07 February 2007

Privatazing the Contrarrevolución?

With Charlie Rangel holding the American purse strings and William Delahunt and Jeff Flake willing to make a deal with the House of Castro at any cost, The USIBB is being forced to find innovative and cheaper ways for its "product" to reach its "market"

The USIBB, United States International Broadcasting Bureau, the Federal agency that runs TV Marti, knows it has a real turkey on its hands that's about to get slaughtered and offered up as the main dish on the table of Castro appeasement.

TV Marti has never really reached large numbers of Cubans on the island because of successful jamming, reportedly personally supervised by one of Fidel Castro's sons. It has also been plagued by controversy and scandal.

This makes it an attractive sacrificial turkey to the new congress.

These set of circumstances has caused the agency towards a "market solution"

TV Marti is paying $195,000 for six months worth of broadcasts to WPMF-TV in Miami, an affiliate of the Spanish-language Azteca Americas network, for daily programing. It will be the the first time Marti programming has been broadcast on U.S. airwaves. The programing will be able to reach Cubans on the island through DirectTV.

Here's the Regime's response:

"They are trying new ways to get their meddlesome and subversive messages, designed to destabilize the Cuban revolution, seen and heard in our country," an
article in the Communist Party newspaper Granma said.


"The authorities of our country, with the support of the vast majority of the people, are taking and will take the necessary measures" to halt this new effort to bring TV Marti programming to the country, Granma said.


Read more at the Washington Post

News, commentary and lame comedy is "meddlesome and subversive and destabilizing to the Cuban revolution."

Update:

Today. In Misceláneas de Cuba we get a report form independent Cuban journalist, Juan Carlos Linares Balmaseda, informing us that the Cuba’s communist Regime is already taking measures to prevent the Direct TV broadcast from reaching Cubans.

According to Carlos Linares Balmaseda, the National Revolutionary Police in coordination with the Cuban Phone Company and other government agencies have started a campaign to eradicate satellite dishes.

Watching DirectTV or any satellite transmission is illegal in Cuba. The only legal DirectTV dishes are reserved for Hotels that cater ONLY to foreigners as it is also illegal for Cubans to stay in Hotels. Even in the Hotels the signal is interrupted daily to broadcast “Mesa Redonda”, a Cuban “news” program.

Cubans on the island refer to the DirecTV programming received through the illegal dishes as “Television by Cable” (cable TV).

The joint operation taking place in Havana is an effort to eradicate the illegal dishes and cut the homemade “networks” of cables that distribute the “television by cable”.

Rafael Carlos Núñez y Nelson Herrera, two residents of the Havana suburb of Luyano told Linares Balmaseda that they witnessed “patrols of two policemen and a bout a dozen phone company employees in four vans and sometimes on foot, that were combing Pérez street and would cut any suspicious cables capable of carrying the satellite signal.”

According to Linares Balmaseda, similar operations have been reported in other Havana neighborhoods.

UPDATE II

Read Killcastro's poignantly subversive take on this here

5 comments:

Val Prieto said...

Theyve done the satelite removal operation before:

http://www.babalublog.com/archives/003779.html

Gusano said...

"They are fertile ground for those who want to carry out the Bush administration's plan to destroy the Cuban revolution," said the newspaper, the official voice of the government. Such an article in Granma usually signals that action is on the way.

LOL Maybe they're just getting around to doing it now.

Anonymous said...

just b/c you think marti is a waste of tax payer money you are a castro 'appeaser' ..

this blog makes me sick. so does the miami mafia.

Anonymous said...

NO ES POR VER TV MARTI by Alejandro Armengol

LA PERSECUCION AL robo de la señal de televisión no es nueva en la isla. El 9 de agosto de 2006, bajo el título ¿Ir a la cárcel por ver esto? escribí el comentario que reproduzco a continuación. En realidad, quienes viven en la isla no están interesados en sintonizar la TV Martí, sino en ver otros programas. Para consumir ideología, le basta con la que transmiten en Cuba, además de la dudosa calidad -por decir lo mejor- de programas como La Oficina del Jefe.

A continuación, el comentario del 9 de agosto:

Las autoridades cubanas intensificaron los operativos contra los piratas de la televisión por satélite, con severas multas y penas de hasta tres años de prisión, en momentos en que TV Martí inició transmisiones diarias hacia la isla.

La piratería de los servicios de la televisión satelital ''no solo transgrede regulaciones jurídicas nacionales e internacionales, sino que ''en las condiciones actuales, además, son caldo de cultivo para quienes pretenden ejecutar los bjetivos previstos en el plan de la administración Bush para derrotar a la revolución cubana'', señaló este miércoles el diario oficial Granma.


Esto forma parte de las recomendaciones contenidas en el capítulo uno del plan anexionista de (George W.) Bush que pretende destruir a la revolución cubana'', agregó el diario.
El anunció de Granma coincide con el inicio hace una semana de las transmisiones -con al menos cuatro horas de programación diaria hacia la isla- de la TV gubernamental Martí, que Cuba considera subversiva, para la cual Washington emplea un avión militar C-130, informó la Agence France Presse.

Funcionarios estadounidenses señalaron que la puesta en práctica del novedoso proyecto tecnológico se aceleró como resultado de la crisis de salud que obligó a Fidel Castro a delegar sus principales poderes en su hermano Raúl, el pasado 31 de julio.

Reprimir con años de prisión por ver la programación de TV Martí es un hecho propio de un estado totalitario, que debe ser rechazado.
Pero más allá de esta condena necesaria, hay otro aspecto que guarda una mayor relación con el sentido común y el pudor a la hora de gastar el dinero de los contribuyentes.

El régimen de La Habana debería permitir que este canal se viera libremente. No sólo como un derecho que tienen quienes residen en la Isla, sino también como una forma de terminar con tanta chabacanería. En el peor de los casos admito que probablemente sólo se logre sustituirla por otra similar, pero ya ésta aburre demasiado.

El gusto por lo prohibido es uno de los pocos atractivos que pudiera tener en la isla un programa de entretenimiento como el que aparece en la foto que abre este comentario.

Los programadores de TV Martí han equivocado el rumbo. Piensan que lo que gustaba en la Calle Ocho hace ya 20 años puede despertar entusiasmo en Cuba. Creo que ni siquiera por la burla hacia el régimen, hay quien aguante en la isla o en cualquier lugar una carencia tan grande de talento.

Gusano said...

Rangel isn't a castro appeaser because he 's agaisnt tv marti. he's agaisnt tv marti because he's a casro appeaser. big difference.

point is that tv mari is probably gonzo.

rather thank make you sick, you should rejoice.

i don't get the left.

so full of anger.

sheesh.