For a few hours on Easter Sunday, it seemed possible that the first nuclear weapon for 80 years - or at least the first such weapon targeted at a population - would shower its destruction on this earth. Not just in Iran, but here and around the world another layer was added to the financial and social insecurity we all feel.

Was it just another dose of the daily deranged Trump bluster? How would we know? As well as launching war on Iran, the US President has kidnapped a sovereign leader, rattled his sabres in the direction of Greenland and his malign shadow still hovers over the brave people of Cuba. 

Last week Cuba announced that it has completely run out of diesel and fuel oil due to the US blockade, an act of international blackmail. In this matter the US has form. When, in 1898, the USA invaded that island, putting the nail in the coffin of 400 years of brutal occupation by Spain, it cast itself as the saviour of democracy. For many then, including some so-called progressives, the USA was to become the new coloniser, the defender of democracy and the saviour of the Cuban people.

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For others it was about resources. Cuba never quite became the 51st state, though it was to be more than half a century before the Cuban people threw off the yoke of US domination. Now it seems, Venezuela is marked down as the putative 51st State. A century ago, it........

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