ZunZuneo: USAID Funded 'Cuban Twitter' To Undermine Communist Regime 173
barlevg (2111272) writes "In a country where the government severely limits access to the world wide web, ZunZeneo, an anonymous SMS-based social network, drew more than 40,000 Cuban users at its peak, the Associated Press reports. On it, people shared news and opinions about music and culture. But what none of its subscribers knew was that the project was secretly funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), though a series of shell corporations and foreign bank accounts, and that its stated goal was 'renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society' in the Communist stronghold, hopefully leading to a 'Cuban Spring.'"
Re:USAID (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the same thing here on Brazil. USAID here helps every one who wants to overthrow any government that does not comply doggedly what the U.S. told to do.
As an American, I can assure you that simply do not understand what you are talking about. While I have no idea whether any US agency cares any about government change in Brazil, I can tell you that Lula was no problem at all. The man was rational and competent and if he and the US had different ideas from time to time, at least there was some logic to what he was doing. Dilma Rousseff is a completely different story. Early on she came on with the same anti-US ranting and ravings that are quite popular in South America these days. Geez, I don't think I've ever seen anything more embarrassing from a national leader than her photo with Fidel where she looked like an aging rock groupie wanting to suck him off at the first chance she got.
Oh dear, oh dear. Yes, I have to agree here; that is horrible. Terrible. Possibly even Terrorism. Ranting and raving against the US! Having her photo taken with Fidel!! Because no US politician would ever rant or rave against neighbouring counties. Or have their photo taken with dubious world leaders.
If the US is trying to support opposition to her presidency, well, that is a fight that she started.
Certainly. If a politician says some mean things about the US, that TOTALLY justifies US meddling in that politician's country. There is lots of jurisprudence here, because it is exactly the time-honoured schoolyard argument that teachers like so much: "But teach, THEY started it!". (And in the same time-honoured schoolyard tradition, the original offence is of course microscopic compared to the retaliation.)
Renegotiation [Re:USAID is not a NGO (Score:3, Interesting)
it seems to say that the USAID helped set up social networks in Cuba that weren't controlled by the government. That sounds like a good thing to me. I'm puzzled why any /. readers would object to this.
Because the goal isn't to set up social networks, it's to start a violent coup and ultimately reinstall a U.S. puppet government in Cuba. These social networks are just a means to a slimy end.
Why do I care about the purported goal-- what we should care about is what they were actually doing, which was setting up a social network independent of the Cuban government. That's a good thing.
The stated goal, in any case, was not "to start a violent coup." I don't know if the US government even knows what it wants (Cuban policy seems to nearly zero priority in the US, outside of south Florida)-- but the quote from the article was "its stated goal was 'renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society' ".
Rephrasing that to make it say "let's start a violent coup" is rather distorting. "Renegotating the balance of power between state and society" sounds like a good thing-- in the US, too.