Not encouraging

It's sometimes pretty easy to look past Castro and see only Cuba's fairly remarkable accomplishments in health care, education, and agriculture despite a scarcity imposed by the United States. But Castro is the glue that holds it together, for better and for worse. Castro's hold on power, now in its fifth decade, has been surrounded by a halo of paranoia which went far beyond protecting the Revolution from its enemies into criminalizing any sort of political dissent. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have, they say, the facts of Cuba.

And while Cuba's claim to the title of "socialist paradise" certainly has more to do with its climate than its classlessness, things have the potential to be a lot worse if the U.S. corporate class has its way with the island.