Bloggers offer glimpse of uncensored Cuba

[Bacchus39]

HAVANA - Only a month has passed since ordinary Cubans won the right to own computers, and the government still keeps a rigid grip on Internet access.

But that hasn’t stopped thousands from finding their way into cyberspace. And a daring few post candid blogs about life in the communist-run country that have garnered international audiences.

Yoani Sanchez writes the “Generacion Y” blog and gets more than a million hits a month, mostly from abroad — though she has begun to strike a chord in Cuba. On her site and others, anonymous Cubans offer stinging criticisms of their government.

But it isn’t simple. To post her blog, Sanchez dresses like a tourist and slips into Havana hotels with Web access for foreigners. It costs about $6 an hour and she can’t afford to stay long given the price and the possibility someone might catch her connecting without permission.

It’s a testament to the ingenuity and black-market prowess Cubans have developed living on salaries averaging $20 a month, with constant restrictions and shortages.

The connections Cuban bloggers are making with the outside world via the Internet are irreversible, said Sanchez, who this month won the Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism, a top Spanish media award.

“With each step we take in that direction, it’s harder for the government to push us back,” she said.

On an island where many censor themselves to avoid trouble, Sanchez says Generacion Y holds nothing back.


“It’s about how I live,” she said. “I think that technically, there are no limits. I have talked about things like Fidel Castro, and you know how taboo that can be.”

But she added that “there are some ethical limits. I would never call for violence, for instance.”

Since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel in February, Raul Castro has lifted bans on Cubans buying consumer electronics, having cell phones and staying in luxury tourist hotels.

While the changes have bolstered the new president’s popularity, most simply legalized what was common practice. In a typically frank recent posting, Sanchez noted that many Cubans already had PCs, cell phones and DVD players bought on the black market.

“Legally recognizing what were already facts prospering in the shadows is not the same as allowing or approving something,” she wrote. Cuba’s leaders are responding to the inevitable, “but they won’t soothe our hunger for change.”


Authorities have made no sustained effort to stop Sanchez’s year-old blog, though pro-government sites accuse her of taking money from opposition groups.

Only foreigners and some government employees and academics are allowed Internet accounts and these are administered by the state.

[Bacchus39]

1. page 2

Ordinary Cubans can join an island-wide network that allows them to send and receive international e-mail. Lines are long at youth clubs, post offices and the few Internet cafes that provide access, but the rest of the Web is blocked — a control far stricter than even China’s or Saudi Arabia’s.

Still, thousands of Cubans pay about $40 a month for black market dial-up Internet accounts bought through third parties overseas or stolen from foreign providers. Or they use passwords from authorized Cuban government accounts that hackers swipe or buy from corrupt officials.

Sanchez said so many Cubans read her blog that fans stop her on the street.


Generacion Y takes its title from a Cuban passion for names beginning in Y. It offers witty and biting accounts of Cubans’ everyday struggles against government restrictions at every turn.
Some of the bloggers hew to the belief that openness is the best answer to official surveillance.

“By signing your name, giving your opinions out loud and not hiding anything, we disarm their efforts to watch us,” Sanchez wrote on her blog.

On a blog called “Sin EVAsion” (“Without Evasion”), Eva Hernandez dared to mock “Granma,” the official Communist Party newspaper, for taking its name from the American yacht that brought Castro and his rebels back to Cuba from Mexico to launch their armed rebellion in 1956.

“Cuba is the only country in the world whose principal newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party and the official voice of the government, has the ridiculous name ’granny,”’ she wrote. Piling on the heat, she added that the name “perpetuates the memory of that yacht that brought us so much that is bad.”

Generacion Y is maintained by a server in Germany, and Sanchez says the Cuban government periodically attempts to block her site within Cuba, though the problem is always cleared up within hours.

Administrators of the “Petrosalvaje” site also claim to struggle with government-imposed limits. A recent post called uncensored Internet access a “virtual raft” — a reference to the rafts on which Cubans flee to the United States.

The government is also into blogging — maintaining dozens of sites dedicated to promoting the island’s image overseas.

“Raul needs time,” reads a post on Kaosenlared.net, a forum based in Spain. “We are confident, calm and staying united in favor of the direction of our revolution.” It is signed Rogelio Sarforat and was apparently posted from Cuba.


Reynaldo Escobar, Sanchez’ husband and a former journalist for official media, now uses his own blog to criticize the government. He said Cuba pays supporters to flood the Internet with positive opinions.

He says he knows of nobody who would spend money to go on the Web and defend the system. “Everyone who argues in favor of the government is paid to do so, or does so because they have been asked to,” he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24316406/page/2/

[Mika]

2. People say that those who argue against the Cuban gov are paid to do so...

... or asked to do so.

See?

Just as valid as above article.

[Bacchus39]

3. right, there is no dissent in Cuba other than those who are paid to do so

here is the link to the blog. why don't you make up your own mind?

http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/



here is the face of the dangerous counterrevolutionary insurgent traitor.








here is the face of Cuba's future.


http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/_/images_1/cuba/raul_castro.jpe

[Mika]

5. I've got no problem w/Yoani

Just pointing out the typical "some people say" swill in the OP article, that typifies the reporting you favor regarding your anti Cuba postings.

BTW, try to sneak into a hotel on Miami Beach and use their facilities and/or internet connection without having a room reservation. They'll call the cops and toss you out in a nanosecond.

Been there. Seen it.

[Bacchus39]

6. I wouldn't need to sneak into a hotel in Miami to use the internet now would I

back to your default argument on crticism of Cuba? some people say that there is oppression in Cuba, who really knows, right???

if its not in Prensa Latina or Granma the veracity of articles cannot be verified.


wow, how sad, they have just been given "permission" to use pressure cookers, cell phones, and dvd players.

[Mika]

7. Neither do Cubans. Got a q-tip? Your ears have something in them?

You really are fixated on your pressure cooker bullshit.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=405&topic_id=3728&mesg_id=3747

[Bacchus39]

10. pressure cookers

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/cubans-now-allowed-dvds-presser-cookers

HAVANA - Cubans snapped up DVD players, motorbikes and pressure cookers for the first time Tuesday as Raul Castro’s new government loosened controls on consumer goods and invited private farmers to plant tobacco, coffee and other crops on unused state land.

Combined with other reforms announced in recent days, the measures suggest real changes are being driven by the new president, who vowed when he took over from his brother Fidel to remove some of the more irksome limitations on the daily lives of Cubans…

Many of the shoppers filling stores Tuesday lamented the fact that the goods are unaffordable on the government salaries they earn. But that didn’t stop them from lining up to see electronic gadgets previously available only to foreigners and companies…

[Mika]

12. Again, bullshit.

As usual, you vomit your (and AP's) Cubaphobic bullshit on DU.

Your disinformation is completely ass backward (not exactly a news flash).

Cuba never ever banned pressure cookers. The Cuban government subsidized pressure cookers for every household in order to save electricity.


From the first hit on a google search...

http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/pressure_cooker... /
Castro hurts Bush Latin trade efforts
Published March 13, 2005

Myriam Marquez, Orlando Sentinel

For International Women’s Day, Cuban women were treated to a new revolutionary objective: A pressure cooker in every home, Fidel Castro proclaimed, and a rice cooker, too!

[Bacchus39]

13. did you read that article???

its not my fault Cuba is so repressive and backward that they just allowed pressure cookers and cell phones in 2008

[Bacchus39]

4. Cuba set for a new generation of leadership

Lookie me Fidel, I got a flag. whoopie!!!

[Mika]

8. Why isn't Raul desecrating his flag like W Bush?

Cubans (in Cuba) wouldn't tolerate leadership desecrating their flag.





The VAST majority of Cubans support their country, their system of government, and the revolution.



Been there. Seen it.

Have you?

[Bacchus39]

9. what does that have to do with oppression in Cuba?

why don't you spend your time reading the fascinating Generacion Y blog to read what Cubans have to say about their own government rather than posting propaganda?

[Mika]

11. I do read her blog.

Its not the only source.

I talk to my many friends in Cuba regularly. Do you?

-

[Bacchus39]

14. Cuba alllows pressure cookers for first time

good God, what a country!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080402/wl_afp/cubacastropoliticseconomyrights_080402211843

It took Fidel Castro four decades to accept limited economic reform in communist Cuba but it has taken his brother, Raul Castro, just five weeks as president to launch a flurry of changes.



Cubans lined up outside stores Tuesday to gawk at, and enjoy their new right to buy, appliances such as pressure cookers, DVDs and electric bikes.

[Bacchus39]

15. wow, for the first time

HAVANA — Shoppers bought DVD players, motorbikes and pressure cookers Tuesday as a slew of consumer products went on sale to all Cuban citizens for the first time.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080402/NEWS/804020678/1418/RSS03

[Mika]

16. Wrong wrong wrong.

You can go ahead and believe bullshit (not a shock to me) all you want.

Of course, you have ZERO experience in Cuba, and, obviously, have no friends in Cuba.

http://books.google.com/books?id=tYtuZj7A940C&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=pressure+cookers+cuba&source=web&ots=FaH4QIHTK6&sig=tdDkX5GLfVkdyzNph8vKOidNVFw&hl=en#PPA181,M1

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/2211

Before he underwent intestinal surgery last summer, Castro was in the midst of an energy-saving crusade in which he distributed pressure cookers and offered household tips on TV.

http://www.cubatrade.org/Articles05.pdf

2005
... the government would distribute 100,000 pressure cookers each month at subsidized prices.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDcastroF.htm

In 2005, for instance, after Fidel launched a national energy-saving campaign, his government imported a huge quantity of Chinese pressure cookers and began to distribute them to Cubans at subsidised prices. Thereafter, Fidel gave speech after televised speech explaining Cuba's energy woes and arguing that the cookers' fuel efficiency made their purchase a virtual patriotic duty

I can think of no other reason for you to continually obsess on this and post bullshit propaganda, except that you are on a payroll. :shrug:

[Bacchus39]

17. Cuba lifts ban on consumer goods including pressure cookers

http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-32471220080313


how progressive of Cuba to do this in 2008.



HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist Cuba has authorized the unrestricted sale of computers and DVD and video players in the first sign that its new president, Raul Castro, is moving to improve Cubans' access to consumer goods.

An internal government memo seen by Reuters on Thursday said the appliances long desired by Cubans can go on sale immediately, although air conditioners will not be available until next year and toasters until 2010 due to limited power supplies.

Only foreigners and companies can buy computers in Cuba at present, while DVD players were seized at the airport until last year, when customs rules were eased.

Now Cubans will be able to buy them freely, paying for them in hard currency CUCs, or convertible pesos, worth 24 times more than the Cuban pesos state wages are paid in.

"Based on the improved availability of electricity, the government at the highest level has approved the sale of some equipment which was prohibited," the memo said.

It also listed television sets, which were already on sale, electric pressure cookers and rice cookers, electric bicycles, car alarms and microwave ovens.

Raul Castro, 76, has led Cuba since July 2006 when his older brother Fidel Castro provisionally handed over power after intestinal surgery from which he has not fully recovered.

The younger Castro was formally named president on Feb. 24, becoming Cuba's first new leader in almost half a century, and he promised to ease some of the restrictions on daily life.

[Mika]

18. Clearly a case of OCD.

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm

[Billy Burnett]

19. Yup.

:rofl:


Time to put the defender of the empire on ignore. It's a bad trip.