USAID discovered spying on and destabilizing Cuba via a Twitter-clone they created

[Peter Lemkin]

Cuba … Again … Still … Forever

Is there actually a limit? Will the United States ever stop trying to overthrow the Cuban government? Entire books have been written documenting the unrelenting ways Washington has tried to get rid of tiny Cuba's horrid socialism from military invasion to repeated assassination attempts to an embargo that President Clinton's National Security Advisor called "the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind". But nothing has ever come even close to succeeding. The horrid socialism keeps on inspiring people all over the world. It's the darnedest thing. Can providing people free or remarkably affordable health care, education, housing, food and culture be all that important?
And now it's "Cuban Twitter" an elaborately complex system set up by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to disguise its American origins and financing, aiming to bring about a "Cuban Spring" uprising. USAID sought to first "build a Cuban audience, mostly young people; then the plan was to push them toward dissent", hoping the messaging network "would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize smart mobs' mass gatherings called at a moment's notice that might trigger political demonstrations or renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society'." It's too bad it's now been exposed, because we all know how wonderful the Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan, and other "Arab Springs" have turned out.
Here's USAID speaking after their scheme was revealed on April 3: "Cubans were able to talk among themselves, and we are proud of that." We are thus asked to believe that normally the poor downtrodden Cubans have no good or safe way to communicate with each other. Is the US National Security Agency working for the Cuban government now?
The Associated Press, which broke the story, asks us further to believe that the "truth" about most things important in the world is being kept from the Cuban people by the Castro regime, and that the "Cuban Twitter" would have opened people's eyes. But what information might a Cuban citizen discover online that the government would not want him to know about? I can't imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami and other southern cities; both CNN and Telesur (Venezuela, covering Latin America) are seen regularly on Cuban television"; international conferences on all manner of political, economic and social issues are held regularly in Cuba. I've spoken at more than one myself. What it must be asked does USAID, as well as the American media, think are the great dark secrets being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?
Those who push this line sometimes point to the serious difficulty of using the Internet in Cuba. The problem is that it's extremely slow, making certain desired usages often impractical. From an American friend living in Havana: "It's not a question of getting or not getting internet. I get internet here. The problem is downloading something or connecting to a link takes too long on the very slow connection that exists here, so usually I/we get timed out'." But the USAID's "Cuban Twitter", after all, could not have functioned at all without the Internet.
Places like universities, upscale hotels, and Internet cafés get better connections, at least some of the time; however, it's rather expensive to use at the hotels and cafés.
In any event, this isn't a government plot to hide dangerous information. It's a matter of technical availability and prohibitive cost, both things at least partly in the hands of the United States and American corporations. Microsoft, for example, at one point, if not at present, barred Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service.
Cuba and Venezuela have jointly built a fiber optic underwater cable connection that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos; the outcome of this has not yet been reported in much detail.
The grandly named Agency for International Development does not have an honorable history; this can perhaps be captured by a couple of examples: In 1981, the agency's director, John Gilligan, stated: "At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind."
On June 21, 2012, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) issued a resolution calling for the immediate expulsion of USAID from their nine member countries, "due to the fact that we consider their presence and actions to constitute an interference which threatens the sovereignty and stability of our nations."
USAID, the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (and the latter's subsidiaries), together or singly, continue to be present at regime changes, or attempts at same, favorable to Washington, from "color revolutions" to "spring" uprisings, producing a large measure of chaos and suffering for our tired old world.


5] Sandy Berger, White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
6] Associated Press, April 3 & 4, 2014
7] Washington Post, April 4, 2014
8] Associated Press, June 2, 2009
9] George Cotter, "Spies, strings and missionaries", The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p.321