Mission Accomplished–CNBC’s Pedro Pan


“Senoras Torres and Wilhelm–MAGNIFICO!”

The first part was good. Much like CNBC’s ads, teasers, “sneak peek’s,” etc., for the program none gave even a HINT of what was coming. Most potential viewers, I suspect, foresaw a typical touchy-feely show about immigrants escaping oppression/poverty and making good in the good ‘ole USA! ( with a few close-ups of tears trickling down cheeks for proper effect.)

Well, that’s how they lure you in, like a barker outside a Bourbon St. nightclub: “Step Right Up!..Free drinks, for all wearing a Saints cap! .etc. etc.!”

Once inside, they lower the boom on ya.

Remember, effective propaganda isn’t a full-frontal assault–that repels much of the intended audience right off the bat. No, they need to hook you first. Hence the stuff at the beginning of the show.

Americans are forward-looking, lets face it. We live in a country where the term “That’s history” is a pejorative! Torres, Wilhelm and their Castroite minders knew full well the stuff that went down half a century ago would be regarded as–perhaps interesting–but nowadays irrelevant by most viewers. The important stuff is the HERE and NOW, which is to say: the “EMBARGO.

Americans are also a very practical people. And the embargo was made to look archaic and impractical.

In sum: Mission (by Torres, Wilhelm and their Cuban case officers) Accomplished.

This issue of “balance” is another canard. Has anyone ever seen a TV program on, say, the Holocaust with proper “balance?” If, say, Elie Weisel or Simon Weisenthal are featured–MUST, say, David Duke or Amahmoud Ahmadinejad appear also? And must these latters’ views be accepted with pensive nods by the hosts?

After all, on this “complicated and mutifaceted” issue of Nazi oppression, wouldn’t the viewpoints of these latter constitute proper “balance”?…Just asking? More relevantly, if the show includes the “opinions” of an Elie Weisel (Carlos Eire, Tomas Regalado) must the “opinions” of THREE Amahmoud Ahmadinejads be given 80 per cent of the airtime for “proper balance?”

Adolph Eichmann, Rudolf Hess, Karl Donitz, Baldur von Schirach and many other Nazi officials were still alive when William Shirer wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Yet these were not Shirer’s primary sources. Therefore, applying contemporary logic as it applies to Cuban history, Shirer’s book should be thoroughly discredited. Anything and everything former Nazi officials had to say should have been taken at face value. Instead Shirer relied on sources such as German exile Fritz Thyssen. This man was “embittered,” had an obvious “ax to grind” against the Nazi regime, and should have been discounted as biased and not credible by William Shirer and by all right-thinking people.

Robert Conquest was also derelict in using Ukrainian refugees such as Marco Carynnyk as sources for his book, The Great Terror. From Leonid Brezhnev to Yuri Andropov, to Nikita Khrushchev thousands of Stalin’s henchmen were available to Conquest as perfectly reliable sources. For not relying upon them exclusively in his studies of Stalinism, Robert Conquest should be laughed off any lectern. His book consists of nothing but embittered ravings and cheap gossip from people with “an ax to grind.”

Simon Weisenthal, Eilie Weisel and Ann Frank all had obvious “axes to grind’ against the Nazi regime so nothing they said or wrote should be taken seriously. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cardinal Mindszenty, Nathan Scharansky, Vladimir Bukovsky, etc. are all “embittered exiles and cranks” with obvious “axes to grind” against the Soviet regime. So the same applies to them.

The above may sound flippant, but it’s precisely the methodology applied in media and “scholarly” circles when it comes to studying Cuban totalitarianism. The normal rules of historiography – and even of decency, logic and common sense – get turned on their heads.

As always, among MSM and “scholarly” circles, Cubans seem to belong to a seperate and lower species.

Unreal.

5 thoughts on “Mission Accomplished–CNBC’s Pedro Pan”

  1. Fabulous. I loved the bit about Shirer and his sources.
    I believe it is Shirer who gave me one of my favorite one liners, “He gave to the perpetrator the moral authority of the victim.” Isn’t that fitting? This program made the parents seem dupes for falling for a false accusation against Castro planted by the C.I.A. and thus makes their horrible choice seem like a mere foolishness. Disgusting.

    Humberto, did you see my letter to them?

  2. The program scoffed at the fact that Silvia “Flippity” Wilhelm had been accused of being a Castro spy. It didn’t mention that the public accusation came from renown spy-catcher Chris Simmons. Wilhelm sued Simmons for slander, but after she got caught in a few lies in her deposition (read it here)
    http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/Wilhelm.pdf
    and when Simmons’ attorney legally requested copies of her bank accounts
    http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/Wilhelm-7-08-09a.pdf
    Flippity did not proceed with the lawsuit against Simmons.
    The program also did not mention the pro-Castro background of Professor Maria de los Angeles Torres Vigil who, since traveling to Cuba with her sister Alicia in 1978 as part of the Antonio Maceo Brigade (BAM),
    http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/dialogue/maria-torres.pdf
    they have been rabid defenders of the Castro dictatorship.
    The Torres Vigil sisters also participated in the farce of the so-called “dialogue” with the dictatorship in December 1978.
    http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/dialogue/Dialogueros-lista.pdf
    In July 1983, Cuban DGI intelligence defector Raul Perez Mendez, revealed to the FBI that the BAM is controlled by the DGI and that Alicia Torres Vigil is their primary agent in Chicago.
    http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/Perez-Mendez-debriefing.pdf
    Indeed, the program was a heavily-weighed pro-Castro propaganda piece. All the people interviewed had returned to visit Cuba, except Professor Carlos Eire and Tomas Regalado. Kudos to them for their patriotic stand and dignity.

  3. Yep, bait and switch all the way. And stacking the deck against the actual truth for the sake of pursuing the MSM’s agenda is simply business as usual. This documentary is a classic example of bad faith in action.

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