Below is a great documentary about how Cuba became largely self sufficient with the help of some Permaculture folks from Australia.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil is an American documentary film that explores the Special Period in Peacetime and its aftermath; the economic collapse and eventual recovery of Cuba following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Following the dramatic steps taken by both the Cuban government and citizens, its major themes include urban agriculture, energy dependence, and sustainability. The film was directed by Faith Morgan, and was released in 2006 by The Community Solution.[1]…
Wikipedia

Thank you as well for giving me one of those cigars back in 1977 from your trip!! I’ve had several Cuban cigars since then during my international travels, none compared to the one from you.

As for Castro, I wish the flies would have feasted on his carcass in the 1950s. Evil lives and walks among us… sometimes justified and glorified by handlers such as the case with Castro (and many other villainous cold war puppets). Castro’s only purpose was to be a Soviet irritant to the USA… all the people he harmed and killed just grease in the wheels… could have been any of us… still might be one day.

Eastie, what Church said is foretelling… Snowden showed us that it came true. The American mainstream media becoming so biased they willfully lost credibility is just the tip of the iceberg. I certainly hope we never again have a president who states his hatred for the culture of more than half of our country or favors a global government over our sovereignty… the fact that we survived 28 years of just such disloyal leadership is quite a testimony to the vision of the founding fathers. However, until we sever the cozy relationship between political spymasters and free press we remain in the grave danger Church worried about. The media must be the true measure of what is real and what is not.

“On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, and discussed the NSA, without mentioning it by name:

‘In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. (…)

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return'”

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On Thursday, a US military man died in Syria fighting against terrorists created by another brutal dictator.

Let’s love and fight for the world that doesn’t have any dictators or tyrants.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/cuba-poll-2015/

Cuba is a disaster. The gaunt horses that pull urban taxis are symbolic of an economy gone awry.

The environment in Cuba seems as abused as the people and beasts.

The air and waterways are polluted. There is no pressurized or chlorinated water supply in the country. Even Cubans drink only bottled water.

Eighty percent of Cubans rate Obama as a good leader. Only 44% rate Fidel as a good leader (above poll).

The people are great and are very optimistic but I am do not share their optimism. Normalization of relations will benefit a lot of American corporations, but little will trickle down to the Cubans.