To Fight Communism, the U.S. Should Beam Internet Into Cuba
"The Cuban people are not asking for military intervention."

Are they still protesting in Cuba?
I don't know.
The Cuban government has shut off the Cuban people's internet.
The big demonstrations began four weeks ago, sparked, curiously, by a rap song. The key lyric is: "Freedom! No more Doctrine!"
"Doctrine" refers to the "constant cycle of propaganda" from the government, explains Cuban émigré Alian Collazo in my newest video.
Sadly, silly TV reporters in America claimed the protests were about "hunger, pandemic restrictions and the lack of COVID vaccinations," or, according to ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "food and fuel shortages."
"Nonsense!" says Collazo. The cause is clear. "The protesters were yelling, 'Down with communism!' and 'Libertad! Liberty!'"
Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) claimed, "They are protesting the lack of materials during the pandemic, particularly the lack of medical supplies."
Collazo is bewildered. "She speaks Spanish! Can she not listen to what the Cuban people are saying? 'Libertad' means 'freedom'!" It's true that Cubans want food, "but if you don't have liberty, you don't have food."
Some people say Cubans lack food because of what Ocasio-Cortez calls America's "absurdly cruel" embargo.
The embargo is absurd and counterproductive.
But that misses the point."
Do research on what the embargo is! Medicine, food, and all of that can be traded," says Collazo.
Yes, they can. America exempts food and medicine from its embargo.
Also, at least 80 other countries do trade with Cuba.
The real reason for shortages and suffering in Cuba is communism. "When the government controls your business," says Collazo, "people don't have food. All resources end up in the hands of the state."
Other American "useful idiots," like Michael Moore, praise Cuba's "free" services.
In his documentary Sicko, Moore took a group of Americans to a Cuban hospital and celebrated how they were given free health care.
But Collazo points out that "free" is misleading. "Go to a hospital in Cuba—they don't even have aspirin! Yeah, [health care's] free. [But] it's horrible."
When the recent protests began, a reporter asked President Joe Biden's press secretary, Jen Psaki, "Do you think that people are leaving Cuba because they don't like communism." She responded, "They are opposed to the oppression [and] mismanagement of the government."
She wouldn't condemn communism by name.
Fortunately, a few days later, her boss did. "Communism is a failed system, a universally failed system," said Biden. "I don't see socialism as a very useful substitute."
Good for Biden for saying that.
Collazo wishes he would do more.
"The Cuban people are not asking for military intervention," he says. Instead, "Get the president of the United States to deliver internet."
The current protests "happened spontaneously," says Collazo, "because of social media. That's why the regime didn't even know about it…they were surprised by the enormous amount of individuals that went out at the same time."
Because of that, Cuba's government has now shut down the island's only internet provider. Future protests will be hidden from the rest of the world.
The United States could beam internet into Cuba.
I don't know if it would make a difference.
But Collazo thinks it would. "This is historic. In Cuba, we have never seen this."
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How?
Internet doesn't work like radio. (well, actually, wifi works exactly like a radio, except there's a transmitter at both ends of the connection.) So all we need is a really big wifi access point in whichever part of Florida is closest to Cuba, and then for someone to remember that the range of wifi is measured in meters, which is not quite enough to reach Cuba from anywhere in the US. You COULD set up a wireless connection that used a different radio frequency than 802.11 (wifi) but then you've got the problem that nobody in Cuba can connect to it. I suppose you could pull a subsea fiber-optic cable from Florida to Cuba (they can cross the Atlantic with fiber optic, and do) but you have the same problem... nobody in Cuba has equipment that can connect to it. Same problem with Directv and Dish networks' satellite options. So maybe what we do is pay Comcast to set up broadband access in Havana. Surely the customer service will convince the Cubans to stay put, and stop washing up on the Florida beaches.
So all we need is a really big wifi access point in whichever part of Florida is closest to Cuba
Or Guantanamo Bay, which I'm told is really really close to Cuba. Like, it's practically part of it...
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Your geographical knowledge is weak. Most of Cuba is more than hundreds of meters from Guantanamo Bay. Out of range of wifi. And you still then have to connect your base station to the US.
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Stossel is calling for foreign interventionism by calling for the state to beam signals into Cuban space.
Would Stossel support Cuba doing the same - the signals may not be internet perhaps?
It is not the job of the state to fight communism in other countries !
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Indeed.
I don’t get that part either. A former coworker that grew up in socialist Slovakia talked about getting Austrian radio and I believe tv. They knew all the market goods their western neighbors had that they couldn’t get.
The US govt shouldn’t be funding any efforts like this. If someone else did the question is on what devices will the Cubans receive these signals?
The US funded radio broadcasts into the Eastern Bloc for a couple of generations, but that was radio, which doesn't require a transmitter at both ends. You could try convincing various cable channels not to encrypt their uplink satellite signals, so that the Cubans (and other repressed peoples of the world) could put up satellite dishes out behind their houses and watch reruns of "The Apprentice" to see how great we Americans have it. Internet is much, much harder. We can barely get Internet service delivered to rural America.
He wasn’t talking about Radio Free Europe. Bratislava is less than an hour drive from Vienna. They were getting regular broadcasts over the air.
Not sure Cubans can own sat dishes. They still have analog tv stations.
Satellite dishes are not difficult to make.
Are they easy to make with the available parts in Cuba? And what are the chances they get confiscated if someone managed to make one?
You can make a satellite dish out of a radio receiver and tinfoil, I went to high school in the 1980's with a guy who built a bunch for his science-fair project.
Plus, as was pointed out for you, Cuba is only embargoed from the United States. Other countries remain free to provide them with consumer products, if the Cubans can afford them.
Satellite dishes are pretty common in Cuba. They also have a sneaker net system called El Paquette where international media is distributed via USB sticks.
Stossel must be a neocon. We don't need his kind anymore.
Because of that, Cuba's government has now shut down the island's only internet provider.
Sounds like they're only stopping misinformation.
B-b-but... that's different!
A++++++
Oh guess, who the front page, above-the-fold story is about in my local rag?
TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!
The media desperately needs Trump. Let's elect him in 2024 to assuage the anxiety of journalists everywhere. It's clear they desperately miss him. Maybe they'll shoot themselves in the head like Hunter S. Thompson did when Nixon was no longer a foil.
He's Florida's problem now!
She wouldn't condemn communism by name.
Let's keep in mind that Psaki was once photographed wearing a hammer and sickle pin.
With Jen Psaki, the ideology matches the drapes.
Peter Hitchens has some interesting perspectives on the Blair government, and all the people who followed him in. Blair, like Hitchens was also a revolutionary Trotskyist who, unlike Hitchens, never recanted. The modern left is chock-a-block with real Marxists who smuggle themselves in as centrist liberals.
>With Jen Psaki, the ideology matches the drapes.
That got a laugh out of me!
Thank you for that. You win the internet for today.
I'm all for fighting communism in Cuba, but what about communism in the USA? We've got a one-party government passing $3.5 trillion in Green New Deal and social welfare programs, and the party seems to have almost total control of the media.
They mean well.
"We’ve got a one-party government passing $3.5 trillion in Green New Deal and social welfare programs,"
We do? Where?
Now it isn't "bipartisan"?
Just to be clear, if the Democrats don't kill the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court, it's because they don't want to kill the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court.
The illusion of bipartisanship is useful, and the downside of being an emperor is that there's no one else to blame for things people don't like. Emperor Xi has a corruption purge periodically.
People used to write letters to Stalin from the gulag. Stalin wouldn't have sent them to die in Siberia! It must be the corrupt people who work for him. The enemy within!
They love having the Republicans around to play that role. How would they you keep up the pretense of protecting society from the menace of Republican racists, xenophobes, sexists, and homophobes without keeping some Republicans around?
^^ Well Said Ken.
How did any of that answer the question?
No more mean tweets.
It can’t be said enough.
And the definition of 'mean' is not cuddling socialist propaganda.
I'm all for fighting communism in Cuba, but what about communism in the USA? We've got a one-party government passing $3.5 trillion in Green New Deal and social welfare programs, and the party seems to have almost total control of the media.
You can say that again.
He stole that extra comment from the proletariat!!
To Fight Communism...
The ruling regime has no interest in this.
Nor did the previous one.
Why do pundits keep saying this? You can't "beam" the internet and more than you can "beam" face-to-face conversations. The internet is a two-way process. You could beam responses to Cuba, but that's going to be 0 Mbps as long as there are no requests.
Most of them are fairly ignorant about many many things.
Details are for other people to figure out.
How about we worry about our communists before we deal with Cuba's?
Bummed because nobody's paying any attention to you?
Who would you rather have in charge of your internet? The Cuban Government or Jack Dorsey.
go.
They both have shitty beards, but the Cubans do have nice cigars, so……
Is Ajit Pai unavailable? He did such a swell job.
If they don't want doctrine, then the special internet we 'beam' can't have Google, You Tube, Apple, Twitter, etc, etc.
How free are Western countries when its citizens are mandated to have vaccine passports to live our lives?
Which western country (sorry, I meant Western country) do you live in where you are required to have a vaccine passport to live your life?
Sorry Cuba; The current USA-Nazi's aren't going to be much help in a pursuit of eliminating Communism... But they will pretend your protests are a problem of NOT-ENOUGH Nazism *just* like Hitler did.
Why should the United States fight communism in another country? No more interventionism, John Stossel. Let others liberate themselves.
"To Fight Communism, the U.S. Should Beam Internet Into Cuba"
That's all we need is for so-called libertarians like Stossel calling on the state to fight communism in other countries !
Secondly, purposefully beaming signals into another country without their permission constitutes foreign interventionism - even if a low-level one.
But these actions are such that they are likely to be responded to in a tit-for-tat
Why would an administration trying to make the USA more like Cuba want to change Cuba?
The internet in Cuba was only out in certain areas of Cuba, and only for a couple of days. It is notoriously unreliable, but it's definitely been back up for weeks already.
Fuck John Stossel. How about some decent internet for rural residents here in America?
And why is it suddenly so urgent to intervene in Cuba? I can't tell that their level of discontent is anywhere near what it was in, say, Ceaucescu's Romania in 1989, when even the security services were fed up.
Mah. If the Cubans decide they don't want to be Communists any more, it's up to them to say so, directly, to the Communists. If the limit of their level of not-wanting-to-be-Communists-anymore is complaining about it but not actually doing anything about it, whose fault is it that they're stuck with it?
On the other hand, if we ever find the microwave emitter that they attacked the diplomats with, we should have a new missile and bomb testing site. THAT actually is a problem for us, as opposed to an other-perople's problem.
Fighting communism? How the fuck is it the business of the USA what they do in Cuba? We have plenty to fix here before we worry about other sovereign nations.