Report from Venezuela

by Milton Pena April 6 2020

THE situation in Acarigua/Azaure #1 is that of the whole country; calm and acceptance of the quarantine.

EVERYONE uses a mask and takes precautions. There is no shortage of food or essentials.

There have been few deaths and only a few cases diagnosed of Covid – 19. #2

As the country has been under an economic blockade for four years it has created means of distribution of food, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, house by house.This has helped tremendously.

There are Centres of Diagnostic Integrals everywhere which has alowed control 0of the pandemic. They have been (largely) run by Cuban doctors who are doing a great job.' #3

#1 Two cities under 200 miles west and inland of the capital Caracus'

#2 Latest figures 7 deaths out of 166 recorded cases.

#3 It has been reported that Cuban medical staff are currently helping in 14 countries world wide.

Comment: They (Cubans) generally work in poorer countries, but the world woke up in admiration when they sent out a team of 52 medics to help in Italy and allowed the British cruise ship MS Braemar to dock when it had been turned away from the US and other countries.

It prompted Dominic Raab, the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, to thank the Cuban government for its assistance. In a ministerial statement in Parliament stating that he had spoken to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and that “we are very grateful to the Cuban government for swiftly enabling this operation and for their close co-operation to make sure it could be successful.”

The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said of its decision: “These are times of solidarity, of understanding health as a human right, of reinforcing international co-operation to face our common challenges, values that are inherent in the humanistic practice of the Revolution and of our people.”

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Tameside Council accused of political censorship over 'Che' poster!

Geoff Oliver and wife Maria who run El Cuba Libre

AS we recently reported, a furious row over civil liberties in Tameside, has erupted after a Greater Manchester GMP licensing officer, last Friday, visited the Sportsman Pub in Hyde, demanding that the pub landlord, Geoff Oliver, remove from his pub window a Cuban flag with the image of the Cuban revolutionary, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara emblazoned across it.  The pub provides Cuban food in its restaurant known as 'El Cuba libre', which is run by the landlord and his wife Maria, known as Cangui, who is from Cuba.

Although the landlord says that the flag has been on display at the pub on and off for five years, he says that the GMP licensing officer told him to remove it and warned that there could be serious consequences if he refused to do so, warning him that it could be recorded as a crime.

Mr Oliver told the Morning Star newspaper that he was woken up last Friday morning, by the local police licensing officer, who told him that complaints had been received about him displaying a photograph of a 'terrorist' in his pub front window.  He says that he was told that he could display the flag inside the pub but not from the front window and that if he didn't remove it, the officer would submit a crime report that could lead to a formal criminal investigation.

Guevara, is an iconic figure and a role model for  many revolutionaries on the left and was part of the 26th July Movement that launched a rebellion to overthrow the former Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Batista, that led to the Cuban revolution in 1959 and a Communist government led by the former president of Cuba, Fidel Castro.

Geoff, 65, from Glossop, has described the incident as attempted 'political censorship' and has refused to take down the poster. He told a local newspaper:

'I just find it unbelievable.  Every day people including many of our customers, walk round with Che Guevara's image on their T-shirts and other memorabilia. In Cuba, he's a national hero and one of the founding fathers...'

Dai Morgan, a regular in the pub, said:  'This is a disgraceful attack on free speech and no laughing matter. Who is this shocking ignoramus. Che stands with Mandela as one of the great fighters for freedom in the 20th century.'

A source told the Manchester Evening News (MEN), that the licensing officer had merely paid a visit to the pub on behalf of Tameside Council to make the landlord aware of the complaint and to 'ask if he would consider taking it down.'   According to the MEN, both Greater Manchester Police and Tameside Council declined to comment.

This type of incident is not unusual in the UK, in spite of the fact that Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, guarantees the right of freedom of expression. In 2010, David Hoffman, a photojournalist, from Bow in East London, was threatened with arrest if he did not remove from his front window a poster that said 'David Cameron is a Wanker!'   In 2012, he received an apology and compensation from the police after they admitted it had been unlawful to insist that he remove the poster from his window and that this and other illegal actions by the police on the day, had amounted to 'unlawful interference with his Article 10 right to freedom of expression.'   Mr Hoffman, later displayed the letter of apology from the police in his front window, along with another poster that read -  'David Cameron is still a Wanker!'

Art of Revolution

WE approached the Art of Revolution exhibition staged at the Undercroft in Norwich by the artist Gennadiy Ivanov, who orginates from Belarus and has lived in England for 15 years, in September with some trepidation. We had already been warned by a student that some of the exhibits were confusing so far as the images of so many sailors and clowns didn’t seem to immediately correspond with is commonly expected at an event commemorating 100-years of the Russian revolution.

It was an eclectic mix and I felt it was a powerful exhibition, which was in the end extended until the 14^th, October.
I thought at first that the many portraits of sailors may have had something to do with the Kronstadt rebellion* in 1921, but was then reminded of the film Battleship Potemkin by Eisenstein which was about a rebellion in 1905. But the clown image I was told by Ivanov that the word 'Guevara' in Che Guevara means ‘clown’ in the country of Guevara’s birth.

For me perhaps the most powerful oil painting and image in the show was Gennadiy Ivanov’s ‘Sailor’s Hands’. The hands grasping desperately onto what may be a red flag are almost transparent.

In the blurb in the booklet that accompanies the exhibition the nature of the colour red is describe thus:

''In many cultures Red means passion and love. In Tibetan philosophy it signifies connection with the Universe. In the Russian language ‘red’ often means 'beautiful’. ‘Beauty Will Save the World' (Dostoevsky). Artists are responsible for bringing creativity to the world, not only to bring Beauty to it – but to Save it''

Mr Ivanov told the Eastern Daily Press:

‘The inspiration for the show for the show came from the 100the anniversary of the Russian Revolution but that the exhibition also explored revolution in the broadest possible terms…. It is an exhibition about different types of revolutions which have happened in 100 years like digital revolution, like art revolution, movie, fashion, design, industrial revolution, sexual revolution, so we have a very wide theme.’

 

* The Kronstadt rebellion was a major unsuccessful uprising against the Bolsheviks in March 1921, during the later years of the Russian Civil War. Led by Stepan Petrichenko[1] and consisting of Russian sailors, soldiers, and civilians, the rebellion was one of the reasons for Vladimir Lenin's and the Communist Party's decision to loosen its control of the Russian economy by implementing the New Economic Policy (NEP).[2][3]