Cuba threatens satellite crackdown

[CHIMO]

The Cuban government has signalled it will take action against people using black-market satellite dishes to get news from the United States.

The Communist party newspaper Granma, also the official voice of the government, reported that the dishes, which provide many Cubans with Spanish-language TV programmes from the exile bastion of Miami, could be used by the US government to broadcast subversive information.

The newspaper wrote on Wednesday, nine days after Fidel Castro, the ailing president, temporarily ceded power to his brother: "They are fertile ground for those who want to carry out the Bush administration's plan to destroy the Cuban revolution."

Such articles in Granma usually indicate that action can be expected.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C04872C7-69B2-49D2-8505-2864B6FD8506.htm

Looks like the ideologue is taking over control.

[Kutjara]

1. This is a regular occurrence in the propaganda war...

...between the US and Cuba. Most of the time, the Cuban government turns a blind eye to the forest of satellite dishes that sprout from the walls and rooftops of many buildings. The internationally-owned hotels all have such dishes, too.

At times of political crisis, however, there is usually a crackdown (announced in advance in Granma), which gives people a chance to take their dishes down and hide them before the searches begin. Then, when the crisis is over, the dishes go right back up and the old status quo is restored.

[Judi Lynn]

2. I had wondered where you stood on this subject, as you started Cuba

threads before, if I'm not mistaken, but you didn't involve yourself in the conversation.

I always hate to see bomb-tossers who simply throw out the subject, knowing it's explosive, and then disappear. Thanks for your comment.

[Akim]

3. What About "Illegal Cable" in the U.S.?

There is also such a thing as illegal cable in the United States. This involves the unauthorized use of cable or satellite tv services by individuals who clandestinely tap into cable lines belonging to paying customers.

Imagine someone signing up for cable, then deciding he himself wants to go into the cable business "freelance" — that is, he runs lines from his house to his neighbors', who then pay him for receiving the purloined cable or satellite service. This is, in effect, what is happening in Cuba, and just as such "entrepreneurship" is not tolerated in this country, neither is it permissible in Cuba.

It is a federal crime to steal cable or satellite services in the U.S. and cable tv technology is virtually driven by the search for more effective means of curtailing cable piracy. Yet what no one objects to in this country has become yet another stick with which to beat the Cuban government.

And why the assumption that this is being done to limit sources of information in Cuba? I think that it is no exaggeration that Cubans on the island are better informed about national and international news than are their American counterparts, and at least they are not lied to by their government. The Cuban media is not subject to outside pressures from advertisers or other entities with various hidden agenda. Cuban media are not the pimps of U.S. capitalism, but the defenders of national sovereignty and honor. No press is anywhere freer than the Cuban press because it is free of pressure from the Almighty Dollar. This is precisely the press that Marti envisioned — an instrument for the education and defense of the people.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Akim, thanks! I was wondering about this very thing!

There's an occassional poster at D.U. I've known for ages, starting at the CNN US/Cuba Relations message board, which closed years ago. He's been to Cuba many, many times, and maintains friendships many years old with people he knows there.

He helped a friend of his install a new dish on his house years ago, in Cuba. After I had learned this, I saw anti-Cuba posters working the message boards trying to tell Americans that Cubans are forbidden to see tv from satellite dishes.

The reason propagandists get by with spinning these whoppers is because there are relatively few people here who can call them out when they are lying, since we are FORBIDDEN to travel to Cuba!

What you say makes absolutely perfect sense. If only people would take the time to think things over, and not just swallow everything they hear, there wouldn't be jobs for the propagandists like major professional liar, Cuban "exile" Otto Reich, working for both Reagan, and _{George W. Bush.}

Thanks for shining the light of truth and good sense. Much needed, as you know.

[Akim]

5. Judi, If One Could Live 1000 Years...

one might hope to unravel all the lies of the Bush-Gusano Axis.

I have often wondered where is the headquarters of this vast misinformation network. I had thought that perhaps it might be Radio Marti, but, frankly, those people are not smart enough to pull it off; they react to orders, but cannot generate them. Wherever it is located, there is no doubt in my mind that Otto Reich is its head.