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Sunday 27 May 2012

Michael and Me

Sunday, 19th December 2010

I have had an email from someone called webguy @ michaelmoore.com – who may be the great propagandist himself or perhaps one of his "people" – saying that the US State Department’s claim that the Cuban communists banned Sicko is false. (“Nick, The government cable's claim that Sicko was banned in Cuba is false. Would appreciate a correction whenever you have a moment. thanks, MichaelMoore.com”)

For what it is worth, I believe Moore. Why would a dictatorship not want to show a flattering description of life in its country? Even though the captive audience would know it was not true, the sight of foreigners repeating the regime’s propaganda could only serve to bolster the Communist Party and demoralise the opposition.

I only mentioned the Wikileaks’ claim in passing, and devoted nearly all of yesterday’s piece to talking about Moore’s promiscuous willingness to indulge tyrannies of whatever stripe – fascist in the case of Saddam’s Iraq, Communist in the case of the Castro family’s Cuba. So I wrote back: “What about the argument that you filmed a hospital for the party elite rather than the masses?”

I waited 12 hours for a reply, but none was forthcoming, so let us see what we can discover. On my own visits to Cuba, I have noticed that doctors are as easy for tourists to buy as prostitutes. Cuban refugee sites maintain that there is a three-tier health service: one for tourists paying in dollars; one for the nomenklatura; and one for the wretched proles. I am sure Moore will counter that Cuban exiles have willingly fled a socialist paradise, and must be deranged conservatives, who are probably in the pay of the CIA.

But at some point you have to listen to people who are free to speak without fear, rather than those who must parrot the party line on pain of imprisonment.

When Sicko came out Reuters did just that and found a doctor who seemed to have all the relevant experience.

'In Cuba, the elite hospitals are as good as here, if not better," said Leonel Cordova, a Cuban doctor who works as a emergency room physician at Miami's Baptist Hospital. The hospitals dedicated to the health of regular citizens are a disaster," said Cordova, who was sent to work in Zimbabwe and defected in 2000. At these hospitals, Cubans bring personal items such as towels, bed sheets, soap and even food.'

None of the above is meant to deny that Cuban scientists have developed important new drugs and preventative treatments, although I would be very careful indeed about believing the life expectancy figures Havana produces, they may well turn out to be as reliable as the statistics on pig iron and steel production from Stalin’s glorious Soviet Union. Nor do I want to pretend that American health care did not shame the nation by denying cover to tens of millions of American citizens. Yet Obama has secured his place in history by reforming the system and introducing universal cover. Alert readers will have noticed that he has done so without introducing a military dictatorship, banning the opposition, imprisoning dissidents, and abolishing freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Needless to add, the same American leftists who giggle at Moore’s films now denounce Obama as a “sell-out”.

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Old Slaughter

December 19th, 2010 1:37pm Report this comment

"I only mentioned the Wikileaks’ claim in passing,"

That is not really true is it? I mean it was sort of central to your piece.

However I agree with the rest of it and this one.

Ghastly man.

Yow Min Lye

December 19th, 2010 2:12pm Report this comment

Michael Moore is the kind of self-loathing leftie who will fawn over any government as long as it is not his own or one of his own's allies.

inf4mation

December 19th, 2010 9:12pm Report this comment

hi Nick,

I think you know you are being a little bit disingenuous when you pen "Moore’s promiscuous willingness to indulge tyrannies of whatever stripe – fascist in the case of Saddam’s Iraq"

Were you not the one who supported the bombing of women and children in Baghdad to advance the interests and wealth of private tyrannies. You put a lot of professional energy into promoting the mass slaughter while Mr. Moore was simply opposed to a war for oil.

Remember how the American government used to simply love Saddam, fund him, arm him and help him gas Iranian troops. Meanwhile Mr. Moore was labelling Saddam as a "monster" and a "murderer" but you equate this position as support for fascism.

You do seem to be full of fury and hatred. Perhaps an understandable emotional reaction to the situation you now find yourself in.

Erica Blair

December 20th, 2010 11:51am Report this comment

Cohen's bluster only serves to demonstrate how little fact-checking he does before using any stick to attack the principled anti-war left.

Tell us again about Hassan Butt, he used to be your 'go to man' back in the day Nick.

Steve

December 20th, 2010 3:40pm Report this comment

inf4mation,

"you seem to be full of hatred and fury"

Clearly you have no grasp of English if you believe that these adjectives accurately reflect the tone of this calm and reasonable article. You are just like the religious fanatics who shout about the aggression of atheists who have never hurt anyone and are just expressing their dis-belief.

Erica Blair,

"the principled anti-war left"

So it is principled now to do nothing while people are brutalized, tortured and murdered by gangsters and religious fanatics? This shallow, self-agrandizing sense of moral superiority is what characterizes most of the so called anti-war left and makes them impossible to debate with. You are the equivalent of the Jehovas witnesses that periodically knock at my door; so convinced of their rightousness that they are incapable of engaging in any sort of meaningful discourse. Apparently you also believe that people are also incapable of changing their minds about things. Well, allow me to let you into a secret, when you think for yourself changes of opinion are somewhat mundane and merely reflect the facts as you find them. People who start by believing that they are unquestioningly 'principled' probably cannot understand this concept.

Ian Walker

December 20th, 2010 4:00pm Report this comment

In the NHS, you're usually expected to bring your own towels and soap.

So the difference between our beacon of well-meaning socialism and a catastrophe of communist dictatorship is the provision of clean linen and ropey hospital food?

Erica Blair

December 21st, 2010 2:08pm Report this comment

'So it is principled now to do nothing while people are brutalized, tortured and murdered by gangsters and religious fanatics?'

No, that's the order Donald Rumsfeld gave to US troops when they came across such activities by their allies. See the Iraq warlogs if you don't believe me.

elixelx

December 21st, 2010 5:09pm Report this comment

When Franz Kafka used to read to his friends from his novels--those same novels that shock and frighten us!--they used to laugh and laugh; because what for us is horror was, for them, satire; they knew exactly whereof he was writing, and it was no fantasy, it was reality!
So please Michael, please do tell; What did the Cuban populace do when they saw the horrors perpetrated in American Hospitals and the beauties presented in their own? Did they gasp, hide faces in hands, titter, guffaw?
I'm betting they nodded sagely in the public theatres and then mocked in the privacy of their homes, making sure that no "sapos" and "gusanos" were around!

Jamie

December 22nd, 2010 3:39pm Report this comment

How is having three separate types of hospital for different people of different alleged importance and class an example of medical communism? If anything, it's the opposite. A communist healthcare system would demand the rich went to the same hospital as the poor, regardless of the fact they wish to pay for a higher quality of care.

Dread

December 24th, 2010 12:47pm Report this comment

Dear Erica Blair,

Regardless of what American troops did or didn't do during and after the invasion of Iraq, what Sadaam did to his own people was much worse. If you cannot understand that, you must be mentally deficient. While it is fine to be critical about what the Western powers do, and thank goodness we can be critical without fear of being locked up or killed; to equate them with oppressive bloodthirsty tyrannies shows you must have had very little in the way of a formal historical education. I suggest you move to North Korea forthwith, and try sending me an email from there. You are a moral retard who lives in a bizarre universe of relativism. Good day to you.