The Cubans are accusing the United States of censoring Michael Moore after the Treasury Department launched an investigation into whether or not Moore violated trade violations with the communist island.
Cuba characterized American filmmaker Michael Moore as a victim of censorship and the U.S. trade embargo as it reported Friday on a U.S. Treasury Department probe of his March visit here for his upcoming health-care documentary, “Sicko.”
Moore took the trip, for a segment in the film, with about 10 ailing workers involved in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center ruins.
The Communist Party daily Granma called the 45-year-old U.S. travel and trade sanctions “a criminal action that has cost lives and grave consequences for the inhabitants of the island,” as well as Americans.
“Any resemblance to McCarthyism is no coincidence,” the newspaper opined, referring to the political witch hunt that U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy carried out against suspected American communists in the 1950s.
The U.S. government’s targeting of Moore “confirms the imperial philosophy of censorship” by American officials, it added.
The Cuban government has jailed 10 independent journalists—most of whom publish articles on Internet news sites—as part of a larger crackdown against political opposition on the island.
Police went from house to house on Tuesday, rounding up the reporters and 24 political activists, according to the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Authorities confiscated the detainees’ computer equipment, books and papers, the group said.
Perhaps those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
By the way, take a moment to ponder what’s going on here. A communist country - guilty of no small number of eggregious human rights violations in the form of arresting reporters and political dissenters, torturing prisoners, denying fair trials to the accused and failing to have even one free and fair election since Castro came to power - is coming to the defense of Michael Moore. Liberal icon and booth-mate of Jimmy Carter at the Democrats’ 2004 Presidential convention.
This guy is a hero for the left, and he’s also apparently a hero for communist Cuba.
Telling, isn’t it?