The Shocked Silence

Ignacio Ramonet. Taken from wwwunmundoperfecto.blogspot.com

Ignacio Ramonet is a Spanish journalist working in France who was, for 18 years, editor-in-chief of the French edition of Le Monde Diplomatique.  Nobody doubts that his journalistic skill or his comprehensive general knowledge.  To his name there are several books, many articles, essays and lectures.  He is also the driving force of the Social Forum of Porto Alegre.

In the Granma newspaper from 16th December I read the article on his most recent visit to my country he had given a talk in the Cuba Pavillion for the Festival of Latin American Cinema.  There he spoke about journalistic ethics, of ‘truthful information in the media’ -he didn’t mention the true media or the biased press-, ‘of the repercussions of Wikileaks and the scope of new technologies in the world order, amongst other things’.  What other things?  Whilst totalitarian models of government exist which ‘supervise and orient the press’ and manipulate and discriminate against their own citizens’ access to new technologies to avoid any of them ever being able to self publish their own opinions in a blog, the above quote is diluted in the muddy insipid waters of talk.  As a result it seems immoral and propagandistic to talk about the US recession in Cuba when here the people have not been given independence in this area and it has permanently been subjugated -still worse when it lost its Russian rock- during the long continuance of the Cuban regime.

In his speech also referred to the movement of the outraged. In Cuba, Mr. Ramonet, there are also outraged, only instead of turning to the streets, they are frightened by the ferocity — induced from the powers-that-be — of the political police. They choose to “march” to the embassies of any country to emigrate or to put their lives on the line to cross the Straits of Florida.

Of course, as is natural, the lecturing friend of the elite of the Cuban power structure does not question why there are no strikes in our country, nor legally recognized political parties nor a legitimate independent press, nor why the institutional means of dissemination are only in the hands of State.

The professor’s position is a very comfortable one, as he has, among many other freedoms, the freedom to travel and to come to our country to speak about the issues with which the omnipresent State media saturates us every day as bombastic as a reggaeton chorus.

He alluded in addition to the idea that the movement of the outraged “(…) has the slogan that politics, as it is practiced, does not work” and that “(…) we can criticize the way of doing politics, but we not can change things without going through politics.”

Ramonet discovered the warm water, but I agree with him on that maxim of universal application that indirectly challenges the emerging socio-economic reforms being introduced by the Cuban government ignoring the rights and legitimate interests of our nation.

December 20 2011