Communists, indeed even socialists, with their fervor for central planning, command-control decision by elites, cannot abide the liberating force that is the Internet.
Bringing the Light of Freedom to Cuba
By Heritage Foundation Mike Gonzalez——Bio and Archives--March 21, 2012
The society that Pope Benedict XVI will find when he lands in Cuba next week will be a destitute one, prostrate in every way. The once proud and comparatively wealthy Cubans are now among the poorest in the hemisphere, definitely the least informed and, consequently, the least free. For outsiders, Cuba is a cautionary tale about what happens when a minority with guns takes over and tries to create a socialist paradise. For Cubans, who can’t escape, Cuba oscillates between inferno and merely tedious existence.
Cuba is disconnected from the rest of the world, via phone or internet, because the communists in charge want it that way. Information is power, and the last thing the generals in charge want is an empowered population. And the Internet, of course, is the most liberating media of all.
The Heritage Foundation and Google Ideas will team up today for a conference on how to bring connectivity to Cuba. The featured speaker at this conference will be Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), whose parents hailed from Cuba and who has used his position as ranking member of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee to become a powerful voice for human rights.
The Heritage Foundation is the nation’s most broadly supported public policy research institute, with more than 453,000 individual, foundation and corporate donors. Heritage, founded in February 1973, mission is
to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
