"Explain that, Fat Albert. You can be willfully blind if you look at a forest and see only the birch trees, because someone told you that there is no other kind of tree than a birch tree. That's what you're doing with regard to Cuban boat people."

Little Hawk:

I have a brother that lives in Cuba. He used to visit Cuba before Castro So he knows how it was before and after communism. I do not agree with his lifestyle but I tolerate it.

The reason he likes to live there is because he has quite a bit of money and he is a king there, a Rich Gringo. All of the basically OK Cubans gather around him to be his buddy in case they might end up with a few American dollars.

Here are few vignettes he has told me about life Cuba:

He tells me tales that give me a different view of your Cuban Utopia. He had a motor scooter there at one time. He was waiting at a traffic light and the police were pursuing someone on foot. They were shooting at him while he ran. He ran in front of my bros scooter and he had to drop it and hug the ground and duck the bullets. The Cuban people live in a police state.

Once he awoke in his apartment to find a cat burglar in his bedroom. The burglar fled when he sat up. Crime is rampant in Cuba.

Every time he has to do something official there like permits etc. The standard procedure is to put a $20 bill in the folded up application. that makes the rubber stamps fly. Lately it is tending more towards a $50. Corruption is rampant in Cuba.

The shelves in the stores there are nearly bare. The farmers spread their rice on the side of the road to dry it. When people want to cook beans or rice, their staples, they have to spread them out on the kitchen table and pick out the twigs, dirt and rocks before they can cook them. The food supply in Cuba is scarce and of poor quality.

The Cubans do not refer to Castro directly when they are criticizing him. They stroke their chin as if they were stroking a beard. Or they refer to the bearded one. The Cuban people do not like Castro.

He has a heart condition. Once he needed an operation to expand his arteries with the balloon, I forget what you call it but it fairly routine in the US. He knows several important doctors there that are connected to hospitals. They told him that they did not have the equipment, the facilities or the knowledge to perform such an operation. As a result, his son had to fly to Mexico and then to Cuba and arrange for an air ambulance to fly him to the Bahamas an then to Miami for the operation. Money can get you just about anything in Cuba except for the modern medical procedures because they do not exist in Cuba.

There may be worse conditions elsewhere in Latin America but Cuba is no garden of eden as you portray it.

When you go there on tour you are shown exactly what the Communistas want you to see. They like to have tourists come and spend money so tourists are treated differently from citizens.

And again I ask, why are they literally dying to get to the USA, like people from other South American countries, if it is so great in Cuba?

Hey Hey Hey