The Miami 5

Yesterday I went to the AGM of the London UNISON Europe and International Committee. One of the speakers was Natasha Hickman from Cuba Solidarity Campaign who spoke about "The Miami 5".

These are 5 Cubans who worked for the Cuba intelligence agencies to infiltrate and spy on extreme right wing anti-communist terrorist organisations based in the United States during the 1990's. They were arrested by the US authorities and sentenced for espionage and conspiracy to murder (which they deny).

To be honest, they are obviously Cuban patriots who volunteered to spy in US and must have known the risks they would face if caught. However, it is clear that they were mainly working against right wing extremists who have murdered Cuban civilians and even western tourists in their "War" against the Castro government. It was also clearly unfair for their trials to be held in Miami which is dominated by Cuban exiles who are rabid anti-Castro.

Most importantly I am still completely and utterly amazed that the United States still shames itself by continuing with an economic "war" and blockade of Cuba. This is now 50 years old. What on earth is the point? The "Cold War" is surely finished?

So the US government does not like the Cuba government. So what? It doesn't stop the US trading with China? The US is acting like a regional bully and must stop the blockade, which serves no purpose whatsoever and is in fact completely counterproductive, since it serves as a rallying call for the Cuba government.

I asked Natasha what is going on and she said that to some Americans the word "Cuba" is like a full moon to a werewolf.

Picture is from the UNISON NDC conference where the wives of the imprisoned Cubans spoke about the hardships their families face from the years of imprisonment.

A prayer for Alberto Korda (of "Guerrillero Heroico" and Fidel Castro fame) in an English Medieval Church

This is a little unusual but an interesting tale - I think anyway.  Last week I was on holiday in the Cotswolds and went for this 7 mile Pathfinder country walk round Ilmington and Ebrington. It was a lovely bright, blue skies and sunshine day. Half way into the walk I stopped off to have a look around the 13th Century St. Eadburgha Church.

Ebrington is a simply beautiful thatched cottage Chocolate box Gloucestershire village.  Very old and very English - as was the church. Well worth a visit for anyone with any sense of history. So I was somewhat surprised to see this inscription in

the Visitors Comments book by Keith Cardwell.  Who had come to the Church on the 25 May this year to say a prayer for his old friend, Alberto Korda, who had died 10 years ago on this day. 

Alberto had been the personal photographer of Cuban revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, and had took the iconic picture above of the "Heroic Guerrilla" Che Guevara.  Which I am slightly embarrassed to admit (only slightly) that like many others I had a tee shirt in my dim and distance youth with this same image on it (which I still have somewhere!).

I really don't know whether Keith, Che or Fidel were or are at all religious (the last two are certainly most unlikely to be C of E - Church of England) but I think that Keith's prayer and comments remembering "a great friend and a good man" will strike a cord with most of us.  I'm not sure that the "God Bless Fidel" will go down all that well in the modern day Cotswolds never mind parts of Miami.

Of course we should not forget that if they were RC then this Church for the first 300 odd years of its long existence would have been a Roman Catholic Church.