This thread now has as many editions as the Rocky movies, I believe! Wow.

MAV - Do not assume that the lack of people driving a Lexus indicates some sort of failure in the quality of a society. Not so.

I've been to Cuba. I saw there a people who are stunningly superior to many of their North American counterparts in the things that really matter...

Such as: maturity, dignity, familial and fraternal feeling, religious faith, a sense of community, a sense of who they really are, a sense of what life is actually about, which is human values and morals...not money and possessions.

This is partly BECAUSE they did not grow up in a consumer society awash from birth to death with materialism and excess and boredom and pointless consumption...I call it the Road to Nowhere.

The Cubans astounded me. I didn't meet one single "communist" the whole time I was down there. Must've been hanging out with the wrong crowd, I suppose. Too bad those commies don't turn bright red, so you could figure out who they are on sight, isn't it. Phooey.

Don't believe the mythology you've been taught since birth until you go there and see for yourself if it holds any truth.

Many young Cubans want to get out, all right, but it is not because of socialism. It is for the same reason that many Mexicans, Guatemalans, Nicarauguans, and Costa Ricans want to get into the USA. They think it's a paradise. They are partly wrong about that, but it doesn't surprise me that they think that...all they have to do is watch Hollywood movies and American TV shows to get sold on the "American Dream"...

All of South American dreams of going to North America to get away from poverty...NOT just the Cubans. Toronto, Canada, has thousands of emigrants from all of Latin America. Most of them fled from American allies...a few from Cuba...all seeking the "good life" in North America.

What's different about the Cubans is...everyone has a good education (free) and total and excellent health coverage (free) and accomodation at very little cost...and they're virtually all poor by our standards.

Whereas in the rest of capitalist-supported South America, a great many people have little or no education, no health coverage, no accomodation...and the majority are utterly desperately poor by our standards.

Mexicans die all the time trying to get into the USA...and they are not in a "socialist" state...just a corrupt state, supported by the USA, and quarantined from it at the same time...as a source of cheap labour for American corporations.

Castro is no angel, but he has achieved a great deal more for his people than any American-supported despot such as Batista ever did. Batista was a murderer and thief on a grand scale. Castro gave the country back to the people. I'm sure the loyalists in 1776 called George Washington a murderer and a thief too, and from THEIR point of view he was. Why don't you read about the Cuban revolution? Read both sides and compare. It was a revolution that redressed MANY wrongs against Cuba's people...which is why it succeeded, in spite of having far less financial backing and far less firepower than Batista's corrupt army, which was supplied by the USA. Batista's soldiers deserted to the revolutionaries on many occasions. The reverse did not happen.

The history of the USA with regard to Cuba is one of exploitation, crime, and greed, with barely a redeeming feature, aside from the US Army's campaign to eliminate yellow fever (and that was motivated by the desire to protect their own personnel, not the Cubans).

Cubans, by the way, like Americans (as individuals), but they aren't too impressed by American policy. Little wonder. I feel the same way. You are living in Imperial Rome, my friend. Cuba is just one little country that refused to be gobbled up, and they've been made to pay for it, and pay, and pay...

- LH