US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
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US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
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Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#2This is such a bizarre story. It doesn't even seem like it was "the US" as much as it was an overeager and undersupervised team within USAID. It's sad, too, because USAID does good work in a lot of places around the world, and that works is undermined if (rightly or wrongly; seemingly rightly in this case) host governments think that USAID is an arm of the US intelligence community.
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#3This almost sounds like something that someone would make up.
Why the hell would the US Govt. want so much unrest all over the world? Haven't they learned from their screw ups in the past [0]? US supported Egyptian army is doing god knows what in Egypt; the US has been involved in the two biggest wars in recent memory (Iraq, Afghanistan), and in not-so-covert operations in countries like Pakistan, Syria and the like. Seriously what is this obsession with unrest and wars.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat#U...
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#4I've been wondering when a government sponsored excursion into twitter astroturfing would come up...it is trivially easy to build a network of fake accounts and to have them followed by hundreds of thousands of fake accounts. As follower count is the main way that people seem to validate accounts, and Twitter has little incentive to stop puffed up accounts, how hard would it be during a revolt to fake something atrocious from the revolters' side and have it endlessly retweeted before anyone realized what happened? And that's just a brazen op...more subtle, patient intel ops could be even more pervasive.
There really aren't many tools to quickly validate accounts by sight, though showing account age would be at least one metric that is harder to fake
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#5This almost sounds like something that someone would make up. Why the hell would the US Govt. want so much unrest all over the world? Haven't they learned from their screw ups in the past [0]? US supported Egyptian army is doing god knows what in Egypt; the US has been involved in the two biggest wars in recent memory (Iraq, Afghanistan), and in not-so-covert operations in countries like Pakistan, Syria and the like.…
This is a direct result of their (continued) fuck-ups. No one will ever be able to look favourably upon the USG again. This is quickly leading to the country's demise as a perceived 'world power'. Unfortunately, military might is next to useless in restoring reputation.
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#6This almost sounds like something that someone would make up. Why the hell would the US Govt. want so much unrest all over the world? Haven't they learned from their screw ups in the past [0]? US supported Egyptian army is doing god knows what in Egypt; the US has been involved in the two biggest wars in recent memory (Iraq, Afghanistan), and in not-so-covert operations in countries like Pakistan, Syria and the like.…
Enemy? Spy on them.
Ally? Spy on them.
Communist regime? Overthrow it.
Democratic government? Overthrow it.
So proud to be an American.
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#7This is such a bizarre story. It doesn't even seem like it was "the US" as much as it was an overeager and undersupervised team within USAID. It's sad, too, because USAID does good work in a lot of places around the world, and that works is undermined if (rightly or wrongly; seemingly rightly in this case) host governments think that USAID is an arm of the US intelligence community.
I never heard of a work of USAID that does not involve US trying to enforce his vision of politics in the country. Could you please illuminate me?
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#8I am so disappointed. The kinds of outreach and charity provided by USAID isn't perfect, but the intent behind it was always good. Heck, if anything I'm really, really proud of the humanitarian work the U.S. government does, including USAID at State and NIH and CDC at HHS. Overthrowing governments is completely at odds with humanitarian missions, never mind the fact that the outcomes (especially in the Americas) for covert U.S. interventions in foreign governments are _not_ generally positive.
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#9This almost sounds like something that someone would make up. Why the hell would the US Govt. want so much unrest all over the world? Haven't they learned from their screw ups in the past [0]? US supported Egyptian army is doing god knows what in Egypt; the US has been involved in the two biggest wars in recent memory (Iraq, Afghanistan), and in not-so-covert operations in countries like Pakistan, Syria and the like.…
Strong governments are an obstacle to corporate ambitions of taking over the resources of the country.
Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest
#10This is such a bizarre story. It doesn't even seem like it was "the US" as much as it was an overeager and undersupervised team within USAID. It's sad, too, because USAID does good work in a lot of places around the world, and that works is undermined if (rightly or wrongly; seemingly rightly in this case) host governments think that USAID is an arm of the US intelligence community.
For better or worse, U.S. foreign aid and assistance are instruments of U.S. foreign policy. Just look at the list of countries and how much they receive. It's not exactly correlated to the amount of poverty and hunger among recipient countries.