Cuba did NOT ban Sicko: [who knows]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/18/wikileaks-us-diplomats-story-cuba-banned-sicko-film
I read that article. I tend to believe the diplomat’s version over Moore’s.
Right. In order to discredit Michael Moore in the public eye, somebody sent a top secret memo which the public was never going to see. Uh huh. Propaganda only works if you actually distribute it.
If the cable were a fabrication by U.S. operatives for the purpose of discrediting Moore, why send it in secret? That makes no sense.
That it was sent secretly indicates to me that it was true.
It also corresponds with similar stories I’m acquainted with regarding communist regimes and censorship of foreign media. For example, the movie version of “The Grapes of Wrath” was banned by the Soviet government. One would think that it would promote the film, since it’s about a poor farm family during the Depression, and it doesn’t cast the U.S., or capitalism in general, in a favorable light. That, of course, was John Steinbeck’s intention. The movie, however, was banned for an interesting reason:
It unintentionally showed that even a desperately poor American family under capitalism could own its own truck!
And THAT’S why it was banned. The Soviet authorities were afraid — just as the Cuban censors were afraid — of a popular backlash by the people, once the latter saw that even poverty under capitalism was better than poverty under socialism.