pro-Castro propaganda in the Statesman

A March 11 Statesman article by Mike Williams titled "Venezuelan oil helps fuel Cuba's eye care program" is a pro-communist puff piece in the propagandistic style of William Duranty (the now disgraced Pulitzer Prize winner who misled people in the 1930s about Stalin and the USSR). Williams, writing from Havana, gives us a story of the Cuban Government teaming with Chavez, the leftist oil despot, to provide an eye care program for kids called the "Miracle Mission", an example of "showcasing Cuban medical expertise".

Cuba is a land where human rights dissidents get 25 year jail sentences. As UN's Human Rights Watch says:

"Over the past forty years, Cuba has developed a highly effective machinery of repression. The denial of basic civil and political rights is written into Cuban law. In the name of legality, armed security forces, aided by state-controlled mass organizations, silence dissent with heavy prison terms, threats of prosecution, harassment, or exile. Cuba uses these tools to restrict severely the exercise of fundamental human rights of expression, association, and assembly. The conditions in Cuba's prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. In recent years, Cuba has added new repressive laws and continued prosecuting nonviolent dissidents while shrugging off international appeals for reform and placating visiting dignitaries with occasional releases of political prisoners.

Repression is increasing in Cuba as Raoul Castro takes over from Fidel Castro.

Cuba has a failed socialist economic model that has moved their standard of living from the top in Latin America to the bottom after 40 years of Castro. Before Castro, Cuba fed itself; today it imports food like rice that it once was self-sufficient in; Sugar production is below levels of 40 years ago. Cuba in 2002 was mired in economic despair. Cuba's economy is living in the past and not even living up to it - by 2004, the Cuban economy remained 12 to 15 percent below 1989 GDP levels.

What keeps Cuba afloat? For a long-time the USSR subidized Castro's failed Communist experiment. Now, it's Hugo Chavez, whose support of the Cuban Government is keeping afloat an otherwise failed system. Notes the Cuba commission: "The economic lifelines of the Castro regime are tourism; access to subsidized Venezuelan oil; commodities; and revenues and other support generated by those with family on the island." Felix Antonio Bonne Carcasses, one of the Cuban dissidents organizing the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, said in 2005:

"If it weren't for the 53,000 barrels of oil that Hugo Chávez sends every day to Cuba, it would be over." (Reported by Oscar Corral,Miami Herald.)

Yet the journalists continue to let themselves become channels of propaganda, and trumpet bogus PR campaign like this one as something 'newsworthy'. Castro's accomplishments are a hoax; his statistics have been fudged or fabricated:

Anecdotes abound of the government cooking the books to prove the glories of the Revolution to the world, with many academics distrusting the official government figures. A demographer from the National Academies of Sciences found that the Cuban government's own data was at odds with official overall statistics for child mortality: If anything, it indicated a growing, not a falling, infant mortality rate, a suspicion supported by other statistics from the Cuban Ministry of Health which showed high rates of several childhood diseases that generally correlate with high infant mortality. Other scientists doubt the claims made over HIV, noting the many Cubans who had served in African wars, the many African students in Cuba, the rampant sex trade in Cuba, and the high rate of HIV among Cubans who escaped from the island. A secret 1987 Cuban Communist Party survey of 10,756 respondents showed 88% of the public in one province to be disappointed with their health-care system. When the Cuban suicide rate skyrocketed -- it's now twice the typical rate in Latin American countries -- the Cuban government stopped reporting suicide statistics in a way that allowed international comparisons.

To the extent that the Cuban government's health claims are credible, the results often came at a price no civilized society could countenance. Patients with AIDS were forcibly removed from society and isolated in sanitaria. Expectant mothers with AIDS were coerced into aborting their babies. Abortions were similarly used to improve infant mortality statistics in general -- Cuba has twice the abortion rate of most countries -- by terminating high-risk pregnancies. To obtain co-operation from doctors, their compensation was tied to their patients' infant mortality rate. Many Cuban mothers claim that their doctors killed their baby at childbirth -- babies who die at birth do not show up in Cuba's infant mortality data.

At the same time that some of Castro's admirers deny claims that the medical system is failing Cubans, other admirers admit to the disastrous health outcomes, but blame them on food, drug and other shortages caused by the Cuban embargo. One such study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, lamented "several public health catastrophes [including] more than 50,000 cases of optic and peripheral neuropathy ... A 1994 outbreak of the Guillain-Barré syndrome in Havana was caused by water that had been contaminated with Campylobacter species because chlorination chemicals were not available for purification."

We are left with one true accomplishment of the Castro-led Communist Government of Cuba - propaganda:

Castro has claimed many achievements. Perhaps his greatest is convincing world leaders and journalists the claims are true.
Lawrence Solomon, National Post, February 01, 2003

Journalists who tell the truth are told to leave by the repressive Castro Government:

The Chicago Tribune said correspondent Gary Marx, based in the country since 2002, was told Wednesday that his stories were too negative. His press credentials were not renewed during an annual process, and he and his family were given 90 days to leave Cuba, the newspaper said.

The Mexican newspaper El Universal said Cesar Gonzalez Calero, its Havana reporter since 2003, was told this week his credentials would not be renewed. Authorities told him his reporting was "not the most convenient for the Cuban government," the reporter said, adding he would be allowed to remain in Cuba as the husband of a Spanish journalist.

Mike Williams is one journalist the Castro Government let stay. And why not, his article had no mention of Cuba's repression, abuse of journalists and statistics, and no mention that the facade of Cuban health care is phony. Is he a dupe or a willing accomplice to propaganda? Does he not notice the "Miracle Mission" story about eyecare (for kids!) is a tailor-made and timed for propaganda effect, about as 'newsworthy' and balanced as a corporate ad campaign? In either case, he needs better eyesight and better insight into the reality of Cuba. Someone please get him some spectacles.