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Happy New year to All Jezblog friends!!!!!

Well I might as well do the first day of the new year the way I mean to carry on......... I'm sitting outside DCA..... my third airport of the day....... London's Heathrow then DC's Dulles..... now Reagan National another DC airport...... the joy.

50 Years of Cuba's Revolution Today on the first day on January 2009

Revlolution implies the turmoil of constant change ..... and intially of course massive change swept through Cuba. Then the dead hand of the Party and Castro's personal grasp on power stiffled any future change or onward evolution. Now Cuba's cities stand rotting.... a monument to the unchanging nature of the society controlled by the Casto brothers. Those beauitiful old buildings literally falling down and the old fifties cars. Unchanged unmordernised since the day Castro seized power.......ornate beautiful and terrible all at once.

'50 years of Revolution' is a complete misnomer really..... more like a revolution followed by 50 years of stagnation.

I once stood by the tank Fidel Castro commanded in the revolutionary battle now a monument in Havana ......... when I stood there I thought back to a conversation I had had with a marxist friend I knew in my youth who spoke admiringly of Castro and Cuba...... she said that I would love it as a photographer..... she told me about the tank..... and laughed at the thought of Neil Kinnock the then Labour Party Leader in Britain commanding a tank in battle to seize power....... but I was glad he never had...... how she laughed at the thought of it....... back then I was 16 ...... the Labour Party has had four leaders since then and Britain has had as many different Prime ministers not all from the Labour Party........ but the Castro brothers still rule Cuba with their almost dead hands still clutching to the power. Call me crazy.... but what is radical about that.

I know its so much more hip to talk about the achievements of the revolution..... the universal health care the literacy rate....... the basic food rations for all....... even the untouched undeveloped beauty of Havana..... unspoilt by advertising billboards etc........ but in the end Im a journalist....... a free spirit and not really that compliant with authority...... I think of the Cuban journalists and writers themselves rotting in jail for the crime of writing in an unauthorized manner...... publishing something other than the party line....... some writers are serving 25 year sentences...... even in the early days...... muscicians were banned from playing 'decadent' rock n' roll...... and in the end there is just the unremitting poverty..... often pictuesqe..... but still just grinding poverty for the huge majority of the people of Cuba.

The family above is living in a classic Havana massively cramped apartment block ....... with many generations of each family sharing just a couple of rooms each.

There seems to be no big celebrations of the 50th year of the revolution three hurricanes in rapid succession last year have left the island reeling and Fidel Castro veteran of many four hour speeches only managed a single line of congratulations to the people of Cuba in the official newspaper to mark the 50 years celebration......... Yeah.... Cuba could seriously use a little change in 2009......... I think just like everyone else a lot of their hopes are resting on Obama.

Cheers Jez XXXXXX

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