Third-world healthcare, Loopy? Cuba has the lowest infant-mortality rate in the world. So if that's third-world, how do you describe the healthcare in, say, Washington DC>

Education is pretty good in Cuba too, and before you accuse it of indoctrinating, pause to consider why there is such a pathological loathing of Communism in America - far more pronounced than anything I've experienced anywhere else in the world. I've met many - many - Americans who think the McCarthy witchunts were a good idea, whereas in most parts of the world, and among my many American friends, they are seen as a cause for shame.

George (Little Hawk), that line in your recent posts, about the possibility of an ironic outcome from easing the hostility, was VERY perceptive. I too feel deep unease about how things might pan out.

People need to remember that Communism never got much of a chance, such was the scale of capitalist vested interest in seeing it fail. Certainly the Soviet experiment took place in the face of international hostility and was blighted by a monster (Stalin) of Hitler proportions. (No-one condemns capitalism because of Hitler, so it seems harsh to condemn Communism because of the monsters it bred.)

By and large, the systems generally described as Communist - China, USSR, etc - were/are in reality merely totalitarian. Many in East Germany were happier with even the shabby apology for communism that they lived with for 40 years than they are with their new-found capitalism. Everyone had a job, no matter how mickey-mouse it was, and because all incomes were within a relatively narrow band, there was little envy, or pressure to keep up with the neighbours. In other words there was general acceptance of their lot, if not actual contentment. Now the eastern part of the re-unified Germany is ridden with extreme poverty, amidst which a handful of crooks, capitalists, gang-leaders etc swan around pushing their obscene wealth up people's noses. Go there now and you'll see precious little contentment.

If the Cuban regime is communist, then I'd be the first to admit that that too is flawed. But they have posted some extraordinary achievements, particularly in health and education. Yet just as with the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, they have had to cope with paranoid hostility from the wealthiest nation on earth.