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I'm sure this will bring me lots of downvotes, but I actually applaud these tactics. Helping people in oppressive regimes to communicate freely with each other

I'm sure this will bring me lots of downvotes, but I actually applaud these tactics. Helping people in oppressive regimes to communicate freely with each other is one of the more humanitarian actions the US can take, and this sort of connectivity is critical in allowing people a degree of freedom even under totalitarian governments. Truly repressive regimes are out there, and without foreign interference and investment people might not have any access to dissenting views. As an example, look at the recent article from HN about Romania's brutal dictatorship.[1] VoA helped to play a major role by inspiring hope and providing alternative viewpoints within an oppressive system. Efforts like this (bringing internet connectivity and alternative service to oppressive regimes which filter internet access) are the VoA of our times. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26838177 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26838177

letrerrr 13y ago
Sigh.
jbooth 13y ago
Well, the US has a pretty checkered history regarding Cuba if you're going to talk about altruism. I'd say we've done more to inadvertantly prop up that regime than to undermine it. There are 3 nominally communist countries left in the world, from a high of dozens -- Cuba's one of them, and probably the closest to actually being communist (China and North Korea being technocratic-capitalist and pharaonic, respectively).
- morgante 13y ago
  Agreed. I definitely don't think we've always had the best policies on Cuba, and also am not entirely convinced Cuba is itself the best target of this sort of effort. But regardless I think the tactics themselves are commendable. Speech, not guns.
  - BgSpnnrs 13y ago
    I think a more commendable tactic would be to not stick their oar into sovereign state's business with a mind to ruin their systems of government. I suppose not killing people is commendable, but it is pretty low bar for moral behaviour.
    - bayesianhorse 13y ago
      If you believe in democracy, you can't believe in any "moral right" or legitimacy of a non-democratic government. Castro, Assad, Putin, neither of them has a moral right to run their countries, as only a freely elected government in a human-rights respecting state can have legitimacy. That doesn't mean these leaders don't have "a claim" to power, or that you necessarily have to actively start deposing them. Yet the only reason a democratic government does not depose an antidemocratic government is if it can't do so. And the latter is true for almost all situations. It stops to be true when there is a specific oportunity to improve the situation.
      - gclaramunt 13y ago
        But you need to be careful to discern what's """real""" and what's propaganda. From the outside, I can also paint a bleak picture of US election process (vote fraud, electoral college, gerrymandering) and if I select the correct news, the US have a presidency bordering on dictatorship that's bent on taking basic rights from the population, and a repressive police force. Besides, the qualification of "human-rights respecting state" might be too much if you consider recent (and not so recent) history.
        bayesianhorse 13y ago
        No democracy ever has been perfect. But You need to apply some serious distortion if you want to say the US is less democratic than Russia. At the very least you have to ignore that there is no opposition in Russia, virtually no dissenting media, virtually no investigative journalism and absolutely legendary corruption. You also need to focus very specifically on "repressive police force", which is easier to do in the US, where the press will hunt down these incidences like sharks will hunt blood in the water. Transparency actually hurts the democratic image of the US, whereas Russia won't ever have these kinds of public scandals...
- davidw 13y ago
  Vietnam is too, in name, but is similar to China, from what I understand. Laos is communist is well, IIRC.
  - dublinben 13y ago
    Vietnam and Laos are socialist countries, not communist by any means.
- jacobolus 13y ago
  To be fair to the Cuban regime, during the period from the 1960s through at least the 1980s, Cuba did better (in terms of health, education, political stability, lack of large-scale violence, (relatively) responsive government, etc.) than most other countries in Latin America or the Caribbean, arguably largely because the US wasn’t able to replace the government with a right-wing dictatorship like the ones that dominated most of the rest of the region. Obviously Castro is no saint, and had no qualms about repressing political dissidents (and I think those on the left in the US and Europe who hold up Cuba or Venezuela as some kind of bastions of freedom are delusional), but on the whole, Cuba actually did reasonably well for itself, especially considering the economic difficulties caused by the U.S. embargo.
  - gadders 13y ago
    For that whole period it was heavily subsidised by the USSR.
    - jacobolus 13y ago
      What else were they supposed to do when their next-door superpower blocked all trade, and brought substantial resources to bear on trying to undermine/destroy them? Invasion plots, assassination plots, every kind of wacky propaganda plot you can imagine (fake radio stations, leaflets dropped from planes), financial support for dissident groups, etc. etc. My point was just that regular Cubans actually did alright, much better than US propaganda would have you believe, and better than most of the other states in the region, including those which were heavily subsidized by the US. They could have easily ended up with a fascist police state or a civil war. American policymakers obviously had legitimate reasons to fear anything that seemed like it might further Soviet interests, given the overall climate of the Cold War, and so as someone born in the mid 1980s I find it hard to judge their intentions and actions, after the fact. However, I tend to think that things would have turned out much better overall for everyone involved if we had kept up diplomatic and economic relations with the Castro regime right from the start, instead of basically forcing them into Soviet arms.
    - jbooth 13y ago
      ..and the right-wing juntas up and down latin america were subsidized by the US. Cuba still did better. You could say, "But that's not a fair comparison, the USSR subsidized things that actually helped people in Cuba while the US only funded commando death squads and fruit exporters, of course Cuba had a higher standard of living".. at which point I'd ask you to review what you just wrote.
- noahl 13y ago
  I realize this may have been an offhand remark in your post, but your description of North Korea as pharaonic is very interesting and something I hadn't thought about before. Do you have any sources comparing North Korea with the government of ancient Egypt, or is that just a comment on the country being built around one person?
  - jbooth 13y ago
    Just the whole cult of personality, near-godhood thing.
tomp 13y ago
Right... as if the US could not do anything else to help Cuba and it's people. (E.g. abolishing the trade embargo.)
- morgante 13y ago
  There's no reason those options have to be mutually exclusive. Sadly, I doubt ending the trade embargo would by itself push Cuba to allow free speech and open dissent.
  - dethstar 13y ago
    Contrary to building a "twitter" for them?
  - tomp 13y ago
    Well, you can't have free speech without media. Cuba first needs some economical growth, so that people get (physical) access to the internet, TV, mobile phones... Then we can talk about de-censoring their media. Also, I heard that they still have rationed food. Free speech is important, but survival is more important.
- diab0lic 13y ago
  One of the key words in the article's title was "secret" and further from the article "There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement,". If the intention were specifically to cause unrest without drawing attention to the states, then lifting the embargo is far too public.
- gadders 13y ago
  But that would prop up the current dictatorship.
  - roc 13y ago
    We prop up worse with less concern. The real reason we won't drop the trade embargo is that it's a very powerful bargaining chip, for whenever the Cuban government decides to talk.
aurumpotest 13y ago
I know what you mean, and mostly agree with you. What they did was actually a good thing, but for the wrong reasons. I doubt that on a high-up level, this was done for the good of the everyday Cuban person.
fit2rule 13y ago
So you'd support other governments doing it to America, then? (Because they do it already..)
- morgante 13y ago
  > So you'd support other governments doing it to America, then? Yes.
thinkr 13y ago
I agree that parts of this tactic were beneficial in helping the people of Cuba to gain increase freedoms, but the article also mentions that these communications were being monitored and stored by the US as well. So obviously the US gains a lot of data on citizens of Cuba that could be used for other purposes.
mcintyre1994 13y ago
Bringing internet to oppressed people, great! Trying to push those people to dissent in the light of recent events seems dangerous and irresponsible, and gathering their data for "political purposes" is pretty lame. As usual I'm on the fence.
mladenkovacevic 13y ago
And I know I'm going to get down voted for this, but that is the most naive thing I've heard all week.
icambron 13y ago
Strongly disagree, though I'd never downvote you for that. Why did the US go to such great lengths to hide its involvement? You might answer that the US's checkered past in foreign policy (coups, assassinations, drug wars, oil wars, supported rebellions, etc) will make the world suspicious despite our altruistic intensions here. But I think the rest of the world's answer is simpler and more likely: our intentions are not altruistic, and this is merely another unprincipled application of power to obtain a goal. That checkered past is good evidence, and there's no reason this is different just because "social media" is a magic word or something. For example, why are we trying to undermine Cuba's regime but not Saudi's? Because our policy goals only pretend to care about dictatorships. And if we care so much about the Cuban people, why do we have a trade embargo against them? Which is why no one trusts us and, frankly, shouldn't trust us. Building a platform that you'll use to "push them toward dissent" isn't providing a medium for free thought and reform; it's psychological warfare. We're trying to capture the attention of people and then trick them into doing what we want. "So what?" you say. "Even if the goals are selfish and strategic, democracy is still good, and Cuba would clearly be better off without a dictator." That's certainly possible, but I doubt it. For starters, our involvement taints any actual emerging democratic movement with the notion that it's just another arm of US foreign policy. I'd like to live in a world where an asshole strong arm dictator can't blame "US meddling" for any unrest without being dismissed out of hand, but sadly, I don't live in that world. So we're really undermining that goal by playing directly into the (mostly correct) notion that the US isn't looking out for other countries' best interests. Maybe we should stop trying to interfere everywhere, because to the extent that our intentions are good in the first place, we're no good at it. But more importantly, it's not really clear that actual democracy is the natural result of this kind of thing. If driven by US involvement, will a grassroots rebellion against the Cuban regime actually result in an open, honest democracy or will it devolve into a feeding frenzy for US interests, led by US-friendly politicians pushed into place by US operatives? The US has installed enough dictatorships and phony democracies for me to think this is more likely. When you use democracy as a veneer, I'm not sure why you'd expect it to really work.
- rickmzp 13y ago
  Quoting from my original comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523278, since it seems very relevant here. ---- Cuban-American here. Helping Castro's controlled economy before giving control of the government and said economy back to its people is unpopular. Allowing the Cuban people to communicate and band together within the country is attempted all the time by government-affiliated and independent organizations, most of which are in Miami and organized by Cuban-Americans. This seems like one of those attempts, sponsored by the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives[1]. If I were in charge of the project, I figure I'd probably also avoid giving this project a U.S. brand as to not catch the attention of Cuban censors or propagandists. Networks are fully controlled by the Cuban government. Their "Facebook" is government built.[2] There are no social networks that are optimized for the tools (like satellite phones) they use to get around censors. At first glance, this seemed like a nice attempt at helping the Cubans get around these limitations. [1] http://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau-democracy-conflict-and-humanitarian-assistance/office-1 http://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau-... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/cuba-launches-facebook-copycat-site-red-social_n_1125771.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/cuba-launches-faceb...
smutticus 13y ago
The Batista regime, which came before Castro, was much worse for the people of Cuba. The US supported the Batista regime because of commercial interests. I'm not going to argue that the Castro is a saint, but the people of Cuba are definitely being treated better than had Batista stayed. No thanks to the US of course, which did everything it could to reinstitute a more corporate friendly dictator in Cuba. Now it seems hating on Cuba has as much to do with winning votes in Florida than it does with corporate interests. The history is still revealing, the US has never intended Cuba to become a democracy and would not welcome a Cuban democratic state. All past and presents efforts instead focus on Cuba becoming a vassal, puppet state to US commercial interests.
- kenrikm 13y ago
  Wow, I'm speechless. You really believe that? My wife is Cuban I've spent a lot of time talking with her grandparents, parents, friends etc.. on the subject. Batista was no saint but things got 100X worse after the revolution. You won't hear the on the ground truth unless you speak with people who were there.
  - kaonashi 13y ago
    Worse for whom? I'm not sure your second-hand anecdotal experiences are all that representative.
    - kenrikm 13y ago
      Don't take my "anecdotal experiences" go, find the facts with an open mind. Many will not like what they find.
      - kaonashi 13y ago
        I have; it's not clear to me that the Castro regime was any more oppressive than Batista (though different people were oppressed, that's clear). It's also seems like a lot of what is blamed on Castro is actually just the fucked-up poisonous choices left to them due to the blockade (though, not all of it).
kenrikm 13y ago
My wife is from Cuba, you don't know the half of it, what most people hear about Cuba and the reality are two completely different things. Anything that can be done to take down that oppressive totalitarian government should be done. It's only a slight step above North Korea. Down vote all you want, but know that it's ignorance intentional or not that fuels the vote. If you're interested in learning more start with this speech by Marco Rubio, he hits on hard truth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUN7d1eYUpM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUN7d1eYUpM
stefantalpalaru 13y ago
VoA in Romania was just propaganda giving out false hopes and giving people the illusion that by listening in secret to forbidden radio stations they were somehow fighting the regime.
mpyne 13y ago
I wouldn't necessarily mind the tactics, but I do strongly oppose USAID having anything to do with it. It's hard enough to deliver humanitarian aid to affected populations without governments also suspecting that nice eager aid worker is really there to foment revolution or collecting intelligence.

letrerrr 13y ago

Sigh.

jbooth 13y ago

Well, the US has a pretty checkered history regarding Cuba if you're going to talk about altruism. I'd say we've done more to inadvertantly prop up that regime than to undermine it. There are 3 nominally communist countries left in the world, from a high of dozens -- Cuba's one of them, and probably the closest to actually being communist (China and North Korea being technocratic-capitalist and pharaonic, respectively).

morgante 13y ago
Agreed. I definitely don't think we've always had the best policies on Cuba, and also am not entirely convinced Cuba is itself the best target of this sort of effort. But regardless I think the tactics themselves are commendable. Speech, not guns.
- BgSpnnrs 13y ago
  I think a more commendable tactic would be to not stick their oar into sovereign state's business with a mind to ruin their systems of government. I suppose not killing people is commendable, but it is pretty low bar for moral behaviour.
  - bayesianhorse 13y ago
    If you believe in democracy, you can't believe in any "moral right" or legitimacy of a non-democratic government. Castro, Assad, Putin, neither of them has a moral right to run their countries, as only a freely elected government in a human-rights respecting state can have legitimacy. That doesn't mean these leaders don't have "a claim" to power, or that you necessarily have to actively start deposing them. Yet the only reason a democratic government does not depose an antidemocratic government is if it can't do so. And the latter is true for almost all situations. It stops to be true when there is a specific oportunity to improve the situation.
    - gclaramunt 13y ago
      But you need to be careful to discern what's """real""" and what's propaganda. From the outside, I can also paint a bleak picture of US election process (vote fraud, electoral college, gerrymandering) and if I select the correct news, the US have a presidency bordering on dictatorship that's bent on taking basic rights from the population, and a repressive police force. Besides, the qualification of "human-rights respecting state" might be too much if you consider recent (and not so recent) history.
      - bayesianhorse 13y ago
        No democracy ever has been perfect. But You need to apply some serious distortion if you want to say the US is less democratic than Russia. At the very least you have to ignore that there is no opposition in Russia, virtually no dissenting media, virtually no investigative journalism and absolutely legendary corruption. You also need to focus very specifically on "repressive police force", which is easier to do in the US, where the press will hunt down these incidences like sharks will hunt blood in the water. Transparency actually hurts the democratic image of the US, whereas Russia won't ever have these kinds of public scandals...
davidw 13y ago
Vietnam is too, in name, but is similar to China, from what I understand. Laos is communist is well, IIRC.
- dublinben 13y ago
  Vietnam and Laos are socialist countries, not communist by any means.
jacobolus 13y ago
To be fair to the Cuban regime, during the period from the 1960s through at least the 1980s, Cuba did better (in terms of health, education, political stability, lack of large-scale violence, (relatively) responsive government, etc.) than most other countries in Latin America or the Caribbean, arguably largely because the US wasn’t able to replace the government with a right-wing dictatorship like the ones that dominated most of the rest of the region. Obviously Castro is no saint, and had no qualms about repressing political dissidents (and I think those on the left in the US and Europe who hold up Cuba or Venezuela as some kind of bastions of freedom are delusional), but on the whole, Cuba actually did reasonably well for itself, especially considering the economic difficulties caused by the U.S. embargo.
- gadders 13y ago
  For that whole period it was heavily subsidised by the USSR.
  - jacobolus 13y ago
    What else were they supposed to do when their next-door superpower blocked all trade, and brought substantial resources to bear on trying to undermine/destroy them? Invasion plots, assassination plots, every kind of wacky propaganda plot you can imagine (fake radio stations, leaflets dropped from planes), financial support for dissident groups, etc. etc. My point was just that regular Cubans actually did alright, much better than US propaganda would have you believe, and better than most of the other states in the region, including those which were heavily subsidized by the US. They could have easily ended up with a fascist police state or a civil war. American policymakers obviously had legitimate reasons to fear anything that seemed like it might further Soviet interests, given the overall climate of the Cold War, and so as someone born in the mid 1980s I find it hard to judge their intentions and actions, after the fact. However, I tend to think that things would have turned out much better overall for everyone involved if we had kept up diplomatic and economic relations with the Castro regime right from the start, instead of basically forcing them into Soviet arms.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    ..and the right-wing juntas up and down latin america were subsidized by the US. Cuba still did better. You could say, "But that's not a fair comparison, the USSR subsidized things that actually helped people in Cuba while the US only funded commando death squads and fruit exporters, of course Cuba had a higher standard of living".. at which point I'd ask you to review what you just wrote.
noahl 13y ago
I realize this may have been an offhand remark in your post, but your description of North Korea as pharaonic is very interesting and something I hadn't thought about before. Do you have any sources comparing North Korea with the government of ancient Egypt, or is that just a comment on the country being built around one person?
- jbooth 13y ago
  Just the whole cult of personality, near-godhood thing.

tomp 13y ago

Right... as if the US could not do anything else to help Cuba and it's people. (E.g. abolishing the trade embargo.)

morgante 13y ago
There's no reason those options have to be mutually exclusive. Sadly, I doubt ending the trade embargo would by itself push Cuba to allow free speech and open dissent.
- dethstar 13y ago
  Contrary to building a "twitter" for them?
- tomp 13y ago
  Well, you can't have free speech without media. Cuba first needs some economical growth, so that people get (physical) access to the internet, TV, mobile phones... Then we can talk about de-censoring their media. Also, I heard that they still have rationed food. Free speech is important, but survival is more important.
diab0lic 13y ago
One of the key words in the article's title was "secret" and further from the article "There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement,". If the intention were specifically to cause unrest without drawing attention to the states, then lifting the embargo is far too public.
gadders 13y ago
But that would prop up the current dictatorship.
- roc 13y ago
  We prop up worse with less concern. The real reason we won't drop the trade embargo is that it's a very powerful bargaining chip, for whenever the Cuban government decides to talk.

aurumpotest 13y ago

I know what you mean, and mostly agree with you. What they did was actually a good thing, but for the wrong reasons. I doubt that on a high-up level, this was done for the good of the everyday Cuban person.

fit2rule 13y ago

So you'd support other governments doing it to America, then? (Because they do it already..)

morgante 13y ago
> So you'd support other governments doing it to America, then? Yes.

thinkr 13y ago

I agree that parts of this tactic were beneficial in helping the people of Cuba to gain increase freedoms, but the article also mentions that these communications were being monitored and stored by the US as well. So obviously the US gains a lot of data on citizens of Cuba that could be used for other purposes.

mcintyre1994 13y ago

Bringing internet to oppressed people, great! Trying to push those people to dissent in the light of recent events seems dangerous and irresponsible, and gathering their data for "political purposes" is pretty lame. As usual I'm on the fence.

mladenkovacevic 13y ago

And I know I'm going to get down voted for this, but that is the most naive thing I've heard all week.

icambron 13y ago

Strongly disagree, though I'd never downvote you for that. Why did the US go to such great lengths to hide its involvement? You might answer that the US's checkered past in foreign policy (coups, assassinations, drug wars, oil wars, supported rebellions, etc) will make the world suspicious despite our altruistic intensions here. But I think the rest of the world's answer is simpler and more likely: our intentions are not altruistic, and this is merely another unprincipled application of power to obtain a goal. That checkered past is good evidence, and there's no reason this is different just because "social media" is a magic word or something. For example, why are we trying to undermine Cuba's regime but not Saudi's? Because our policy goals only pretend to care about dictatorships. And if we care so much about the Cuban people, why do we have a trade embargo against them? Which is why no one trusts us and, frankly, shouldn't trust us. Building a platform that you'll use to "push them toward dissent" isn't providing a medium for free thought and reform; it's psychological warfare. We're trying to capture the attention of people and then trick them into doing what we want. "So what?" you say. "Even if the goals are selfish and strategic, democracy is still good, and Cuba would clearly be better off without a dictator." That's certainly possible, but I doubt it. For starters, our involvement taints any actual emerging democratic movement with the notion that it's just another arm of US foreign policy. I'd like to live in a world where an asshole strong arm dictator can't blame "US meddling" for any unrest without being dismissed out of hand, but sadly, I don't live in that world. So we're really undermining that goal by playing directly into the (mostly correct) notion that the US isn't looking out for other countries' best interests. Maybe we should stop trying to interfere everywhere, because to the extent that our intentions are good in the first place, we're no good at it. But more importantly, it's not really clear that actual democracy is the natural result of this kind of thing. If driven by US involvement, will a grassroots rebellion against the Cuban regime actually result in an open, honest democracy or will it devolve into a feeding frenzy for US interests, led by US-friendly politicians pushed into place by US operatives? The US has installed enough dictatorships and phony democracies for me to think this is more likely. When you use democracy as a veneer, I'm not sure why you'd expect it to really work.

rickmzp 13y ago
Quoting from my original comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523278, since it seems very relevant here. ---- Cuban-American here. Helping Castro's controlled economy before giving control of the government and said economy back to its people is unpopular. Allowing the Cuban people to communicate and band together within the country is attempted all the time by government-affiliated and independent organizations, most of which are in Miami and organized by Cuban-Americans. This seems like one of those attempts, sponsored by the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives[1]. If I were in charge of the project, I figure I'd probably also avoid giving this project a U.S. brand as to not catch the attention of Cuban censors or propagandists. Networks are fully controlled by the Cuban government. Their "Facebook" is government built.[2] There are no social networks that are optimized for the tools (like satellite phones) they use to get around censors. At first glance, this seemed like a nice attempt at helping the Cubans get around these limitations. [1] http://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau-democracy-conflict-and-humanitarian-assistance/office-1 http://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau-... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/cuba-launches-facebook-copycat-site-red-social_n_1125771.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/cuba-launches-faceb...

smutticus 13y ago

The Batista regime, which came before Castro, was much worse for the people of Cuba. The US supported the Batista regime because of commercial interests. I'm not going to argue that the Castro is a saint, but the people of Cuba are definitely being treated better than had Batista stayed. No thanks to the US of course, which did everything it could to reinstitute a more corporate friendly dictator in Cuba. Now it seems hating on Cuba has as much to do with winning votes in Florida than it does with corporate interests. The history is still revealing, the US has never intended Cuba to become a democracy and would not welcome a Cuban democratic state. All past and presents efforts instead focus on Cuba becoming a vassal, puppet state to US commercial interests.

kenrikm 13y ago
Wow, I'm speechless. You really believe that? My wife is Cuban I've spent a lot of time talking with her grandparents, parents, friends etc.. on the subject. Batista was no saint but things got 100X worse after the revolution. You won't hear the on the ground truth unless you speak with people who were there.
- kaonashi 13y ago
  Worse for whom? I'm not sure your second-hand anecdotal experiences are all that representative.
  - kenrikm 13y ago
    Don't take my "anecdotal experiences" go, find the facts with an open mind. Many will not like what they find.
    - kaonashi 13y ago
      I have; it's not clear to me that the Castro regime was any more oppressive than Batista (though different people were oppressed, that's clear). It's also seems like a lot of what is blamed on Castro is actually just the fucked-up poisonous choices left to them due to the blockade (though, not all of it).

kenrikm 13y ago

My wife is from Cuba, you don't know the half of it, what most people hear about Cuba and the reality are two completely different things. Anything that can be done to take down that oppressive totalitarian government should be done. It's only a slight step above North Korea. Down vote all you want, but know that it's ignorance intentional or not that fuels the vote. If you're interested in learning more start with this speech by Marco Rubio, he hits on hard truth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUN7d1eYUpM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUN7d1eYUpM

stefantalpalaru 13y ago

VoA in Romania was just propaganda giving out false hopes and giving people the illusion that by listening in secret to forbidden radio stations they were somehow fighting the regime.

mpyne 13y ago

I wouldn't necessarily mind the tactics, but I do strongly oppose USAID having anything to do with it. It's hard enough to deliver humanitarian aid to affected populations without governments also suspecting that nice eager aid worker is really there to foment revolution or collecting intelligence.