbook, Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States does. (See list of countries by infant mortality rate on Wikipedia for a full list.) That, despite the extreme discrepancies in GDP, per capita income, etc., between the two countries.
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RIAA just goes after lowest common demoninator (Score:3, Insightful)
2) that's 100$ in the US, not how much it is in Cuba
Not new. I used to do that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mind you, that took place in a western european country, a free country with freedom of expression as best as the world could muster. Yet, that network, which TFA tries to label as a sign of subversive actions against a government went ahead anyway. How could that be?
The thing is, that has absolutely nothing to do with dissent or trying to overthrow any government. People form data sharing networks because they want to share data. With the internet we belong to multiple P2P networks. Before that we had FTPs. Before that we had BBS. If there is no electronic network available then that doesn't stop anyone. Instead of a computer network, people networks are formed. Nowadays, instead of floppy disks or even CD-RWs we have USB mass storage devices such as flash drives.
So quite simply the article is nothing more than yet another piece of anti-Cuba propaganda. Just because there are people in Cuba sharing media around does that mean that they do it with subversive intentions in mind? If you fire up your FTP client does it mean that you are also trying to overthrow your country's government? What about your USB drive? And what about SD cards? What a rebellion.
Re:Want to bring down the Cuban government? (Score:4, Insightful)
In any event, they haven't even tried to kick the Americans out of Gitmo.
this is an attitude i can't fathom (Score:3, Insightful)
but then you have some people such as yourself, due to hating the usa's tactics in fighting cuba, or in thinking the idea to defeat cuba is not to fight it, or with a laundry list of cold war and colonial era grievances... that it all somehow means that the point here is to prosecute the usa, rather than the clearly worse government: cuba
how does this convoluted kind of thinking present itself? on the subject matter of the evils cuba does, we should... drum roll please... prosecute the usa. the clear enemy of cuba!
(smacks forehead)
how does this work in some people's minds? that the usa gets prosecuted for what its bitter enemies do?
various internet ideologues: fine. you win. the usa sucks. fuck the usa. rah rah rah! the usa is evil! blah blah blah. whatever! i don't care: be my guest, hate the usa, you go on with your bad selves
but in your effort to hate and prosecute the usa, how do you get anywhere in that passion of yours by forgiving regimes which, right now, in the PRESENT TIME, are doing clearly worse than the usa, ON THE SUBJECT MATTER YOU SAY IS IMPORTANT, such as freedom of expression?
i can never understand this kind of thinking
again, someone please explain to me: how on the subject matter of the bad things the usa's bitter enemies do, does the usa gets all the hate?
it just blows my mind how that is possible in someone's mind. you present them with evidence of usa's enemies doing truly vile things, and their reply is to hate the usa
it blows my mind how this kind of thinking works
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:3, Insightful)
Mind you, with decent free health care, they have something fundamentally good that Americans don't, and the way things are going, never will have.
How many people in the US can't change jobs because of losing health insurance if they do?
I have known a few myself, doesn't seem either fair or pleasant.
nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason the infant "mortality" rate in the US is low is because the US is one of the very few countries that tries to save the life of severely premature babies and babies with severe birth defects. Not surprisingly, quite a lot of these sad cases die, up to 80% in the case of severely premature babies. By contrast, most other countries don't even try to save those infants, and simply record them as late miscarriages or stillbirths. Since they're never "born" they can't "die," so they don't count in infant mortality statistics. Hey presto! A lower infant mortality rate than the US! Congratulatory headlines in any random self-hating US media outlet...
Here's a related fun fact: university hospitals often have higher death rates than community hospitals for grave disease, e.g. heart attacks, strokes. Is this because they're less competent? Some strange corruption where the richer and more prestigious hospital is screwing up because of its callous disregard for humanity, i.e. the kind of "logic" used to criticize the US infant mortality rate? Nope. It's just because the most serious cases prefer to go to university hospitals, or get transferred there from community hospitals, and because university hospitals often admit people for experimental therapies that usually don't work, whereas less sophisticated hospitals just send folks to hospice or home to die.
Whenever you compare statistics, it really needs to be apples to apples, and when the statistic is so politically-charged as a quality of life versus type of government measurement, you really need to ask some hard and detailed questions about the methodology. It's amazingly easy to lie with statistics.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:this is an attitude i can't fathom (Score:3, Insightful)
I love the ideals that we aspire to, but as a country there is a pattern of antisocial behavior which I find to be disturbing.
Re:this is an attitude i can't fathom (Score:3, Insightful)
I put it to you that the Cuban government is no worse than the United States government, under similar circumstances. The Cuban government is subject to monthly threats of annihilation from its northern neighbour, who possess the most powerful military the world has ever seen. Faced with a far less potent threat from Imperial Japan, the United States started rounding up people based on their ethnicity and putting them into camps. Faced with a far less potent threat from the Soviet Union, the United States started investigating its own intellectuals, artists, dissidents and union leaders accusing them of treason.
This is not to condone the Cuban dictatorship (and I am calling it such directly seeing as you seem to have missed me calling it so indirectly in my original post...) - it is merely to explain its actions and its nature. Everyone, repeat EVERYONE, who has formed a government that works for the poor in Latin America has come under attack from the United States. In the same way that sharing an environment with dangerous predators has made Hippos extremely aggressive animals, sharing the Western Hemisphere with the U.S. made revolutionary movements there extremely aggressive.
I suppose you are going to continue to maintain that I'm an apologist for the regime. But hey, you are clearly a libertarian, so I don't expect you to grasp nuance.
i understand what you are saying (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is not to condone the Cuban dictatorship (and I am calling it such directly seeing as you seem to have missed me calling it so indirectly in my original post...) - it is merely to explain its actions and its nature."
"In the same way that sharing an environment with dangerous predators has made Hippos extremely aggressive animals, sharing the Western Hemisphere with the U.S. made revolutionary movements there extremely aggressive."
tell me where i am wrong in my understanding of your words: you are saying that the cuban government behaves the way it does because of the usa
W.T.F!?
this utterly blows my mind!
here is my bizarre, neocon, libertarian (is that what you called me?! how did you base that weird judgment!?), imperialist, neocolonial, mercenary capitalist, zionist, orphan children raping opinion:
1. criticize cuba for cuba doing bad things
2. don't criticize the usa for cuba doing bad things
that's it. that's the beginning of my thought. that's the end of my thought. that's my strange, exotic way of thinking
please forgive me if this such an alien concept to you!
(smacks forehead)
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:2, Insightful)
I have known many who have fled that land of oppression, and have known a few doctors. It is from them I receive my information. Absent any transparency of the Cuba government, anecdotal evidence is to me far more reliable than propaganda. If you want to believe the shit shoveled to you by the Castro Monarchy, feel free.
Also, if you honestly believe that 0.3% of the population dies every year because of unnecessary surgery - nothing I could possibly quote would be acceptable for you. That is nearly 1/3 of all deaths every year. Total insanity.
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:2, Insightful)
Bush is a fucking idiot and a traitor. Rise up and overthrow that madman.
That would get me found and shot in Cuba, yet strangely, not here in the US.
Funny how the reality of the situation escapes people like you in your rush to spew snide remarks all over the place.
here's some wacky ideas for you to mull over (Score:4, Insightful)
etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum
most every country that exists and has ever existed and will ever exist has tinkered in the affairs of other countries
and you want to do two things:
1. conveniently forget all tinkering by any country except american tinkering
2. leverage that american tinkering into direct accountability by the usa for whatever bullshit someone else does
example: britian, france, russia, china, and the usa all had arms deals with iraq. but we'll forget all of that and just think about the usa. next, saddam hussein gassed kurds. so obviously, the usa is responsible for that
this is your superior understanding of the world?
Re:Handing off thumb drives - The new Cuban Intern (Score:3, Insightful)
When those "common carriers" are begging for retroactive immunity from handing our communications to bad actors like the Bush Administration, I'd say that "when" is "now".
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:2, Insightful)
How about you address the issue he points out: that too many people in the U.S. have too little access to health care.
Re:sneakernet (Score:5, Insightful)
Or just hand them to a citizen of any other country in the world, who can put them in a suitcase and bring them over on the plane.... 8^)
Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society (Score:3, Insightful)
And all they've given up is their inalienable rights as human beings. Yay!
Er... where do I find these "inalienable rights" for all human beings? Last I checked, the common interpretation was that these only apply to US citizens, if we had to extend them to everyone else our current international (and increasingly domestic) policies would dissolve.
To all of our leaders, since FDR (perhaps before), the only "inalienable right" that the US has stood for is opening your markets to our corporations, and do what we say. Or at least this is the right that we've fought every modern war over.
That said, Cuba has some problems, and should have free elections. I do think, sans the embargo, that they are better off than under the US shill Batista, though. If the people freely decided to be communist, then fine, no business of ours. Appearently communism isn't enough, since we are now trading with Vietnam and China, leaving only two "verboten" states, Cuba and North Korea. Cuba doesn't compare to N. Korea in any way besides economic systems.
Re:2 things (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not defending the United States when I say they have good intentions. There have been many atrocities committed with good intentions. I think our foreign policy towards Cuba is guided by, perhaps, one part good intentions (we want them to be a democracy, as long as they make all the "right" decisions), two parts pride (we'd like to forget the whole humiliating bay of pigs thing), two parts revenge (for nationalizing the property of US corporations), and three parts stubbornness (if we stop our embargo, it's an admission that we were wrong all along).
Cuba, of course, is at least as responsible for their own government as the United States is for perpetuating things. But, we in the United States can't change Cuba directly (nor can we change the past), we can only change our own foreign policy towards Cuba. As for the causality, my understanding of Cuban history isn't very good, so I'll defer to the other reply to your post, which is written by someone with (perhaps) more understanding than I.
I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the countries we don't currently get along with (and generally label "evil", perhaps not incorrectly), are countries that we've interfered with in self-serving ways in the past. (It's funny you mention Iran...) I think we ought to accept our share of the blame for that. Not more than our share, but not less either.