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Mambi Watch: Controversy Over Death of Juan Wilfredo Soto

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flamingdem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-15-11 07:14 PM
Original message
Mambi Watch: Controversy Over Death of Juan Wilfredo Soto
http://mambiwatch.blogspot.com/

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Juan Wilfredo was arrested during a protest last Thursday in Santa Clara where, according to some witnesses, he was beaten by security agents. One witness, dissident Guillermo Fariñas, told Radio/TV Marti that Juan Wilfredo was "savagely beaten" while in handcuffs. Supposedly, Juan Wilfredo was then taken to a hospital where he stayed until his death Sunday morning. But, events that happened after his arrest have produced conflicting reports.

According to this report on the El Nuevo Herald website, but attributed to an AFP copy, Juan Wilfredo "was taken by the agents" to the hospital after his arrest. The original AFP story doesn't include this specific information about how Juan Wilfredo arrived at the hospital. Other news outlets (such as CNN and BBC) have also assumed that Juan Wilfredo was so badly beaten that he was sent to the hospital after the protest due to injuries, and therefore have not reported that Juan Wilfredo was actually taken to the hospital for other reasons.

According this Radio/TV Marti report, Juan Wilfredo was arrested by state agents on Thursday and then "taken home instead of being taken to a jail cell." That information comes from Cuban dissident Idania Yanez Contreras. But, Idania is much more specific in her audio comments linked to the report. She says that Juan Wilfredo was arrested, taken to the hospital by the police because of his already known poor health, and then released home.

Marc Frank for Reuters similarly reports that Juan Wilfredo "was quickly released but then checked into the Arnaldo Milian Hospital," but Frank doesn't specify by whom. According to Idania, after being taken home Juan Wilfredo's family, concerned over his worsening health, checked him into the hospital on Saturday. Juan Wilfredo was complaining of pain around his kidneys.

Several reports have mentioned Juan Wilfredo's already poor health, stricken with diabetes and hypertension, but Radio/TV Marti also includes "renal insufficiency" among his ailments. According to Marc Frank, "various bloggers close to the government quoted Dr. Ruben Aneiro Medina of the hospital as saying Soto died of pancreatitis and kidney failure and there were no signs of physical violence." more at link
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-16-11 11:51 AM
Response to Original message
1. The trouble is that anti-Castro Cubans, the rightwing & the corporate 'news' have lied so much,
over the decades, I can't trust anything they say. It surprises me not at all that there are half a dozen conflicting versions of this story. It has all the marks of CIA disinformation: it serves rightwing/corporate interests, it portrays the Cuban government as brutal, it sows dissension, confusion and anger and the headline is the point, not the truth.

I've seen this pattern time and again, throughout the history of U.S. efforts to smash the Cuban Revolution, and over the last decade used against the strongest leftist democracies--Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina--as the left began sweeping elections in the Latin America.

The democratic elements of Cuba's government have been ignored;

The benefits of the Cuban government to the people of Cuba have been ignored
(for instance, universal, free, high quality health care and universal free education through graduate school);

The Cuban government has been portrayed as some kind of heinous dictatorship when it is not;

True heinousness--for instance, the bombing of a Cubana airliner--has been celebrated or justified.

Furthermore, this sick Miami mafia/CIA culture has infested our government and poisoned U.S. policy, because it serves the rich and the powerful. Thus, the U.S. government and the controlled media can completely ignore reality in a country like Venezuela, for instance, which holds elections that are far, FAR more honest and transparent than our own, and where it is plainly and obviously true that the people of Venezuela have chosen their own "New Deal" over rule by the rich elite and U.S. corporations and banksters. The evidence for this is overwhelming but that evidence is NEVER provided to 'news' consumers, who instead are fed an impressionistic, subliminal message, sluiced into their brains with every headline, of a bogeyman "dictator." The people of Venezuela are the most democratic people in Latin America. They rate their democracy highest in the region. They saved their democracy from a U.S.-supported, rightwing coup d'etat. They have elected the government that they want, by big margins.

The unreality in corporate 'news' reporting on Latin America--which often seems to be copying and pasting the faxes from Langely--is mind-boggling, and that disinformationist, "Big Lie" M.O. started with the Miami mafia when the Cubans booted them out of Cuba and they landed on our shore.

So when I see a story like this, I activate my "rule of them" for the Bush Junta: Whatever they say, the opposite is true; and whatever they accuse others of doing, they are doing or planning to do.

It's a pretty good guide to the truth when you have been lied to often enough to know that you are dealing with congenital liars. And I shudder to think what it portends if the Miami mafia ever gets a foothold in Cuba again. The anti-Castro Cubans, in fact, have beaten, tortured, threatened and murdered their opponents. That is the history of the anti-Castro movement starting with Batista and infesting Miami with rightwing violence for decades, as well as anti-Castro bombings of hotels, a commercial airliner and other heinous acts.

We need to understand the disinformation method and its projection aspects. It has been ever active in anti-Castro circles and it is no different from the Bush Junta and its lies about the WMDs in Iraq. In fact, the Bushwhacks gave us a sterling example of how it works and what its consequences are. Whatever they say, the opposite is true; and whatever they accuse others of doing, they are doing or planning to do.

The rightwing/corporate forces behind this story are likely plotting a rightwing dictatorship in Cuba, in which anti-coup protestors will be terrorized and murdered (as is happening at this moment in Honduras, where dozens of anti-coup protest leaders have been murdered, including a teacher shot dead in front of his students, and yet another journalist was murdered just last week, by rightwing death squads). That is what my "rule of thumb" for Bushwhacks tells me. This story--yet another impressionistic tale of Cuba's 'heinous dictatorship'-- is a projection. The confusing, contradictory details likely derive from the tale's false origins, and, as long as the confusion can be maintained, the story does its work: adding one more impressionistic image to the picture of Cuba's government as evil and thus any action against it--no matter how heinous--is justified.

The truth: Cuba's government is actually rather benign and is recognized throughout Latin America and the world as legitimate--everywhere but here, where the Miami mafia controls U.S. policy.

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Billy Burnett Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-16-11 01:53 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Indeed.
Funny how the US paid dissidents commentary are called "reports". I have the same feeling as you regarding the HRW, RsF, AI "reports" on Cuba, since their sources are the very same vested "dissidents".


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