US Secretly Built 'Cuban Twitter' To Stir Unrest • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by gclaramunt » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 2:24 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #134

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…

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.

Sure, but claims of moral authority to intervene are pretty weak.

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

#142

Post by kaonashi » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 8:27 PM UTC

kenrikm wrote: post #132

kaonashi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have; it's not clear to me that the Castro regime was any more oppressive than Batista (though different people were oppressed, that's clear).

It's also seems like a lot of what is blamed on Castro is actually just the fucked-up poisonous choices left to them due to the blockade (though, not all of it).

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

#143

Post by thisiswrong » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 8:40 PM UTC

bayesianhorse wrote: post #139

thisiswrong wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intenti…

and here lies the problem...

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

#144

Post by bayesianhorse » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 6:56 AM UTC

gclaramunt wrote: post #140

bayesianhorse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

The Iraq War wasn't about installing democracy. After 9/11 the US was in a shocked, irrational state of mind. I would hope other nations would behave differently given the same situation and power, but I have my doubts about that also.

There was a shortage of enemies to punish, so Saddam Hussein was the next best villain. After all, he did not only have weapons of mass destruction previously, but also used them.

I actually live in a country where regime change worked emphatically well (Germany). I can't recall any such "regime change" project though were the major intent was to install democracy. In Iraq it was the WMD pretense and a diffuse sense of retaliation. In Libya it was to stop an army from shelling civilian living quarters. Mostly the intention is "just stop killing people, dammit!" And it actually works. You can never say for sure, but for example if Syria is any indication, it worked in Libya. While there are tons of problems in Syria, continued shelling and bombing of civilians isn't one of them any more.

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

#145

Post by bayesianhorse » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 1:22 PM UTC

bayesianhorse wrote: post #144

gclaramunt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

The Iraq War wasn't about installing democracy. After 9/11 the US was in a shocked, irrational state of mind. I would hope other nations would behave differently given the same situation and power, but I have my doubts about that also. There was a shortage of enemies to punish, so Saddam Hussein was the next best villain. After all, he did not only have weapons of mass destruction previously, but also used them. I ac…

I actually meant Libya in the last sentence. Sorry. Shelling and Bombing is very much a reality there now.