In and Out of the News
This is how the news gets reported to us:
An article on tensions between Arabs and Jews in Israel tells us: “Last week, Amir Makhoul, a leading community activist, pleaded guilty to handing sensitive information to Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that fought an intense monthlong war against Israel in 2006. He faces up to 10 years in prison.”
Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the “Lebanese guerrilla group” was resisting an Israeli invasion of their homeland.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101102/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_arabs)
Then we have this item, from an article
“Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which monitors dissident activity and advocates for the release of political prisoners, said the government faces no real threat from the presence of a dozen more activists.”
Sanchez gets quoted a lot in dispatches from US reporters in Havana. Never mentioned is the fact that the “Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation” has exactly one (1) member: Sanchez.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101031/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_dissident_deadline)
Interestingly, a recent change in US policy toward Cuba slipped completely beneath news media radar. The Voice of America has halted its Spanish-language shortwave radio broadcasts to Cuba, a long time irritant to the government there. I found out about it in the blog of Tracey Eaton, former Havana bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News.
Eaton also picked up on a brief report in the New York Times that USAID had decided to shift its support in Cuba “from those intent on ‘regime change’ to those that support educational exchanges and the growth of small businesses.”
The blog also has a “Q&A” Eaton conducted via email with a USAID official who stated that the agency spent $15.62 million in “fiscal year 2009” on “pro-democracy programs” aimed at the Cuban government. The official was unable to say how much of that money actually got to “people on the ground” in Cuba.
In Miami, leaders of the “anti-Castro exile community” are known for throwing around a lot of money. And any Cuban who takes money from Washington’s “Cuba Transition Initiative” will go to jail, so it may be a while before taxpayers here find out how their money gets spent.
(http://alongthemalecon.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-10-26T12%3A00%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=2