Re: Or they could, you know, abandon Communism (Score 1)

Ahem, it's Stalinism that the Cubans suffer under, not Communism. As Noam Chomsky put it in an interview in a 1991 issue of Rolling Stone, true socialism (as he defined/defines it-workers controlling the means of production, with said means run by cooperatives) never really happened in Russia in 1917, China in 1949, or Cuba in 1960. What we've seen in the East and in Cuba were just authoritarian states with a veneer of socialism. Cuba needs to get rid of the Stalinism that it's suffering under and learn to live. After that, maybe we could see a socialist state, but I'm not holding my breath. And as for being exploited, the Cubans have been exploited by the Soviets (and Soviet companies) for decades-how different would the suffering be now? A few joint companies have been set up with capitalist firms in Cuba anyway for quite a while. At least if the Stalinist regime running Cuba collapsed, the Cuban people could be free to be what they wanted to be, rather than just be under the boot heels of two old men (the Castro brothers) and their shitty regime that isn't socialist.