Ernesto of Penultimos Dias has sent out the following email. I am just including the entire text because I don't have time to add my thoughts but it's important that this be reported.

Update: Seems Henry and I were working on this simultaneously, so I will add my two cents worth: This is a great commie bitch slapping by Ernesto Hernandez Busto. And a very well deserved one at that because this is typical for the regime. Since they cannot debate or argue on the issues, their standard operating procedure is the ad hominem attack in attempts to discredit whomever it is their are up against.

Dear friends and colleagues,

Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has been attacked today by THE official Cuban journalist, Rosa Miriam Elizalde in Cubadebate site. That's not the first time, but is a good example of the official poin-of-view about independent blogging in Cuba. At the same time, Internet access in Cuban hotels has been severely restricted this week. Until now, only the foreign tourists can buy Internet cards to access to the hotel connections. This is the answer I blogged today in Penultimos Días.
Regards,

Ernesto Hernandez Busto
www.penultimosdias.com

The return of Rosa Miriam

The new media “mission” in which Rosa Miriam Elizalde has reappeared in the Cuban electronic media has to do with blogs and the internet. The point is to prove, through any means possible (although preferably without citing the newspaper Granma), that the increasingly numerous blogs and websites where many Cubans have dared to freely post their opinions are a part of a cyber-campaign designed by shadowy American institutions.

To do this, Rosa Miriam offers as “overwhelming” evidence the fact that the domain of the group Porno Para Ricardo was purchased through GoDaddy, one of the web sites supposedly sponsored by the Pentagon. (As have millions of other domains because, as everyone except Rosa Miriam knows, the registration fees from GoDaddy have no competition: it’s the cheapest, most anonymous and most secure way to buy a domain.)

The latest exercise of Rosa Miriam, however, is too blatant for anyone familiar with the Internet and her alleged "revelations" are laughable to anyone who is somewhat aware of what's happening in the Cuban blogosphere. The whole world knows that Charlie Bravo is the webmaster of the PPR site (unofficial); that it would be absurd (and impossible) that these independent blogs and websites on Cuban themes be housed on servers on the island; that the registration of .cu domains is only authorized for official Cuban government sites (I myself have not been able to register one, nor have the managers of Bloggers Cuba); that in regards to the internet it’s absurd to resort to the nationalistic “territorialization”; and that what Elizalde pompously calls “the sophisticated management tools and services on this website with a payment gateway or electronic gateway for sending money by credit card,” is something anyone can do anywhere via PayPal in 15 minutes—if it doesn’t contravene the embargo regulations.

In the case of Yoani they don’t know what to make up. Now they catch her with poor Josef, an old friend of Yoani’s who has selflessly taken on the server for DesdeCuba for years. Of course the server’s not in Cuba because if it had been Generation Y wouldn’t have lasted two seconds. (By the way, if you take the time to check out the site used by this journalist, you’ll discover that the server for Granma and other official Cuban press sites isn’t located in Cuba either; Cubadebate, for example, appears to be housed in Japan, which is more or less the same distance as they are from Cuban reality.)

When Rosa Miriam says that “the technical support for this site, which serves her blog almost exclusively, is the kind of custom-designed tool which in today’s market costs several hundreds of thousands of dollars,” one has to laugh. A blog available from WordPress for free and a server that’s not even “dedicated” are elevated by this “specialist” to something only a millionaire could afford, as she takes advantage of the widespread ignorance among Cubans about these things. To them, the success of Generation Y must be the result of “a Major League... advertising strategy.” With limited references to the way they themselves carry out “ideological work” and massive propaganda, the blog phenomenon is an alien world to them, a godson of sordid conspiracies and suspect financing.

Yoani’s other sin is to use Twitter “and other variants of Web 2.0 that are barely used in Cuba.” The fact that anyone can freely send a message of up to 140 characters is a possibility that terrifies them. Maybe the person at Copextel who had to prepare the report about the liberalization of cellular telephones didn’t tell them about that. Their excuse for banning Web 2.0 and any other form of direct participation worked until a few days ago: now the ever present “blockade” doesn’t affect telecommunications. Then they throw the blame on the CIA, distorting the majority demand to open up the Internet on the island.

Along the way, Rosa Miriam gets sidetracked and becomes increasingly predictable: she copies M. H. Lagarde Jr. in the extreme distortion of the apparent content of a post where Yoani referred to the rancor and thirst for revenge that “Castro-ism” has incubated in Cubans for decades.

As a culmination of her extensive diatribe, Rosa Miriam takes care to point out that the work of the blogger is a little less than useless, “since obviously she has no readers in Cuba,” a refrain that is repeated in several sites and which can be easily disproved. Yoani and her blog (even with access blocked to Cuban cybernauts) has—and every day will have more—readers in Cuba. Many more than Rosa Miriam has, notwithstanding that she uses every official means to discredit Yoani and present her as an “instrument of the American government” or of Spain’s PRISA group, or any of these tired fables.