Calwest ; "left wing" does not mean "cultural relativist" ; I accept that Castro's failings were real. Meanwhile you ignore everything I ask of you.

I wrote the following article many years ago: http://leftfocus.blogspot.com.au/2009/02/multiculturalism-and-false-lure-of.html

The average 2000 people per year who drowned were trying to trying to get from Cuba to USA not from USA to Cuba. The Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall were built to stop people getting out of Eastern Europe into Western Europe. Walls were erected to stop people getting out of China to Hong Kong

Does that not tell you something? Are you stupid?

Old Man ; It tells me some people were being oppressed and tried to escape ; at no point do I deny that. Some would have been agents of foreign powers ; but it would be too easy for the Castro government to say all or even most were thus. They used to say the same kind of thing about Communists in the West. (again sometimes true, sometimes not - generally not when you think of the communist reformers who opposed Stalinism)

It also tells me that people wanted to escape poverty - which really kicked in after the USSR and Eastern Bloc collapsed. Courtesy of the economic blockade.

I would be a critic of BOTH the old Western Bloc AND the old Eastern Bloc. Of course there was oppression in the East. Just like there was in the West. A long war about spheres of influence (including economic exploitation) and geo-political dominance or 'security'.

The socialist left faction of the Labor Party in Victoria kept Labor in opposition federally for decades. Their successors are now in the process of destroying Victoria - perhaps even more successfully than Phoney Joanie.

And we can see Tristan Ewins as typical of them: he thinks that (relatively minor) improvements in education and very patchy improvements in health services in Cuba offset thousands of deaths, jailings, torture and the suppression of individual liberties by Castro and his gang.

He thinks that all of that should be forgiven because, hey, the US and its allies have done bad things too. No, Tristan, there is no equivalence.