*Say WHAT? You're Cuba, yet you don't know what to do with your dissidents? Does Fidel have senile amnesia? Hint: you arrest them and all their friends! Their friends used to be hard to find, but now you just bust whoever follows 'em on Twitter. Have you learned nothing from Iran?
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/1380664.html
Cuba is counter-attacking its cyber-foes with government backers calling them mercenaries and CIA agents, but sometimes admitting it's difficult to fight Internet critics like well-known blogger Yoani Sánchez.
There must be a defense, but how?'' wrote one government supporter on Progreso-Weekly.com If you [answer] them, you validate them. If you ignore them, you confirm them. If they are repressed, they are empowered. And if they are not repressed, they are also empowered.'' (((Hey Cuban geekboy: A, remove computer, B, place blogger in cell)))
The answer seems to be to counter-attack. Half-a-dozen posts referring to a media war'' and the need to man the trenches'' in ``defense of the revolution'' have popped up on pro-government blog sites in the past three weeks.
Most of the posts took direct aim at Sánchez and her Generación Y blog, and were published after she posted President Barack Obama's replies to her questions on Nov. 19. (((I hate to think what would happen if Huffington Post started cozying up to Fidel.))) But the posts left no doubt that all of the 15 or so other bloggers who regularly criticize the Cuban government are viewed as dangerous subversives.
``Those who want to restore capitalism receive financial and technical support, from both inside and outside the island, to build a counterrevolutionary front,'' wrote Enrique Ubieta, editor of the Cuban magazine La Calle Del Medio.
`CONFRONTATION'
If bloggers ``have, as the only goal of their acts, the toppling of their adversary, the seizure of power; if there's an express intent to subvert, then we speak of confrontation and the right of the revolution to defend itself,'' wrote Vladia Rubio, a writer in the official Granma newspaper. (((What, against all 15 of 'em? I'm scared, that's like two squads, half a platoon.)))
Most of the counter-attacks were posted on the Cuba-based Cambios en Cuba blog, where a cartoon shows Obama ripping open his shirt, Superman-style, to reveal the Sánchez blog's logo, and another shows her as a ``cyber-clown.''
Several blogs implied she lied when she complained that state security agents had beaten her in mid-November, (((Cuban state security agents never hit girls))) and that the many international prizes she has won were arranged by powerful anti-Castro interests to lend weight to her criticisms of the Cuban system.
CUBAN SITE
Other attacks were posted on Blogcip, a Cuban site with 44 blogs aimed at ``helping to overcome the accumulation of distorted and erroneous reports about Cuba, and publicize how Cubans think, live, struggle and work on an island constantly harassed.''
One post on Blogcip was titled ``Pentagon Babe,'' and another took a name, DesdeCuba.net, oddly similar to the name of Sánchez' portal, DesdeCuba.com.
``In principle, the Cuban government is not opposed to the blogger movement, but it's a different thing when those blogs don't reflect the real situation in Cuba,'' said Alberto Gonzalez, spokesman for the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington.
Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor whose blog, El Yuma, focuses on Cuba issues, said the attacks seldom focus on the blogs' criticisms and their ``overall intent is to argue that the fatherland is threatened by an ungrateful anti-Cuban, a skinny computer hacker with a poison pen – ink bought and paid for by Uncle Sam, of course.'...'
