doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Fidel is finally "good."

"...that paddlewheel's thumpin..."

"Mississippi moon won't you keep on shinin' on me?"
JR

Ol' Fidel spent his life hating America and capitalism....then the SOB croaks on Black Friday; KARMA
BTW: NFL football ticket to the Miami Dolphins Stadium - $74.00
parking for said football game - $25.00
PRICELESS: getting to watch the Dolphins beat Kapernick's sorry a$$ in front of thousands of Cubans on Black Friday.

old colonel, Castro's human rights record is there for all the world to see, and Trudeau Senior brought it up officially with Castro and during many personal conversations. They were friends. Our former ambassador to Cuba Entwhistle said tonight he attended those official conversations "but Castro wasn't a good listener." Canada's liberal and conservative prime ministers pursued an independent foreign policy with Cuba, as it would with other countries.

The US did similarly with other dictators.

Castro's social improvement with health and education isn't specious. It's on the public record. Google it for yourself. Its superior performance to US and Canada in two sectors of healthcare particularly were broadcast in a television documentary on our national network tonight-- one was infant mortality, a good indicator of healthcare generally. Literacy improved from 60 to 99.8 per cent, according to the CBC, and I'd take its word over Moore any day.

Anyone that believes a 99 percent literacy rate exists in any country is lying or a imbecile, maybe both.

Mike, I answered your question and you seem to have raised yourself on your own petard with this:

"I ask again, if Fidel and Raul produced such great health care and education systems how come their stellar performance won't stand up to a free and independent press? If it was so exceptionally good why did the Castro brothers need to eliminate the independent press and replace it with a state controlled press?

"Your refusal to answer that question strongly validates my argument."

Cuba's stellar performance in the top expenditures of modern societies for welfare of their people---health and education---not only stands up to public scrutiny it's acknowledged in world statistics and reported in "the free and independent press." Look it up for yourself.

You err in your notion that news organizations are independent because they're not controlled by governments. All US newspapers, radio and television fit that category. Money, advertising, scratching elite backs portend a greater angle of influence on media than governments.

It's true journalism has influence on national affairs but since you mentioned Cronkite and Vietnam you may may not be aware of the context of media's independence, its relationship with government and how a Canadian removed American innocence and pulled the plug on the war.

It's an integral part of your history, acknowledged and unchallenged, recorded magnificently in David Halberstam's "The Powers That Be." The short of it is Morley Safer, my colleague for years in the CBC documentary unit, exposed the lying to the American people, mindless killing of civilians which Cronkite and others at first didn't know what to do with it because of certain political and commercial repercussions.

Halberstam: "It was a shattering thing; it marked the end of an era, the end of a kind of innocence. No wonder the Vietnam War cut more sharply to the inner soul of America, to questions of morality and of American culture, than anything else in this century . . ."

"There was greater receptivity . . . to there was something terribly wrong out there. Overnight, one correspondent with one cameraman could become as important as ten or fifteen or twenty senators."

"McNamara could manipulate the media . . .but he could not control the events he had set loose in Vietnam and he could not control Morley Safer. (CBS News vice-president) Friendly . . .called Vietnam "Morley Safer's War.'"

Halberstam's reporting on media's dependence and independence of government and money influences is a scary near-run thing, Mike, as was the New York Times publication of the Pentagon Papers also covered in "Powers That Be." Without mainstream media the US would be in a worse place. I don't recall anyone defending it here.

Well in this particular case there is a 3rd option as well.

That someone might have an imaginary vineyard and that they grow an award winning wine that they have been drinking too much of called "old bullshit."