LET'S FIGHT BACK
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Friday, April 30, 2021
Thursday, April 29, 2021
Prominent Cubans
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Free Cuba Now!
To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
The Art of Repression in Cuba Clashes with the Art of Dissent. The hunger and thirst strike is not a performance, but an act of nonviolent resistance.
Source: Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara's Facebook page
On April 16, 2021 over Facebook, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, one of the leaders of the San Isidro Movement announced a performance to dramatize the vulnerability of dissidents on the island. The headquarters of the movement is located at Luis Manuel's home.The San Isidro Movement, a dissident movement made up of artists that came into existence in 2018 to protest Decree 349, a new law that further tightened the dictatorship's grip over the arts in Cuba. headquarters in Old Havana. Their mission is to campaign against Decree 349 and defend the freedom of expression of artists. Luis Manuel in the above mentioned Facebook explained the dramatic protest he was undertaking.
"From today I will be for 8 h daily for 5 days, sitting in a Garrote, days when I remain besieged by the DSE (State Security), I call on the authorities to turn this lathe and execute me publicly. Today Cuban activists and opponents live more vulnerable than ever, every day we are more exposed, and that vulnerability is coming from a dictatorship that is 62 years old. That 62-year-old dictatorship that copies the most repressive models of many dictatorships and security and repression organs like Russia, and those of the world.
This work is the result of a series of videos where we denounce the arbitrary way in which activists and opponents in Cuba are accused. From Law 88 that can sentence you to up to 20 years in jail, coming with the black spring, to the charge of contempt, a crime for which Denis Solis is now in prison, and Luis Robles is also in prison for expressing himself .. The law against insulting patriotic symbols is another one of those laws that criminalize free speech, crimes made up by State security. This performance is based on the garrote technique of killing activists or criminals in dictatorships like Franco's and in the Spanish Colonies. It is a wake-up call to what this dictatorship is capable of doing. Imagine if Luis Robles was handed down a six years prison sentence for expressing himself with a sign, what can happen to an activist who actually succeeds in having millions of followers for Cuban Freedom?"
The political police arrived that same day and took him away then returned to seize and steal or destroy his artwork located there at his home and studio. It was captured on video by a neighbor. The Cuban American artist Coco Fusco obtained a copy of the video and edited it with some questions added for those still sympathetic with the Castro dictatorship.
Repression against artists in Cuba stretches back 60 years to the early months of the Revolution and it was clearly explained by the late Cuban dictator. On June 30, 1961 Fidel Castro gave his speech to [Cuba's] intellectuals where he summed up the limits of artistic expression: 'Within the revolution, everything; outside of it, nothing,' he told intellectuals and artists. Nearly a decade later on April 27, 1971 the case of Heberto Padilla underscored the limits of artistic expression. [This episode was explored in yesterday's CubaBrief.] Index on Censorship described the aftermath of Padilla's interrogation and self-criticism stating, "whatever the reason for his confession, it served as a harbinger of what was to follow: a period known as the Grey Five Years in which dozens of Cuban artists and writers were banished from public life." This was how intellectuals and artists would be dealt with who strayed out of the prescribed limits imposed by the Castro regime.
The war on artistic freedom is not unique to the Castro regime, or a mistake, but a feature of communist and fascist systems. Totalitarians have had a hostile relationship with the arts, and with artists seeking to control them. In the Soviet Union modern art was declared subversive by Josef Stalin, and socialist realism with an optimistic tone the politically correct style. Artists destroyed or hid their work that did not accord with the new aesthetic. In Nazi Germany, modern art was declared degenerate and a style that mirrored in appearance their Soviet counterparts, and repression was visited upon artists that did not adhere to the official style.
The 1984 documentary Improper Conduct outlines how Cuban artists that did not conform, or were deemed to be engaged in “extravagant behavior” were sent to work camps or forced into exile by the Castro regime. Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, who went into exile in 1979, is interviewed.
The patterns of repression have continued to the present day. Technology has improved, and new opportunities arise for activists to be able to communicate, but old methods should not be replaced, but complemented. Michael Lima Cuadra, of Democratic Spaces, translated to English and transcribed Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara's statement following his release from his April 16, 2021 arbitrary detention.
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Free Cuba Now!
To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Alerting the world to Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara's ongoing hunger and thirst strike and remembering Heberto Juan Padilla's coerced confession in 1971
Heberto Padilla (1971) and Luis Manuel Alcántara (2021): Two artists targeted by Castro regime for their freedom of expression
Over the past sixty two years the space for artistic expression in Cuba has been under attack. Today, Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a leading figure in the San Isidro Movement, is on a hunger and thirst strike demanding that "the state of siege that has remained on his home since November 2020 be lifted; Return of his works of art and corresponding compensation for the damage they have caused; respect for the full exercise of artistic freedoms for all Cuban artists," reports independent journalist MarÃa Matienzo. On November 26, 2020 Luis Manuel's home was raided by secret police posing as doctors, and everyone was arbitrarily detained and taken away. The next day at the Ministry of Culture hundreds of Cuban artists and intellectuals gathered outside the entrance in nonviolent protest. Out of this demonstration emerged the 27N movement.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara
The San Isidro Movement came into existence in 2018 protesting the Castro regime's Decree 349, a new law that further restricted artistic freedoms in Cuba, and that Amnesty International described as dystopian. According to Amnesty, "under the decree, all artists, including collectives, musicians and performers, are prohibited from operating in public or private spaces without prior approval by the Ministry of Culture."
Times have changed, and the protests of these artists have circled the world, and the Castro dictatorship has been exposed for the tyranny that it is.
It was not always this way. The Castro regime was able to operate with complete impunity between 1959 and 1971, and many in the international community refused to listen to the victims, almost nobody listened but fifty years ago that began to change.
Herberto Juan Padilla, a Cuban poet, who like many had been an enthusiastic supporter of Fidel Castro ousting Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, became disillusioned when the Castro regime's dictatorial nature became clear, and reflected it in his writings. In 1968, however, Cuban judges in the national poetry contest awarded their "Julian del Casal" poetry prize to Padilla's collection, Fuera del Juego (Out of the Game), which contained critical lines such as:
"The poet! Kick him out!
He has no business here.
He doesn't play the game.
He never gets excited
Or speaks out clearly.
He never even sees the miracles ..."
The book was published but an addendum was added that criticized the work as counterrevolutionary, and Herberto Padilla was placed under house arrest. On March 20, 1971 Herberto Padilla and Belkis Cuza Malé's home was raided by armed state security agents at seven in the morning and they were arbitrarily detained. Belkis was held incommunicado for three days and released. Herberto was interrogated for over a month and psychologically tortured by the secret police and on April 27, 1971 taken to confess before the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, UNEAC) his counter-revolutionary tendencies. Cuban literary critic José Antonio Portuondo served as the moderator and introduced Herberto Padilla to the gathered group, and the numerous cameras of the official press. Below is an excerpt of a video from the event.
Artists and intellectuals wrote two open and public letters to Fidel Castro about Herberto Padilla, the first on April 9, 1971, was signed by Carlos Barral, Simone de Beauvoir, Italo Calvino, Josep Maria Castellet, Fernando ClaudÃn, Julio Cortázar, Jean Daniel, Marguerite Duras, Hans Magnus Enzensbeger, Jean-Pierre Faye, Carlos Franqui, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, Juan Goytisolo, Luis Goytisolo, Alain Jouffroy, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Joyce Mansour, Dionys Mascolo, Alberto Moravia, Maurice Nadeau, Hélène Parmelin, Octavio Paz, Anne Philipe, Pignon, Jean Pronteau, Rebeyrolle, Rossana Rossanda, Francisco Rossi, Claude Roy, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jorge Semprún, Mario Vargas Llosa, and the second on May 20, 1971 was signed by an even greater number of artists and intellectuals.
The second letter was in reaction to Heberto Padilla's "confession" and expressed their belief that it was their "duty to communicate our shame and anger to you" regarding it and expressed concern for "the contempt for human dignity that involves forcing a man to ridiculously accuse himself of the worst betrayals and vileness does not alarm us because he is a writer, but because any Cuban colleague - peasant, worker, technician or intellectual - may also be the victim of a similar violence and humiliation."
Help Save Luis Otero
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Otero is the leading figure of the San Isidro Movement (MSI for its Spanish acronym), a group of young artists, musicians, writers, and researchers that came together to protest
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Monday, April 26, 2021
Shot By Terrorist
(USA Features) House Minority Whip Steve Scalise blasted the FBI on Saturday for claiming that a known left-wing activist and supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders went to a ball field where Republicans were practicing for their annual congressional game in the summer of 2017 because he wanted to be killed by police, otherwise known as “suicide by cop.”
“This was not ‘suicide by cop.’ Anybody who’s studied the police report, who was there on the ball field that day, all of us know what happened,” the Louisiana Republican, who was nearly killed and required several surgeries to recover, told Fox News.
“He went to that ball field to target and kill Republicans. He made it clear that was what his intention was,” Scalise continued. He actually had a list of Republican members of Congress in his pocket who he was targeting to kill.”
“And for the FBI to have classified it as that, it’s disturbing, it’s offensive, and it’s inaccurate. And so we’re asking that the FBI correct this record,” he said.
Scalise said his House colleague, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, first requested the FBI to change the designation during a House Intelligence Committee hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“FBI Director [Christopher] Wray, who was not the director at the time this happened, and actually, to his credit, Director Wray said he would look into it. So hopefully, we’ll get this fixed because it’s a disservice to the police as well to classify it that way,” Scalise said.
After the hearing, Wenstrup made his request formal in a letter to the bureau.
“I am extremely frustrated that the FBI failed to conduct thorough interviews during the initial investigation. After canvassing multiple Members of Congress present during the attack, I am not aware that any of my colleagues present that day were interviewed as witnesses, including me,” he wrote.
“As a Member who was present during the attack and the November 2017 briefing, and as a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I request that the FBI Counterterrorism Division promptly review the investigative findings, interview all relevant witnesses, and update, as appropriate, the investigative conclusions — including an internal investigation of how the FBI reached its ‘suicide by cop’ conclusion,” the Ohio Republican added.
Matt Mika, a Tyson Foods lobbyist who also coaches the GOP softball team and was hit during the attack, also pushed back on the FBI’s claim, telling Fox News that it is “not accurate.”
On June 14, 2017, the lone shooter, James Hodgkinson of Illinois, a known supporter of Sanders, used an SKS rifle and a 9 mm handgun to shoot at 24 Republican members of Congress. He reportedly asked a bystander before he started shooting if the players on the field were Republicans.
Look, the dude was a Bernie Sanders fan and what the FBI is doing is running interference for the Democrats.
Once one of the premier law enforcement agencies is now an agency that is controlled by the Communists.
Makes me sick to my stomach.