--- On Fri, 1/15/10, Scott Bidstrup <[email protected]> wrote:
>From: Scott Bidstrup <[email protected]> >Subject: Cuba is Missing - Or Is It? >Date: Friday, January 15, 2010, 11:01 PM > > >All, > >Cuba is missing, alright, primarily from the list of nations to which the >Fawning Corporate Media in the United States is willing to pay respect. > >What it is not missing from, is the list of first responder nations to the >Haiti emergency. Contrary to what Fox News has reported, it has not only >responded by sending medical help, but it was one of the first to do so. >Cuba, hit frequently by hurricanes as it is, knows how to deal with >emergencies, and is doing so very effectively. It was one of the first to >land medical help into the affected area, having sent 30 in addition to the >400 it already had there. > >And its people have responded - I know, because I can listen (7045 Khz.) to >the efforts of the ham radio operators in Cuba, providing emergency >communications into the affected area - and doing so with more efficiency and >effectiveness than anyone else, including such experienced U.S. groups > as the Salvation Army. > >Scott > >==== > >Cuba is Missing...From US Reports on the International Response to Haiti’s >Earthquake >Dave Lindorff > >http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/26095 > >There are only two US media outlets that have reported on Cuba’s response to >the deadly 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti. One was Fox News, which claimed, >wrongly, that the Cubans were absent from the list of neighboring Caribbean >countries providing aid. The other was the Christian Science Monitor (a >respected news organization that recently shut down its print edition), which >reported correctly that Cuba had dispatched 30 doctors to the stricken nation. > >The Christian Science Monitor, in a second article, quoted Laurence Korb, >former assistant secretary of defense and now based at the Center for American >Progress, as saying that the US, which is leading the relief > efforts in Haiti, should “consider tapping the expertise of neighboring > Cuba,” which he noted, “has some of the best doctors in the world--we should > see about flying them in.” > >As for the rest of the US media, they have simply ignored Cuba. > >In fact, left unmentioned is the reality that Cuba already had over 400 >doctors posted to Haiti to help with the day-to-day health needs of this >poorest nation in the Americas, and that those doctors were the first to >respond to the disaster, setting up a hospital right next to the main hospital >in Port-au-Prince which collapsed in the earthquake. > >Far from “doing nothing” about the disaster as the right-wing propagandists at >Fox-TV were claiming, Cuba has been one of the most effective and critical >responders to the crisis, because it had set up a medical infrastructure >before the quake, which was able to mobilize quickly and start treating the >victims. > >The American emergency > response, predictably, has focussed primarily, at least in terms of personnel > and money, on sending the hugely costly and inefficient US military--a fleet > of aircraft and an aircraft carrier--a factor that should be considered when > examining that $100 million figure the Obama administration claims is being > allocated to emergency aid to Haiti. Considering that the cost of operating > an aircraft carrier, including crew, is roughly $2 million a day, just > sending a carrier to Port-au-Prince for two weeks accounts for a quarter of > the announced American aid effort, and while many of the military personnel > sent there will certainly be doing actual aid work, delivering supplies and > guarding supplies, many, given America’s long history of brutal > military/colonial control of Haiti, will inevitably be spending their time > ensuring continued survival and control of the parasitic pro-US political > elite in Haiti. > >Otherwise, the US has basically ignored the > ongoing day-to-day human crisis in Haiti, while Cuba has been doing the > yeoman work of providing basic health care. > >But that’s not a story that the American corporate media want to tell. > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
