Fidel Said Si to Sicko!

One of the more interesting thing that Wikileaks has revealed is that the Republican cable that Fidel Castro had banned Sicko in Cuba is a lie.  Now for Republican operatives to lie is nothing unusual.  When their mouths are open they are eating, drinking, snoring or lying.  But what does make this relevant is the connection between Sicko and 9/11 rescue workers.

In a classic case of telling the boss what he wants to hear, WikiLeaks released cables asserting that Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko was banned in Cuba. Only problem? It wasn’t.

Michael Moore was as surprised as anyone when WikiLeaks revealed a US cable asserting that Cuban officials banned his Sicko documentary because it depicted a "mythical" view of health care there. He was even more surprised when the media picked up on the cable and reported it as gospel truth. (See the Guardian, whose report in turn got widely disseminated.) The problem is that the documentary—a damning assessment of the American health care system—was not banned in Cuba, he writes at the Huffington Post.

As Digby points out, we used to have this thing that would actually check out stories before running them.

If only there were professional people who gather facts and research issues and interview subjects who could be called upon to investigate such things. I recall that there used to be an organization called The New York Times which was interested in sorting out various secrets and lies but they seem to have gone into another business. (Some strange foreigners still practice this old fashioned craft but here in the US not so much.) Too bad. It could be useful.

The point is apt, and makes the Americans media’s tweaking about Julian Assange look all that much more ridiculous, because it looks more and more that many of these cables were written by people looking to make the bosses happy, not truthfully inform them… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

The article also included a video of Michael Moore in Cuba.

Now, since it presents Cuba in such a positive light, it would appear unreasonable that Cuba would not want their people to see it.

Nameless, as a doctor, would you please take a look at the video and comment on the quality of the equipment and care the people received?

Now here is the irony of ironies.  The 9/11 workers were with Moore, because they could not get the care they needed here for conditions resulting from their service to America.  America’s enemy provided it to them.  Now, over nine years later, they still cannot get the care they need here, because Republicans blocked the bil that would have provided it.  Why?  The money to pay for the care was to come from closing a loophole in the tax code that benefits foreign corporations when US jobs are outsourced to them.  I feel like screaming!