Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 9:37pm

One More Thing to Thank God For This Thursday

 

 

Michael Totten reminds us why we might wish to thank God this Thursday that we were not born in Cuba:

Private Internet is banned. You can only get online in hotels, Internet cafes, and government offices. Regular citizens are effectively prohibited from accessing the Web by the price. It cost me seven dollars an hour to use a dial-up connection. The government caps Cuban salaries at 20 dollars a month, so it costs a citizen ten days of income just to get online for an hour. Once they do get online, the connection will be so slow that surfing around is impossible. It took me the better part of my hour to get connected, to open my inbox, and to send a single email to my wife telling her I had arrived safely and without incident.

The government strangles the Internet because it fears free information. There can be no other reason. That’s also why they vet journalists in advance and require special visas. Information can barely get in and barely get out. There can be no Twitter or Facebook revolution in Cuba’s near future.

And there are apparently no real newspapers or magazines, at least none that I saw. No International Herald Tribune. No Newsweek and Time in the dentist’s office. No Google News since there is no Google. Certainly not the Wall Street Journal or The Economist.

I hadn’t even been there a full day and I already felt umbilically severed from the rest of the planet. My awareness of the world narrowed to what I could see right in front of me. I felt as though I had lost one of my senses. I had no real access to the Internet. No CNN, no New York Times. No blogs, not even my own. Nothing at all. I could not use my iPhone. I may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean.

The only newspaper I saw was Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party. Juventud Rebelde supposedly exists somewhere, as well, but I didn’t see any copies.

That, by the way, is the most outrageously named newspaper I know of. The English translation of Juventud Rebelde is Rebel Youth—as if it’s Cuba’s version of Rolling Stone. But God, no. It’s not that at all. Rebel Youth indoctrinates young people with the zombie ideology of walking dead men. Youthful and rebellious it ain’t. It is the most tired, stale, old, and establishment “newspaper” in the hemisphere.

 

Go here to read the rest.  Freedom, you never really cherish it until its gone.

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philip
philip
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 12:19pm

Cuba sounds like the perfect home for Michelle, Barry, Nancy and on and on.

I am grateful for our freedoms.
To all contributors and frequent visitors of TAC….Happy Thanksgiving and Blessings to you and your loved ones.
Thank God for all of you.
Your insights and deep Faith help me to go on proclaiming the Great News in my daily affairs. Thanks be to God.

Ron
Ron
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 12:52pm

Obama must wish he was Castro.

tamsin
tamsin
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 2:53pm

But, free healthcare!

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 4:33pm

By far the scariest part I found was:

French philosopher Michel Foucault assailed it as a cruel, ingenious cage. “The panoptic schema makes any apparatus of power more intense,” he wrote. “It’s strength is that it never intervenes, it is exercised spontaneously and without noise.”

Prisoners collaborate in their own surveillance because their heads are haunted by the thought of an all-seeing eye.

No prison was ever designed to all of Benthem’s specifications, but dozens were constructed around the world that met most of them. The one that most closely resembles Benthem’s Panoptic regime is in Cuba.

I have something to add to it, but quite frankly it chills me too much to say anything.

Jon
Jon
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 4:47pm

Nate, I think today’s society of surveillance is primarily a product of increasing crime. When morality breaks down, people are less likely to self-govern. Resources are limited, and security personnel cannot be placed everywhere. But cameras can be placed almost everywhere.

Don the Kiwi
Don the Kiwi
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 5:24pm

Be careful what you wish for. The way Obama’s going, you’re headed right down that path.
But I suspect that’ll change next November.

Jon
Jon
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 6:14pm

What continues to astonish me is just how committed some peopel remain to theory. They are willing to forego all sorts of things, mistreat others, and deny reality fro the sake of a marxist dream. It’s incredible. Cuba and North Korea are dinosaurs. What’s really scary is that many people in free countries continue to believe in marxism.

philip
philip
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 7:47pm

Don the Kiwi-
“…but I expect that will change next Nov.”

How I wish!!
In 2016 the Dems will go with Cult hit Hillary. As the mindless dweebs thought it cool and “historic” to vote for the 1st Afro-sudo-American you can bet your 4X beer that they’ll vote Hell er eee.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 9:05pm

“When morality breaks down, people are less likely to self-govern. Resources are limited, and security personnel cannot be placed everywhere.”
When morality breaks down? Did morality self implode” The person of God was forcibly removed from the public square by atheism which denies the immortal rational human soul and eternal destiny. When nobody was looking our unalienable civil rights went to hell in a hand basket. Human sacrifice, pornography and every other vile, evil vice became our women’s home companion. Men never bothered to grow up. So, we got sodomy. Legalized, codified atheism begot every demon in hell and you say morality broke down. Well, it had a lot of help.
As far as Hillary, Hillary was more than willing to put innocent men in prison for two years for healing a patient without her healthcare. Hillary is the matron of the gulag. Wait and see if Obamacare isn’t willing to imprison citizens for practicing freedom. Obamacare has a clause which states that Obama may change anything at any time, even Congress cannot do that. Obama can order a conscience clause if he cared about his constituents. “…or prohibit the free exercise thereof.”

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

philip
philip
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 10:21pm

Obama offering a “conscience clause” is akin to Hitler offering a Kosher catalog to the “vacationers of Auschwitz.”

In the end the two sweet ideologists will have an eternity to pat each other on the back at their “social justice practices.”

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 10:28pm

Jon,

I must apologize for heading into the wind with guns blazing with my last comment. All these happenings are no act of God. They are calculated and diabolical man made travesties of Justice. I do not apologize for speaking what they are. I apologize for saying it to an inocent person.
Do forgive me and celebrate a Happy Thanksgiving. At our home some Thanksgiving Days we have a WHOBEAST…one roast beef with eight chiken legs attached. Domesticated WHOBEASTS can’t fly any more than domesticated turkeys.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 10:44pm

Philip: “Obama offering a “conscience clause” is akin to Hitler offering a Kosher catalog to the “vacationers of Auschwitz.”
True. Enjoy your domesticated turkey and remember grace before meals.

philip
philip
Tuesday, November 26, AD 2013 11:14pm

This to shall pass Mary DeVoe…
domesticated turkey & the reign of a false presidency.
Peace.

Jon
Jon
Wednesday, November 27, AD 2013 3:25am

Mary De Voe, I was speaking metaphorically when I said morality has broken down. It’s kind of like saying America hates itself or our society is committing suicide.
What is a Whobeast and what does it taste like? Where can i get one?
Happy Thanksgiving!

Edward Radler Rice
Edward Radler Rice
Wednesday, November 27, AD 2013 8:50am

On November 27th in 1095, Pope Urban II (declared Blessed by Leo XIII) called upon the Franks to defend Eastern Christians and liberate Jerusalem for the glory of God. Give thanks to God for the crusaders.

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Wednesday, November 27, AD 2013 10:11pm

[…] Holidays – R. Eggenberger Be Thankful for Heaven This Thanksgiving – Philip Kosloski One More Thing to Thank God for This Thursday – Donald R. McClarey JD It’s Not Really Wal-Mart’s Fault – Marge Fenelon, Catholic […]

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Monday, December 2, AD 2013 10:36am

Finally found what it was that was unnerving me.

http://hawaiianlibertarian.blogspot.com/2013/12/this-is-just-beginning.html

Prisoners collaborate in their own surveillance because their heads are haunted by the thought of an all-seeing eye.

That’s what’s happening. Society is being turned into a Foucault cage as a whole, and we citizens are collaborating in our own surveillance.

If anything, the cage proves we don’t need the “all-seeing eye” everywhere. Just enough places at random times to convince us it’s everywhere.

And we’ll construct our own cages.

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