In this undisturbed world, inaugurated by the myth, there is no external influence—and if there is, it’s called ‘interference’—its inhabitants can be treated like idiots, that is they don’t think about freedom for themselves, and certain common words acquire another meaning.
Above all, it’s about a world that should not be altered, and any attempt to do so could only be a conspiracy; generated, naturally, by external forces. The role of the media is exactly this: to transform facts, to endorse the vocabulary of those who rule in the name of good, and show evil as banal. continue reading
The Associated Press reports on Zunzuneo and the programs developed by USAID, an agency of the US government to promote a possible version of development and democracy, are modeled on the template of this syndrome and follow its procedures.
If we accept what is put forward by the medium, the promotion of social networks and civic courses in a territory captured by a dictatorship are demonstrably illegal acts, not according to the ordinary law ruling the interior of the kingdom, but according to the discourse of the dictators.
Nothing in Cuban legislation punishes the use a citizen makes of a digital or educational tool provided from the exterior, whether by a government or another institution, for legitimate purposes. But with the enmity between the Cuban autocracy and the democratic providers we have the necessary ingredient for the AP reporters to mount a case for conspiracy, harassment and overthrowing, where the only thing that exists is a project to promote democracy. Nothing else. And this toward a country–I don’t know why AP doesn’t report on it—where democratic ideas and freedom have more roots and antecedents than the “protoideas,” we could argue, of the Castro regime.
The AP reporters mount a conspiracy case where there is only a project to promote democracy
The fundamental questions, far beyond the ‘expertise’ of USAID, are whether it is legitimate to promote democracy—it turns out it’s less cynical to argue that you can bring in money from the outside, but not ideas—and if Cuban citizens consider the Internet or a couple of prohibited books as interference and manipulation of their brains. And this latter, judging by the constant police raids prohibiting everything that can be prohibited, doesn’t appear to be the case.
Which the Associated Press can’t talk about, unless it is willing to discuss the existence of USAID itself, which it has the right to do but that would lead it to question the very legitimacy of democratic changes anywhere in the world, supported in every case from outside, including by governments, and reported on by AP.
However, the AP doesn’t risk criticizing the legitimacy of the social purpose of USAID, it only suggests that it designs bad secret projects. And it lies, using the techniques of the complex lie. How? Through a report classified as secret that doesn’t previously appear published by the AP.
Certain press engage in the vice of recognizing as public only what is published, a media tautology that circumscribes the real world to the newsrooms; for the rest, they’re either not aware of it, or it only exists in the hidden labyrinths of the games of power. It so happens, however, that USAID programs and funding are exposed to view by anyone who wants to know about them or criticize them. And indeed they are, for certain sectors, by their very nature public.
When it feeds the conspiracy theory, the AP has no other choice than to assume the terminology of the Cuban penal code. For a Cuban, the term ‘subversion’ that the AP so happily uses in its reports, has made a long journey from violence to public and peaceful demonstrations of popular discontent with the brutality of an abusive regime. Thus, it tries to criminalize the extreme right that helps the people to shake off their oppression; this time solely through tweeting and civic leadership; a demonstration, by the way, that people can behave themselves in a more civilized way than those who oppress them.
Here the AP establishes an equivalence between a dictatorship and a democracy, as if the criminal codes between the two regimes were interchangeable
Here the AP establishes an equivalence between a dictatorship and a democracy, as if the criminal codes between the two regimes were interchangeable and the punishments they mete out are within the same category. From the depravity of pandering to the rhetoric of the dictatorship, the press in democratic countries wants to appear aseptic and condemns people like Alan Gross to ostracism by omission and journalistic trivialities, and this a man whom everyone knows was not in a condition to subvert any regime.
Hence the banalization of evil the AP always incurs referring to the pro-democracy activists. It’s odd that in all their reports the term “mercenary” appears, a term the Government assigns to its opponents in its periodic table. But doesn’t the AP know that “a mercenary” is a figure in the Cuban penal code but that that section of the code cites are none of the actions for which the Government calls us mercenaries.
Dictatorships are not rigorous with words, an imponderable for its specious domination over its citizens; but the free press should use the language of the dictionary and not the neo-language of the autocrats.
We are still waiting for a report from AP that concludes by saying, “The dissenters consider the Government to be despotic,” to achieve that balance. Something closer to the facts. In any event, I would like to record that, according to the penal code, we can be where many of us are: working for democracy in Cuba, although according to the rhetoric of power we are mercenaries fighting to subvert the regime. Does the AP have any objective opinion?
And the money? Well there it is. Money from the American people, both private and public—not from the Government—that public and private agencies in the United States destined to dissimilar projects all over the world, for the benefit of the organizers and governments, with few exceptions, which don’t include the Cuban government, much less its associated institutions.
In this whole issue of AP and Cuba I have a hypothesis: we are facing a conflict in the centers of power between the media groups, and those of the establishment. Which is settled from time to time on the periphery. Once resolved, Cuba will once again be a dictatorship for the AP, neither of the left nor the right, but infamous. As are all dictatorships, in the words of a wise politician.
