ROGER AILES, "FOX NEWS IS FAIR AND BALANCED", SO WHY DID FOX NEWS LIE ABOUT CUBA'S AID TO HAITI?

By Dave Lindorff, in Rebelión. Rebellion is in spanish.

Originally posted on the bog Counterpunch which interestingly has a broken link today, hmm, and also found on Pravda. The news media feeds us the information the military-industrial-complex wants us to believe and a lot is left out. Roger Ailes was on ABC this morning defending craziness. I agree with him on one point, he does not look like J. Edgar Hoover whose face looks scrunched like a dried apple, Ailes looks like Jaba-the-Hut. However, he is a malignant tumor. He is directing a huge amount of the crazy beliefs the right wing are exposed to in this country, which are not based on what the rest of us call the truth. He has nothing intelligent to say and looks in my opinion ignorant sitting next to Arianna Huffington and Krugman who was also on the panel. He took this opportunity during the discussion to plug the CIA-military-industrial-complex's war on terrorism.

Huffington:



Krugman:



View more of the discussion on ABC.

From Counterpunch:
In the critical first days after the quake struck Haiti, only two US corporate media news organizations reported on Cuba’s quick response to the crisis. One was Fox News, which claimed, wrongly, that the Cubans were absent from the list of neighboring Caribbean countries providing aid. The other was the Christian Science Monitor (a respected news organization that recently shut down its print edition), which reported correctly that Cuba had dispatched 30 doctors to the stricken nation.



The Christian Science Monitor, in a second article, quoted Laurence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense and now based at the Center for American Progress, as saying that the US, which is leading the relief efforts in Haiti, should “consider tapping the expertise of neighboring Cuba,” which he noted, “has some of the best doctors in the world--we should see about flying them in.”

As for the rest of the US corporate media, they simply ignored Cuba.


In fact, left unmentioned was the reality that Cuba already had nearly 400 doctors, EMTs and other medical personnel posted to Haiti to help with the day-to-day health needs of this poorest nation in the Americas, and that those professionals were the first to respond to the disaster, setting up a hospital right next to the main hospital in Port-au-Prince which collapsed in the earthquake, as well as a second tent-hospital elsewhere in the stricken city.


Far from “doing nothing” about the disaster as the right-wing propagandists at Fox-TV were claiming, Cuba has been one of the most effective and critical responders to the crisis, because it had set up a medical infrastructure before the quake, which was able to mobilize quickly and start treating the victims right away.

The American emergency response, predictably, has focussed primarily, at least in terms of personnel and money, on sending the hugely costly and inefficient US military--a fleet of aircraft and an aircraft carrier--a factor that should be considered when examining that $100 million figure the Obama administration claims is being allocated to emergency aid to Haiti. Considering that the cost of operating an aircraft carrier, including crew, is roughly $2 million a day, just sending a carrier to Port-au-Prince for two weeks accounts for a quarter of the announced American aid effort, and while many of the military personnel sent there will certainly be doing actual aid work, delivering supplies and guarding supplies, many, given America’s long history of brutal military/colonial control of Haiti, will inevitably be spending their time ensuring continued survival and control of the parasitic pro-US political elite in Haiti.


Otherwise, the US has basically ignored the ongoing day-to-day human crisis in Haiti, while Cuba has been doing the yeoman work of providing basic health care.


It’s not that the Cubans were hard to find in Port-au-Prince. Democracy Now! had a report, as did the Washington-based magazine Cuba News. It’s just that telling Americans about the good works of a poor and unashamedly Communist nation is not a story that the American corporate media want to tell.

The Christian Science Monitor, in a second paper, citing Laurence Korb, a former deputy defense secretary and current member of the Center for American Progress, said that the U.S., who led relief efforts in Haiti should "think about utilizing the knowledge of neighboring Cuba." He also noted that they "have some of the best doctors in the world - we should try sending them to Haiti."


With regard to other media in the U.S., Cuba is simply ignored. In fact, they omitted and failed to inform that Cuba already had about 400 doctors, paramedics and other health professionals sent to Haiti to assist in day-to-day health needs of the poorest country in the Americas, and that these professionals were the first to respond to the disaster by erecting a hospital, just next to the main hospital in Port au Prince that was toppled by the earthquake, as well as a second hospital in another part of town.

Far from "doing nothing" after the disaster, as the propaganda wing Fox-TV, Cuba has been one of the countries that responded more efficiently and crucially in this crisis, because even before the earthquake they had created a medical infrastructure that was able to mobilize quickly to immediately begin treating the victims.


As might be expected, the North American emergency response has focused primarily, at least in terms of personnel and money, to send the enormously expensive and inefficient military machine - a fleet of aircraft and an aircraft carrier - a factor that should be taken into account when considering the $100 million that the Obama administration says it has designated for emergency aid to Haiti.