MKNE political information

Now here’s a find: a blog run by young people in Cuba, and one that gives some real insights into life in that much-mythologised island.

It is spearheaded by Yoani Sanchez, who seems to be an extraordinary woman indeed. The ethos looks a marvellously liberal one: “Freedom discovers roads that suppression cannot find”. I wouldn’t mind that one as an election slogan for the LibDems! She is so upfront about what she is doing that her profile page includes a picture of her national identity card.

The future of Cuba could be very interesting especially now that the USA will shortly have at least the capacity to make intelligent choices over its relationship with Cubans. This is definitely a resource to watch…

See this post for example about the reluctantly-conceded benefits of the fragments of a free market in foodstuffs… and what still remains extraordinarily absent.

Various of these blog posts are translated, almost in real time into English, and with some selective delays into languages such as Lithuanian (like this one on the longest war – Cuba’s intervention in Angola), German, Bulgarian and Finnish.

On the site is a current press release:

December 6, 2008
Between December 5 and 6 the first exchanges of a knowledge workshop have begun to take place between people who maintain Internet blogs from the Island and others interested in exploring this medium. Conceived from its beginnings as a journey of study with several stages, the encounter was deprived of its inaugural session because agents from the Interior Ministry cited and officially announced to some participants that they would be prohibited from attending the inauguration in the city of Pinar del Río. It is not possible to provide documented evidence of this prohibition because said agents refused to confirm it in writing.
But freedom discovers roads that suppression cannot find. That’s why the workshop participants, faithful to their choice of dialog and the search for viable alternatives, turned to other methods to begin the journey, without having to physically travel from one territory to another.
There have been several initial topics: General notes about a blog, conducted by Yoani Sánchez, which addresses technical questions related to the software appropriate for a blog; The writing of a blog, proposed by Reinaldo Escobar, with a debate on the application of journalistic norms in drafting the new language of cyberspace; and finally, The Ethical Blogger, where Eugenio Leal introduces concepts relative to ethical conduct in this novel way of transmitting ideas and information. The texts of these discussions and others will be posted on a website.
The exchange of experiences took place in an informal atmosphere of respect for different opinions and purposeful debate.
Promoting this experience were the collaborators from the digital magazine Convivencia and from the Desde Cuba portal , among others.
These first steps constitute an authentic management of knowledge. Among the suggested initiatives is a call for participants in a competition for Cuban blogs, to be launched in 2009. These new variants to the plan of study about Cuban blogs remain open to all interested parties.

Hope there are interested parties other than the Cuban Secret Police to keep a friendly eye on all of this.

Labels: blogs, cuba, freedom