Andres Martinez has a great piece today questioning why the MSM (among others) doesn’t seem to care all that much about freedom in Cuba as compared to in the Middle East. The media’s neglect is all the more shameless when one takes into account Cuba’s internet restrictions:
Now, Cuba is no Egypt. Cuba’s disdain for basic human rights and democratic norms is far more startling a departure from the prevailing conditions in its part of the world. And Cuba is far more shut off from the outside world than Egypt is. There can be no heroic Google employees or Twitteratis or Facebookers in Havana precisely because the communist regime has been so successful at keeping Cuba sealed off from the outside world and the 21st century. The “Arab Spring” may yet inspire Cubans to demand more freedoms, but the fact that they are not on the grid in any meaningful way makes that less likely.
It’s appalling, meanwhile, how the Castro brothers, who have ruled the island for more than half a century, continue to get a pass for their behavior, as if they have a license to preside over a tropical gulag in perpetuity.