One of the confidential US embassy cables revealed by WikiLeaks reports that Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko: "...the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so "disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room".
Castro's government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it "knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them."
Read more at The Guardian.
UPDATE: Michael Moore response, and my comment, via it's all one thing
5 comments:
Was there ever any doubt?
For some UUs there is.
It's strange to see the Peace Making list praise Assange as some hero. It seems they don't read the links much to see how much of this confirms a "neo cons" view of the world. "Neo Con" the label slapped on me in the list.
I'm not on the Peace making list, but I'd rather see the truth even if it is something that doesn't confirm what I believe.
I wish that Assange wasn't quite so focused on the Americans all the time, I actually thought Wikileaks was more interesting a year or so ago when it was releasing information on the corrupt dealings of South American governments and polluters and stuff like that in addition to its releases about the US.
Also, they teased for awhile that they had inside information on the Russian mafia and I really wanted to see that. But the US reaction has him wanting to do an all-US-secrets-all-the-time format.
Bummer.
CC
Since you quoted The Guardian for this blog post, you may be interested in knowing that they printed a correction:
Contrary to a claim made in a leaked US diplomatic cable whose contents we reported, Sicko – a documentary by film-maker Michael Moore – was not banned in Cuba. The film, which examines US healthcare through comparisons with some countries' publicly funded systems, including Cuba's, was in fact shown in film theatres throughout the island and on national TV (Cuba 'vetoed' healthcare film, 18 December, page 7).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/dec/21/corrections-clarifications
It's entirely possible that a diplomatic cable did say that Michael Moore's movie was banned in Cuba. And it's also possible that the cable's author was factually wrong. There have been past instances where the US State Department's intelligence collection has been inaccurate.
Steve- the update has a link to a discussion of the Cuban showing of the film. It's possible that the diplomatic cable was correct when written, as "Sicko" was shown on TV three months after the cable. There is some reason to believe that Castro may have been reluctant to show the film initially, as the first show is 11 months after the first release... you'd think they'd be so proud about what it says about them that they'd have shown the film immediately, rather than waiting a year, unless there was some trepidation. And yes, Michael Moore says the film was widely shown throughout Cuba, but I notice that there's no release date listed for Cuba on IMDb, so I don't know what he means by "throughout".
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