As Cubans Protest, Government Cracks Down On Internet Access and Messaging Apps (nbcnews.com) 239
As Cubans take to the streets to protest against the government's mishandling of the economy and coronavirus health crisis, the country's government is turning to censorship to crack down on dissent. According to NBC News, the government "has taken steps to block citizens' use of the encrypted chat apps WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram." They've also shut off the internet. According to a case study from Top10VPN, Cuba went offline for 32 hours, which affected 7 millions users and cost the country more than $13 million. NBC News reports: Widespread internet use in Cuba is still relatively new, and Cubans mostly reach the web through their smartphones. The country only has a single major internet provider, the national telecommunications company ETECSA. That means most Cubans have to rely on a single, centralized, government-affiliated hub, making government censorship substantially easier. NetBlocks, an internet monitoring nonprofit, said Monday that it had detected disruptions to multiple messaging apps through ETECSA's service. A number of messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, are all blocked in Cuba, said Arturo Filasto, the project lead at the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).
OONI, an international nonprofit, relies on volunteers around the world to install a program that probes for which types of internet use are being censored and how. Its data showed that ETECSA began blocking WhatsApp on Sunday night, then Signal and Telegram on Monday. All three were still blocked on Tuesday, Filasto said. "We have never seen instant messaging apps being blocked in the country," he said. "It's sort of unprecedented that we would see such a heavy crackdown on the internet in Cuba." Marianne Diaz Hernandez, a fellow at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, said some Cubans have reported that their specific SIM cards for their phones have been rendered useless, keeping them offline. And some virtual private networks have themselves been blocked, she said. Two major VPNs, Tor and Psiphon, appear to still work. While Cuba has deployed various censorship techniques in the past, this is the first time they have all been deployed at the same time, Hernandez said. "Since they have had internet, this is the largest blackout in history," she said. On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wants Florida companies to provide internet connection to residents in Cuba.
"What does the regime do when you start to see these images? They shut down the internet. They don't want the truth to be out, they don't want people to be able to communicate," said DeSantis during a roundtable with Republican lawmakers and members of the Cuban exile community in Miami. "And so one of the things I think we should be able to do with our private companies or with the United States is to provide some of that internet via satellite. We have companies on the Space Coast that launch these things," he added. DeSantis said he would make some calls to "see what are the options" to make it happen.
OONI, an international nonprofit, relies on volunteers around the world to install a program that probes for which types of internet use are being censored and how. Its data showed that ETECSA began blocking WhatsApp on Sunday night, then Signal and Telegram on Monday. All three were still blocked on Tuesday, Filasto said. "We have never seen instant messaging apps being blocked in the country," he said. "It's sort of unprecedented that we would see such a heavy crackdown on the internet in Cuba." Marianne Diaz Hernandez, a fellow at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, said some Cubans have reported that their specific SIM cards for their phones have been rendered useless, keeping them offline. And some virtual private networks have themselves been blocked, she said. Two major VPNs, Tor and Psiphon, appear to still work. While Cuba has deployed various censorship techniques in the past, this is the first time they have all been deployed at the same time, Hernandez said. "Since they have had internet, this is the largest blackout in history," she said. On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wants Florida companies to provide internet connection to residents in Cuba.
"What does the regime do when you start to see these images? They shut down the internet. They don't want the truth to be out, they don't want people to be able to communicate," said DeSantis during a roundtable with Republican lawmakers and members of the Cuban exile community in Miami. "And so one of the things I think we should be able to do with our private companies or with the United States is to provide some of that internet via satellite. We have companies on the Space Coast that launch these things," he added. DeSantis said he would make some calls to "see what are the options" to make it happen.
Paradise (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Paradise (Score:5, Informative)
Ah what a great communist paradise with universal healthcare.
Cuba is mostly a dystopia, but its healthcare system is better than in most poor countries.
I am a believer in free-market capitalism, but healthcare is one area where the lefties have a point. Capitalism doesn't provide good outcomes when information is asymmetric and prices are opaque.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Cuba inherited the health care from some amazing work in the 1950's, and 50 years of Soviet tourism as the only place to get leading Western medicine outside the immediate Soviet government standards of Moscow politics. They were the peak of medical tourism for the entire Soviet Marxist empire, and as they had been before the revolution, they were amazingly corrupt. My dad did research there before working at Walter Reed doing nuclear medicine, we talked.
Re:Paradise (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism works best if both parties are informed about the choices they make. When you're sitting by the side of the road in pain and losing consciousness, you're not able to make truly informed decisions, which leads to capitalism breaking down into the exploitative mess it is without accountability.
It's why Air Ambulances are among the biggest scams being run today in the healthcare industry - they cannot be regulated because as an air service, they were deregulated decades ago. But as an essential service, they can charge anything. A 10 minute flight can be $100,000. And they purposely do NOT join any insurance networks - so air ambulances are never covered by any provider.
Of course, you could take an insurance covered ground ambulance, and if you were lucid and thinking properly you probably should as the survival outcomes aren't that much different, surprisingly enough. But since we've grown into this "time is of the essence" mentality, it's easy to incur $100,000 in a flight that gets you there an hour earlier than on the ground that costs you $1000 in co-pay.
That's what happens when capitalism goes wrong like in healthcare where one party just isn't able to make a proper decision. And the other party cannot be regulated - I mean, airline deregulation means airlines set the price of the flight, not government, so government can't mandate how much an air ambulance flight "ticket" costs.
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Ah what a great communist paradise with universal healthcare.
Cuba is mostly a dystopia, but its healthcare system is better than in most poor countries.
If you mean their operating rooms don't have dirt floors, then yes.
Sorry. I happen to believe in not making wild-ass contradictions.
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Cubans have better health care than you do for a tiny fraction of the cost, you sweet summer capitalist child. And that's under economic and literal warfare from the most powerful country in the world for the last 60 years.
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There are hundreds of thousands of people who have fled Cuba so there are plenty to ask.
Hint: they did not flee the health system.
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Capitalism doesn't provide good outcomes when information is asymmetric and prices are opaque.
In what market wouldn't that be the case?
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But to the point, Cuba has been renting their doctors out instead of keeping them around to treat Cubans. It's one of the reasons the people are pissed.
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Well the ACA allowed insurance across state lines already since 2008, they're called interstate compacts and as of 2017 no insurers had used it for a multitude of reasons, mainly because it just would not be profitable.
Also posting prices simply is not enough for a few reasons. Firstly not everyone in need of medical care at the moment they need it are capable or have the luxury of shopping around, mainly when it comes to emergency care.
Second is that medical care is complex and varied and the average pers
Re:Paradise (Score:5, Informative)
There's more than Cuba [wikipedia.org] on that list. You may also notice that all the major G7 countries [wikipedia.org] have universal healthcare except for the U.S.A.
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You may also notice that all the major G7 countries [wikipedia.org] have universal healthcare except for the U.S.A.
And yet people keep pouring over the US borders. Yeah. I know. It's about as explainable as people moving to California.
I guess a service that very few actually rely on or need for the majority of their (young and semi-healthy) lives, isn't that important?
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Well, if you're living in hell, purgatory looks mighty tempting. And if your country is completely shit, a country that only smells like shit most of the time isn't such a bad alternative.
Wake me when the poor people from the EU are banging on the US doors.
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About 50K EU citizens emigrate to the US annually. No clue as to whether they are "poor people"....
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That attitude is akin to dismissing any criticism of Microsoft by saying that "well, businesses keep buying their software en masse so the problems can't be that important."
In some technical sense maybe it's true - the problems aren't important enough for many businesses (or immigrants, from your scenario) to make different decisions - but that doesn't mean that there isn't still room to improve.
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Yeah, because they're fleeing your CIA-backed death squads and State Department installed dictators. Pay them trillions in reparations for 200 years of American imperialism [wikipedia.org] and maybe they'll stay home.
Re: Paradise (Score:3)
Which of those G7 countries are currently begging the US for vaccines? Two of them invented two of the major vaccines, BTW. The way things are going, the majority of the other G7 countries will have better COVID vaccination rates than the US.
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That's socialism.
That's capitalism. It's not Social Security and Medicare that have needed tens of trillions in bailouts over the last 13 years.
Because of taxpayer-funded research at universities. NOT publicly traded Pharma stocks. Most of "their" money is spent on lobbying,
Re:Paradise (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah what a great communist paradise with universal healthcare. If it weren’t for stupid republicans, we could have this leftist utopia in the United States.
The good ol' "find the worst example of something and declare that the norm" argument. I mean both sides of the debate use this argument, unfortunately the USA is actually the example of the worst form of privatised healthcare.
Good ol' Land of the Free ... to die of perfectly preventable causes.
Re:Paradise (Score:5, Funny)
Good ol' Land of the Fee
There, fixed that for ya.
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Mod +1 SadUncomfortableTruth.
Heck Genesis even called it in the 70s.
"Well
Thanks to our kindness and skill
You'll have no trouble until
You catch your breath and the nurse will present you the bill"
Genesis - Entangled, from the 1976 Album "A Trick of the Tail"
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There is a Socialist party in the US, it doesn't mean that it is a Socialist country.
Germany - coalition including the Social Democratic Party of Germany
I hear the National Socialist Party was pretty successful for a time there too.
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That is not just a list of parties, it's a list of the current governments.
I see some people have been trolled by facts again.
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Yep, that's a good description of the USA: Republicans and commies. :rolleyes
Not "communism" but embargo USA enforces on others (Score:4, Informative)
Cuba would have been a much better functioning communist country if it could participate in the markets.
USA is not just embargoing Cuba by themselves, but blocking other countries from making business with Cuba via economical and political influence. This is the real problem.
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Cuba would have been a much better functioning communist country if it could participate in the markets.
I would argue that Cuba isn't - and never was - a communist country. It's a dictatorship. Just like all other countries claiming to be communist. I don't think communism is possible at all as long as humans are involved.
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You're describing capitalism. Not communism. Castro lived hi
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The irony of a communist country suffering from lack of market access. Maybe they shouldn't have become communist, hmm?
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If it's all the fault of the dirty commies, maybe stop the sanctions, embargoes and regime change policies, hmmm?
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It's a shame the EU has not done more to fix this. We now have China leading the way when it should be the EU.
China is creating alternatives to US financial systems for stuff like payment processing, because the US uses those to extend the reach of US laws beyond its borders. Doubtless China will do the same, having its own legal requirements and shit list of countries who can't use it.
Europe needs its own ones that are run on its own rules. Actually they exist, but they need to be built up to be global sta
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Well, a couple of people tried to dump the USD for a more sensible and less monopolized currency.
We know what happened to the first how tried [rferl.org], let's see how it will work out for the other one [ibtimes.com].
Just in case you wonder why we're desperately looking for a reason to attack them.
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The EU is at least big enough to make it work, as is China. That's the problem with forcing people to pick sides, they might not pick the US now.
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The US is the schoolyard bully of international politics. Strong, tough but, well, not the brigtest candle in the box. But he can shake all the other kids down for their lunch money. And the other kids suck up to him, first, to not get shaken down for their money and then in the hope that during the shakedown some pennies fall to the floor that they can pick up.
But nobody really likes the bully. And everyone would really like if he finally got expelled. But until then, we put up with him and his antics, and
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The problem with the US is that it's leadership is unstable. Every 4 years it can swing from one extreme of foreign policy to the other.
China is extremely stable because it's not a democracy, but the down side is it's not a democracy.
The EU is more stable than the US but doesn't have enough power to become a major foreign policy player.
The US, and every other democracy that hasn't done it already, would benefit from changing the electoral system to encourage coalition rule. As well as stability and better r
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Maybe America still occupying Europe 75 years after WWII has something to do with it. Between its own bases (over 30 just in Germany) and NATO, which is dominated by the United States.
Re: Paradise (Score:2)
I think you mean Republicans and Democrats, since both parties are strictly on the right. The US Communist Party is tiny and irrelevant thanks to the efforts from both.
By the way, this is the difference between right and left, for those unaware of History:
a) The right believes political equality comes from all citizens having the same formal rights. In the democratic right this means one citizen, one vote.
b) The left believes political equality comes from all citizens having the same economic power, under t
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But you do. Or do you think that the internet wouldn't get cut down in the name of "national security" in case anything like this happened around here? That you suddenly couldn't write about certain events or get miraculously shadowbanned because you are not supposed to write about something? And how what you write wouldn't be distorted and twisted until nobody believes you anymore, or gives a fuck because it's been buried under a mountain of bullshit?
If you really think that, you're delustional. This is pr
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If Socialism works, then it doesn't matter if Cuba is cut off from foreign markets. It doesn't
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Re:Paradise (Score:4, Informative)
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That's an odd statement. First, the concept of left vs right hadn't even existed yet. Second, that was an act of protest against taxation, whereas today people who self identify as "left" tend to be pro-taxation. Third, you forgot a few things that people who really did identify as "left" were behind, namely prohibition and eugenics (they literally called themselves "progressives", by the way) and let's not forget the number one cause of famine in the 20th century, socialism, which to this day is still taki
Re:Paradise (Score:5, Informative)
"Second, that was an act of protest against taxation..." Actually, no. It was an act of protest against taxation *without* representation.
Actually the colonists had already been paying taxes for over a century prior to that without representation. The rebellion that the Boston tea party was ultimately part of mostly came about because they were putting taxes on everyday goods through the Stamp Act. Literally, every single piece of paper they used was taxed. Then they passed the Townsend Act, which placed duties on everything that was imported. They wanted representation in parliament at this point because parliament was passing laws to tax them when they had very little say in the matter. Ultimately, even if they were represented but out-voted in parliament, they still would have rebelled against these taxes.
And now your next statement: "people who really did identify as "left" were behind, namely prohibition and eugenics (they literally called themselves "progressives", by the way)"...it doesn't matter what they called themselves.
They were still very much self-identifying as left-wing, in parenthesis I was calling out the absurdity of the word "progressive", as one who calls themselves progressive has their mind set that their ideas are the exclusive ideas that "progress" society, even when history proves them wrong. Today somebody who calls themselves by these terms (left, progressive, etc) would straight deny that -- as you are -- their ideology falls in the same line.
Anyways, the motivation behind prohibition was indeed what many today would identify as left wing:
https://www.inquirer.com/phill... [inquirer.com]
(Note: The Inquirer is commonly referred to as "left" leaning. Well cited piece too.)
As was eugenics, in fact the modern reproductive rights movement has its origins firmly planted in it (Margaret Sanger was a huge proponent)
You place far too much value in a word and take things too literally.
No. That's definitely you. In fact, I was specifically calling out the absurdity of it, and you came along to contradict me.
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That article is really reaching. Prohibition was mainly driven in the US by the Temperance Movement, which was mostly conservative Christians (both Protestants and Catholics).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
For most of it's history there wasn't really a "left" at all, politically left wing politics only really formed in the United States in the early 1900s and was heavily suppressed (e.g. by the Espionage Act). Really the left has never had much influence in the US and certainly not around the time prohibi
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Yet went on to build a system of taxation with representation, as even most white men in the US couldn't vote as they didn't own property.
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Laughable capitalist propaganda with asspulled numbers. Famines happened on the regular under the Tsars, and unde
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Horwitz has to jump through a lot of assumptions to almost kind of get his point across and as someone from the austrian school, it only makes sense.
Also disingenuously conflating FDR's personal biases with the policy of the time is a a bad way to make a point.
Social Security has been the most successful anti-poverty program in American history and the program itself has very high approval ratings, usually in the 80 to 90%. Medicare, Medicaid and the VA also have excellent approval ratings. People like th
Re: (Score:3)
Pure capitalist dumbfuckery. The only problem with the New Deal is that it wasn't big enough. Why you Randian whackjobs bother claiming otherwise when massive government spending and universal employment in WWII made it an established fact is beyond me.
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But you're right in that technically, the US is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy, even though we now use the latter term for any pluralistic system of popular governance. Meaning that the powers and duties of the Federal government are contra
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Only if you mean the exact opposite commitment.
Its Obvious (Score:2, Funny)
The problem is those Cuban communists are doing it all wrong. Our American communists are far more smarticle then every other communist on the planet. All Hail Bernie!
Re: (Score:2)
Totally. Castro could have learnt a lot from watching that famous Democratic Socialists of America conference.
Point of personal privilege: please don't use upper case letters as they trigger my sensory overload!
Castro could have learnt a lot from these guys.
point of personal privilege: please don't use gendered pronouns as it triggers my dysphoria!
point of personal privilege: i'm hungry. when is third lunch? the letter t triggers me.
the bay of pigs would have been over in seconds. had the american bandi s b
Yes, but how would that work? (Score:2)
Technically, how could the US provide internet access to Cuba? Couldn't use WiFi, obviously, the island is 90 miles from the US mainland. Satellites require dishes, probably not something easy to hide. A smartphone WAN, perhaps? But doesn't that have the same distance problems? No, you'd have to get on the island to give them access, correct?
Re: (Score:2)
There's always IPoAC [wikipedia.org] as an option.
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Re: Yes, but how would that work? (Score:2)
The embassy is an interesting thought. The military base isn't near any population center, I believe.
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Use TCPigeon. RFC1149 and RFC2549.
Re: Satellite receivers are easy to hide (Score:2)
You can't hide them indoors, correct? They're line of sight. That would be a problem. But maybe if they're mobile? Someone changes them around each night? Hm. Doesn't sound like an easy thing to do regardless.
Lost...something? (Score:2)
Artists such as entertainers on YouTube, musicians on Spotify and online entrepreneurs on any web platform suffer the most.
Hmmm, according to slash-speak that's known as a "lost sale". Not to be confused with those "lost sales" cause by the Arrr group.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah why not send in the RIAA to sue Cuba!
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta suppress all that "misinformation"!
It took the currently free countries in the World centuries to get rid of "prior restraint" legislation and practices where everything published had to be pre-approved by the authorities (usually a government or institution) before it could be published. It seems like we are now entering an age where prior restraint will be de-facto re-instituted in some form using technology and in cooperation with businesses in spite of most constitutions banning this practice for good reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I kinda doubt that the right wing loonies really want social media to enforce fact-checking before publishing something.
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Depends who the fact checkers are I guess. They don't really think of it in terms of objective truth, just who controls the "facts".
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Ah, alternative facts make a reappearance.
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What if you have read what the fact checkers say, and found that large chunks of publicly-verifiable information are missing from their analyses? What if you have seen the rating of political topics change to fit an emerging media narrative without any chang
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Isn't it interesting how so many conservatives are in favour of getting rid of Section 230 and forcing social media/messaging companies to approve messages before publishing, while at the same time saying "look how all these repressive commies control what can be published.
It gets even more bizarre when you notice that they consider Silicon Valley companies like Twitter and Facebook to be agents of the left.
I am not in favor of getting rid of Section 230 but the position of these conservatives does make sense since this will destroy Facebook and Twitter entirely in their current shape (in the USA) since they will no longer be able to leverage user created content at the level that they are currently doing it. And if you believe that Twitter and Facebook are skewed towards the left the end result will therefore be more balanced.
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Yeahno. What they want is for social media to lose their 230 immunity if they are going act like a publisher and censor content instead of being an open platform. Kinda hard to argue against, given all their "mistakes" made on lab leak theory, Hunter's laptop, banning Palestinian activists, etc.
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Gotta suppress all that "misinformation"!
I believe dictators and those striving to become ones use the term "Fake News" these days.
From a different perspective... (Score:2)
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The government likes to blame everything that goes wrong on the US, but that's just an excuse for their own failure. They aren't cracking down on communications to keep the CIA out, they're doing it to keep the people from talking to each other and from telling the world what's happening. The CIA doesn't need to do a damn thing, this has been building for decades.
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The crack down will continue.... (Score:2)
So what you're saying is... (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you're saying is, the Cuban government is no worse than YouTube, Facebook and CNN?
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So what you're saying is, the Cuban government is no worse than YouTube, Facebook and CNN?
If you don't understand the difference between a government and a private entity doing something, then you're beyond help.
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FTFY
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Cool a Troll mod. I guess trolls don't understand the difference between civil rights and government powers either. The constitution is truly dead, by the will of the people.
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The difference between Communism and Capitalism is that in Communism, the government controls the commerce.
Capitalism is the exact opposite of that.
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Riiight. That's why tech monopolies destroyed Parler after being demanded to do so by right wing shitlibs like AOC. Long before last January, the government was not only demanding censorship from tech companies, but telling them who to censor via government funded think tanks like the Atlantic Council. Straight from the horses ass:
https://about.fb.com/news/2018... [fb.com]
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If you don't like YouTube, Facebook or CNN, you can choose one of their competitors as an alternative.
If you live in Cuba and don't like the government, there is no alternative.
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If you don't like YouTube, Facebook or CNN, you can choose one of their competitors as an alternative.
If you live in Cuba and don't like the government, there is no alternative.
Sure you can choose a competitor to CNN or YouTube. But Facebook is in practice a monopoly due to strong network effects. Markets with strong network effects tend to be monopolized. It is a broken market. Suggested remedy: Just like you can call someone using another phone carrier than your own, so should social networks be forced to be interoperable in order to restore competition to this market. In effect you should have ownership over your own information and let whoever you decide use whatever portion o
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That's exactly what Parler offered, except it was destroyed by shitlibs and tech monopolies for planning that happened on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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So what you're saying is, the Cuban government is no worse than YouTube, Facebook and CNN?
None of those websites ever imprisoned anyone for years for being a political dissident. Grow some perspective.
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As if it's just about the networks themselves. Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are fascinated by your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Along with all the 1/6 rioters being held in jail while the government tries to find something worse than trespassing and vandalism to charge them with.
so does Canada (Score:2)
Socialisim = No choice (Score:2)
If only they had a choice in internet providers, outside of government control...
But that's not how socialism works. You have no choice, it's been made for you.
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How many internet providers can you choose from in capitalist America?
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Depending on where you live, from 5 to 15.
Does our embassy have wifi? (Score:2)
Just don't forget to keep it segregated from the internal network.
Biden admin says No to Cubans, yes to rest of wrld (Score:3)
Of course the administration is still encouraging the rest of the world to get raped all the way from Guatemala to Texas, because they will be allowed in.
So, what's the message here? That everyone in the world except Cubans are welcome to sneak across our borders? That it's okay to seek asylum because your husband is a violent drunk or you can't find a job, but not because your government is trying to murder you? That it's too dangerous to cross 90 miles of water, but sending children through a thousand mile gauntlet of revolutionaries, drug traffickers, human smugglers and plain-old rapists is just fine?
Is it idiocy+incompetence, or is it worse? I hate to have to think it, but what if the problem is just that Cubans know Socialism all to well? What if it's that they hate Socialism and even, *gasp* vote Republican?
I hope it's just that they're incompetent morons too stupid to realize how insane this contradiction is.
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I dunno, what is your excuse for ignoring the fact that Biden is still building Trumps wall, throwing kids in cages and telling the victims of the Monroe Doctrine to stay home?
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That it's okay to seek asylum because your husband is a violent drunk or you can't find a job, but not because your government is trying to murder you?
Kind of disturbing too, since US law allows for asylum in this case, but not the cases you mention. Asylum is specifically for instances where your country discriminating against you.
swap intervention args with Godzilla (Score:3)
If Every Debate About US Interventionism Was About Godzilla Instead [medium.com]
Person A: Wow, things are looking really bad in Venezuela(Cuba) right now.
Person B: Yeah.
Person A: All that poverty and unrest!
Person B: I know, it's terrible.
Person A: You know what we should do?
Person B: Please don't say send in Godzilla.
Person A: What? Why not??
Person B: Because he always makes things worse! You know that! Every time we send in Godzilla to try and solve problems in the world, he just ends up trampling all over the city, knocking down buildings and killing thousands of people with his atomic heat beam.
Person A: Maybe this time would be different though!
Person B: Why in God's name would this time be different?? You said it would be different in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria. What happened there?
Person A: He trampled all over the cities, knocked down the buildings and killed people with his atomic heat beam.
Person B: Exactly! So what makes you think sending in Godzilla would be any different this time?
Person A: Well we can't just do nothing!
Re: That's rich coming from DeSantis. (Score:2)
Re: Fake news (Score:5, Insightful)
Communism: an idea so good it has to be enforced at the point of a gun.
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This crisis is actually mostly due to Covid plus Cuban domestic policy decisions [substack.com].
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FTFY.
Your victim-blaming bullshit. If it's all the fault of the dirty commies, lift all sanctions sanctions and stop illegally occupying Cuba. [wikipedia.org]