“We stand with the Cuban people,” US President Joe Biden says in an official White House statement, responding to protests across the Caribbean island country, “and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel disagrees as to the nature of the protests. “All this discontent, these feelings of dissatisfaction, what is the ultimate cause of all that?” he asks. “It’s the blockade. This is part of the U.S. playbook to destabilize us, to generate chaos, to break our will and spirit.”

Diaz-Canel has a point.

There’s no actual “blockade,” but there is an embargo, now yearly 60 years long, under which most trade with Cuba is forbidden to American businesses (and foreign business which operate the US).

The supposed purpose of the embargo has been, simply put, to make life hard enough on the Cuban people that they rise up and overthrow the communist regime. So when Diaz-Canel blames the embargo for popular discomfort and dissatisfaction, a US claim that he’s wrong is essentially an admission that the embargo serves no worthwhile purpose whatsoever.

Which seems to be the case. Six decades of failure to achieve its purpose kind of speaks for itself, don’t you think?

If Biden really wants to “stand with the Cuban people,” there are two easy steps he can take to do so in an honest way.

First, he can ask Congress to lift the embargo and declare a policy of unilateral free trade with Cuba. If Cubans aren’t going to be permitted to trade with Americans, let the Cuban regime, not the US regime, be the ones to say so — and to pay any price in popularity that comes with the decision.

Second, he can ask Congress to end all restrictions on travel and migration between Cuba and the US. If you’re a Cuban who wants to visit or live in America, or vice versa, and if you can can find a way to make the journey, the US government won’t stand in your way (again, if the Cuban government does, that’s on them).

Will those two things happen? Not likely. Florida’s a swing presidential state with a strong lobby and associated Cuban-American voting bloc that favors economic protectionism in the name of an “anti-communism” that aims to keep Cuba’s Communist Party in charge at all costs.

But if he dares risk it, Biden can actually stand up for freedom — in a way that invites the Cuban people to reveal and act on their true preferences, whatever those preferences may be — instead of just mouthing dishonest platitudes.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“If [Donald] Trump and [Bernie] Sanders take the same position on Big Tech censorship,” David Catron writes at The American Spectator, “the issue deserves serious attention.”

He’s right, but in pretty much the opposite of the way he intends. When the mainstream “right” and “left” agree on anything, that’s almost always a blazing neon sign warning us that our freedoms are under threat.

Catron (and Trump and Sanders) want the US government to seize control of social media platforms and dictate which users those platforms must accept and what kind of content those platforms must permit publication of. They don’t put it quite that baldly, of course, but who would? Their cause is implicit in their criticisms of “Big Tech” as a “monopoly,” which requires government regulation to promote competition in the “marketplace of ideas.”

Social media platforms aren’t monopolies. If you don’t like Facebook or Twitter, you can go to Minds, MeWe, Diaspora, Mastodon, Gab, Discord, et al.

The US government, however, IS a monopoly. Everyone’s forced to “do business” with it, and in many areas it forcibly forbids or limits competition with its own offerings.

Arguments in favor of government regulation of social media platforms aren’t arguments against monopolies. They’re arguments in favor of extending the government monopoly’s reach into new markets. In this case, markets constitutionally protected by the First Amendment and by that amendment’s codification in statute vis a vis the Internet, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Social media platforms’ banning and content moderation decisions aren’t “censorship.”

Censorship is “you can’t say that.”

“You can’t use OUR PLATFORM” to say that isn’t censorship.

If you tell me I can’t sing my favorite Irish ballad, and that if I do you’ll have me arrested (assuming you have the power to do so), that’s censorship.

If you tell me I can’t sing “Foggy Dew” on your front porch at midnight, that’s not censorship. I’m free to sing it on my own front porch, or on the sidewalk, or at karaoke night at the local bar.

By way of arguing the point, some of my friends point out that politicians bully major Internet platforms into “censoring by proxy.” The popular example is US Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) successfully leaning on Amazon Prime Video to remove “anti-vaccine” documentaries.

My friends are right. It’s a problem.  Politicians attempting to compel platforms to host speech they don’t want to host is the flip side of the same problem, not a different problem.

Whatever the solution to that problem may be,  repeal of the First Amendment or “reform” of Section 230 aren’t part of it.

Ideally, bad actors like Schiff, Trump, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis would be impeached and removed from office, or charged with conspiracy against rights (18 US Code § 241), or both.

Barring that, we should work to ensure that these evil-doers lose in Congress, in the courts, and at the ballot box. We mustn’t sacrifice Internet freedom, or freedom of speech and press in general, to politicians and their schemes.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Associated Press headline, July 8: “Biden with few options to stabilize Haiti in wake of slaying.” Following the assassination of president Jovenel Moïse, AP reports, “the U.S. is unlikely to deploy troops.”

Nonetheless, the American political and media establishments seem to blithely assume that Haiti’s internal affairs are very much America’s business. State Department spokesman Ned Price says “It is still the view of the United States that elections this year should proceed.” An “electoral timetable” proposed by Moïse was “backed by the Biden administration, though it rejected plans to hold a constitutional referendum.”

Imagine, for a moment, that Russian president Vladimir Putin announced his support for the US holding 2022 congressional midterm elections, but denounced a proposed constitutional amendment.

Haven’t American politicians spent the last several years kvetching about supposed “Russian meddling” in US elections? Is there some particular reason why “election interference” is bad when others do it to us, but good when we do it to others?

The United States has intervened in Haiti’s internal affairs for more than 200 years, almost always with poor results for both countries’ populations.

After Haiti’s slave population rose up and overthrew their French masters, Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton recognized Toussaint Louverture’s new regime and encouraged independence (Louverture maintained the colonial relationship with France until 1804).

Under Thomas Jefferson, the US withdrew that diplomatic recognition under pressure from slave owners who feared a spread of Louverture’s rebellion to the American mainland, and  refused to recognize Haiti’s independence until 1862. Subsequently, Washington intervened militarily in Haiti multiple times, occupied the country from 1915 to 1934, and supported the dictatorships of Francois “Papa Doc”  and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier from 1957 to 1986 on the Cold War logic that Haiti could be a Caribbean “counterweight” to Communist Cuba.

Since the fall of Duvalier The Younger, the US government has continued to intervene in Haitian affairs — dangling and withdrawing aid, engaging in economic blockade, and intercepting and repatriating US-bound refugees, based on who’s in charge in Port-au-Prince and whether they toe Washington’s line.

While it’s simplistic to conclude that the US government is responsible for all of Haiti’s many problems, Washington certainly bears a great deal of responsibility for those problems. The way forward and out of that culpability is less, not more, interference in Haiti’s affairs.

If the US government really needs a “Haiti policy,” that policy should include two elements: Free trade and welcoming refugees. Beyond that, hands off Haiti!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY