Samizdat in Cuba

by Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.

This is a fascinating and hopeful article (there is a button on the site to translate) that Keelin found.

The Cuban people have developed something like a modern/digital Samizdat (the clandestine distribution of literature banned by the state, in the communist countries of eastern Europe) to get news and entertainment from outside the state-controlled media and propaganda machine. Instead of Xeroxes, they use USB drives that can be purchased for 30 pesos (about $1.20) or portable hard drives.

https://www.cubanet.org/reportajes/el-paquete-semanal-manda-en-los-hogares-cubanos/ (Translation button is on the right-hand side of the page)

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He's gone

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Drawing: Faces No 1973

by Jack Brummet

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Drawing: Faces No. 1972 — Double Date

by Jack Brummet

[4B pencil, Sharpie™, .05 Micron, W&N markers on last page and pastedown page of a 1927 book with bonus Fumitized sticker]

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Thirteen UFO Quotes

by Jack Brummet, Alien Lore & Unexplained Phenomena ed.

I have argued flying saucers with lots of people. I was interested in possible. They do not appreciate that the problem is not to demonstrate whether it's possible or not but whether it's going on or not. — Richard Feynman

• UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable. — Carl Sagan, Other Worlds, 1975. 

• It was the darndest thing I've ever seen. It was big, it was very bright, it changed colors and it was about the size of the Moon. We watched it for ten minutes, but none of us could figure out what it was. One thing's for sure, I'll never make fun of people who say they've seen unidentified objects in the sky.

• If I become President, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. — President Jimmy Carter

• UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head… . I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something… . The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalleled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop. — Paul Hellyer, Canada's Defence Minister from 1963-67, speech at the University of Toronto, 25 September 2005.

• The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously. — Mikhail Gorbachev, 'Soviet Youth,' 4 May 1990.

• A circle of fire coming in the sky, noiseless, one rod long with its body and one rod wide. After some days these things became more numerous, shining more than the brightness of the sun. — From a series of Egyptian hieroglyphs on a papyrus dated to the reign of Thutmose III (1504-1450 BC)

• I've been asked [about UFOs] and I've said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization. —   Astronaut Eugene Cernan, Apollo 17, in Los Angeles Times, 1973.

• I've been convinced for a long time that the flying saucers are real and interplanetary. In other words we are being watched by beings from outer space. —   Albert M. Chop, deputy public relations director at NASA

• I can assure you that, given they exist, these flying saucers are made by no power on this Earth. — President Harry S. Truman, 4 April 1950, at a press conference.

• I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets--which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on earth. — Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper,  Mercury 7

•  I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets which obviously are a little more … advanced than we are… — Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, Mercury 7, letter to the United Nations, 1978.

• We all know that UFOs are real. All we need to ask is where do they come from. —   Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, after his Apollo 14 Moon flight in 1971.

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Guerrillero Heroico: Michael Korda's famous 1960 photograph of Ernesto "Che" Guevara

by Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

Guerrillero Heroico: this image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, by Cuban photographer Michael Korda was taken in Havana in 1960 at a memorial service for the victims of the Le Coubre explosion. By the end of the 1960s, Guevara's notoriety and revolutionary actions and execution (by CIA-hired assassins), solidified the leader and his image as an icon.

Korda once said that at the moment he shot the picture at the funeral, he was drawn to Guevara's facial expression, which showed "absolute implacability" as well as anger and pain.

Images of Che Guevara are ubiquitous in Cuba (and over much of the world). There are also, of course, many images of Fidel Castro, who survived Che by over 50 years. But it is Che you see *everywhere*, in many forms and mediums.

The image was the focus of a documentary "Chevolution," by Trisha Ziff, as well as a 2009 book "Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image" by Michael Casey."

It is a stunning photograph and fascinating to see (in such a heavily controlled and monitored society) the degree of exploitation of this image, in memorials, photos, books, and posters. Here are some of the trash and trinkets we saw.

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Drawing: Faces No. 1969 - a curved bone I found on the beach in Havana

by Jack Brummet

Detail:

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Photos of friends we met in Trinidad and Havana Cuba

by Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.

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Richard Nixon tweet on being compared to Donald Trump

O.J. Simpson has one thing in common with Jack the Ripper, for example, but the similarity ends there. pic.twitter.com/JbZRceOiRD 

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) May 26, 2017

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Granma's target practice dummies

by Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.

One of the target practice dummies Fidel, Che, Raoul, and the 79 other revolutionaries used on board the yacht Granma as they sailed from Mexico to invade Cuba. I still don't know they avoided ricochets?

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The hanging of the Lincoln assassination conspirators

by Jack Brummet

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Drawing: Faces No. 1963: Throwbacks

by Jack Brummet

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