History Repeats Itself

Then it was the Nazis supporting Francisco Franco, today they it is the US military supporting the oil barons. Yesterday it was Gernika, soon it will be Baghdad. Colin Powell instead of Goebbels.

This article comes to us thanks to the Workers World News Service:

WHO PUT THE WRAPS ON GUERNICA?

By Leslie Feinberg

A woven tapestry reproduction of the famous mural "Guernica" has hung on the wall outside the United Nations Security Council chamber since 1985. But on Jan. 27, it was covered up with a drape. Why?

Screaming, shattering people and animals: Guernica. The painting is characterized as modern art's most powerful anti-war statement.

Pablo Picasso painted the mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair.

Spain was rocked by civil war. Resistance fighters, joined by solidarity brigades from the United States and around the world, were battling hand-to-hand against Gen. Francisco Franco's fascist forces.

On April 27, 1937, Franco gave the go-ahead for Hitler's air force to use a little Basque hamlet in northern Spain as bombing practice. For more than three hours, the village was pummeled from the sky with high explosives and incendiary bombs. When the smoke cleared, 1,600 civilians were dead or wounded.

By May 1, word of the horror at Guernica reached Paris. More than a million enraged people poured into the streets in the biggest May Day march that city had ever witnessed. The world was stunned. The normally apolitical Picasso was moved to capture the massacre in his now-famous mural.

Apparently the realities of war--particularly the terror, death and destruction at ground zero of bombing raids--are not the backdrop U.S. officials want for their photo opportunities.

Dignitaries have long been filmed, photographed and interviewed in front of the painting. "So it was a surprise for many of the envoys to arrive at UN headquarters last Monday for a Security Council briefing by chief weapons inspectors, only to find the searing work covered with a baby-blue banner and the U.S. logo," reported the Feb. 3 Washington Times.

The censoring curtain was draped on the days the council discussed Iraq.

"A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the UN, John Negroponte, or [Secretary of State Colin] Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings." (Washington Times, Feb. 3)

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