By Benjamin Noria
HAVANA TIMES – Yesterday, I was reading a recent official Cuban newspaper Granma, with an article talking about scandals involving high-ranking officials in the US Government. For example, there’s the Watergate Scandal in 1972, involving President Richard Nixon; as well as the Credit Mobilier company bribing President Ulysses Grant; the Iran-Contra Affair, in 1986, when different US Government officials organized a drug sale to fund the Nicaraguan Contras and Senator Bob Menendez accepted thousands of dollars in bribes, collaborated with the US mafia and was caught with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.
But… anyway… an interesting thing we can safely say is that we know all of the above because there is freedom of the press, speech and democracy in the US. No system is or ever will be perfect because there’s a moral imbalance, between natural freedom and social morality, in our human nature since birth. However, these systems try to win one over Nature. Countries like Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Holland, Iceland are considered Welfare States.
Hmmmmm. That said, we have Cuba on the other hand. What they wrote on this newspaper page is nothing more than psychological projection, which is a defense mechanism that consists of attributing our own unacceptable and uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, desires, and impulses to another person. We see in others what we don’t want to see in ourselves.
So, what are we really talking about? Does the Cuban Government have any moral standing to talk about the corruption of high-ranking officials in other countries? The thing is, in Cuba there isn’t any freedom of the press or freedom of speech, and that’s why we know so very little about the behavior of high-ranking officials in Cuban Government and the State. Furthermore, State Security and the Ideological Department of the Cuban Communist Party have an iron grip on every piece of information that is printed in newspapers and said on TV.
As there is no freedom of speech or press in Cuba, we only know a few things about high-ranking officials in Cuban Government because of what people furtively post on Facebook or from some people who have arrived in the US and have had the audacity to be interviewed on TV shows in Miami.
We know from the book called: “The Double Life of Fidel Castro”, written by Lieutenant Colonel Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, the leader’s former bodyguard, about the Comandante’s corruption, influence peddling, embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, abuse of power, abuse of authority. There are things that we won’t be able to verify or know for certain until Communism falls in Cuba. Unfortunately, we have to let the Cuban Government continue to project, but nothing is forever here. The world is always spinning and crumbling. We’ll have to watch this space…
Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.
