A small community of unofficial Apple technicians in Cuba
restofworld.org
restofworld.org
Not being an official Apple Store doesn’t mean it’s fake, especially if it’s in a prominent mall or something.
If you see an "Apple Store" that looks real but isn't an official Apple Store then it's fake, or its an authorized reseller that if Apple finds out about them will lose their status as a reseller.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110426040855/http://www.mac-co...
The ones in Malaysia are sanctioned by Apple, since they appear on Apple's own store locator website [2].
[1] Google "machines malaysia" for example
[2] https://locate.apple.com/my/en/sales?pt=4&lat=3.160000085830...
PC has removable SSD and many cheap options to buy new machine.
+1 to TextNow here, if you need a free phone number in the US and you don't actually live there, they're the way to go (or were a few years ago at least.)
There is no specific "only apple" in this. So, all the anti-cuban government info is available via VPN from other places, via the local copy wikipedia &c. It would work on Android. There might be "I trust apple more, I trust icloud more to protect my secrecy" or "Less spyware risk" maybe.
At this point, I would think that being part of a combine which collects old apple gear (actually, almost any ICT gear), puts it in a container, and ships to Havana would work fine. I doubt every US government body wants that so you'd be placed in the position of evading ITAR regulations or some equivalent.
You would think that much the same happens in Syria, Libya, Iran, you-name-it: equipment beyond end-of-life in the developed west winds up either in the waste stream or part of a container delivered via various paths into these economies for the value it has, mending other things or being mended itself.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-09-19/how-tonga-pla...
Africa has different problems. Friends had to leave a Morris Minor van in the desert, there were no UK conforming spare parts, if they'd driven a french car or truck almost anything would have worked because metric. That was a few decades ago but they said the landscape was littered with broken cromwell, challenger and other tanks, from the desert campaigns. The rate of rain is low enough these metal hulks last many decades.
One of the solutions proposed there is to set the import duty high enough to fund disposal of (at least) one car.
Some places find ways to take advantage of this, e.g. Canada exports most of it's bean/pulse crop in bags to Asia in containers instead of bulk carriers. Wasn't that long ago we did the same with scrap metal (maybe still do).
Certainly a crusher/cuber helps maximize density, but a torch or other cutting tools can go a long way to save space. And you're mainly paying for weight anyway as the empty is a sunk cost.
The peugeotard way is basically a tradition stretching back to the '60s; for many, it's just an excuse to have an epic road trip. I remember reading about it in the '90s in an excellent Italian book, Vado verso il Capo - 13.000 km attraverso l'Africa (Feltrinelli, 1996) by Sergio Ramazzotti.
It really skews our perspective, the Cuban government doesn’t need to give in to anything. The article is about a German resident just chilling in Cuba, and picking up an iPhone in Miami on a weekend bender. Nobody cares about the US’ political machinations so that Florida votes swing in the desired direction, the rest of the world gives Cuba enough commerce and doesnt think anything of it.
Now it's an authoritarian country where everyone but Americans go to party.
aside from it being trendy to say equality and espouse those values, what about PR’s status suggests the residents would be anything other than a 2nd class of citizen under the United States?
That would create additional outcomes to PR that they are never asked about
The insular cases are pretty unrecognizably appallingly racist for what we expect of the court, really go read them, so I could see them overruling it and wind up dropping Puerto Rico and Congress being unable to reach consensus on any other outcome
Puerto Rican's would gain some things in medicaid, have to pay different rates of tax, and lose some status in UN and LAC community contexts.
On the mainland, both major parties ostensibly support in principle self determination. That said, I don't see how the current political landscape could produce it, given the fracture lines.
I loved this footnote in the wiki page:
Another misconception is that the import/export taxes collected by the U.S. on products manufactured in Puerto Rico are all returned to the Puerto Rico Treasury. This is not the case. Such import/export taxes are returned only for rum products, and even then the U.S. Treasury keeps a portion of those taxesBeautiful country, amazing people. But it's kind of bleak, and not getting any better. I'm fairly radically left wing, and when I was younger I was more ambiguous about that regime -- critical but also fairly naive about it -- but I've seen enough now to just be totally critical.
Cuba is corrupt and authoritarian and I don't feel good about spending my money there.
They throw people with opinions like mine in jail, they make ordinary people's lives brutally hard, and it's basically run by a mafia with the name "Communist Party" stamped on it.
They've also become explicitly Putin-allied and part of that sphere of ick that pretends to be "anti-colonial" but is really are just vicious thugs.
The US needs to drop the embargo, but that gov't needs to end. Somehow.
But hoping American public and private sector economic pressures have anything to do with anything are the thing I find naive, and oozing with indoctrinated hubris that’s reinforced by people from that country that vehemently agree. Its a skewed perspective is my only point.
The “axis of ick” reinforces how little pressure there is on that government system in reality.
Those ills are not different from any other poor Caribbean island. There’s not that much accountability on any island nation regardless of the governance system.
> create sufficient internal backpressure to liberalise the market, that it makes sense for the Cuban government to give in. I wonder if it works?
After more than 50 years, I think the answer is that it doesn’t work. And the US sanctions are illegal under international law, aside from being cruel and counterproductive.
Cubans have all the food and medicine they need because China, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the rest of the world still trades with them.
The US and Israel are the only countries that have imposed a (very lax) trade ban on Cuba.
Here is a Danish article about more Danish and European companies operating in Cuba because they expect a Vietnam/China-like economic boom:
https://politiken.dk/oekonomi/gloekonomi/art5577587/Virksomh...
Denmark is a NATO country and the US is our main export partner. We wouldn't be trading with Cuba if it put our relationship with the US at risk.
[1] https://www.vozpopuli.com/economia_y_finanzas/retiran-demand...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-jud...
It's true the rest of the western world has basically said "f you" to the US about the trade embargo there, but it doesn't mean that it's ineffective. So much of western capitalism is built around the US financial and legal system that it has a huge impact, not to mention the consequences it can have for people traveling, etc.
Perhaps the worst part about the embargo is that it gives the Cuban gov't an excuse for its mediocrity and authoritarian behaviour. Basically all internal problems get blamed on it.
And it has kept the Cuban regime in a hostile place re: the US. Obama made some moves to rectify this, but Trump reversed them and then doubled back down.
Exactly-- these embargoes and sanctions only hurt the general population and keep the government in a siege mentality.
With the sanctions lifted one of two things would likely happen: the "communist" regime would disintegrate under competition, leaving something likely still hostile to the US but not particularly "negative exemplar"is -- like what happened in the eastern bloc -- or it would economically "reform" well enough to function/compete in the world market (like Vietnam or China) while still pretending to be "socialist." Neither of those outcomes are likely outcomes that US capital really wants.
Plus at this point the Cuban economy is heavily dominated by trade competitors to the US. Spanish, Italian, French, and (to a lesser extent) Canadian companies dominate there. Its telecoms systems, electrical grid, energy, etc. are not based on US standards or tech. Non-US companies operate in places and on "property" that US capital still considers to be "theirs" from pre-revolutionary days. Imagine the legal clusterfuck when the blockade/sanctions regime falls apart, and normal trade is attempted again...
In any case, the Cuban people and most normal Cuban exiles aren't doing well out of the status quo. But the Communist Party actually kinda prospers out of this arrangement, and it gives a good drum for right wing politicians in Florida to beat on.
I'm sure Kissinger has some blueprint on this topic somewhere written down, and it's propagated through successive administrations with little to no modification.
As someone who has first-hand experience let me tell you that Cubans do NOT have all the food and medicine they need. The situation is pretty bad. I know this because I’ve been there, in real-life, interacting with real people. I’ve gone to a Cuban grocery store with my family and seen the shelves empty. You may go as a tourist and have a very different experience, because the government has setup “tourist-only” stores and hotels with very high prices that a Cuban person would never be able to afford and in some cases not even be allowed to enter. I know this because I’ve witnessed my family and friends being denied entry into a store because they did not have a foreign passport.
The Cuban government has been incredibly successful in painting this picture of Cuba as an anti-capitalist success story. I’m always surprised by the amount of people (especially Europeans) that I speak to and think Cuba is this great pristine place that capitalism never tainted. People who often flat out refuse to believe me when I tell them how bad things are, despite them not ever having set a foot on the island. I wonder where the heck they are getting all these fantasy stories from.
https://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Cuba/p...
Dated, but still relevant: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8942780/