Fidel Castro, Internet junkie

7.9.10

Fidel Castro, Internet junkie - latimes.com
Fidel Castro is back from the dead (his words) and has been reincarnated as an Internet junkie. Not only is he a prolific blogger on Cuba's online Granma newspaper but, it turns out, the 84-year-old greybeard consumes 200 to 300 news items a day on the Web and is fascinated by the WikiLeaks site, with its trove of 90,000 formerly secret U.S. documents on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The "resuscitated" revolutionary is smaller and shakier than he was before the intestinal illness that prompted him to hand power to his younger brother in 2006, but no less verbose. He spoke with the editor of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada for five hours, during which he raved about the profound impact of the Web. "Do you know what this means, comrade?" he asked, like some sort of Rip Van Winkle waking up in the 21st century. The Internet, he said, "has put an end to secrets.... We are seeing a high level of investigative journalism, as the New York Times calls it, that is within reach of the whole world."

Well, not the whole world. Cuba, for example, has the lowest level of Internet penetration in the hemisphere, plus severe government restrictions and censorship affecting those who do have access. A Brookings Institution report says that Cuba has 1.3 million users, or 13% of the population, according to Cuban government statistics — or about 2.6% by international estimates. Either way, that's lower even than impoverished Haiti's 23%.