On July 28, 2008 (and in print at some point in time before that) Computer World/InfoWorld editorial director Don Tennant wrote about the fact that Microsoft (MSFT)—as with all U.S. companies—is legally prohibited from doing business in Cuba. I thought Tennant’s position on this issue might be worth paying attention to because his bio says:
“Don has… held several positions in the U.S. government's intelligence community, including seven years with the National Security Agency.”
I think invoking Microsoft was a canard because one Computerworld Online headline dated July 28 reads “U.S. position on Cuba hurts Microsoft” but another earlier post dated July 18 says “Our obstinance on Cuba is unfair to U.S. companies.” Tennant concludes the July 18 column saying:
“… (In 2007) the Cuban government declared its intention to rid itself of Microsoft software in favor of open-source alternatives. According to an Associated Press report, Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes… suggested that Microsoft was cooperating with U.S. military and intelligence authorities, and he proclaimed that IT is a battlefield on which Cuba is fighting imperialism.”
I am a little confused by that statement because U.S. companies were prohibited from doing business with Cuba for 15 years before there even was a Microsoft. I understand the desire of the Cuban dictatorship to follow its current patron Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Russia, Netherlands and a good mix of other European Community (EC) countries that believe in state-controlled economies down the road to open sourced (read that--in the case of the governments, not the open source community, as “government-controlled rather than free-market competition”) software. But if Cuba never could have legally had Microsoft software how much Microsoft software does Cuba have to “rid itself of?”
This led Tennant off on another tack to end the similar July 28 column applauding one of his readers of the July 18 column for commenting as follows:
"Yet after four and a half decades, our (the U.S. government’s, I think) obstinacy has prevented us from [engaging] one of our closest neighbors and has prevented our (U.S., I think) companies from benefiting from the changes that have occurred there. We are truly the last bastion that has failed to recognize that the ghost of Khrushchev is gone."
Spoken like a guy who is probably too young to have been instructed to hide under the school desk if Khrushchev and Castro pushed the button on their nuclear-tipped missiles.
The real issue is that I am confused by the references to
What are those changes in Cuba that the U.S congress and government are being obstinate about? Changes in religious freedom? Freedom of the press? Freed political prisoners? But what the hell: When you can attack both Microsoft and the U.S. government in one column and make it sound like you’re pro-free-market and pro-American, what a bonanza.
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