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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

#131

Post by smutticus »

kenrikm wrote: post #107
smutticus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Batista regime, which came before Castro, was much worse for the people of Cuba. The US supported the Batista regime because of commercial interests. I'm not going to argue that the Castro is a saint, but the people of Cuba are definitely being treated better than had Batista stayed. No thanks to the US of course, which did everything it could to reinstitute a more corporate friendly dictator in Cuba. Now it seem…

Wow, I'm speechless. You really believe that? My wife is Cuban I've spent a lot of time talking with her grandparents, parents, friends etc.. on the subject. Batista was no saint but things got 100X worse after the revolution. You won't hear the on the ground truth unless you speak with people who were there.

If Batista was so great, then how was Castro able to win?

It's practically impossible to guerrilla movements to succeed without the support of the general populace. Even accounts of the revolution written by the CIA show that the majority of the population wanted the revolution to succeed. That wouldn't be the case if Batista was well loved.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#132

Post by kenrikm »

kaonashi wrote: post #118
kenrikm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'm speechless. You really believe that? My wife is Cuban I've spent a lot of time talking with her grandparents, parents, friends etc.. on the subject. Batista was no saint but things got 100X worse after the revolution. You won't hear the on the ground truth unless you speak with people who were there.

Worse for whom? I'm not sure your second-hand anecdotal experiences are all that representative.

Don't take my "anecdotal experiences" go, find the facts with an open mind. Many will not like what they find.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#133

Post by kenrikm »

smutticus wrote: post #131
kenrikm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'm speechless. You really believe that? My wife is Cuban I've spent a lot of time talking with her grandparents, parents, friends etc.. on the subject. Batista was no saint but things got 100X worse after the revolution. You won't hear the on the ground truth unless you speak with people who were there.

If Batista was so great, then how was Castro able to win? It's practically impossible to guerrilla movements to succeed without the support of the general populace. Even accounts of the revolution written by the CIA show that the majority of the population wanted the revolution to succeed. That wouldn't be the case if Batista was well loved.

The vast majority of the population did not know that after the revolution they were getting Communism. As is a common result throughout history after a revolution the people who take power are worse then those before. Batista was a bad guy, he was oppressive, but what they ended up with was a guy who was even more oppressive, their economy was even worse etc. Things did not go up and to the right after the revolution.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#134

Post by morgante »

gclaramunt wrote: post #108
bayesianhorse wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe in democracy, you can't believe in any "moral right" or legitimacy of a non-democratic government. Castro, Assad, Putin, neither of them has a moral right to run their countries, as only a freely elected government in a human-rights respecting state can have legitimacy. That doesn't mean these leaders don't have "a claim" to power, or that you necessarily have to actively start deposing them. Yet the o…

But you need to be careful to discern what's """real""" and what's propaganda. From the outside, I can also paint a bleak picture of US election process (vote fraud, electoral college, gerrymandering) and if I select the correct news, the US have a presidency bordering on dictatorship that's bent on taking basic rights from the population, and a repressive police force. Besides, the qualification of "human-rights res…

I'd be the first to admit that the US isn't perfect, but we're certainly doing better at democracy than Cuba.

When it comes down to it, in Cuba there's one and only one candidate for president. That's not distortion, and that's not democracy.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#135

Post by DominikR »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #113
DominikR wrote: post #102

That's the reason why countries like Russia and China make it so hard for NGOs to work within their borders. I can't blame them for that, why should they allow foreign governments to stir up protests in their countries? Is anyone better off in Libya, Syria or Egypt after the so called "Arab Spring" destabilized these countries?

The answer there may be "not yet". But Tunisia is an example of a positive outcome.

> The answer there may be "not yet"

With that argument you could justify almost anything.

Just ask yourself if you'd tolerate a coup in the US initiated by China that leads to a civil war which lasts 10 years (basically what people are experiencing in Afghanistan) and kills millions to install a type of government that China feels is better and more humane than capitalism.

That's basically what the US is doing to other countries on a regular basis.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#136

Post by jbooth »

noahl wrote: post #95
jbooth wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the US has a pretty checkered history regarding Cuba if you're going to talk about altruism. I'd say we've done more to inadvertantly prop up that regime than to undermine it. There are 3 nominally communist countries left in the world, from a high of dozens -- Cuba's one of them, and probably the closest to actually being communist (China and North Korea being technocratic-capitalist and pharaonic, respectivel…

I realize this may have been an offhand remark in your post, but your description of North Korea as pharaonic is very interesting and something I hadn't thought about before. Do you have any sources comparing North Korea with the government of ancient Egypt, or is that just a comment on the country being built around one person?

Just the whole cult of personality, near-godhood thing.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#137

Post by mpyne »

morgante wrote: post #29

I'm sure this will bring me lots of downvotes, but I actually applaud these tactics. Helping people in oppressive regimes to communicate freely with each other is one of the more humanitarian actions the US can take, and this sort of connectivity is critical in allowing people a degree of freedom even under totalitarian governments. Truly repressive regimes are out there, and without foreign interference and investme…

I wouldn't necessarily mind the tactics, but I do strongly oppose USAID having anything to do with it. It's hard enough to deliver humanitarian aid to affected populations without governments also suspecting that nice eager aid worker is really there to foment revolution or collecting intelligence.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#138

Post by smutticus »

kenrikm wrote: post #133
smutticus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Batista was so great, then how was Castro able to win? It's practically impossible to guerrilla movements to succeed without the support of the general populace. Even accounts of the revolution written by the CIA show that the majority of the population wanted the revolution to succeed. That wouldn't be the case if Batista was well loved.

The vast majority of the population did not know that after the revolution they were getting Communism. As is a common result throughout history after a revolution the people who take power are worse then those before. Batista was a bad guy, he was oppressive, but what they ended up with was a guy who was even more oppressive, their economy was even worse etc. Things did not go up and to the right after the revolutio…

Isn't the stagnation of the Cuban economy atleast in part attributable to the US embargo?

Castro himself didn't expect the US to snub him as much they did. He naively thought that the US would recognize his liberation of Cuba in the same light as the US Revolutionary War. Cuba had no choice but to turn to the Soviet Union for assistance.

Again, I know Castro is not a saint, and modern Cuba is not a paradise. I merely want to point out that American interests in Cuba have rarely been aligned with the interests of the majority of Cubans.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#139

Post by bayesianhorse »

thisiswrong wrote: post #123
bayesianhorse wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the US is still holding a grudge about the little incident with the nuclear missiles, when Che Guevarra tried to convince the Soviets behind the scenes to launch a nuclear preemptive strike against the US...

Well you sure don't read the news. This is not about some old missle crisis from last century. This is about greed and expanding global putocratic control. Very similar to what's going on in Ukraine, Syria, and Libya.

One could argue that the Crimea invasion, Assad's decision to use his army to carpet bomb his citizens and Gaddafi's decision to use artillery against civilian neighbourhoods was born out of "plutocratic" reasoning.

Or would you say "plutocratic" does not apply to the use military force for personal profit? Because the US certainly didn't profit from your examples, even if this doesn't prove the absence of an intention to profit.

Re: US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest

#140

Post by gclaramunt »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #119
gclaramunt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you need to be careful to discern what's """real""" and what's propaganda. From the outside, I can also paint a bleak picture of US election process (vote fraud, electoral college, gerrymandering) and if I select the correct news, the US have a presidency bordering on dictatorship that's bent on taking basic rights from the population, and a repressive police force. Besides, the qualification of "human-rights res…

No democracy ever has been perfect. But You need to apply some serious distortion if you want to say the US is less democratic than Russia. At the very least you have to ignore that there is no opposition in Russia, virtually no dissenting media, virtually no investigative journalism and absolutely legendary corruption. You also need to focus very specifically on "repressive police force", which is easier to do in th…

I never claimed that, for sure IMHO a good indication of a healthy democracy is presidency turnaround. But if you want to give the rights for state to intervene in the matters of another, you have to thread VERY carefully: "bring democracy to Irak" didn't work very well and the actual intentions were transparently different. tl, dr: separating a state's geopolitical interests from "helping democracy in other places" is very hard
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