Thursday, July 17, 2008

US embargoes dissent in Cuba

According to a document leaked to the very interesting website Wikileaks, Cuba's government has negotiated with Venezuela's government to establish a cable connection to the internet. Apparently Cuba has been walled off from the internet via anything but a slow and expensive satellite connection thanks to Amerca's embargo on Castro's prison paradise. I'm not a big fan of the Cuban embargo, but this strikes me as a particularly boneheaded aspect of it – it's very difficult to fully censor the internet, and in a semi-repressive communist country, the internet could be a great way of safe communication among dissidents. There are already a few famous dissident bloggers in Cuba, and it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be more if Cubans could access the internet more cheaply and easily.

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