Writing in The New Statesman, British parliamentarian John McDonnell, the Right Honorable Gentleman from 1968, offers high praise for Cuban communism and demonstrates a level of credulity not seen since John Reed vacationed in Moscow. But don’t mention Moscow, because, as McDonnell bizarrely writes, “unlike Stalin’s Russia there have never been any Cuban gulags.” What’s not to like, he asks, about a country that provides “free prescriptions, free care for the elderly, free university education.”

So again, the health and education canard returns. What all of these pols and pundits lazily presume is that if the state of Cuban health care and education have markedly improved on Castro’s watch, surely the situation was dire during the final years of the Batista dictatorship.

Well, not exactly. In 1959 Cuba had 128.6 doctors and dentists per 100,000 inhabitants, placing it 22nd globally—that is, ahead of France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland. In infant mortality tables, Cuba ranked one of the best in the world, with 5.8 deaths per 100,000 babies, compared to 9.5 per 100,000 in the United States. In 1958 Cuba’s adult literacy rate was 80 percent, higher than that of its colonial grandfather in Spain, and the country possessed one of the most highly-regarded university systems in the Western hemisphere.

Cuba improved, as have most countries, on some of these indices in the years since the revolution. As reason Contributing Editor Glenn Garvin points out, “countries like Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil have posted equal gains in literacy during the same time period without resorting to totalitarian governments.” (For more reason coverage over the years on Cuba and Castro, go here.)

This is precisely the point: Punctual trains and spiffy highway networks hardly mitigate the horror of dictatorship. Such “advances,” like the illusory gains of the Cuban Revolution, are best achieved through policies that promote economic and political freedom. You would think, almost 20 yeas after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that journalists would understand that.

Oh, and as for the canard the Cuba never had gulags? Lies.

Four dissidents freed this week after five years in inhumane conditions in a Cuban prison have revealed the dark side of Fidel Castro’s regime.

The four - José Gabriel Ramón Castillo, Omar Pernet Hernández, Alejandro González and Pedro Pablo Álvarez - described regular beatings, humiliation and arbitrary punishment with long periods of solitary confinement in cramped cells with cement beds.

Arriving in Spain to be reunited with their families, they exposed the routine abuse of political prisoners which marked Castro’s five decades in power.

The four were part of a group of 75 dissidents who were jailed in 2003 by Castro’s regime in a move which caused an international outcry. The official reason given for their release was “health reasons”.

...

Mr Castillo, 50, a journalist who wrote articles critical of the regime, told The Sunday Telegraph: “It was terrible. It was like being in a desert in which sometimes there is no water, there is no food, you are tortured and you are abused.

“This was not torture in the textbook way with electric prods, but it was cruel and degrading. They would beat you for no reason even when you were in hospital.

“At other times they would search you for no reason, stripping you bare and humiliating you. There was one particular commander at a jail in Santa Clara who seemed to take delight in handing out beatings to the prisoners.”

Mr Castillo, who claims he was denied proper medical aid for diabetes and heart problems, added: “We are nothing more than a reflection of the human cost of the fight being waged by the Cuban people.”

While the dissidents tasted freedom, 58 of the original 75 jailed for long terms in 2003 are still behind bars.

It is estimated another 250 political prisoners languish in Cuban prisons. Mr Castillo was not hopeful that the departure of El Comandante from the helm of power would bring great changes.

...

Omar Pernet, a steel worker also in his fifties, was jailed for being an opposition activist, suffered an accident while being moved from one jail to another in 2004.

He also suffered lung problems in jail, a broken leg, a broken collar bone.

He said he was kept in solitary confinement in a cell measuring four metres square with a cement bed.

In all, he has spent 21 years behind bars for opposing the regime. Mr Pernet was jailed for 20 years after being accused of aiding the US secret services - a charge he says was trumped up.

Why do we go on and on about Castro? Because Fidelphilia is one of the symptoms of what I call the Credulous Left—the faction of the left wing that believes anything bad they hear about America and anything good they hear about our enemies. From Noam Chomsky on, they will deny Killing Fields, proclaim Saddam’s Iraq a paradise, praise Cuban health care and condemn the killing of terrorists. Moore, in going to Cuba and proclaiming everything he saw wonderful, has become a standard-bearer of the Credulous Left. And with every truth that leaks out about Fidel’s Cuba, we can see just how credulous he is.

I’m sure there a lot of health Nazis out there who are reading this and nodding their heads. Our national obssession with obesity—and in particular, the useless Body Mass Index—has warped our perception of everything. (BMI is useless—the healthiest Americans are those who are slightly overweight).

The Health Nazis are already saying our government should force us to diet and exercise. And now, they’ve got the data to back it up! Ok, maybe we don’t need extreme poverty. But coercive methods (denying care to the obese, a fat tax, etc.) would work! Cuba is healthier!

But even we accept these bullshit statistics, Cuba’s is not healthier. You can’t consider this thing in a vacuum, unless your last name happens to be “Moore”.

Consider this: some time back, the NYT ran an excellent article about how seniors in the US today are healthier than seniors have ever been. 100 years ago, if you were lucky enough to reach 60, you were almost certaintly in bad shape and probably bed-ridden. The astonishing improvement is attributed, not to better adult care, but to better early care - prenatal care, early immunization and, yes, better nutrition in the first few years of life.

One particular fact struck me. Children who were in the womb during the great Flu Pandemic, compared to children who came before or after, lived shorter lives and had more health problems. Just their mothers catching the damned flu was enough to affect them for the rest of their lives. It is an inescapable fact of life that good prenatal and early childhood care can set someone up for a lifetime of better health.

The Health Nazis look at Cuba, see weight loss and say, “Hooray!”. I’m sure Michael Moore will joke, “Boy, I sure wish I lived in Cuba! Ha! Ha!” But the negative effects of this wonderful beneficial glorious economic crisis may not show up for half a century, when the children of Cuba grow up to be unhealthy, crippled adults.

Now, forget Cuba for a moment. Forget weight loss and BMI. Concentrate on the principle. We have serious researchers proclaming that starvation was a good thing. Does it really stretch the imagination to think that, once our healthcare is in the government’s hands, some idiot won’t convince them ... well maybe not that starvation is good. But how about that stomach stapling should be mandated? Or even craziers ideas like mammograms cause brain cancer? Or that cell phones should be banned? That reading blogs stunts your growth? That masturbation makes you blind? Can’t you imagine Congress debating the merits of aromatherapy and magnets?

OK, maybe we won’t get crazy ideas like that. But right now we have people who want to mandate the HPV vaccine. And as much as I hate to side with the anti-vaccinators, what happens if we find out that it has long-term fertility effects? It wouldn’t be the first time a supposedly safe OB/Gyn drug caused defects twenty years down the road.

If the government controls healthcare, decisions will not be made by the Wisdom of Crowds but by policy wonks. And policy wonks have an amazing tendency to embrace unproven ideas that later turn out to be bad ones.

“Hey, our methods made Americans skinnier! Hooray! Oh, but now we have a bunch of crippled seniors. D’oh!”

The reason conservatives like me oppose government control is because it limits the damage of dumb ideas and bad policy. If I fall for some whack-job unscientific health nonsense or embrace a seemingly good idea (like vaccinating my daughter against HPV) that later turns out to be bad, the only person hurt is myself and my family. When the government embraces bad ideas—we all get hurt. And the history of government is that they come up with far more bad ideas than good ones.

Such as, you know, communism.

On May 10th, 1980, Reinaldo Arenas stepped of the deck of the “San Lazaro” and onto the shores of Key West. It was the first time in his life he had ever walked on land not owned and governed by a ruthless dictator.  He had virtually no possessions and no money, so it was a lucky turn of fate when Reinaldo met up with the son of a friend from Cuba. The young man took Arenas to a warehouse filled with donations designed to help the Mariel arrivals. Reinaldo received a batch of new clothes, food, and soap. He then met up with Juan Abreu and his dearest friend Lazaro Carilles and was able to contact the Camachos to ensure that his papers were safe. Finally, after so many years of running, hiding and exile, Reinaldo Arenas began to feel human again.

Reinaldo Arenas’ fame and talent had indeed preceded him, and he was invited to speak at a conference at the International University of Florida. Ironically, Herberto Padilla spoke before him; a drunk and stumbling shadow of his former self. Padilla had never been able to recover from the torture and imprisonment which Castro had imposed on him. The sight of this still-broken man fueled Arenas desire to let the world know about the atrocities being committed against artists and homosexuals in Cuba. But when Reinaldo took the stage and began denouncing Castro and his actions in Cuba, the public turned against him and an astonished Arenas was heckled off the stage.

This alarming trend continued as Reinaldo Arenas continued to speak out publicly against Castro’s regime. Arenas’ Mexican publisher told Reinaldo he should have stayed in Cuba and refused to pay him any of his royalties. A similar event happened in Uruguay where Arenas’ publisher not only denounced Reinaldo but published a letter stating that Arenas should be ostracized from the literary world. Despite the fact that Reinaldo Arenas’ works were published and read in dozens of languages all over the globe, he received almost no monetary compensation for it. Even though these events were a rude awakening to the capitalist system, Reinaldo still found it infinitely superior to communism:

None of this surprised me: I already knew that the capitalist system was also sordid and money hungry. In one of my first statements after leaving Cuba I had declared that “the difference between the communist and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream. And I came here to scream.”

In the summer of 1980 Professor Reinaldo Sanchez offered Arenas a job as a visiting professor at the International University of Florida teaching Cuban poetry. Reinaldo happily accepted this offer while still communing with the plethora of Cuban writers now exiled in Miami. Most of these formerly great writers were living hand-to-mouth or on welfare. Almost none of them could get published. Arenas tried to use his influence to start a publishing house for these talented writers but could not get funding for the project. He was told “literature is not lucrative” – it seemed no one was ready to hear about life under Fidel Castro.

It was after all of this that Reinaldo Arenas realized life in Miami was simply not for him. He found Miami to be a sad caricature of Cuba, a plastic world with no real substance. So when Arenas received an invitation to speak at Columbia University in New York he left almost immediately. Reinaldo fell in love with New York City and its endless sidewalks, trains, theater and nightlife. A friend found him an apartment within blocks of Times Square and, after finishing his course at the University of Florida, Reinaldo Arenas and Lazaro Carilles moved to New York on New Years Eve of 1980.

1981 and 1982 were wonderful years for Reinaldo Arenas in New York. He began writing prolifically and joined a small group of other exiled Cuban writers who had moved to the big city. Just as they used to do in Cuba, the group met and shared their work with each other, eventually leading to the creation of a magazine called “Mariel”. “Mariel” was a defiant publication that spoke about great writers and unmasked the hypocrisy about Cuba, in particular the treatment of homosexuals by Castro. The magazine wasn’t well received and eventually folded, but Arenas felt it was a triumphant effort for it raised important issues about life in Cuba.

Reinaldo Arenas continued insistence on speaking about the horrors occurring in Cuba under Castro began to cost him both professionally and financially. His books were dropped from assigned reading lists at New York University as well numerous other colleges worldwide. This attitude wasn’t limited to Arenas’ work – it affected all Cuban exiled writers:

In exile we have no country to represent us; we live as if by special permission, always in danger of being rejected. Instead of having a country, we have an anti-country…

In the US these types of problems were particularly bad. Reinaldo Arenas found that the vast majority of US liberals were either supportive of Castro or simply overlooked the atrocities being committed in Cuba. Instead of discovering movements to overthrow Castro, Arenas instead found liberal groups wanting to negotiate with the communist dictator and demanding that dissidents remain quiet. To Reinaldo Arenas, who had spent his life fighting, hiding, and being tortured and imprisoned by Castro, this attitude of tolerance and silence was simply unacceptable:

I remember that after I arrived in the United States, a Cuban exile who lived in Washington said to me: “Don’t ever quarrel with the left.” For people like him, to attack Castro’s government was to fight against the left. But after twenty years of repression, how could I keep silent about these crimes? On the other hand, I have never considered myself as belonging to the “left” or to the “right”, nor do I want to be included under any opportunistic or political label. I tell my truth, as does the Jew who has suffered racism or the Russian was has been in the Gulag, or any human being who has eyes to see the way things really are. I scream, therefore I exist.

It took until 1983 for Reinaldo Arenas to obtain a UN document that classified him a refugee. This document allowed him to travel outside the United States and to finally see his good friends Jorge and Margarita Camacho for the first time since 1967. Arenas then embarked on a speaking tour of Europe beginning in Sweden. At the University of Stockholm he gave a lecture in which he simply read sections of the Granma – Castro’s official newspaper – in order to demonstrate what was really happening daily in Cuba. The audience’s response was pointed – they heckled Reinaldo continuously until he was forced to leave the stage. Indeed, Arenas met responses like this in many places along his tour, proving once again that people were either unwilling or unable to deal with the truth about Castro and Cuba.

Between 1980 and 1983 Reinaldo Arenas also appeared in three films: “In His Own Words”, “The Other Cuba”, and “Improper Conduct”. Arenas loved “Improper Conduct” as it was the first film to openly denounce Castro and the persecution of homosexuals in Cuba. The film contained footage of the UMAP concentration camps for gays and interviews with many survivors. The film attracted international attention and won the Human Rights Award in Europe.

During this time period Reinaldo Arenas accomplished a great deal. He wrote or re-wrote six books, was invited to speak at over 40 universities and gave lectures around the world. He was even able to get his mother out of Cuba to New York for a three month visit, sending her home with a huge sack of clothes for his still poor family. These years were among the happiest in Reinaldo Arenas’ life.

For the next few years Reinaldo Arenas devoted his time to fixing and translating his life’s work. He penned a book of essays on Cuban life called “A Need for Freedom” and a book of poetry called “The Will to Live Manifesting Itself”. He had not yet completed the last two novels of his “pentagonia” when Reinaldo became sick with repeated fevers.

In 1987 Reinaldo Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS. Feeling sure his death was now imminent, Arenas bought a plane ticket to Miami – he wanted to die near his beloved sea. Lazaro brought Reinaldo back to New York and checked him into a hospital despite his lack of money or insurance. Given only a 10% chance to live, Reinaldo fought for nearly four months and beat the odds. Upon his discharge from the hospital, although still quite ill, Reinaldo Arenas swore that he would not die until he had completed his life’s work. 

Now too weak to type, Reinaldo began dictating his autobiography “Before Night Falls”. In the spring of 1988 Arenas’ novel “The Doorman” was published in France to great critical and commercial success and was one of three finalists for the International Medici Prize. This tremendous success was eclipsed when Reinaldo fell ill again with PCP pneumonia. Despite also developing Kaposi’s sarcoma, phlebitis and toxoplasmosis, he once again beat the odds and lived to continue his work.

Reinaldo Arenas finished “Before Night Falls” in the hospital and began to write “The Color of Summer”, the critical fourth installment in his “pentagonia”. Simultaneously he was revising “The Assault”, the fifth and final piece of the “pentagonia” which had been hurried penned in Cuba. Friends helped to translate Arenas’ longhand and “The Assault” was finally completed. He was also eventually able to complete “The Color of Summer” – thus completing the “pentagonia” – and his poetic trilogy “Leper Colony”. Reinaldo Arenas had finally completed his body of work

In 1988 Reinaldo Arenas flew out to Spain to visit with the Camachos. It was there that Jorge Camacho and Arenas hatched an idea to publish an open letter to Castro requesting he hold a plebiscite similar to the one held in Chile by Pinochet. The idea blossomed, and the letter garnered thousands of signatures, including those of eight Nobel Laureates. The letter was published in newspapers around the world, enraging Castro to no end. Reinaldo hoped that Castro’s reaction to this letter would open the eyes of the world to the atrocities being committed in Cuba and that Cuba would someday soon be free.

In 1990, his body ravaged by disease, Reinaldo Arenas gave several sealed envelopes to his translator and friend Dolores M. Koch with instructions to deliver them at the appropriate time. Shortly after this, Reinaldo Arenas committed suicide, and his letter appeared in newspapers around the world:

Dear friends:

Due to my delicate date of health and to the terrible emotional depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. During the past few years, even though I felt very ill, I have been able to finish my literary work, to which I have devoted almost thirty years. You are the heirs of all my terrors, but also of my hope that Cuba will soon be free. I am satisfied to have contributed, though in a very small way, to the triumph of this freedom. I end my life voluntarily because I cannot continue working. Persons near to me are in no way responsible for my decision. There is only one person I hold accountable: Fidel Castro. The sufferings of exile, the pain of being banished from my country, the loneliness, and the diseases contracted in exiles would probably never have happened if I had been able to enjoy freedom in my country.

I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. I do not want to convey to you a message of defeat but of continued struggle and of hope.

Cuba will be free. I already am.

--Reinaldo Arenas

It has been seventeen years since the death of Reinaldo Arenas. It has been seventeen years since he thought Cuba might soon be free. And it has been seventeen more years of persecution, oppression, imprisonment, disease and death for the Cuban people under the ruthless rein of Castro.

Now you have heard the story of Reinaldo Arenas, and what you have heard is indeed the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Reinaldo’s story is completely verified and vetted. Many of the people who knew him and saw the struggles he endured in Cuba escaped the island as well and have verified his accounts. He has many friends outside of Cuba who are still alive who also corroborate everything he says in his autobiography as fact. Indeed, Lazaro Carilles, Reinaldo’s dearest friend and love, was one of the screenwriters for the movie adaptation for “Before Night Falls”. Reinaldo Arenas’ life is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about life in Cuba and what Castro has done to the Cuban people.

So then, if Reinaldo Arenas is the truth – and a very moving and heart-wrenching truth at that – what then do we make of Michael Moore’s vision of Cuba in Sicko? According to Michael Moore, Cuba is a happy, sunny place where the people are blissful and everyone receives wonderful care by Castro, who isn’t a man deserving of the hate that America flings at him. How can we juxtapose these two diametrically opposing images?

The simple truth is we can’t and we shouldn’t. Reinaldo Arenas showed us the truth about Cuba. All Michael Moore showed us was a film segment full of lies and political propaganda.

By portraying Cuba as he did in Sicko, Michael Moore refused to acknowledge the life, struggle and death of Reinaldo Arenas and the true horror of life in Cuba. In order to advance his own political agenda Moore shows you the beautiful Cuban countryside, footage of well dressed people, cared for houses and, of course, the wonderful hospital system.

What Michael Moore does NOT show you is the Cuba in which real Cuba citizens are forced to live. These pictures from therealcuba.com show in a dramatic fashion the difference between the Cuba the world is allowed to view and the Cuba that really exists. These pictures, these stories, and the life of Reinaldo Arenas show you the real Cuba, not Michael Moore, who knowingly and willingly turns his back on the real Cuba. Michael Moore shows a complete lack of regard for the struggles of the Cuban people under Castro simply to further his personal agenda against the United States, and that, no matter how you look at it, is wrong.

But what Michael Moore has done is so much worse than a simple and willful denial of reality. By portraying Cuba as he did in Sicko, Michael Moore undoes and undermines all the years of hard and painful work Cubans have spent trying to tell the world about the atrocities that have been committed in Cuba. Reinaldo Arenas spent much of the last ten years of his life, many of them when he was extraordinarily ill, trying to educate the world about the tyranny of Castro. And yet because Michael Moore’s influence is so broad he has the ability to undo and undermine all the progress Reinaldo Arenas and so many countless others have made in trying to educate the world about the real Cuba and the horrors of Castro.

Michael Moore is supposed to be a journalist, a documentarian. His work is supposed to be the truth, but it isn’t. It is full of deception and outright lies about what life in Cuba is like and the reasons America “hates” Cuba. But yet the work of this “journalist” is at complete odds with the truth we know about Cuba, particularly Cuban hospitals. In point of fact, Michael Moore’s so-called “truth” is in direct contradiction to the truth of Reinaldo Arenas and the hundreds of thousands of people who have escaped and continue to escape from Cuba every year.

Reinaldo Arenas had met men like Michael Moore when he arrived in the United States. He called them the “Communist Deluxe” – men and women who tolerated or even admired Castro while eating plates full of food and living free lives, refusing to acknowledge or understand that Cuban people couldn’t live like as they did:

I now discovered a variety of creature unknown in Cuba: the Communist Deluxe. I remember that at a Harvard University banquet a German professor said to me “In a way I can understand that you may have suffered in Cuba, but I am a great admirer of Fidel Castro and I am very happy with what he has done in Cuba.” While saying this the man had a huge, full plate of food in front of him, and I told him: “I think it’s fine for you to admire Fidel Castro, but in that case, you should not continue eating that food on your plate; no one in Cuba can eat food like that, with the exception of Cuban officials.” I took his plate and threw it against the wall.

If ever a man fit the description of “Communist Deluxe”, it would be Michael Moore. But, in fact, Michael Moore is so much worse than just this. He isn’t a man who simply denies or lies about the horrors of real Cuban life under Castro. In order to have filmed what he did in Cuba Michael Moore *MUST* have collaborated directly with Castro and his government. Michael Moore worked directly and willingly with the man – or at the very least, agents of the government - who destroyed the life of Reinaldo Arenas and all Cuban citizens. Michael Moore is a collaborator, pure and simple.

The evidence is undeniable. Entrance into Cuba is next to impossible without official permission. It is illegal for foreigners to film inside Cuba without official permission. One cannot even gain access to Havana Hospital – the hospital Moore displays grandly as an everyday example of Cuban health care – without official permission and, yes, without paying a very capitalist bill for your care.

Look at how wonderfully the government firefighters lined up for Moore’s group in Sicko! Look at how happy the men playing dominos in the street seem to be while extolling the virtues of Castro’s health care system! Never mind the man in black shadowing the filming from across the street – I’m sure he’s not with the government. And never mind the fact that, as a state run system, the firefighters would have had to do and say anything the government told them to do or say else face the same type of consequences Reinaldo Arenas faced.

All of this evidence, *all* of it, means that Michael Moore had to have worked directly with Castro’s government to shoot the Cuban portion of Sicko. He worked side by side with the same man who destroyed the life of Reinaldo Arenas. He worked hand in hand with the same man who has destroyed the lives of the Cuban people for 45 years. And he did it all knowing he wasn’t showing the real truth, knowing all he was going to show the world was a piece of Castro-loving propaganda that turns its back on everything for which the Cuban people have fought.

Michael Moore is a Castro collaborator. He has actively and knowing collaborated with a sociopath, communist, mass-murdering dictator and he shows no remorse for it. Reinaldo Arenas had some choice words for men like Michael Moore who chose willingly to collaborate with Castro:

One day, eventually, the people will overthrow Castro, and the least they will do is bring to justice those who collaborated with the tyrant with impunity. The one who promote dialogue with Castro, well aware that Castro will never give up his power peacefully and that a truce and economic assistance are what he needs to strengthen his position, are as guilty as his own henchmen who torture and murder people. Those who are not living in Cuba are perhaps even more to blame, because inside Cuba you exist under absolute terror, but outside you can at least maintain a modicum of political integrity. All the pretentious people who dream of appearing on TV shaking Fidel Castro’s hand and of becoming politically relevant should have more realistic dreams: they should envision the rope from which they will swing in Havana’s Central Park, because the Cuban people, being generous, will hang them when their moment of truth comes. The only consolation for them will be to have avoided bloodshed.

Michael Moore is not an innocent party. He knew what he was showing the world was not the truth about Cuba and he did it anyway. He lied to the world and desecrated the memory of Reinaldo Arenas and all the brave men and women who have fought for the truth to come out about the real Cuba like Reinaldo Arenas.  In his zeal to attack the United States government Michael Moore ignored the plight of the Cuban people and nullified their struggle for freedom. He twisted the truth to fit his agenda without any thought to those who might be hurt by this and ignored whatever facts didn’t fit with his agenda.

Michael Moore is a liar, a collaborator, and a maker of propaganda. He has shown no regard at all for the truly brave men like Reinaldo Arenas who spent their lives fighting for their art and their truth. It is Reinaldo Arenas we should respect and believe, not Michael Moore. It is Reinaldo Arenas we should honor for his fight for truth, not Michael More. And it is the work of Reinaldo Arenas that should live on in people’s minds and hearts, not the work of Michael Moore.

Shame on you, Michael Moore. Eternal shame on you for what you have done.

I rest my case.

Thank you, Reinaldo. 

I strongly encourage you all to read the whole article, but here are some highlights for your perusal.

On the subject of Moore’s claim that Cubans live longer than Americans:

In “Sicko,” Moore parrots the Castroite claim that Cubans live longer than Americans. In fact the figures are practically identical, which actually casts Cuba’s vaunted health care in a negative light. In all nations with high emigration rates, longevity rates skew high. This occurs because the birth is recorded but the death gets recorded in the nation migrated to. So it seems like fewer people die. Naturally, the opposite effect appears in nations with a large influx of immigrants. The death is recorded but the birth was recorded in the nation immigrated from. So generally speaking, a nation with high longevity but known to hemorrhage its people has little to boast about with regard to longevity figures. All they’re proving is that theirs is a miserable place to live and from which massive numbers of people flee.

And few nations hemorrhage people like Cuba—almost 20% of its population since the glorious revolution. This 20% represents those who got out with the clothes on their back and against enormous odds.

This, of course, makes complete sense when you examine it. If a Cuban is born in Cuba but dies in the US, the death is never recorded in Cuba but rather in the US. This makes it seem as if fewer people are dying in Cuba, but all it really means is that massive numbers of people are fleeing the oppression of Castro’s regime. No matter how you look at it, this is a lose-lose situation for Moore - the facts are squarely against him.

On the quality and state of Cuban doctors:

A few years back Castro launched his “Doctor Diplomacy,” wherein he started sending Cuban “doctors” to heathen lands (though their spouses and children were held hostage in Cuba) to heal the sick and raise the dead. This was coupled with “free” treatment of poor foreigners from the Caribbean and Latin American nations in Cuban hospitals. The scheme has gotten no end of gushy reviews in the major media…

Brazil also got a birds-eye view of Cuba’s vaunted “Doctor Diplomacy.” The April 2005 story from Agence France-Presse titled “96 Cuban Doctors Expelled from Brazil” reported: “Federal Judge Marcelo Bernal ruled in favor of a demand by the Brazilian state of Tocantins’ Consejo Regional de Medicina (Regional Council on Medicine) that Cuban doctors be prohibited from practicing in their state.” Based on the results they’d achieved with Tocantins’ residents, the judge referred to the Cuban doctors as “Witch Doctors and Shamans. We cannot accept doctors who have not proven that they are doctors.”

According to a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, more than 75% of “doctors” with Cuban “medical degrees” flunk the exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for licensing in the U.S. This exam is considered a cakewalk even by the graduates of Mexico’s Tec de Monterrey School of Medicine. Most Cuba-certified doctors even flunk the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates’ exam for certification as “physician assistants,” making them unfit even as nurses.

So much for those vaunted Cuban doctors we see in Sicko. These are people who do not have the knowledge or skill to pass the exam to become a nurse practitioner, let alone a doctor. Would you want to entrust your health with doctors with reputations such as these? I know the LAST thing I would think of doing is bringing 9/11 rescue workers to a country whose doctors who are routinely expelled from other countries as being too incompetent to practice medicine.

And, finally, on the Cuban infant mortality rate:

In April 2001, Dr. Juan Felipe García, MD, of Jacksonville, Fla., interviewed several recent doctor defectors from Cuba. Based on what he heard he reported the following: “The official Cuban infant-mortality figure is a farce. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during its first year, the doctors often report he was older. Otherwise, such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job.”

Cuba’s infant mortality rate, though it plunged from 13th lowest in the world pre-Castro to 40th today—is also kept artificially low by an abortion rate of 0.71 abortion per live birth—the hemisphere’s highest by far, which “terminates” any pregnancy that even hints at trouble.

More interesting (and tragic) still, the maternal mortality rate in Cuba is almost four times that of the U.S. rate (33 versus 8.4 per 1,000). Peculiar how so many mothers die during childbirth in Cuba, but how many one- to four-year-olds perish, while from birth to one year old (the period during which they qualify in UN statistics as infants) they’re perfectly healthy.

This is just simply tragic now matter how you look at it. Forced abortions, high maternal death rates, artificially skewed infant mortality rates… this is simply an abhorrent system run by an abhorrent man, Fidel Castro. How Michael Moore could stomach praising this man and this regime after the crimes against humanity Castro continues to commit to this day astonishes me. All I can hope is that more people begin to call out and question Mr. Moore on his words and actions in regards to Cuba. In the face of facts such as these… how can Michael Moore support Cuba or Castro in any way???

The sun was hot and the water was warm in the summer of 1973. Reinaldo Arenas and his friend Pepe Malas were enjoying a swim at Guanabo Beach when they discovered that they had been robbed off all their belongings, including their clothes and bags. Against Reinaldo’s protestations, Malas called over a nearby police officer and reported the theft. The young thieves were quickly apprehended by the police and both Arenas and Malas were requested to appear at the Havana police department the following day.

Reinaldo Arenas was filled with apprehension; he feared a police trap. Unfortunately for him, his premonition was correct. The young thieves accused Arenas and Malas of being homosexuals who had tried to fondle their genitals. Because under Castro’s law “in the case of a homosexual committing a sexual crime, anyone’s accusation was enough to prosecute”, both Reinaldo Arenas and Pepe Malas were immediately arresting for the corruption of minors and brought to the Guanabo jail.

After Reinaldo Arenas was released on bail he met with his appointed lawyer… and realized the situation was far more dire than he could have ever guessed. His terrified attorney showed him an overflowing file filled with information about Arenas’ illegal overseas publications and statements against him from some of his closest friends. Because Arenas had published overseas without Castro’s permission he was seen as a counter-revolutionary and a threat to Castro’s regime. Between these publications and the sworn statements by his friends against him, Reinaldo Arenas was now facing charges for political crimes and was looking at eight years or more in jail. 

Arenas was arrested again the next day and was taken to the Patu Miramar police jail. Shortly after his arrival at the jail, there was a brief commotion and his cell door was left unlocked. In an incredibly daring move, Reinaldo slipped the lock off the door, quietly left the station and dove into the water nearby. It was an amazing escape, and Arenas was able to swim to a distant beach where he wouldn’t be quickly apprehended.

His situation now turning more desperate by the minute, Reinaldo Arenas decided to risk an escape to Guantanamo Bay in the hopes he could reach US soil. He shaved off his long hair, donned a set of threadbare clothes and took a three day long train ride to Guantanamo. Under the cover of night, Reinaldo Arenas set out for the first river crossing that would take him to safety. However, when he reached the river he heard strange crackling noises in the water. Suddenly, bright green lights appeared around him and machine gun fire rang out in the night. The lights were infrared sensors – the Cuban border patrol had sensed an intruder and began hunting him. Terrified, Reinaldo scaled a tall tree and hid there for two days and nights until the search was over.

When Arenas finally descended from his hiding place in the tree he tried again to cross the river. It was only after he began his swim across the dark river that he discovered the source of those odd crackling sounds. The river was filled with alligators – the cracking sound was the gnashing of their teeth. With so many predators in the water there was simply no way to cross. Defeated, Reinaldo Arenas was forced