I am not defending Communism.

I'm all in favour of democracy, Old Guy, as long as it's real democracy. I'm not convinced that what you now have in the USA is real democracy...at the federal level. It certainly is real democracy at the local or the civic level, but that's a different kettle of fish. I don't frankly believe that our political parties (in Canada and in the USA) are actually representing the ordinary people anymore, and I don't know what the ordinary people can do about it.

(By the way, how come Russia was not on your list of democracies? They have multi-party elections now, after all, pretty much like we do. They have had them since the Soviet Union fell. According to you, a system like that is a democracy.) ;-)

I'm saying that it's one thing to have window dressing that looks like a democracy, it's another thing altogether to have real democracy.

You cannot have real democracy when all the major political parties in a country are funded and controlled by a very small rich elite...and that is what's happening in the USA and Canada.

In Cuba, you have a small Communist elite running the place...and they don't pretend otherwise...but they do have elections on a regular basis for local civic and government officials...and people vote for the local candidate they like best out of 2 or more alternatives.

In both cases, however, at the very top it's the controlling elite that calls the shots. The Republican and Democratic parties in the USA are owned by that controlling elite, and there is nothing that you, as an American voter, can do about it, because the only candidates you will ever be offered at the higher levels are those the elite hand-picked as its servants.

You can call that democracy if you want to, but it's just a stage play put on to make you think you really have a voice. You don't. Bush and Kerry work for the same $ySStem, and there's nothing you can do about that when you step into the polling booth.

The way I see it, both you and the Cubans...and us Canadians...are screwed. We can't change the controlling powers at the top. We have no way of doing that at all.

But...you and I are just somewhat luckier than Cubans. We were born in societies that are more prosperous than many other places and still relatively free, because they sprang out of a prosperous and relatively free British society and social tradition in the 1700's...and they have remained relatively advanced in that respect.

It's a holding pattern. Be glad it holds. The day Bush declares martial law because of some new "emergency" and starts arresting people and holding them without trial, your relative freedom will be over. And mine may be over not too long after that.

Of course, you can always opt to serve the $ySStem in that case, turn in your neighbours as subversives if they complain, and maybe even get to carry a gun for the ruling elite. Many would be happy to do that kind of work, I'm sure. Many were in Nazi Germany.

I'm telling you that your phony democracy is as brittle as an empty eggshell right now. Pray to God that it holds.