I'm not necessarily defending Akenaton's personal view of revolution, Don...I'm just wondering why the only example of revolution you thought to quote was what happened in the Soviet Union?

There are many forms of revolution. They don't all require blood to be flowing in the street. The Occupy movement is an attempt at a nonviolent revolution of sorts, is it not? Any great change in human affairs can be considered a revolution...the word means "a great turn of events". One can have a revolution in social philosophy too. It doesn't have to involve bloodshed.

So why did you only think of Lenin's and Stalin's version of it?

As for Cuba, it's not perfect. No place is. But it's way, WAY better off than it would have been if Batista and his USA criminal business and army buddies had not been replaced by Castro's revolution. WAY better off. I've been there. I have some basis for saying this. Cubans are immeasurably better off than they would have been without Castro. Why do many of them try to reach Florida? For the same reasons that a vastly greater number of OTHER Latin Americans try to get into the USA through Mexico!

And the reasons for that are so many and so obvious that I really don't even see why I should continue tiring out my fingers explaining them to you or anyone else here. They are looking for a variety of things, material and otherwise, that they figure they might be able to find in the USA, that's why. NOT just Cubans, Don. MILLIONS of Latin Americans from a whole bunch of countries that are poorer on average than we in North America are. And the Cubans are better off than most of them. Cuba is safe. It's not full of drug wars like Mexico. Its streets are safe. Its people have free and good medical care of every sort, very cheap utilities and rent, a place to live, available work, and free education for everyone right through university. Who else in the world has that? They train more doctors per capita than any other nation in the world (and a majority of them are women).

You point to people who have fled Cuba. Don, people have fled the USA for political reasons too. Good people. Ever since Vietnam. And I know some of them. I am glad they're here.

I also know Cubans, brave people with high ideals, who came here to Canada to visit. They did not seek to be "refugees" here while visiting, they went back to Cuba with no regrets at all, because they are proud of their society and they believe in it. I hope you get to meet some of them one day and they can tell you why it is that they are proud of Cuba. They remember what it was like before Castro.