This is what freedom looks like: cellphones 
Lines stretched for blocks outside phone centers Monday as the government allowed ordinary Cubans to sign up for cellular phone service for the first time.
The contracts cost about US$120 (euro76) to activate – half a year’s wages on the average state salary. And that doesn’t include a phone or credit to make and receive calls.
But most Cubans have at least some access to dollars or euros thanks to jobs in tourism or with foreign firms, or money sent by relatives abroad. Lines formed before the stores opened, and waits grew to more than an hour.
“Everyone wants to be first to sign up,” said Usan Astorga, a 19-year-old medical student who stood for about 20 minutes before her line moved at all.
Getting through the day without a cell phone is unthinkable now in most developed countries, but Cuba’s government limited access to mobile phones and other so-called luxuries in an attempt to preserve the relative economic equality that is a hallmark of life on the communist-run island.
[...]
Only foreigners and Cubans holding key government posts had been allowed to have cell phones since they first appeared here in 1991. Thousands of ordinary Cubans already had mobile phones through the black market, but could activate them only if foreigners agreed to lend their names to the contracts.
I bet Castro had a cellphone but then some animals are more equal than others, right?
Thank the Lord for capitalism where anyone can get a cellphone (except for Samantha who has to wait until we can afford it).
posted April 15, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Yes, deo gratia for capitalism … my kids’ tax burden was several hundred dollars, combined! Oh, and, drat, I forgot to go vote down the local school budget …
posted April 15, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I’m sure the Lord is doing cartwheels now that Cubanos can text message each other.
posted April 15, 2008 at 10:04 pm
The question is whether of not the Cubans will be doing cartwheels when they have to listen to everyone else’s conversations and can only get one side of it and go crazy trying to figure out what the other person on the phone is saying.
posted April 16, 2008 at 1:54 am
the nsa seems to get great reception. don’t know what you’re complaining about.
posted April 16, 2008 at 7:14 am
Yeah, the omnipresent NSA who has the ability to listen in on millions of conversations at the same time.
posted April 16, 2008 at 8:33 am
Yeah, that evil NSA. It’s because of them that people in black uniforms are breaking down our doors at night and hauling us away….Oh, wait, that doesn’t really happen here. I bet it does in Cuba, though.