The Ministry of Truth

I asked CB of Killcastro to give us his thoughts on Cuba's ridiculous demand for a non-elite information society in Tunisia:

The Ministry of Truth

The piece of news hit me like a ton of bricks: Cuba demands non-elite info society.

Let's analyse what happened in the Tunisian Circus, were the Cuban Information and Communication Minister had a hefty agenda to share with his buddies from the United Nations.

To begin with, the sole title of Mr. Ignacio Gonzalez Planas has to be a joke. In Cuba, the building that houses the Ministry of Information and Communications has a big sign on top of it, which reads:

"En la guerra como en la paz, mantendremos las comunicaciones."

In plain English, "In war, as in peace, we will keep the communications".

But the Habanero sense of humor has given it a colorful spin, saying "en la guerra como en la paz mal tendremos las comunicaciones" or "in war, as in peace, communications will be as badly".*

Well, to be honest, the corresponding counterpart to the ministry to the one headed by Mr. Gonzalez Planas, is the Orwellian Ministry of Truth of the novel 1984.

So Cuba emphasized Wednesday throught that talking head of the Minister that to truly achieve an "Information Society" it requires a world without hunger, ignorance, unhealthiness, discrimination and exclusion. Interesting...

Let's go step by step here....

A world without hunger. In Cuba there's is rationing. The longest lasting rationing card in the history of the world. For the last 45 years, Cubans have been surviving on a combo of starvation diet and black market efforts, exile remittances, and creative gardening and animal husbandry. The goverment only rations more and more, and uses this penury as an instrument of social control. Sorry Gonzo, your first item falls like hot coffee in your lap, burning your b*lls.

A world without ignorance. With many forbidden books in Cuba and with persecution of the independent library you can't talk about ignorance without mentioning your state-sponsored domestic variety. Not to mention the prohibition of owning computers, satelite dishes, fax machines, and the monopoly of information of the tyranny.

Unhealthiness. Gonzo, we all have seen the conditions of the hospitals in Cuba, and worse, we all have seen and experienced how the goverment leaves the population undernourished, with lack of water, electricty, and sanitary conditions, while money goes to finance guerrillas, wars, and undercover actions all over the world.

Exclusion. In Cuba, a foreigner (as long as the foreigner is not a Cuban American) is king. Cubans don't have access to their own country, unless their are guests of a foreigner, or members of the nomenklatura. There are beaches closed to Cubans, a Cuban cannot even dream of visiting a hotel lobby, much less to rent a room in one of them.

Still while speaking at the first plenary of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), meeting in this North African capital, Cuban Information and Communication Minister Ignacio Gonzalez Planas stressed that starving, sick, illiterate and marginalized people will never understand new technologies. Maybe he was describing the state in which kagasstro has left a country that was the third economy of the Americas in 1958, and that now is the first economy in the Americas, just in reverse order.

Presenting a summary of Cuban positions and proposals, Gonzalez said that far from becoming the means to a more just and equitable world, the new information technologies replicate the present neoliberal unjust economic order. By the same token, and at the same time, he apparently considers just and fair that computers are banned in Cuba and that a regular Cuban cannot buy one or the components to build it and much less to connect to an independent internet provider. All of that's verbotten.

He continued saying that the extraordinary conquests of human intelligence have become a privilege of a few countries, rather than becoming true instruments of progress for all. However, he didn't explain why kagasstro keeps the Cuban people marginalized from information and technology.

This part of his speech was a jewel, tough: "In Cuba, we work with a strategy based on the social and collective principles on which our economy and society are based, he stressed, which means rational and practical prioritizing of education, public health, science, culture, economy, government and population services". Do I really want to comment on this?

The Cuban minister pointed out that despite the US economic blockade (sic) and without great financial resources (doesn't kagasstro have 3.9 billion sitting in an account at UBS, in NYC?), every child and adolescent in the country, beginning with preschoolers, receives computer lessons. This is a blatant lie. And besides, if there were a possibility of that being true, they cannot own their own computers, and have to use them in an environment determined and defined by the government.

He also noted that universities in every municipality of the Island use computers as essential tools, while Cuba has a network of 600 free community Computer Youth Clubs to which more than 770,000 Cubans have access, which out of 11.4 million people is just risible. He fails to mention that Cubans cannot have computers at home, that internet access is government controlled and that many people have only access to e-mail and not to the internet, but to an intranet of sorts put in place in his country with the sole objective of controlling the surfing habits of Cubans, feed them precanned goverment information, and preventing them from accessing a treasure of information and opinions that is a universal patrimony of every human being.

Cuban physicians, offering their services in more than 60 countries, also use the Internet as an essential element to share and obtain scientific information, he said. And I say that it's a lie, they only get one e-mail address that is controlled and monitored by the goverment. They have access to the intranet of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, and that's about it Gonzo.

Now the most hilarious part, the minister pointed out that Cuba is willing to share its modest and incipient experience with any nation, to which end it has a functioning stand parallel to the WSIS Summit where thousands of people a day can experience how the Cuban society is using and developing information technology. Meaning, they set up a mock up with a computer fed with tons of propaganda. Too bad they didn't set up another mock up with the cell where they keep prisoners whose only offense is to share information with the rest of the population.

Blogs are banned in Cuba. Our blogs have been visited in Cuba in more occassions than it's shown in our site meters, due to the inventive of the Cubans that manage to circumvent the goverment controls. People are coming to read our blogs, and according to the normatives of the repressive forces, to own a computer, to be able to read English, and to stay up at the wee hours trying to surf over a pirate connection makes you into an enemy of the State.

I received information that Granma is preparing a series of articles on the "enemy uses of the internet" with reference to blogs, hopefully ours among them. I am waiting very anxiously!

*Behind the Information and Communication Ministry is the Ministry of Construction, with another neon sigh saying, "Revolution is Construction" (revolucion es construir) transformed by the Habanero "new man" into "Revolution is destruction" (revolucion es destruir). Located in the same area is the Ministry of Interior with a portrait of che huevera in the facade, donated by France. Close by is the Ministry of the Armed Forces, and at a short distances are the offices of the Devil himself. Curiously, all Internet communications are managed in a site whose physical address corresponds to an area at the back of both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Information and Communication.

Posted by Val Prieto at November 17, 2005 07:19 AM

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Posted by: Alberto Quiroga at November 17, 2005 10:01 AM

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