‘Cease illegal activity against Cuba’: Havana slams Washington for ‘Twitter’ program

[KoKo]

‘Cease illegal activity against Cuba’: Havana slams Washington for ‘Twitter’ program
Published time: April 04, 2014 12:22

Havana has blasted Washington’s so-called ‘Cuba Twitter’ texting service as illegal and subversive, saying the United States is persisting in its decades’ long plan to topple Cuba’s communist government.


Reuters/Enrique de la Osa
Josefina Vidal, director of US affairs at Cuba's Foreign Ministry, said late Thursday that the ZunZuneo program "shows once again that the United States government has not renounced its plans of subversion against Cuba, which have as their aim the creation of situations of destabilization in our country to create changes in the public order and toward which it continues to devote multimillion-dollar budgets each year."

Vidal called on the United States to respect international law along with the principles of the UN charter, demanding that it “cease its illegal and clandestine actions against Cuba, which are rejected by the Cuban people and international public opinion.”

According to documents obtained by the Associated Press, the US government attempted to develop a no frills ‘Cuban Twitter’ using cellphone text messaging to circumvent Cuba’s strict control over the internet. Directly alluding to Twitter, the program is known as ZunZuneo — slang for a Cuban hummingbird's ‘tweet’.

The project was financed by the US Agency for international development (USAID), best known for overseeing billions of dollars in US humanitarian aid. USAID staff had noted that text messaging had been a popular fuse in starting political uprisings in Moldova and the Philippines.

At its peak, the site had more than 40,000 subscribers, who were never aware that the network had been created by the US government. The program was discontinued in 2012.

“There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement,” AP cites a 2010 memo from Mobile Accord, one of the project's contractors, as saying. “This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the mission.”

USAID's top official, Rajiv Shah, had been scheduled to testify on Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations State Department and foreign operations subcommittee on the agency's budget.

In an appearance on MSNBC on Thursday, the subcommittee's chairman, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont, called the project "dumb, dumb, dumb."

While US law requires written authorization of covert action by the president State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said the program was neither "secret" nor "covert" under the US government's definitions of those terms. "Discreet does not equal covert," Harf told a news briefing on Thursday.

Harf said the so-called "democracy promotion" program created a platform "similar to Twitter" and was conducted under a three-year grant totaling $1.2 million, Reuters. The program was created with the aid of subcontractors and foreign banks under the tutelage of Joe McSpedon, a US government official.

"We did not supply political content. We did not drive the political content," Harf said, though she noted that initial communications made over the network on topics such as soccer, music and hurricane updates were made by US-funded contractors.

"So this is solely for the purpose of creating a platform for Cubans to express themselves, which has long been the policy of the United States, the United States Congress, and many other people in this country," Harf said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney echoed Harf’s statements, saying suggestions the program was covert “are wrong.”

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[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. The U.S. has never stopped fucking with Cuba. Can't keep its claws off it.

Here's what it says about the Zunzuneo program on Wiki:

ZunZuneo was an online social networking and microblogging service marketed to Cuban users, created in 2010 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The U.S. government covertly developed the service as a long-term strategy to encourage Cuban youths to revolt against the nation's government, fomenting a "Cuban Spring"—a reference to the Arab Spring revolutions. The initiative also appears to have had a surveillance dimension, allowing "a vast database about Cuban ZunZuneo subscribers, including gender, age, 'receptiveness' and 'political tendencies'" to be built. The word "zunzuneo" is Cuban slang for a hummingbird's call.[1]

Contractors funded by USAID "set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit[ed] unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company's ties to the U.S. government," according to an Associated Press (AP) report which traced the origin of the service. ZunZuneo, dubbed the "Cuban Twitter", reached at least 40,000 Cuban subscribers but was retired in 2012 without notice.[2][3] While initially the service attracted subscribers by having discussions on topics such as sports, the plans were to introduce political messages to encourage dissent.[4] After the AP released an exposé in April 2014, the U.S. government acknowledged that it funded the service in order to foment unrest in Cuba.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZunZuneo

[malaise]

2. Cuba?

and anywhere else on the planet that it chooses.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. True, but Cuba is much closer to my heart nt

[malaise]

4. Got it

[Sarah Ibarruri]

5. :-) nt

[newfie11]

6. +infinity!

[Gravitycollapse]

7. Cuba has no free press or freedom of speech. People like Josefina Vidal are state puppets.

Yes, the program was a surprisingly terrible idea. But I don't really give a shit what Vidal or the Cuban state have to say on the matter.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

8. And how far are your words getting you here in the U.S., where only the green paper is allowed

to speak and be heard? I mean, we have to jump through hoops to try to get a Dem in office because the corporate machine pays its way into controlling everything, and Republicans are just so much more friendly to the corporate machine.

The U.S. (well, not the ordinary working man, but the corporate machine, Republicans, etc. and so on) is quite fond of intervention everywhere around the globe - Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, etc., to steal manpower, land, and resources for the corporate machine's pleasure and at their behest, and I resent that and never will I not resent it.

[Gravitycollapse]

9. If you think the level of repression in the US and Cuba is comparable, you have no idea...

What you are talking about.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

11. They're not the same, but then the U.S. has not been shat upon as the U.S. has shat upon Cuba

for over 120 years. I am sick and tired of it. The U.S. just can't keep its filthy claws off the island. It can't resist. It has to always be fucking with it one way or another.

[Gravitycollapse]

12. The US is not at fault for the Cuban police state. That is the fault of the Soviets and Cubans.

You can argue that the Cold War helped facilitate the construction of the Cuban communist regime. But you cannot dump all responsibility for it on the US. That's absurd.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

13. The U.S. is at fault for fucking with Cuba during its entire history and threatening it every day of

its existence. Please let's do stop discussing this. I'm getting angry. Goodbye.

[dipsydoodle]

10. K & R

.