US peddling yet more lies about Cuba

[IndianaGreen]

US peddling yet more lies about Cuba

Friday 20 November 2009
John Haylett

Did you know that 82 per cent of Cuba's people are unhappy with the direction of the country and that 20 per cent want the political system changed and 10 per cent want a different political system?

Don't take my word for it. Be guided by the self-styled "non-partisan" International Republican Institute, which has been surveying Cuban opinion since 2007 "to support its work promoting democracy."

"Cubans are as frustrated and pessimistic as they've ever been," says Alex Sutton of the non-partisan institute.

Just to balance matters up, the survey revealed that, despite not being asked to comment on US policy, a massive 8 per cent of respondents had suggested that ending the blockade against Cuba would help to improve the island's economy.

In case there should be any cynicism about just how non-partisan it is, the institute accepts funding from the US State Department, the US Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy and a number of private donors, so that's OK then.

Of course there will always be the doubting Thomases, who note that Cubans' views were sought "surreptitiously" and that the poll was carried out by a Latin American company that prefers to remain anonymous.

But such doubts haven't prevented the Miami anti-Cuba media and other staunch defenders of free speech in the US from treating this anonymous farrago as a valid measure of Cuban people's discontent with their government.

Talking of free speech, the US Supreme Court backed a Miami school board decision this week to remove the book Vamos A Cuba, and its English-language version A Visit To Cuba, from state school libraries because it presents an "inaccurate" picture of life in Cuba.

Read more at: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/83513