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- Xref: sparky misc.activism.progressive:8202 alt.activism:18471
- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism
- Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!ukma!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
- From: kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
- Subject: CACM's Cuba hatchet job, Nov. `92 (was Re: Cuban refugees)
- Message-ID: <1992Nov7.090357.16588@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Summary: Cuban Disinformation Campaign: The Reaganoid Zombie Process hasn't
- Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Keywords: Cuba,CACM,propaganda,US embargo against Cuba,disinformation
- Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: >>> Eskimo North (206)-FOR-EVER <<<
- Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 09:03:57 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 146
-
- Note follow-ups line.
-
- In article <987@nazgul.UUCP> bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
- >In article <MS-C.720410727.1103527590.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) writes:
- >/In 1991, the number of Cubans rescued at sea after fleeing Cuba was
- >/2,203.
- >
- >I wonder how many Americans fled to the Workers' Paradise in Cuba during
- >the same period.
-
- 3 answers here -- take your pick :)
- 1) 23,795 -- and they *all* had a pirated copy of Zortech C++! :)
- [FYI late-comers, Walter works for Zortech -- kurt]
- 2) 42 (this answer works everywhere! but, like Godel's Theorem, any
- system strong enough to prove it can also disprove it :)
- 3) Probably not many -- personally, I wouldn't care to be mistaken for a
- returning gusano. But maybe refraining from wearing fatigues and
- shades suffices here. Birkenstocks probably work better :) . Many
- Americans did just that in the early 70's onwards.
-
- BTW, anybody see the hatchet job on Cuba in the Nov. `92 CACM?
-
- It looks like 5 of Mark's cantankerous AIs got loose and were pressed
- into service by the USIA. A by-blow of the brief collaboration appears as
-
- G. M. Mesher, R. O. Briggs, S. E. Goodman, L. I. Press, and J. M. Snyder
- Cuba, Communism, and Computing
- Communications of the ACM 35(Nov. 92)11:27ff
-
- The article takes the form of a heavily ideologically biased "economic
- intelligence report" (i. e. "executive report") that presumes to examine
- the computing situation in Cuba. The authors visited Cuba presumably
- to attend Informatica `92, a trade show in Havana. However, hardly anything
- is said about what the authors saw at the trade show. Personally, I would
- have found it interesting to see some pictures. The article also mentioned
- nothing about whatever might exist in Cuba in the way of professional
- computing associations, or what, if any, were the directions of Cuban
- informatic research. Actually, the article's a negative puff piece that
- dwells on the economic problems that Cuba faces as its old trading partners
- fade away and new ones stay away, intimidated by the US's remaining economic
- clout. Only a brief mention is made of the continuing US embargo.
-
- The front-page illo shows Castro's head peering in dismay out of a terminal
- as a hand holding a pair of scissors snips the cable leading to the terminal.
- But get this: on the cuff of the hand is a *red* *star*, not an American flag!
- Nevertheless, towards the end of the article, the authors describe how
- the existing primitive facilities in Cuba (and the ailing international lines
- that serve them) worked to connect them to their home base in Arizona from
- Cuba. Wouldn't surprise me if the article was typed on an author's laptop
- in Havana telnetted to his home base, the author cussing and swearing at the
- creaky 1200-baud link, as a fan overhead turned lazily and somewhere, a fly
- droned in the sultry Havana night... :) .
-
- The history of Cuban computing is "once-over-lightly"ed (one line
- for each "era"), and segues
- into an analysis of the hardware industry, and the Cuban's efforts to
- find a sustainable solution to their own economic problems, some of which
- are doubtless due to difficulties associated with centralized economic
- planning, but most of which are deliberately orchestrated by the US and it's
- "allies" [IMO]. Cuba's tentative attempts to try out capitalist ideas are
- ridiculed, deprecated and minimized by labelling them "nouvelle communism",
- an offensively flippant neologism, IMO. I would expect that this would
- warrant applause, but it would appear that this is not in accordance with
- the Master Plan for Cuba, as defined by the US and their Miami Minions
- (the latter, also known as "gusanos", get a brief bow; the authors describe
- them as "a sizeable and fairly well-to-do (and sometimes resented) expatriate
- community 90 miles away").
-
- The authors cite as one example of evidence that work is inadequately
- rewarded, that the author of a successful software program would not
- receive an increase in his salary as a result. Are we to believe that
- there are no rewards *whatever* given for superior performance? Is this
- the general practice or was it just true where the question was asked?
- Now it really may be true that in Cuba workers receive *no* extra perks,
- bennies, vacation, or other compensation whatever in exchange for superior
- performance (other than salary). But from the article, I can't tell if such
- a question was ever asked. Indeed, a candid answer wouldn't have served the
- purposes of the article, that much is clear.
-
- Now I don't know all that much of Cuba, but I do know that most of what
- we *do* "know" is disinformation, and the CACM article does little to
- dispel that notion. Many of the facts reported may actually be true.
- However, there's a sneering, hectoring, downright catty tone to the article
- -- the sort of snotty condescension that I might have expected to find in a
- *Dartmouth* *Review* rant about shantytowns on campus.
-
- Here's a particularly juicy quote where the Cubans are accused of *theft*
- of software [last 2 paragraphs of pg. 29]:
-
- The Cuban government's ideological opposition to capitalism creates
- another obstacle to the development of a software export industry by
- not recognizing software copyrights. Cuba maintains a National Software
- Interchange Center [NSIC -- kurt], where copies of all kinds of foreign
- software are made
- available to any Cuban citizen free of charge. Ignoring foreign copyrights
- solves the immediate problem of meeting software needs under conditions of
- capital scarcity. But it will make it more difficult for Cuba to export
- software products into markets which depend on the respect of those same
- intellectual property rights.
- Beyond the piracy issue, by not directly recognizing the intrinsic value
- of software, an important feedback link is removed from a system which is
- supposed to produce high-quality products capable of competing on the
- international market...
-
- Of course, in the course of the accusation, our intrepid agents [oops --
- I meant authors -- kurt] failed to note how they arrived at that conclusion,
- possibly concluding that our imaginations would serve us a lot better than
- any dry and boring description of actual events or observations.
- Of course, the obstacles *our* gov't (BTW, the same one accused of *stealing*
- Inslaw's software) causes by prohibiting *imports* from Cuba are *nothing*
- compared to the Cuban's self-destructive disdain for intellectual property
- laws! I'll bet they even ignore the Refac X-or cursor patent, the fiends!
- Typical buncha commies...
-
- Notice their mention of the NSIC. How is it different from any BBS or
- similar software repository in the US? The authors don't tell us.
- Again, they prefer to let our imaginations replay gory details supplied to
- us originally by their colleagues during the Cold War.
- Instead, the next paragraph, by starting off "Beyond the piracy issue..."
- [an extraordinarily subtle application of the "Big Lie" technique IMO --
- I have to hand it to you psy-ops guys -- that's what I call technical
- excellence! -- kurt] implants the idea thoroughly in the readers mind that
- the data held by the NSIC was acquired dishonestly. I would have preferred
- that the ACM devote a whole issue to Cuba (the way they did, in a relatively
- friendly fashion, to the old USSR a number of years back), where they could
- discuss the NSIC in depth (among other things), in a way more interesting to
- concerned programmers, rather than the way a bunch of Tom Tomorrow-style TV
- pundits would do it. I hope that they print rebuttals to the article in
- future issues. If this slides by American programmers, then perhaps it is
- they who are unfit to compete internationally!
-
- Cuba is pinning its hopes on software (as are a lot of other 3rd world
- countries -- but note -- this is also what the first-world countries are
- doing. I think this has them worried). It has a high literacy rate
- and hopes to develop a pool of software-knowledgable workers that
- can serve as temporary workers on foreign projects. What I want to know
- is how it serves American programmers to print articles knocking the
- software establishment of the COE (Current Official Enemy).
- I already know how it serves America's masters, so we needn't reiterate on
- that.
- --
- kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
- Nostalgic conservatives are already referring to the Bush Era as
- "those Halcion days of yesteryear".
-
-
-