The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 any issue. That shows his courage and confidence in the principles of the rev- olution” ( www.radiohc.cu/viejo/ing les/portada-ref.htm ). Despite this bravado, rumblings of dissent have reached American shores from the Cuban underground. Since gaining access to the Internet in 2007, a Cuban citizen, Yoani Sánchez, has overcome government suppression to found and foster a pro-democratic community of bloggers. Sánchez’s ex- posés of the hardships of life in Cuba led to an unsuccessful attempt by the government inMay to block Cuban ac- cess to the Internet. Sánchez observes: “I think that if we had not raised a ruckus in recent days — denouncing such apartheid—we would have been deprived of the ability to connect. Yes, they cede when you push back; they have to amend the plan when we citi- zens raise our voices and the interna- tional media hears the echo” ( desde cuba.com/generationy/ ) . Thus it appears that the Cuban state may be losing some of its powers of repression. Indeed, as Ray Walser, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, puts it: no matter how strong a regime may make itself ap- pear, it can still quickly disappear “once a dissenter like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet walks out of prison, when blogger Yoani Sanchez is free to write and travel without hindrance, and when a humble Afro-Cuban cane-cutter like Jorge Luis Garcia Pérez Antúnez is able to speak his mind without fear of retribution and imprisonment” ( www. heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ ed052709a.cfm ). A February analysis by the Brook- ings Institute reflects this approach: “The goal of U.S. policy toward Cuba should be to support the emergence of a state where the Cuban people deter- mine the political and economic future of their country through democratic means. A great lesson of democracy is that it cannot be imposed; it must come from within. Our policy should encompass the political, economic and diplomatic tools that are needed to help the Cuban people find the politi- cal space that is essential to engage in and direct the politics of their country” ( www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files /rc/reports/2009/02_cuba_roadma p/02_cuba_roadmap.pdf ). —Mark Hay, Editorial Intern Are Governments Prolonging the Global Food Crisis? Days before the first-ever meeting of Group of Eight agriculture ministers to address the world food crisis, held on April 18-20 in Italy, a study co-pub- lished by the International Policy Net- work and more than 20 research institutes around the world claimed that governments themselves were its primary cause ( www.policynetwork. C Y B E R N O T E S Site of the Month: Gapminder.com Officially, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling’s mission state- ment for Gapminder.com offers the site as a tool for “promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations MillenniumDevelopment Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about so- cial, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.” Yet that description does not capture the beauty of this site. Much more than a tool, it is an engaging means to transform statistics into participatory art. The main feature of the site is the Gapminder World graph. Upon loading that page, one may change either of the axes so as to compare any of the 350-plus vari- ables (dealing with demographics, economics, health, environment, and more) to each other. Once the user selects the variables, the dots on the graph (each repre- senting a nation and proportionate in size to their relative populations) fly about, set- tling into different patterns roughly revealing the relationships (or lack thereof) between, say, “Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (percent of internal resources)” and “C0 2 emissions (tons per person).” Once the graph has been created to match conditions in the last year data was collected for both variables, one may, if the data goes far enough back, be able to rewind time and recreate the graph to show conditions as far back as 1800. There- after, the graph may be played like a film, showing trends evolving over as many as 200 years within seconds. Variants allow one to view segments of larger areas — for example, regions of China, India and the U.S. set against each other, specific re- gions of the world or all other nations. Given the amount of data made available and the variety of ways it may be ordered (the permutations are almost infinite and ever- increasing), one can easily induce a Rip van Winkle effect. Whether one shares the Swedish trio’s ideals or not, their system offers almost limitless potential — for proving theories, finding unexpected trends of interest to investigate or just indulging a fascination for statistics and graphs. Whatever the use, Gapminder.com delivers on its tagline: “Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact-based world view.” — Mark Hay, Editorial Intern