By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on March 4, 2023
Meta has been at it again. It deactivated 363 Facebook accounts of Cuban users, in addition to 270 pages and 229 groups, as well as 72 from Instagram. The operation covered other social networks such as YouTube, TikTok and Twitter, and included hundreds of pages of Bolivian citizens. (more…)
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on February 11, 2023
Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin
The new banality of evil is tourism, capable of turning a Nazi concentration camp, where 200,000 people were interned between 1936 and 1945, into an object of consumption. In Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, more than 30,000 died from disease, starvation, medical experiments, torture or the gas chamber. (more…)
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on December 22, 2022
The Intercept has provided evidence this Tuesday of the long-standing and incestuous relationship between the social network Twitter and the Pentagon. Not only has the platform helped “amplify certain messages” in countries targeted as enemies by the United States government, but also executives of the blue bird network have granted the US Department of Defense special privileges for covert Internet campaigns for at least five years. (more…)
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on December 8, 2022
In a surprising display of sincerity, the U.S. government has just admitted that it is Washington that prevents Cuba from accessing the Internet. The Department of Justice has recommended to the Federal Communications Commission to deny a permit for the island to link to the submarine cable that interconnects the Caribbean countries with the American continent. (more…)
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on November 11, 2022
Horrors will be seen. It’s no coincidence that Elon Musk put together his Twitter buyout show just before the U.S. midterm elections. It’s hard to swallow that the South African is behaving like Attila just out of sympathy for the likely Republican candidate for the 2024 election. The underlying plot here is not Trump liking; he is the Trump of Silicon Valley. (more…)
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on October 27, 2022
On Monday at noon Twitter users noticed a modification to the tagging policy. The social media platform began tagging a group of public media outlets as “affiliated with the Cuban government” and the tag would in turn appear on messages sent or shared from any individual account that linked to those publications’ websites. (more…)
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on October 14, 2022
photo: Enrique Gonzalez
Ernest Hemingway learned in Cuba that the best way to get through a hurricane is to have your ears tuned to a battery-powered radio and keep your hands busy with a bottle of rum and a hammer to nail down doors and windows. The American writer appropriated the typical jargon of Cuban meteorologists and fishermen who speak of “the sea” in the feminine and of the hurricane as a demon or evil sorcerer, and who, when a storm leaves the island, usually say that “it entered in the channel” or that “it crossed the land.” (more…)
By Alejandra Garcia on September 13, 2022, from Havana
Eusebio Leal, photo: Bill Hackwell
Cuba has much to thank Eusebio Leal, who was, until his death, one of the men who most traveled, studied, and loved our country. Wherever he scratched, life from the past reappeared: from the most emblematic work of architecture of Old Havana to the most humble of the surrounding community buildings. (more…)