Back in August 2009 BB (Before Scott Brown) CNN was frantically producing infomercials for Obama’s healthcare plan. Luckily for them, Michael Moore had a handy supply of valuable footage from his infomercials for Castro’s healthcare plan.
So on the August 6 edition of CNN’s “Newsroom,” while Morgan Neil “reported” on location from a Potemkin Havana hospital, gushing about Cuban healthcare’s “impressive statistics!” the broadcast included clips from Michael Moore’s Sicko, adding much oomph to the propaganda montage. CNN’s “Cuba’s infant mortality rates” reported Neil, “are the lowest in the hemisphere, in line with those of Canada!”
“Amazing!” probably gasped the type of person who watches CNN nowadays “No wonder Colin Powell said “Castro had done some good things for his people!” No wonder Barbara Walters hailed Castro for “bringing great healthcare to his people!” No wonder Michael Moore catches so much grief from those insufferable Miami Cubans! Before Castro only they could afford doctors, as Cuba’s huddled masses languished in sickness and poverty!”
And indeed, according to UN figures, Cuba’s current infant mortality rate places her 44th from the top in worldwide ranking, right next to Canada. (The lower the rate the higher the ranking.) What CNN left out is that according to those same UN figures, in 1958 (the year prior to the glorious revolution), Cuba ranked 13th from the top, worldwide.
This meant that robustly capitalist Cuba had the 13th lowest infant-mortality rate in the world. This put her not only at the top in Latin America but atop most of Western Europe, ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Today all of these countries leave Communist Cuba in the dust, with much lower infant mortality rates.
And even plummeting from 13th (capitalist) to 44th (communist), Cuba’s “impressive” infant mortality rate is kept artificially low by Communist chicanery with statistics and by a truly appalling abortion rate of 0.71 abortions per live birth. This is the hemisphere’s highest, by far. Any Cuban pregnancy that even hints at trouble gets “terminated.”
In April 2001, Dr. Juan Felipe García, MD, of Jacksonville, Fla., interviewed several recent doctor defectors from Cuba. Based on what he heard, he reported the following:
The official Cuban infant-mortality figure is a farce. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during its first year, the doctors often report he was older. Otherwise, such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job.
This might lead a few people to question Cuba’s official infant-mortality figures. But such people would not get a Havana bureau for their news agency, much less a visa to film a documentary.
According to a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, more than 75% of “doctors” with Cuban “medical degrees” flunk the exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for licensing in the U.S. Most Cuba-certified doctors even flunk the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates’ exam for certification as “physician assistants,” making them unfit even as nurses. None of this is meant to disparage these hapless men and women who were simply cursed by fate to be born under a Stalinist tyranny.
Ninety-nine percent of Cubans have no more experience with hospitals like the one Michael Moore featured in Sicko and CNN’s Morgan Neill visited, than Moore has with a Soloflex machine. Most Cubans view these hospitals the way teenage boys used to view Playboy magazine and husbands view a “Victoria’s Secret” catalog: “Wow! If only. . .”
The Castroite propaganda in Sicko so outraged people cursed by fate to live in Castro’s fiefdom that they risked their lives by using hidden cameras to film conditions in genuine Cuban hospitals, hoping they could alert the world to Moore’s swinishness as a propaganda operative for a Stalinist regime.
At enormous risk, two hours of shocking, often revolting, footage was obtained with tiny hidden cameras and smuggled out of Cuba to Cuban-exile George Utset, who runs the superb and revelatory website The Real Cuba. The man who assumed most of the risk during the filming and smuggling was Cuban dissident — a medical doctor himself — Dr Darsi Ferrer, who was also willing to talk on camera, narrating much of the video’s revelations. Dr Ferrer worked in these genuinely Cuban hospitals daily, witnessing the truth. More importantly, he wasn’t cowed from revealing this truth to America and the world. (A recent samizdat reports that the black Dr Ferrer is currently languishing in a Cuban prison cell –not far from Gitmo, btw– undergoing frequent beatings.
Originally, ABC’s John Stossel planned to show the shocking smuggled videos in their entirety, during a 20/20 show. Alas, on Sept. 12th 2007, the show ran only a tiny segment on Cuba’s “real” healthcare, barely five minutes long and with almost none of the smuggled video footage. What happened?
Well, the Castro regime got wind of these videos and called in ABC’s Havana bureau for a little talking-to, stressing that ABC’s “bureau permit” might face “closer scrutiny” if they showed the blockbuster videos. ABC wimped out.
Enter Fox News, and Sean Hannity in particular. Your humble servant here contacted Hannity’s producers regarding the smuggled videos and they immediately requested a look. Within hours they jumped on them and produced a blockbuster of a show:
and:
In case some have forgotten, Cuba is a totalitarian state almost perfectly patterned on the Stalinist model. I say “almost” because in the early stage Castro and Che deviated somewhat by actually jailing more political prisoners per-capita than Stalin. As such, material rewards are granted exclusively by the regime and relentless police-state control is the regime priority.
“Health-care” is important only so far as a function to bamboozle foreign press agencies, academics and filmmakers (which has proven a laughable cakewalk). So the rewards issued by Castro’s Stalinist regime to Cuba’s doctors (a monthly salary of $22) are dwarfed by those awarded to the dedicated and intrepid staff of Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior. (spies/ secret police.) These latter perform the vital functions in maintaining the viability of Castro’s fiefdom.
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57 Comments
it takes an ex-pat to really define Castro's Cuba…
The Hollywood version is not only a lie and a farce, but a cruel one. People who live there, and risk their lives consistently to come to the US, know about what Castro shows, say Oliver Stone, or Chevy Chase- and what the truth REALLY is.
What people don't realize is that it is an IMAGE of what the left would like to see- that's being peddled here. Little details like mass jailings for political speech, crushing poverty, and a class system weighted towards Communist party apparatchiks over the common man are never discussed. The peasants don't know what's good for them, anyway-\\the reasoning goes.
And so it goes. 50 odd years later,one of the most repressive regiemes in modern history exists 90 miles off the Florida coast. And nitwit apologists still praise it.
Sad, pathetic and disgusting…
Yesterday it was reported that an Afro-Cuban dissident that was on a hunger strike while in a Cuban prison died. When asked about this, Raul Castro stated that the dissident had not been tortured or beaten or executed. Does anyone really believe that?
Thanks Mr. Fontova. Great report.
I'm going to guess that Michael Moore is hiding wherever Al Gore is. Those two boys cannot be happy. It was, after all, about a year ago when they were both probably toasting each other with Champagne to some supposed 'New Liberal World Order.' My, how things have changed. All that 'dithering' on health care reform when they could have been finding a way to get their beloved Fairness Doctrine passed. Oh well!
Moore will go down as the Duranty or Riefenstahl of his day, except for lacking their talent.
Regarding Cuba, I don't know how anyone can ignore the wealth of dissident literature that comes off the isle, such as Valladares' "Against All Hope." Only the woefully or willfully ignorant, or the truly morally bankrupt, could have anything good to say about what Castro and the Communist Party have wrought there.
You have one misrepresentation in your article. A physician assistant is not a nurse. PAs are classified as mid-level practitioners and are trained on the same model as physicians (i.e. diagnose and treat) and licensed by their state's medical board. PAs can write prescriptions (RNs and LPNs cannot) and give orders to RN/LPN in hospital and clinic settings. PAs are required to work under the supervision of a physician; however in most settings this is equates to an oversight responsibility. Nurse practioners (NPs) are very similar to PAs in that they are classified as mid-level practioners and can write prescriptions, however NPs are trained on a nursing model and are licensed by their state's nursing board. Unlike PAs, NPs can function independently (i.e. hang out their own shingle). See http://www.aapa.org/about-pas for more information about physician assistants.
BTW, other than the physician assistant thing, I thought your article was spot on.
Totally agree.
As a liberal who is fond of reasoned debate (explaining my presence on this website), I'm actually ashamed that moore is associated with my ideaology.
I grew up in florida and have been to cuba, and I know that these claims of great health care and low infant mortality are false. My only question (and I'm asking because I want opinions I am NOT pushing an agenda) is what do you do about it? Do you open the embargo? Do you do something different?
Thanks for covering that Squid, I was just about to Google that myself. Bravo Humberto, keep these articles coming. As someone with experience as an everyman in Cuba, you have a vastly different viewpoint from the Lefties constantly servicing the Castro regime with their blatant lies. Thank you for writing the truth about Cuba.
Moore looks like he just chewed the meat off those bones.
As cruel as it sounds, sometimes people have to be left to stand up for themselves. The US can't save everyone everywhere. Look at all we're going to wind up doing to rebuild Haiti after all the foreign aid poured in, and I will bet you that Haiti looks no different even when recovered.
having been 'down under' in the 80's, we can back up your assertion on Danny Ortega, Tomas Borge and their Sandinistas- which were MUCH more popular up here in the US than they ever were down there. Seems the Nicaraguans- particaularly the Mesquite Indians- didn't care much for the Stalinist tactics they used against them.
You know, kill the village elders, the teachers, public exections and the like…
But John (the haughty John Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam) Kerry was besotted with Ortega and steered him to a cosmetic makeover and top flite liberal polling firms.
The polls reflected what the Sandinistas wanted them to show. Not the truth.
And so, yet another example of the left believing their own lies…
Whenever I see some Lib Jackass with a 'Che' t-shirt, I'm tempted to put a round in it.
it is an appealing target, one must admit…
But resist the impulse. Heck, with even silly 9mm rounds thirty cents each a garrotte, or a nice carbon steel Gerber would do the trick nicely.
And YOU save thirty cents.
Sweet…
a valid point, and I'm fairly sure you are right. Alot of this is because Haiti's assistance is coming from nonprofits and government organizations who just don't run their projects in a sustainable way. I served two years with the Peace Corps and if theres one thing I learned its that a lot of those offices only exist so long as people are dependent – so they make their target market need them more, not less.
That is also why in one sense I kind of want to support ending the embargo, but only doing so without any associated aid. It would be an interesting opportunity to see business effect social change – as I think it might but in humility realize I lack the accumen to say for sure.
Also, the UN stats are not based on uniform data collection rules. Some first world / western countries don't count premature babies who die after birth. Others encourage abortions for babies at risk (Cuba included).
The stats tend to be straight forward which is why we score poorly against those who play games with them.
Enlightening – the difference is in the details. Like torture in prison for dissidents who tell the truth.
Reminds me of a joke…
Bill Gates was at the pearly gates, and was given a chance to tour and choose between heaven and hell.
Heaven was nice, but Gates wanted to see hell. There he saw endless parties, women, booze, and festivals. Bill Gates chose Hell.
Later, being tortured by demons, Bill Gates complained about the vision of Hell not being real. Satan replied, "it was just demo-ware".
Likewise, we are seeing Cuban Hospitals not much better than ours touted as free and no wait places… Yet our healthcare is so much better than theirs, and here we may choose hell over heaven.
Good point. I've got a perfectly good Gerber Mk II that's already tasted Marxist blood.
A good buddy of mine did a little camping with the Contras.
I worked for a non-profit for a year and they had a mandatory staff meeting (with a film to watch) expounding on the glory of Cuban Health Care. I was livid and told all the tools taking notes that this was bullshit, communist propaganda. I reamed out my boss for wasting precious time I could be enjoying with my children. I can still see the suck-ups sitting there like ninnies taking notes.
Aaron, Please clarify that you are a classical liberal, as are most "conservatives". You sound like you are actually thinking, which takes you far afield of modern "liberalism". Keep on thinking!
No, I dont believe it, but there is a first time for most anything.
My nephew's cousin is from Switzerland. For summer college credit available for spending time in a 3rd world country she decided on Cuba. Went there and was assigned to a family. Realizing after the first day there that food was in short supply for them, she suggested that they all just go out and buy more, not understanding how ration cards work. Three weeks later and seven pounds lighter, she was out of there.
Daily caloric requirements have been understood since the early 1930's. Give them just enough food to produce for the State, but not enough to cause trouble.
Camping with the Contras
Sounds like a good name for a band.
Sean Penn does. So does Danny Glover. And Ted Turner. Oh, and Matt Damon.
Hey,__I have a Che T-shirt and I have worn it proudly in San Francisco and LA. It has a skelotonized version of Che and states "Che is dead, get over it!". So remember, Identify your target, no friendly fire!
I wonder if CNN, MSNBC and MSM at large have seen these clips, read the reports, talked to people who've lived there. Are they intentionally misleading the public by this blatantly false propaganda? How can they sleep at night? (Because some people actually believe Sicko to be some factual documentary if you can believe that!) If Moore has a conscience he'll come out and apologize to the Cuban citizens who know better, to Americans who are duped into thinking Cuba has a superior health care system, and to the world who continue to buy the lies. And to the MSM – shame on you. No wonder your credibility is challenged and your ratings plummet. (I am sickened to read of Dr. Ferrer's predicament.) Good reporting by Mr. Fontova, Big Journalism and Fox News!
Meanwhile the hack Michael Moore sits in his mansion while the true hero rots in a Cuban prison.
Please God hasten the day when liberty and freedom….and justice will come to that beautiful island and those suffering people. Let the nightmare pass and let a decent government take its place.
In western first world countries statistics are often massaged for the desired effect, especially when there is an agenda behind those publishing the numbers. Case in point the Anthropomorphic Global Warming hoax.
In 1990 polling showed support for the ruling Sandinista government in Nicaragua, they were defeated overwhelmingly.
So, you'll forgive me if I don't believe statistical numbers from a country where the government controls every facet of life. A country where having an opinion, other than the official party approved opinion, is a crime.
Amen RobCon. This footage broke my heart, I hadn't seen it before. I do not understand how any person can believe Communism is a good thing, are people like Michael Moore and the culpably-negligent low lifes at ABC et alia that do not report the truth completely freaking insane or what? How can you live with yourself if, when given the chance to shine light on the evils in Cuba and the human suffering there, you won't even tell the truth about the matter. It's equivalent to watching a murder and not saying anything to the cops. sick sick sick sick sick, Michael Moore is going to have to answer for his life at some point.
Anyone wanting to know what's really going on in Cuba should follow the the "Tweets" of Yoani Sanchez, a Cuban blogger, particularly over the past few days as she's reported on the disgraceful events leading up to the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo after a hunger strike protesting the Socialist Paradise's policies of repression & brutality.
That's the voice of freedom struggling to break out, aided by the advent of technology that the Castro regime isn't gonna be able to keep under control for very much longer. Wish we could help them more. Are we gonna be as deaf to their pleas as we were with Iran? What would Reagan do?
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He did while he was waiting to see the doctor! Hey, the poor guy's got to keep his strength up so he can continue to "deliver the message".
Thanks, Squidward! I'm about 6 months from my final PA certification and couldn't have put it better. I would also point out that the overwhelming majority of PA training programs in this country (about 94% if memory serves) are Master's level programs and many PAs are now being awarded doctorates in specialty fields such as orthopedics. Also, in rural areas physician oversight may be no more than having your overseeing physician available by phone. In the Army we frequently operate with no oversight whatsoever in forward deployed situations.
I would have gone with him, but had other commitments.
I never put a hole in anything that didn't need it.
Thanks! My spouse is a PA and I've had about 16 years experience explaining the difference between PAs, MDs, RNs, etc, ever since she graduated from her Masters-level PA program. She started out in rural primary care and now works in a suburban family practice. We live in NC, which is where the PA profession was born and is a very pro-PA state. She is quite autonomous in her practice, very knowledgable, and more thorough than her supervising physician.
Oh I think CNN, MSNBC, and the rest MSM,etc… know full well what the real system is in Cuba. They did not get where they are by being stupid. And even if they don't – they should! That's their freaking job as 'journalist'.
ABC news, at least knows fully – they were the ones wo suppressed the videos!
No they know full well, or are willingly unaware.
Despicable!
"woefully or willfully ignorant, or the truly morally bankrupt" Well there ya go — that's about 90% of Hollywood, the networks, and Democrats right there. Of course that 90% does NOT include willing fellow-travelers.
Cuba has normal relations with the rest of the world. All the rest of the world does no good, does it?
Moore is not a liberal, not even of the New Deal-Great Society type. He's just a small-minded hypocrite who hates his own people while claiming to fight for them
Remember the part in 1984, where the pigs put on a show for the visiting humans by filling their feed bins with sand and putting their food on top of them, to make-believe they weren’t starving? The Russians did that for real. All totalitarian/communist governments lie about themselves, including the China. I don’t buy any food from China – I don’t want to die.
When did the fat guy strip the flesh of his waiting room cohorts?
"According to a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, more than 75% of 'doctors' with Cuban 'medical degrees' flunk the exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for licensing in the U.S. Most Cuba-certified doctors even flunk the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates’ exam for certification as 'physician assistants,' making them unfit even as nurses."
Can you, please, provide a link for this AAPS report? Or at least the title & date of the report? I can't find it anywhere at the AAPS site.
Thanks!
most likely using 'gear' we supplied…
Not to quibble here about infant mortality rates but… I am not sure where you got your stats but check out the UN stats and the CIA World Factbook stats at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
Humberto you say, "And indeed, according to UN figures, Cuba’s current infant mortality rate places her 44th from the top in worldwide ranking, right next to Canada."
Not quite…. Canada is not next to Cuba… the US is, at least on the CIA list. On the CIA list the US ranks 46th worse than Cuba at 44th. According to the UN stats for 2006, the US ranks 33rd to Cuba's 28th. Canada beats both at 36th and 23rd respectively. In real terms compared to each other however, their difference is negligible. And Cuba's bogus reporting would make a mockery of these stats.
Canada's healthcare systems definitely needs injection of private participation or more two-tier tinkering. Moore's confused healthcare movie has succeeded in conflating (in the eyes of Americans at least) the Cuban with the Canadian system. It's like comparing a Moped to a Chev. Canada's not quite BMW, heck it's not even Toyota, but it's not like Cuba. And the mortality stats… they're probably irrelevant.
DCASE: At .30 a round * 40 rounds = $12.00 dollars.
Plus the fun of running it all thru my MP-5 on full auto.
Plus seeing one really shredded Che T-Shirt.
Priceless.
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[...] Unluckily for the above “news analysts” and Human Rights spokespersons, the people cursed by fate to live under Castro/Stalinism have a drastically different story to tell, as we already saw here. [...]
[...] Unluckily for the above “news analysts” and Human Rights spokespersons, the people cursed by fate to live under Castro/Stalinism have a drastically different story to tell, as we already saw here. [...]
Why do lib elitists rally around Castro and Uncle Achmed from Iran, why do gays sit on their hands while they do, why does NOW abide them ignoring the mistreatment of women in both regimes? I don't know the answer, but if you can't see clearly it's because they're keeping things intentionally murky, like their real goals. What's the real motivation for elitists who support people who would have them or their ilk in front of a firing squad as soon as they took power? Only a handful of possible reasons, none of them pleasant.
Why do lib elitists rally around Castro and Uncle Achmed from Iran, why do gays sit on their hands while they do, why does NOW abide them ignoring the mistreatment of women in both regimes? I don't know the answer, but if you can't see clearly it's because they're keeping their real goals intentionally murky . What's the real motivation for elitists who support people who would have them or their ilk in front of a firing squad as soon as they took power? Only a handful of possible reasons, none of them pleasant. They must think they could control the dictators like puppets, be incredibly foolish or that the purity of their "virtues" will protect them, rather like a greenie climbing into the cage to embrace a polar bear.
The 20th century showed libs tend to ignore real dangers until it's almost too late, then over-react wildly. Last minute intervention and then over-reacting after WWI and WWII come to mind, along with not aiding the French in Vietnam and then taking up the quixotic banner ourselves, trying to disarm only one side in the Cold War. I worry they'll do the same with militant Islamists, wait until they do something really awful and then nuke them out of existence?
[...] course, there’s free health care, which Cubans (and Michael Moore) are programmed to hype to Americans. They tell you that Fidel brought universal health care. [...]
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[...] at his word (Hint: He’s a murdering creep), perhaps they should look at the reality behind Cuba’s health care and then breathe a sigh of relief that it’s taken us this long to start down that same [...]
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