Cuba USA

The New York Times cannot ignore Cuba

by Omar Pérez Salomón

source Pupila Insomne

transaltion Cuba -Network in Defense of Humanity

Everything seems to indicate that the time has come to move The New York Times piece in the chessboard planned and organized from Washington to attack and give check mate to the Cuban Revolution. It cannot not be any other way when we observe the about face of its editorial policy related to Cuba after the publication of the editorial: It is time to connect Cuba to Internet of last November 30.

The singer songwriter Silvio Rodríguez expressed in 2010 “We are a country who worked to alphabetize, build universities of doctors and artists. Now they intend to make us want pianos without strings, winds without shoes” but, however. it is a history that cannot be annulled, or even ignored. We expose 20 realities that deny what is published by the US media.

1. In 1959 all the Telephone centrals, transmission equipment and links by cable were made in the United States. The fierce blockade of technology against Cuba, limited maintenance of the technology installed, the purchase of equipment from the northern nation in 57 years and the growth of telephone density.

2. Since 1959 communication by cable between Cuba and the United States was blocked, not by the Cuban Government in such a way that in1986 they were blocked definitively. At that time began the proliferation of fiber optic cables, but this Antillean nation did not have permission to connect with any of the dozens of cables that passed along her shores – merely 30 kilometers away.

3. Cuba placed a service of underwater cable of fiber optics that links the Island to Venezuela and Jamaica, improving the quality of voice and data transmission and access to Internet as the country made investments in the infrastructure of telecommunications.

4. On October 23 of 1992 US Congress approved the Torricelli law promoted by former president George Bush (senior) and one of the most defined aggressive lines of the US against the Cuban Revolution. At the same time it came out in favor of “proper communications between both countries” in the interest of “promoting political changes in Cuba”.

5. During the 90s of last century Rand Corporation – think tank of the Pentagon – made several studies recommending extending a direct IP connection of internet to offer the Cubans interactive access to materials from abroad; give a rapid response to the request made by the WilTel company for permission to build a fiber optic cable between the United States and Cuba, pending in the US government since March of 1994 and other requests to offer different services related to data, promote trips and other forms of technical exchange since it is difficult to obtain permission to travel to Cuba, avoid legislative restrictions in spheres of communication in the manner of the Helms-Burton Law and allow direct investment of US companies in Cuban infrastructure, offering equipment and services, prohibited by Washington since 1959, after the triumph of the Revolution.

6. The Barack Obama administration continued the line of his predecessors and strengthened the economic and trade blockade against Cuba. In the case of telecommunications, on April 13 of 2009 he issued a memorandum with “permits” for suppliers of services from the United States but hardly implemented.

7. The United States continues confiscating assets of Cuban companies retained in US banks of about 200 million dollars of the telecommunication companies in Cuba.

8. Several sites and services in internet are block for users who reside in Cuba. For example equipment of medical imagery are controlled or that include in their composition computer parts based on Windows XP of 6 4 bits that requires activation by Microsoft 30 days after installation. The activation can be made automatically through internet, through direct connection of the computers to the Microsoft server manually connected by telephone to any office of the company in the world. None of these two options are available for Cuba since it has no Microsoft representation in the island and rejects automatic activation through a server of the company when it comes from Cuba.

9. Exert pressure on companies in allied countries; that is the case of the Spanish Telefónica that was demanded in November of 2011 by the US Stock Exchange for alleged businesses and contacts with the Cuban Telecommunications Company, ETECSA.

10. The US Sprints and Cuban ETECSA have not been able to implement the service of roaming – that allows travelers from one country to continue using the services of calls, messages and data on their cell phones while visiting another country– since transactions with US banks and those of third countries fear sanctions applied for doing these operations.

11. The Revolution has invested more than two billion pesos to send communications to the most separated places of the Cuban geography.

12. Cuba has highly qualified human resources in the TIC among the first countries according to the report of the International Union of Telecommunications in 2014.

13. In their 28 years the Young Computer Clubs have prepared, free of charge more than 4,2 million Cubans in subjects related to the TIC.

14. Cuban universities are connected to Internet and extend substantially their broad band in the past year. This also occurs in scientific centers, press associations and other institutions that have priority in the creation of technical conditions that could be obtained.

15. Increasingly more Cubans, in spite of the technological limitations – scarce resources of connections and infrastructure – use Facebook, Twitter and other social networks as a means of communication with the world. There are more than 3 thousand blogs with different profiles in national platforms.

16. Google executives visited Cuba in less that a year. They carried out visits to Cuban institutions where they learned the interest in the non state sector that the main objective is to search information on Cuban networks, connectivity and programs developed as well as presenting themselves as the fairy god mother that can solve problems of infrastructure for connectivity and to extend broad band that our country presents. The reality is that they presented no new project nor answers to questions raised in several centers related to the limitations of access from Cuba of several Google services.

17. The New York Times claims the Cuban government does not have the political will to expand access to internet. However, the Guidelines of the 6th Congress of the Party approved in April 2011: 131 – aimed at sustaining and developing results reached in the process of granting information to society – the 223 – raise technological sovereignty in the development of infrastructure of telecommunications – 226 – execute investments in the electronic, computer sciences and communications that allow maintaining what has been achieved and their development – demonstrates the contrary. Also, Cuban First vice president Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez explained in the closing event of the 2nd National Workshop on Computer Sciences and Cyber Security last February 20 that “there is the will and effective disposition of the Cuban Party and Government to develop information access for society and place Internet at the services of everyone; aiding the effective and authentic insertion of Cubans to this space”.

18. In the first quarter of 2016 the Union of Computer Scientists of Cuba was constituted. It will be an organization that groups professionals of the technologies of information and communication.

19. The Cuban government plans a program to computerized the country that includes modernization of the infrastructure of telecommunication and computer equipment, update the legal framework, technological security, development of the contents, applications, services, electronic commerce and human capital.

20. Cuba assumes the purpose put forward in the “Connect Program 2020 to the Worldwide Development of the Technologies of Information and Communications” of the International Union of Telecommunications (UIT) explained Ernesto Rodríguez Hernández, General Director of Information of the Ministry of Communications of Cuba.

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