Women and the Transformation of Venezuela

From political representation and employment rights to tackling poverty and domestic violence, women’s advancement in Venezuela has been remarkable since Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998. But these changes haven’t happened by accident. Women themselves have been a driving force behind the revolutionary process and gender equality was enshrined in Venezuela’s progressive constitution adopted in 1999.

For decades feminists across the world have demanded recognition that domestic labour, largely carried out by women, is economically productive. Section 88 of Venezuela’s constitution is the only one in the world that acknowledges this and over 100,000 women in poverty have benefitted, receiving financial support, education, training and access to social security. The government has also helped some of Venezuela’s poorest and most excluded women buy essential household goods such as fridges, cookers and washing machines, thanks to the creation of the world’s first development bank that lends almost exclusively to women.

Venezuela’s Banmujer, or Women’s Development Bank, was set up to tackle poverty and empower women in their communities. Through providing low-interest loans, advice and workshops about a range of issues, women have the financial means and confidence to set up small businesses and co-operatives. Over 500,000 jobs have been created as a result of Banmujer’s work, giving financial independence to women and economic benefits to the wider community.

Women are also changing the face of their communities through leading social programmes and participating in community councils, which set local budgets and projects funded by the government. These councils are made up of around 200-400 households in each neighbourhood and 70 per cent of participants are women. With this high activity at grassroots level, it’s not surprising that women account for over half of elected mayors and regional government officials. 

At the national level women have more seats in Parliament than ever before, lead important ministries and shape national policy. The Inamujer, or National Women’s Institute, was instrumental in forming and enforcing the law on the right of women to a life free of violence. Recognised by Amnesty as a positive step towards women’s liberation, this law has prompted training of police and legal staff to deal specifically with and prevent gendered violence. 

Venezuela has adopted progressive rights for women and mothers at work too. Under the recently adopted Labour Law, which has improved rights for all workers, specific measures for women include an increase in maternity leave, job security for expectant mothers, and better childcare provision. Employers with over 20 employees must provide a crèche for children between 3 months and 6 years old.

These rights have made it easier for new mothers to remain in work, attain senior positions and overturn a deep-seated prejudice against women workers. It’s hard to believe that before the revolution an employer had the right to ask a woman to submit a pregnancy test if she was offered a job! Thankfully that is now outlawed and women account for 42 per cent of the workforce, up from 20 per cent before Chavez was elected. It’s worth noting that Venezuela also has South America’s smallest gender pay gap.

These are just some of the developments made by women and for women in Venezuela. It is astonishing that these huge strides in gender equality have been made in only 14 years and shows just how much can be achieved with the political will and dedication of a socialist government.

While women in Venezuela continue to benefit from policies, institutions and groups set up to specifically tackle gender inequality, it is important to remember that equally, Venezuelan society has benefitted from women’s more active participation in democratic structures that continue to build a better society for all Venezuelans.

U.S. government funds ‘independent’ journalists in Cuba

Applied Memetics manages cohort of "independent" journalists in Cuba

The U.S. government has hired a former CIA agent to create and manage a team of “independent” journalists in Cuba.  Daniel Gabriel, previously operations assistant at CNN, joined the CIA and completed six tours to Afghanistan and Iraq in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

His LinkedIn biography describes him as a former CIA covert action officer who spent 10 years "countering violent-extremism, directing counter-insurgency operations, and developing and benchmarking counter-radicalization theory and methodology in the Islamic world."

Gabriel is currently part of the Corporate Leadership Team at Applied Memetics who, according to their mission statement, “exploit and leverage perceptions to create new realities on the ground”. After running the phrase through the corporate bullshit filter of GoogleTranslate, I’m told it means “manufacturing propaganda” or “lying”.

Contracts from last September show that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) – a U.S. government agency – paid Applied Memetics $9,909 for work performed in Cuba.  A document from the following month shows that the contract was modified to include the option of extending the arrangement until October 2016. 

The BBG’s proposal said that Cuban reporters would be required to operate in “major cities in Cuba, including Havana and Santiago de Cuba” and “would provide regular local news and feature reports”  on politics, economics and “the dissident movement.”

The BBG, which manages the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, said the contract managing the Cuban journalists would be required to produce “at least five stories per week” including video news packages, interviews, sound bites, written stories for use in radio and on websites, and photos.

America’s funding of journalists with a specific aim of producing stories on the “dissident” movement raises serious questions about the independence and objectivity – and therefore reliability – of these correspondents. In a country with an average wage of little over $20 per month, the promise of sponsorship from an imperial power is a powerful incentive to manufacture unfounded stories about non-existent dissidence.  Indeed, by 2011, the U.S. government had already used $150m of tax payers’ money to fund ‘democracy promotion’ – including the subsidy of “independent” journalists – in Cuba.     

And it isn’t just in Cuba that the United States is contradicting its belief in a “free” media. According to evidence obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the American government directly funded Miami-based journalists  to write and broadcast prejudicial articles before and during the trial of the Miami Five, five Cuban anti-terrorists that have been unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. for 15 years.

In this context, you don't need GoogleTranslate to tell you that the United States’ continuing insistence that Cuba lacks a “free” media seems somewhat ironic. 

The Christian thing to do

In Raul Castro and Cuba – A Military History, Hal Klepak discusses three social challenges that could ruin Cuban families before the Revolution. These were:

1. Over-stretching financially in an attempt to send a son to school and university so his new social and professional position could bring the whole family up by its bootstraps
2. Significant illness in family, the cost of which could devastate even well-off families
3. The cost of a proper, respectable burial for one’s parents with a fine plot, monument, feast and well remunerated priest

Everyone knows about Cuba’s achievements in the fields of education and health, but Klepak gives fascinating insight into a little-known area of Cuban social policy:

Even in the less dramatic field of proper burials, the Revolution moved soon to provide a civilized system that would take the terrible psychological and financial burden off the family’s shoulders. The state now provides the plot for a family’s loved ones. It also ensures that the deceased will be brought from anywhere on the island for burial where he or she wished at no cost to the family. In addition, the stone for the burial, while hardly monumental or luxurious, is provided as is the general maintenance of the plot in the future. Transportation for the friends and family members of the deceased, by bus or even taxi, is also covered by the state.

What would the equivalent be worth in the UK? Many people save for years to cover funeral costs. Considerations include the cost of making a will, funeral planning, venue hire, coffin, memorial cost, flowers, death notice, catering for the wake, a plot for burial and headstone. The average burial in the UK costs £3,307 and the typical cremation costs £4,954 – whilst the emotional stress caused by a loved one’s death is unquantifiable.

With real incomes falling and benefits being slashed, funeral costs will become more of a burden – both financially and emotionally.  According to the Mirror:

With the current economic environment putting pressure on jobs, incomes and pensions, it is not surprising that 17% of people in the UK struggle with the costs of arranging a funeral. On average, people struggle to find a shortfall of £1,246.  If you multiply 17% of the 552,000 deaths in the UK in 2011 by the shortfall of £1,246, funeral poverty (the funding gap) stands at £117m.

Somehow, Cuba continues to provide this service for free. As Klepak says:

Perhaps even more striking for a socialist, and for a long time even an atheist, state, the government also provides at its expense a priest for the mass and the chapel or related arrangements necessary for decent Christian burial. And when the ceremony is over, the state provides a decent if frugal reception for all who have attended the event

Cuba’s stance is even more remarkable considering the reactionary position the Catholic Church took following the Revolution. For instance, in the early 1960s, they helped orchestrate Operation Peter Pan which saw 14,000 Cuban children sent to Miami after false rumours were spread that children would be sent to Soviet labour camps against their parent’s wishes. Cuba's ability to see beyond this - and turn the other cheek - is admirable.

So what is ‘the Christian thing to do’? The subversive Operation Peter Pan or an egalitarian social policy that removes the emotional and financial burden associated with the death of the loved one? I don’t think you need divine intervention to find the answer.

Are the Chinese Censoring UK Citizens?

When fellow political blog Pride's Purge found itself inaccessible on 3 Mobile, author Tom Pride tweeted 3 as to why. They responded that they had classified it as containing offensive material and therefore blocked it for anyone who had not explicitly removed automatic filters (a majority of 3UK users). Aside from the rare swearword his blog is as white as white. It doesn’t even contain pictures.

What 3UK may have taken offense to is a critical article written by Pride on how UK utility companies are being bought up by Chinese businessmen like Li Ka-shing a year ago. Li Ka-shing just so happens to be majority shareholder in 3UK. When Pride supporters questioned 3UK over their content blocking policies 3UK were unable to give a confirmed list or reason why the block had taken place.

Automatic content filtering isn’t a very reliable at the best of times. Has Pride unwittingly triggered an automatic block or are there more sinister motives afoot? Head on over to the blog post and see the discussion for yourself.

In an attempt to avoid such a block ourselves please glaze upon Li Ka-shing’s lovely picture below. Our hope is that 3UK won’t classify this article as offensive in fear of risking upsetting the great man himself.

Getting to Know You

Theresa May wants the power to track everywhere you have been the past year, everyone you have spoken to and emailed. Don’t worry though she won’t use it on you. You may already be aware of this since she kindly outlined her proposals in the Draft Communications Bill (known commonly as the Snoopers Charter) back in June 2012. The fact that this horrendous piece of legislation made it to the draft sage is astounding. Aside from private security service backing there is no visible support for the proposals. Even Nick Clegg and Davis Davis are opposed. The last bashing it received was from a Parliamentary Joint Committee which stated that current safeguards were adequate and that if the Home Secretary wasn’t going to use the new powers then why ask for them?

Not deterred by this Mrs May did what David Cameron did when he had no support over the UK Porn Filter, she went to the tabloids (again). Not convinced we should keep logs of all your digital actions? Here’s a picture of Ian Huntley. What about now? Here’s a picture of the bus blown up on 7/7. Now?

How could the Act prevent these crimes? The Act states that the police and UK security services find it too time consuming to approach various providers of communication service providers (such as ISPs, email hosts and telecoms providers) with the correct authority to get the data they need. They also take time in processing that data into meaningful information to help them with their enquiries. It states that these providers must hold this information centrally in an accessible place for 12 months. Those who can access this data include the police and security services, the Home Secretary and other public authorities (with consent for the Magistrates Court). That's right, Theresa May is trying to pass a law which allows her personally to request communication and location data on anyone in the UK without their knowledge.

At the moment you mobile telecoms provider stores the location of everywhere you have ever taken your mobile in raw data. It stores the reception you have from each mobile mast which can be used to triangulate your position. Your mobile phone uses this same data to work out roughly where you are without wifi or GPS on. It was this data that was used to exposed Ian Huntley’s initial alabi since he said he was many miles away. This data is quite rough though. In the Ian Huntley case officers had to retrace the victims’ route with a mobile to confirm that the data match the victims were vicinity of Ian Huntley. For more information on mobile tracking I highly recommend this TED Talk.

ISPs hold connection logs in a multitude of different ways again completely unprocessed. The Act would seek to have this information as easily accessible and as preprocessed as possible. They don’t want a text file with the connections your computer made they want a list of websites you visited. They don’t want a text file with times and signals strengths, they want a map with where you were when and they don’t want to have to go to a magistrates court to get it. Technologically this is very “complex” and “expensive” to achieve. It’s these kind of assumptions that have led Google to call it “very difficult” and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia to label the authors "technologically incompetent".

Theresa May in defending these rights said that these measures will “NOT target ordinary people” only criminals. By collecting centralised information on everyone how are they only targeting criminals? Surely only collecting information on criminals is a better way of only targeting criminals? This is similar to the classic Stazi anti-privacy argument that “if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear”.

This argument at first sounds compelling until you relate it to your own personal privacy concerns. Why have you put a lock on your bathroom door and a frosted glass window so that no one can see in? You must be doing something immoral otherwise you wouldn’t need to hide your actions.

Clearly there is a difference here between privacy and secrecy. It’s probably no secret what you do in the toilet but you still have a right to privacy doing it. The same can be said for every action in your life. Every digital action you take being recorded is unnerving in the same way as a camera watching every move you take. The fact that probably no one will ever watch the recorded footage of you on your own trying the Gangnam Style horse dance and tripping over doesn’t take away shame that you feel after it happened. In fact with the camera there you probably wouldn’t do it in the first place. As crude as this metaphor is the point hopefully made is that the act of surveillance or even implied surveillance changes behaviour even when there is no wrong doing.

The act of collecting this information in an accessible place is a danger in itself. By making it easier for the police you are also making it easier to steal. Under the act the data is still held by the providers as it is now, the difference is that it’s a lot easier to use. Say your ISP gets hacked, do you want a year’s worth of all your internet history (including private browsing) to be dropped on to a public website against you real name? Although I’m sure that there will be some good security in place, you know like what Sony used when all PS3 subscriber payment information was stolen and made public or when LinkedIn had the same happen with a couple of million passwords. If hackers stole ISP information today all they could get (aside from payment details) would be IP (computer) address logs which would be very difficult to trace.

Another assumption that is made is that this will help catch more criminals. Theresa May outlined the Ian Huntley case as an example. Someone should inform Mrs May that Ian Huntley was caught. Not only that, he was caught quite quickly under existing legislation before any more harm was done. This law could not have prevented the Soham murders.

Don’t you think that maybe criminals might hear this publicly available news and change how they operate? They may be less inclined to search “how to kill the prime minister” in Google and take their phones out with them when they go out to commit crime. The “permitted purposes” for these searches are extremely vague and include for “public health reasons” and in the “interests of the economic well-being of the UK” aside from the obvious “national security” concerns and remain valid and secret even is nothing incriminating is found. In the Act the test for using your data is not criminality. If only criminals are the target then why are public health, safety reasons and economic concerns listed as permitted purposes for search to take place?

This lack of focus in the draft lends credence to the slippery slope to authoritarianism argument. Let’s ignore the fact that only states like China, Iran and Kazakhstan employ such measures and look at the fact that permitted search purposes also include the detection and prevention of crime. Let’s also ignore the fact that you could argue that you need to look at every UK citizen’s information to detect crime and still fall within the legal limits as the act stands. The police could easily use these powers to track Occupy protesters and build a database linking everyone together. If there are only six degrees of separation between everyone on the planet then there are a lot less between you and someone of interest to the police.

Say the police ran searches on your mobile movements because someone who they were investigating made a number of calls to you and they wanted some background information. In the doing so they uncover unconnected information that points to you being wrongly arrested 6 months ago after you were incorrectly identified in some damage caused during a march/protest. Do you think they will be inclined to investigate this? Now swap it around. In the search they find some information that points to you being involved in the damage done. Would they ignore this just because it is unconnected? This is a very large threat to any form of protest. The worry that digital spotlight may be cast you away and uncover something potentially incriminating even if unconnected is a deterrent from action.

With only the police at the helm of these searches only arrests matter. There is no balance of power, no one standing up for the individual’s rights. Under the current legislation there were nearly 500,000 requests to communication service providers (CSP) in 2011 for information. Of these around 1000 were erroneous. 80% were done without the correct authority. 2 people were wrongly convicted due to typos in the request for data. That’s right, two people went to jail because when the police requested data from the CSP they gave the wrong information which meant the CSR handed over the wrong person’s details. Since it’s clear Theresa May is searching for “paedos and terrorists” imagine the damage being wrongly arrested for either would do to someone. You might want to think about better security on your router.

During a time of austerity and cuts surely the Government has something better it can do with the £1.8 billion this would cost.

If you are interesting learning more you can read the Communications Bill here. The Open Rights Group has a number of groups around the country that meet to discuss how to educate others and oppose such proposals.

Welcome to the New Nanny State

The Tories first coined the term “Nanny State” as a criticism of an overprotective and overbearing government that interferes with the personal lives of its citizens. It’s strange then that David Cameron’s government has embarked on an unparalleled scale of monitoring personal activities ever envisioned. 

I'm not sure about you but the type of Nanny I want is one that has money set aside for hard times and is supportive of modern technology even though she doesn't understand it because she trusts you to use it for good. The type of Nanny David Cameron obviously had is one that blames you for your misfortune, checks your internet history to make sure you are looking for job, thinks you may be a terrorist and blocks what she doesn't trust you to see. 

The idea for an automatic pornography block for children is nothing new. Many other countries have toyed with the idea. Australia recently decided that such measures would be too difficult and costly to implement with no guarantee of protecting children. 

Claire Perry MP first raised the issue which lead to a public consultation concluding that parents already have the safeguards they need. “UK Rejects Automatic Porn Filter” the internet cried. No so fast. The Daily Mail has been running a year long campaign to “protect our children from porn” and today crowed that it had won. That’s right all Dave has to do now is flick porn block switch under the desk in Number 10 and all the children will finally be safe. Actually...

While the concept of blocking porn sounds easy in principle, it’s actually very difficult to achieve in reality. The first is what classifies as porn? How nude does someone have to be before you call it porn? Even if you come up with a rating system how to you automatically classify this? 

Websites may contain a wide range of language, pictures and video that may be submitted by users. If you find a nude image posted by a user on a public forum do you add the whole site to the block list? Any user generated site is susceptible to porn uploading. Should Wikipedia and YouTube

On the subject of scanning for porn. Scanning imagery for nudity is massively processor intensive task confined to the likes of Google with their complex algorithms in it’s huge data centres. Even then it’s nowhere near fool proof. Are our ISPs suppose to do this? Even though most basic measures would mean that ISPs would have to make an investment and pass the cost on to everyone. I’m not sure that I want to pay more for my internet so that parents can pass the blame for monitoring their children’s activities off onto BT. 

You would think that when Claire Perry states that the sexualisation of children must be stopped that she would start with sexually suggestive music videos, unrealistic fashion imagery and sexually suggestive clothing all directly marketed at children rather than online pornography which is not. 

The moral of the story is that the Tories neither understand technology nor trust the public. They create systems based on a pessimistic view of humanity. Parents can’t be trusted to monitor and regulate their children on the internet, the unemployed cannot be trusted to find jobs so should be monitored and everyone is potentially a terrorist who should be watched. If you navigate this sea of pessimism using the moral compass of the Daily Mail then you are unlikely to find your way to reasoned shores. I suppose it’s not all bleak though, at the very least one can hope that such a filter will block filth like this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

The incredible story of Cuban medical internationalism

Source: New Internationalist

Cameron's game of political Guess Who

Cameron’s latest bunch of cabinet cronies looks like the worst game of Guess Who imaginable.

Is this person a millionaire? – Yes

Is this person right-wing? – Yes

Is this person BME? – No

Is this person a man? – Almost certainly yes

Is this person a vile cretin? – Certainly

Doesn’t leave you much to go on…

The real danger to the Edinburgh fringe isn’t the big venues, it’s the BBC

After reading one of our greatest living stand-up comedians Stewart Lee’s annual mawkish piece for the Guardian about the commercialisation of the fringe – and how it was much better when Edinburgh consisted of shows like Professor Nutty’s Racist Flea Circus played to three people in an abandoned shoe at the bottom of Arthur’s Seat – I felt an urge to respond.

Stu – (I can call him Stu because he’s done about 5 gigs for me, I’ve interviewed him a couple of times and if I see him in the street he will say hi. Actually, saying that, since he’s had his deserved critical acclaim and commercial success, the last time I saw him he ignored me) – Stewart makes some good points, but he ignores the real danger to the fringe – the BBC.

Lee’s main gripe is aimed at the so-called big four venues and the Etonian cabal who run them. I dislike the big four as much as the next man, but they’ve been at the fringe for over 25 years (Underbelly 12.) They are here to stay, get over it. The real problem is not the big four or Eton. And unless someone wants to burn Eton down and throw all its students into the sea, we are going to have to put up with its alumni continuing its stranglehold over British society – David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Bear Grylls, Prince William...

Lee mentions the cost of performing at some of the venues as upwards of £10,000 (the figure is closer to £6,000 and venue hire makes up very little of that). One of the biggest costs is actually accommodation. Scottish landlords charge a month’s London rent for a week to live in a city with worse weather than the moon.

Most of the big four venues actually do a pretty fair deal apart from forcing you to advertise in their brochure. If you are arrogant and deluded enough to think – after working the open mic circuit for a year with one appearance on Russell Howard’s Good News – that £2000 is a worthwhile amount to spend on PR, then you deserve the debt you find yourself in. Show business is not a charity vanity project. You don’t book the London palladium and ask them to cover your losses if your show is rubbish and no-one comes, so why should the big four? That’s not reality, unless you are playing the Stand it would seem (“The fiercely independent Stand underwrites all its shows, so performers lose nothing,” writes Lee).

Edinburgh offers a platform to develop, become a better performer and build an audience. It is the ultimate meritocracy: the better your show is, the more people come and the more money you make. You can be in the back room of a pub on the Free Fringe or at the Pleasance, managed by Avalon or some bloke who operates out of a public toilet in Peckham, if your show is shit no-one is going to come and see it. So either stay at home or give me £6,000 and I’ll make you a star (1).

What Lee fails to mention was that last year the BBC re-launched their Edinburgh presence by moving their operations out of the Pleasance and setting-up a full time comedy venue to house the live recordings of some of its flagship comedy shows, masterclasses and Q&A’s with TV stars. All totally free.

For £12 a ticket you can see their long running mixed-bill BBC Comedy Presents. At the risk of never getting my own BBC series – something that seems unlikely after 10 years of failing to be called into a meeting, let alone receiving a reply to any of my proposals (2) – the BBC venue is wrong and is a real danger to the fringe.

With over 100 shows scheduled by the BBC, several pages of listings and advertising in the fringe brochure, this is taking thousands of audience members away from other shows at the fringe. Performing to no people is not a show, it’s mental illness.

The BBC’s defence is that they film and record shows for broadcast and this advertises the fringe – but instead of showcasing innovative fringe shows, it produces Q&A’s with bloated TV stars and soulless mixed-bill nights in a marquee more akin to hosting a wedding reception.

And who’s paying for the privilege? The acts, producers and promoters who produce the majority of the fringe’s output. If Rupert Murdoch set up a Sky venue and gave all the tickets away for free there would be calls for it to be shut down and a Levenson-style enquiry into why a massive corporation set up a free venue that took tickets away from the fringe. But because it’s Auntie it feels like their free comedy is a reward for our license fee, when in fact it’s slowly eroding performers’ audiences.

The BBC should be covering the festival as a broadcaster the same way it covers Glastonbury or the Olympics. There is no imagination in their programming despite the fringe having one of the most inventive programmes possible. This should a) be reflected in the BBC venue (which it isn’t) and b) be represented in the BBC’s broadcast output (which it isn’t).

Essentially the BBC in Edinburgh becomes a rival promoter putting on free shows with TV names and – worst of all – charging for their mixed-bill shows that take further money out of the fringe economy (the equivalent of two tickets for two unknown shows). With many acts producing their own shows, appearing on the Free Fringe or being backed by a small promoter they are never going to be able to compete with this.

So Stewart Lee is right that the fringe has changed but has it changed for the better or the worse? I think the spirit of the fringe is stronger than any corporate entity but you have to look a little harder for it. Artists being abused is a dance as old as time – but that’s not to say I agree with it. The BBC should have a presence at the fringe, but in its current form it takes more from the fringe than it gives back. Right that’s Edinburgh sorted, now can I have my own TV show and a prime slot at BBC Comedy Presents?

(1) I say this to a lot of the young female performers

(2) Can someone forward this sentence to the head of comedy at the BBC?

Guest blog by Harry Deansway, comedy writer, producer & promoter

Sport at the heart of revolution

Interview with double Olympic gold-medalist Alberto Juantorena

On a recent visit to a North London primary school, Cuban Olympic legend Alberto Juantorena was asked by a pupil how much his gold medals were worth. Nobody had asked Juantorena the question before and, unsurprisingly, he didn’t know the answer – but the exchange gave a fascinating insight into the contrasting British and Cuban mentalities. Whilst Britain racks up an £11bn bill for the Olympic games, Cuba continues to punch above its weight in the field of sport despite a relentless blockade. As Britain’s Olympic bill grows, Juantorena observes wryly, “with a smaller budget you could do fantastic things as long as you organise and have government support”.

Alberto Juantorena remains the only athlete to win both the 400m and 800m Olympic titles. At the 1976 Montreal games, Juantorena – also known as El Caballo (the Horse) – achieved the unique feat of winning golds in both sprint and middle-distance events. He smashed the 800m world record and, in doing so, redefined middle-distance running.

Despite his unequalled sporting achievements, Juantorena remains best known in Britain for being the subject of one of the most infamous commentary gaffes. As Ron Pickering exclaimed as El Caballo galloped to victory in 1976, “there goes Juantorena down the back straight, opening his legs and showing his class”.

Standing at well over six foot tall, Juantorena is an imposing figure. Affable and with contagious enthusiasm, he is a giant both on and off the field. Having served in Cuba’s National Assembly for over a decade, he is now Vice-President of INDER, the Cuban Institute of Sport, as he seeks to nurture the next generation of Cuban sporting heroes.

Originally a promising basketball player – representing Santiago province and the national team – Juantorena was encouraged into track and field by his Polish coach Zygmunt Zabierzowski after running the 400m in 51.5 seconds whilst wearing basketball shoes. In 1972, at the age of 22, he made his Olympic debut in Munich where he was narrowly defeated in the semi-finals. For the next two years he remained undefeated and – after recovering from two foot operations – emerged as the 400m favourite in Montreal.

Success in the 400m seemed inevitable – until the indomitable Zabierzowski had another brainwave:

"Three months before Montreal he said ‘you will run the 800m in the next Olympics’ and I said ‘No way man, you’re crazy’. Do you know why? Because I was afraid. I knew that the 800m was the first event and I was worried that I’d be tired after the first race and wouldn’t win anything in the 400m either." 

Zabierzowski set about building Juantorena’s confidence and – at a training camp in Italy – asked him to pace the first lap for two teammates who still needed the 800m qualifying time. He found the first lap so easy that he completed the second and chalked up the second fastest time in the world that season. 

The only person to run faster was Rick Wolhuter of the United States who dismissed the unknown Cuban’s chances in an interview with the French newspaper L’Equipe: “I don’t think he’ll be able to make three rounds in Montreal”.

“They didn’t know about me,” beams Juantorena with a smile as wide as his gigantic stride. “I didn’t have any history in the 800m and from a psychological point of view that gave me an advantage over them”.  

"We changed the strategy of the 800m. Before the first lap was 52 or 53 seconds because they ran the 800m and 1500m. Because I was a 400m runner I could do the first lap in 44.6 seconds, and I was walking! The first lap was faster than ever."

Juantorena broke Marcello Fiasconaro's world record and became the first 800m Olympic champion from a non-English speaking country. “No-one thought the tall guy with the basketball socks and the big hair could win. Nobody cared about me and suddenly boom, I smashed it”. Three days later he sprinted to 400m glory and became the first person to compete on every day of the athletics programme.

Returning to Cuba a national hero, he was greeted at Havana airport by Fidel Castro.

“Fidel gave me a big hug. He congratulated me and called me his colleague. I asked him why he called me a colleague and he said that he also ran the 800m. He told me about how he ran in the 1946 college competition in Havana. He had a magazine from the Jesuit school and there he was winning the gold medal! I was very proud to have a colleague like Fidel”

As we sit chatting, Juantorena removes one of his gold medals from its original commemorative case. It is the first time it has left Cuba since 1976 and the other remains on permanent public display in a museum in Havana.

“This belongs to the Cuban people, not to me. It belongs to everyone: the man who prepares the track, my doctors, my coach, my team and my Commander Fidel – but also to every single Cuban who strives on behalf of our country”.

It is a sobering and inclusive sentiment which has underpinned Juantorena’s whole life. He spent the summer after his Olympic triumph volunteering on a sugar plantation. “I wanted to cut cane, support the workers and help the economy,” he declares proudly. “The first voluntary work in Cuba was created by Che Guevara and it is part of our tradition”. 

Juantorena sees himself as both a product and champion of the Cuban revolution. “When the revolution triumphed, the opportunity to participate in sport opened up to everyone regardless of religion, gender or race,” he reflects.

“Before 1959, professionalism was the only way to compete in sport. You couldn’t go to sport installations because they were private. But look at the change! Fidel abolished both these things – professionalism and private institutions – and put all those facilities in the hands of the people”.

The revolution brought a new mentality and new coaches to Cuban sport. Before 1959, there were only 800 physical education teachers, now there are 78,000. “We had only one Olympic champion – and he lived and trained in France,” says Juantorena. “Now we have 62”. All this has been achieved despite an unrelenting and pernicious blockade.

Juantorena – who has been denied a visa to the US on four separate occasions for being a “danger” to the American people – laments the debilitating effects of the blockade. “We cannot buy anything from the United States. If we want to buy a javelin, shoes or rice, we need to go via another country like China or Pakistan. It would be cheaper to go to the United States, but we cannot do it.”

“Two of our pole-vaulters – Lázaro Borges and Yarisley Silva – need equipment, but the pole they need is produced in the United States by UCS Enterprise and we cannot trade with them. Do you know how I got them five poles each for a tournament last month?” he asks.

“I called a friend of mine in Mexico who was a former president of their association. I asked him to speak to UCS – even though they are friends of mine – and we had to get the poles via Mexico.”

“We practise sport in Cuba with a real lack of everything. Almost nothing. Our infrastructure is not sophisticated. Our resources – from an economic point of view – are not high. But we have been successful because we focus on children. We pay a lot of attention to physical education which is compulsory in school from primary to university. And we produce athletes like a windmill – we never stop. Why? Because if you have mass participation, if you have 2.5m students – from primary to university – practising sport at least three times a week, then you can see the talent, select it and nurture it. It’s easy.”

The organisation of physical education in Cuba is multi-layered. Primarily, it focuses on mass participation and, as a sub-product, it seeks to develop champions. Mass participation in sport is a key pillar of Cuba’s exceptional health system.

“Sport is a key benefit to people’s health. It’s better than medicine and it’s also good to socialise, interact with friends and to teach people to think collectively. It’s about providing tools for people to improve their own health. If people can reduce their blood pressure then it reduces the risk of heart attack. Mass programmes of activity can help people with diabetes or obesity.”

Playground sport in Cuba

Juantorena – in his role as Vice-President of INDER – is a sporting visionary focussed on equal and inclusive participation. “We promote sport not to promote competition, but to increase life-expectancy. We aim to increase the health of the people first – but, as a consequence of this, you can develop talent and win medals.” 

At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Cuba won nine gold medals – the same as Britain – despite being a sixth of the size. Furthermore, whilst more than one third of Great Britain’s Olympic team in 2012 will have been privately educated and rely on private sponsorship to compete, Cuba’s emphasis on inclusion and mass participation has made sport accessible to all. 

“All the sports people in Cuba are students. They are studying different subjects at university such as physical education, engineering or journalism. It’s very different to everywhere else because our sponsor is the state. The state provides revenue, budget, materials, equipment, medical care, education, flight tickets, food, everything. It’s a completely different approach”

So how well would Britain do if we adopted the same sporting principles as Cuba? “Really, really well,” admits Juantorena. “Because you have the resources and the infrastructure we don’t. The British love sport. My advice is always focus on physical education, not just for future champions, but for the whole country. Everyone might not be a champion, but they will be the politicians, teachers and doctors of tomorrow.”

This interview originally appeared in CubaSi magazine

Media Watch: The Anti-Islam Bias

Iran is trending on Twitter. It must be true.

While the Arab Spring was a democratic triumph, the resulting wave of Islamic conservatism seems troubling. Reading media reports describing proposed Egyptian laws allowing sex with dead wives and plans to destroy the Pyramids one can’t help feel that the previous regimes had a place in suppressing this Islamic madness.

That may be the case but neither of the above stories are actually true – and yet they were still reported as fact around online and print media. Once the truth behind the stories came to light, most media outlets pulled the story – but the damage had already been done.

These stories typify a trend of spurious anti-Islamism which dominates Western media, and it occurs for a number of reasons:

1.       Lazy Research

Decreasing resources and corporate competition mean that journalists are under increasing pressure to churn out more copy. This “churnalism” results in little or no research time and therefore uncorroborated falsehoods are often reported as fact. In a market where stories are the product, it’s cheaper to buy in from public relation companies or reprocess press releases from the news wire than spend precious resources on producing well-researched original content. A well-researched story is likely to be less sexy – and less saleable – than something specifically designed by a corporate PR company to be emotive.

2.       Bias

The first rule of PR is to “be the journalist”. When working for the Labour government I attended constituency training on how to increase your vote. The talk was given by Tom Watson who stood out by defying the national trend to hold his vote in 2005. Tom explained that spamming the local press with stuff you wanted to get in will get you nowhere as you are asking the journalist to find value in your message and extract it by rewriting it. Instead you evaluate the saleability of the story yourself and write it for them in that vein. If you are successful they will print it pretty much word for word and whack a journalist's name on it. This is ideal since you are getting your message through intact in a way that looks like ‘objective’ journalism. The media thus has become middle ground for competing PR interests who win and lose depending on the market value of their message. You can increase your chances of getting in by appealing to the known bias of a media source or by democratisation.

3.       Democratic Journalism

The rise of social media has taken the guesswork out of determining the market value of news items. If a story is trending then it obviously has appeal and can be reprocessed and sold to a different audience. The very fact that it has been popular creates safety in numbers as if you print the story and it is disproved you are not alone.

Let’s take the above example of a Daily Mail article that was debunked.  They first published the article on having sex with dead wives on the 25th of April – but the correction exposing the hoax didn’t appear until over a month later even though the story was contradicted within a day (as soon as the Egyptian authorities could respond). The reader comments underneath show the reaction to this lie. I wonder how many people who read the article saw the later correction? Why, also, does the story link to other articles about Muslim women’s rights rather than other false stories?

The journey of the story is fairly typical. It was seeded and propagated through Twitter (democratic journalism) and at no point did the Daily Mail check with the Egyptian Parliament to see if this proposed law was on the table (lazy research). And why would they bother? It fits nicely with the Mail’s constant bashing of Muslims (bias). 

There are also some who believe that corporate interests play their part in promoting or suppressing stories. It's difficult to find direct evidence of this in the UK (in the US it isn't).