digitall565

And to be honest this pretty much lines up with what adults get on Masterchef and shows like GBBO as well. Guidelines but not very specific instructions.

So she never got to meet George in the end? Bummer.

if the only thing that is preventing this ruling from quickly biting us in the ass is that people will get angry about it then we are all doomed.

And I bet before yesterday's ruling, you thought the FCC was going to rule in the ISP's favor, because there's no reason they'd have to listen to what the people want. My point is, making an assumption that we are all doomed because things couldn't possibly go our way if we got angry enough is defeatist and patently false, especially when the opposite was demonstrated yesterday.

Hell we have laws in place that allow for unlawful detention of American citizens and that still hasn't been stopped.

My experience has been that people have gotten a lot angrier about net neutrality than unlawful detention of citizens. The former has had passionate advocates working for over a decade to push back on ISPs while Americans have grown generally complacent about the detention (and killing) of American citizens.

A Cuban blogger by the name of Yusnaby Perez (one of the few who have found ways to post freely on the internet) made a post about experiencing the CDR in Cuba. The post in the link is in Spanish, but I translated it when he released it so I could send it around.

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The CDR in Cuba By Yusnaby Pérez

There is a man who, every week, visits my neighbor Mercy at her home. The only thing we know about him is that every visit someone on our block receives bad news: a position of employment denied, a trip abroad rejected, a license not provided or a requested phone number never assigned, etc.

Mercy is the president of the CDR of my street, an organization created in during the full swing of socialism in 1960 with initials that match: Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. In every corner of my country there is a CDR; a system of continuous monitoring among neighbors.

When shrimp are cooked in my home, we have to shut the windows and doors tightly. The smell can betray us to Mercy. The next day, the leftovers cannot be thrown away with the trash on the corner, we have to walk four more blocks away so that we aren’t discovered by Mercy. It is the same way with my neighbor Luisito, who rents out a room at night: he must wait for Mercy to fall asleep to allow in tenants looking for nocturnal passions. We all take care with her. When we see her we smile and wave, but we know she is taking mental notes of anything our smiles may be giving away. She is responsible for giving information to the police chief of our sector, the investigators from the Community Party, and the State Security Service agents, or G2 (political police), regarding our lives in great detail. Mercy takes note of our sexual preferences, our attitudes, and our political opinions; she writes down whether we work or story, and, if neither apply, we are denounced and applied the “law of potentially dangerous behavior”. Mercy stays aware of who we meet with and who visits our homes. If a foreigner sleeps on our property, she calls immigration and we are fined thousands of convertible pesos (Ed. note: More expensive U.S. dollars instead of Cuban pesos).

Mercy has developed a list of every neighbor who has relatives abroad, now that that is an issue that is well tracked and investigated. It has been her responsibility to organize acts of repudiation, i.e., summoning as many neighbors as possible to go to the homes of “counterrevolutionaries” and throw rocks, yell “revolutionary” slogans, and provoke an embarrassing violent outbreak on the part of the accused. On election day, she goes from house to house taking note of who has and has not voted. She obliges the ones who haven’t voted to do so, and even brings the ballots to their home for the “commodity” of the voter. Whoever refuses to exercise their right to vote is put on her list of the “disaffected of the block” (Ed. note: Spanish desafectos; “dissatisfied with the people in authority and no longer willing to support them”)

The future of a student or worker is subject to the whims of a persona responsible for monitoring them, who in a secret fashion collaborates with the political organs of the state. Mercy’s opinions, solely due to her declaration of loyalty to the “Revolution”, are above all others regardless of personal or academic merit or contributions to labor made by the individuals in question.

This continuous monitoring reveals the old man who sells bags “illegally”, the teacher who in his spare time gives free classes, the carpenter neighbor who has no license, the friend who eats beef and the citizen that has political beliefs which are “different”… because of this, there exists a double standard in Cuba. That’s why people criticize the government with their voices low, quietly, because they know that someone could be listening on the other side of the wall.

My friend Lachy was not able to receive a college career because the president of the CDR “informed” that his family was Catholic. In the first 30 years of this organization, religious individuals, homosexual individuals, and Cubans with family and friends abroad were strongly denounced.

When I turned 14 years old, Mercy automatically added me to the list of “cederistas” (Ed. note: CDR supporters). She never consulted with me! Those who refuse to join are investigated and every possible opportunity for them is gone.

The effectiveness of the Cuban political police y and Department of Technical Research rely on the existence of the CDR, which offers close, detailed, and continuous information on the targets that must be investigated.

Now they want to implement in Venezuela what are referred to as “communes”; a fixed institution to sow fear, self-censorship, distrust between neighbors, and root our all opposition or outbreak of citizen activism. A practice that functioned and still functions in Cuba.

Many ask: why does no one in my country complain or demand their rights? Because there is always someone watching, who will denounce you and disgrace your life. In my case, that person is Mercy, president of the CDR, and charged with “revolutionary vigilance” as the poster pasted on the door says.

THE GENTLEMAN IS CORRECT IN MAKING THIS MOTION.