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| Manufacturing the Enemy: The Media War Against Cuba |
Chapter 6: Introduction Highlight Chapter progress: 11.81% Highlight: The perception is that privately operated media equates to independence and a democratic barrier to state authoritarianism. In fact, when mainstream media ownership finds itself under the control of the uber-rich reactionary corporate elements of society, you don’t need government pressure to ensure compliance, it comes willingly.
Chapter 6: Introduction Highlight Chapter progress: 12.24% Highlight: Cuba’s revolution is one of the few movements that succeeded in ousting US hegemony and keeping it out—but at a great cost.
Chapter 6: Introduction Highlight Chapter progress: 16.03% Highlight: Cuban leadership considers itself to be under siege, necessitating measures to protect its citizens that the press condemns as human right constraints. Policies that in much the same way reflected civil right restrictions that were put into place and accepted by American society following 9/11. The mass media did its job well in justifying measures such as the Patriot Act, but giving the same consideration to others who have faced far more incidents of terrorism is not appropriate.
Chapter 6: Introduction Highlight Chapter progress: 18.14% Highlight: What is missed is comparative data. The benefits from the country’s social programs were in the vast majority enjoyed by those living in Havana and Cuba’s other urban areas. In the countryside, they were virtually non-existent before the revolution. Fidel Castro’s movement was aimed at changing that dynamic, to try and provide those in the rural regions with similar community assistances. To erase the urban centric attitude of a government official who stated: “Havana is Cuba, the rest is landscape.
Chapter 6: Introduction Highlight Chapter progress: 21.52% Highlight: An article in La Monde Diplomatique provided a rare insight into what the Cuban Revolution really meant: It may be that the heroes of the Sierra Maestra would find the question of orthodoxy versus reform irrelevant. Journalist Fernando Ravsberg points out that “Soviet-style socialism was never a political aim in Cuba: it was seen as a means of saving the revolution, whose first goal
Chapter 6: Introduction Highlight Chapter progress: 21.52% Highlight: was national independence. Under those conditions, the struggle goes on, with or without socialism.”
Chapter 7: 1. Media Control of Cuban History Highlight Chapter progress: 25.74% Highlight: No island so small ever maintained a separate existence near a country so great and a government so powerful.27 There
Chapter 8: 2. The Media versus the Revolution Highlight Chapter progress: 32.49% Highlight: Speaking to French journalist Jean Daniel, on his way to meet Castro in 1963, the US president articulated: I believe that there is no country in the world, including all the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization,
Chapter 8: 2. The Media versus the Revolution Highlight Chapter progress: 32.91% Highlight: humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owning to my country’s policies during the Batista regime …To some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins.
Chapter 8: 2. The Media versus the Revolution Highlight Chapter progress: 35.44% Highlight: When it became apparent that the American side had no intention of negotiation, the revolutionary government accelerated nationalizing property (regardless of what foreign entity owned it) with little regard to reparations. However, by the 1980s, compensation for nationalized properties belonging to all non-US countries had been settled.29
Chapter 8: 2. The Media versus the Revolution Highlight Chapter progress: 40.08% Highlight: Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles
Chapter 10: 4. The Media Opens and Closes Against Cuba Highlight Chapter progress: 54.85% Highlight: the media’s role is not to examine Cuba’s society fairly; it is to validate regime change.
Chapter 10: 4. The Media Opens and Closes Against Cuba Highlight Chapter progress: 62.45% Highlight: Kimber’s voice was but a small whisper against the cacophony of righteous bleating falling from the avalanche of mainstream media misinformation.
Chapter 11: 5. Future Coverage Highlight Chapter progress: 70.46% Highlight: “Mr. Díaz-Canel, who became Cuba’s new president on Thursday, the day before his 58th birthday, has spent his entire life in the service of a revolution he did not fight.”25 It takes considerable effort to come up with a criticism so tortured and convoluted in its construct—particularly one with absolutely no relevancy. But when it comes to Cuba, there seemingly is no limit to stretching credibility or setting different standards. As there are no current US leaders who fought in the 1776 revolution, the New York Times certainly would not be giving any consideration to make a similar value judgment.