Cuban Government bans foreign newspapers

[Karl Marx's Camel]

On 20 February 2006 the Cuban Government banned the sale of foreign newspapers such as Hola!, Mecánica popular, Muy Interesante and El País on the grounds that they are "ideologically dangerous". - Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#The_Present


Is this true?

[fernando]

This is something that bothers me with pseudo socialism/communism, I mean if everybody is happily working together for the revolution and we are all happily a communist society in which we all want to work together...why the hell are these leaders so scared of these newspapers, magazines, articles, books, etc?

Now I dont know if this is happening in Cuba though...

[redstar2000]

I have no idea whether it's true or not; don't forget that any gusano could freely edit a Wikipedia article to say anything.

Meanwhile...

Someone who reads Spanish fluently might want to take a look at these publications.

hola.com (http://www.hola.com/)

Seems to be some kind of celebrity tabloid?

Mecánica popular (http://www.televisa.cl/_r_mp/index.htm)

Translations of articles from the American publication Popular Mechanics?

Muy Interesante (http://www.muyinteresante.es/)

A popularly written magazine about science and history?

El Pais (http://www.elpais.es/)

News magazine?

Perhaps reasons for banning these particular publications might suggest themselves.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Atlas Swallowed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 10:04 PM
Translations of articles from the American publication Popular Mechanics?

If the information is coming from Popular Mechanics it should not be taken seriously. Popular Mechanics is a CIA front as are all Hearst publications.

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

No clue about Popular Mechanics (how is it a CIA front again?). Or El Pais (a Spanish newspaper...fairly centrist as far as mainstream politics go).

The two tabloids might have been banned for the way they portray Cuba. I haven't read those tabloids specifically, but reading Spanish langauge tabloids available in the US and watching Univision and other Spanish TV channels I know that they ALWAYS make Castro look like a monster and Cuba look like a complete hellhole. They make it seem as if the entire world has made up its mind that Cuba is an ENEMY and portray exiles as heroic and shit, so Im not surprised.

[Atlas Swallowed]

Victor Ganzi president and CEO of Hearst publications is a member of Business Executives for National Security. Calling it CIA front may be a stretch(would not surprise me and I assume the worse when it comes to the corrupt government and media) but they are definatly biased for the US government.

A couple of articles dealing with CIA media manipulation.


http://www.namebase.org/news17.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 12:49 PM

On 20 February 2006 the Cuban Government banned the sale of foreign newspapers such as Hola!, Mecánica popular, Muy Interesante and El País on the grounds that they are "ideologically dangerous". - Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#The_Present


Is this true?
This seems to be the source - Reporters without Borders(RSF). (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16527)

In fact, it appears a direct quote was pasted into Wikipedia, which could be considered plagiarism.

There is no mention on the Human Rights Watch site, or in a search of official Cuban media (.cu domain.)

A Google News search finds little other media mention of this alleged ban. Those few media sources which do mention it seem to be reprinting Reporters Without Borders press releases or picking up on this CubaNet item. (http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/feb06/23e4.htm) CubaNet is an exile dissident group.

Reporters Without Borders(RSF) is not particularly neutral or consistent in supporting press freedom either. This article on their website (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10889) hails the overthrow of Haiti's elected president in a coup by ex-military people. "Press freedom returns : a gain to be nurtured - "We can breathe again !"" is the headline.

It whitewashes the media suppression carried out by the new, unelected government: "Though worrying, the closure of Radio and Télé Timoun and the arrest of one of its cameramen does not seem to be part of any campaign to silence pro-Lavalas media." Part of the reason not to worry too much: "Journalists were arbitrarily arrested by former soldiers in the Mirebalais area, but one of those detained, Jeanty André Omilert, said Lavalas supporters were not being targeted as such but simply journalists who were considered too critical. " Gee, if they're not being arrested for being pro-Lavalas, but only for being critical of the new regime, it must not be too bad!

I've e-mailed RSF to ask for their source for the Cuba item. I'd regard it as unconfirmed presently.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yeah the RSF is as good as a US front.


RSF does report on some discrimination against journalists, but in a very selective way, that is, targeting nations on the US State Department "hit list": Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc., while ignoring any and all anti-journalist activities in areas allied with the US, and of course, never in the US itself.

For three examples of many to give the idea: RSF does not defend reporters in the Phillippines, which is the second deadliest nation for journalists after Iraq but is a strong ally of the US military. RSF completely ignores Mumia abu Jamal, a US reporter on death row and the object of support from "other" human rights organizations all over the globe. And in a recent interview, despite his very close ties with the Cuban-American community in Miami, RSF director Robert Menard claimed to be completely "unfamiliar" with the case of the Cuban Five. The Five, one of whom is a Cuban journalist, are serving life sentences in US prisons for infiltrating these Miami groups to prevent terrorist attacks on their homeland.

Reporters Without Britches (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=9713)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Some more from the same article:


This denial ties into the major activity (time, money and propaganda campaigns) of RSF, which is defaming the Cuban Revolution, trying to prevent European tourists from visiting the Island, and serving as a news agency and defender for "dissident reporters". The latter, according to Nestor Baguer -founder of the Independent Cuban Journalist Association, their reporter of longest duration, and the main Cuban representative of RSF, who later revealed himself as a Cuban security agent- were "neither journalists nor dissidents", but mercenaries paid to write as dictated by the RSF, the US Interest Section in Havana, and Florida-based hate groups.

RSF, in Menard’s own words in an interview in 2000, has always considered Cuba the priority in Latin America, even giving the country a lower ranking on its press freedom index than countries where journalists routinely have been killed, such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico.


... RSF receives the preponderance of its funding from organizations corresponding with the CIA, filtered directly or indirectly, such as USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, the US Interest Section in Havana, and Cuban-American anti-Cuba groups in Miami.

[Rosario Central]

If it is true can you blame them?

The world is against them , Always poking fun at Fidel, And the Cuban people. So Fidel did what he felt was right, He is protecting his people from all this propoganda. Until I hear first hand from a Cuban official, I wont take this serious, Wikipedia is good for general info { Sports, Music, Culture, Etc.} but when it comes to politics and especially communism they are very conservative.

[Severian]

No response so far to my e-mail. I'm not really expecting one.

[Punk Rocker]

If it is true can you blame them?

The world is against them , Always poking fun at Fidel, And the Cuban people. So Fidel did what he felt was right, He is protecting his people from all this propoganda. Until I hear first hand from a Cuban official, I wont take this serious, Wikipedia is good for general info { Sports, Music, Culture, Etc.} but when it comes to politics and especially communism they are very conservative.

I don't think it's true, but if it was, I would blame them. Censoring shit in the name of protection is fascist.

[bcbm]

Originally posted by Punk [email protected] 14 2006, 10:08 PM
Censoring shit in the name of protection is fascist.
No, it is authoritarian.

[Punk Rocker]

No, it is authoritarian.

My bad.

[Rosario Central]

No, Its Responsible! Do you want Fox News to be able to broadcast to Cuba with the racist Bill O'Reilly?

[Punk Rocker]

No, Its Responsible! Do you want Fox News to be able to broadcast to Cuba with the racist Bill O'Reilly?

No dude, but with oreilly we shouldn't have to worry about his show, we should just kill him. Racism is bullshit you can't argue against, the only way to stop it is with violence.

Racism sucks but I'm saying Catsro shouldn't censor everything that doesn't talk about how cool he is.

[Atlas Swallowed]

Originally posted by Rosario [email protected] 17 2006, 03:40 AM
No, Its Responsible! Do you want Fox News to be able to broadcast to Cuba with the racist Bill O'Reilly?
Yes, the Cuban people would probably appreciate the comedy, the guy is a fucking joke. Concidering how many Americans take this fool seriously and believe he is an unbiased journalist would make it that more comic.

[poetofrageX]

I doubt it's true, but even if it is, i can understand why he did it.

In fact, I think Castro's authoritarian policies are a nessecary evil, to protect the gains of the revolution. i mean, look at what happened to Allende, if he instituted half of the authoritarian policies that Castro did, we might not have ended up with Pinochet's dictatorship. Allende left himself and his people exposed to the CIA, but it was with good intentions.

If Castro suddenly went all libertarian, like Allende was, the CIA would rip Cuba to pieces in months, then set up a puppet president to sell Cuba's resources to US companies.

[Severian]

The Cuban government does place some limits on the circulation of foreign media in Cuba.

IMO it is necessary to keep the world bourgeois media from outshouting the Cuban Communist media. Which it could do if wholly unlimited. The resources just aren't there to match it in variety and other respects.

Though the Cuban press certainly could be better, more varied and interesting, and politically clearer than it is now! Better able to answer the bourgeois ideological influences which are inevitable in a capitalist world.


(In the late 80s, Soviet publications including Novedades de Moscu were also banned in Cuba - not only were they spreading pro-capitalist crap, but they were able to do it in more copies than the Cuban press. Resources again.)

On the other hand, it would certainly be wrong to adopt an approach of trying (hopelessly) to completely seal off Cuba from all bad ideological influences. I get the impression that at times the Cuban government has tended to err in that direction.

Some visitors have even had problems with customs officials about brining in copies of revolutionary publications; although that may have partly been a problem with individual officials and I haven't heard of anything like that recently.