Thank you Cubano/Polaco for posting. The Fairy Tale that communists like Tim Anderson paint are not even remotely accurate and it is good to see someone with first hand experience of the actual situation being able to show his articles for the pathetic communist propaganda it is.

As other posters have also said, the truth of the bad situation in Cuba is evidenced by the thousands of people who risk their lives every year to escape to America.

It is also important to realise there is no freedom of information in Cuba. What the government says or decides to show it's visitors is all they get to 'know' about Cuba. I doubt that is Tim's concern though, as he seems merely hell bent on trying to cast a totalitarian communist dictatorship as a better democracy than the US. An absurd notion to anyone who knows anything about communism.

Stop lying Tim.

For a look at the 'great' universal health care that cubans receive...
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm

The Real Cuba Libre

Ingredients:
1 chunk Ice, preferably crushed
Juice of 1 Lime
8 cl Rum (Havana club)
1 shot Coca-Cola

Mixing instructions:

sit outside on balcony, fill glass with crushed ice, sqeeze lime, hold glass up to the sky (best effect during sunset), pour rum up to horizon , add some coke to cover the sky (no overflow), stir smoothly, lean back & ENJOY! Maximum effect with bass heavy dub reggae in the backgroun

The Cuban Socialist Constitution of 1976 provides the framework of Anderson's article. He quotes from it extensively to prove that Cubans enjoy even greater rights than are accorded Americans under the U.S. Constitution. This fantasy is sustainable only by ignoring Article 62 of Castro's constitution. This Article in effect takes way all the rights granted in the other articles:

ARTICLE 62. None of the freedoms granted to citizens may be exercised against the provisions of the Constitution and the laws, nor against the existence and objectives of the socialist State, nor against the Cuban people's decision to construct socialism and communism. Violation of this principle is punishable.

In this respect the Cuban Socialist Constitution of 1976 is identical to the Stalinist Constitution of 1936, which also negated the very rights it granted when exercised against the interests of the one-party state.

Just to correct an historical error.

Those boat loads of women were in fact bought to Australia. However they were not prostitutes. They were young women and widows bought here from England by Caroline Chisholm. They were initially housed in protected and secure buildings in Sydney and later taken by wagon and literally deposited at the gates of single men working farms in NSW and Victoria.

Chisholm and Macquarrie organised the scheme in response to the debauchery in Sydney at the time.

It partly worked. It resulted in an exdous of men from Sydney.
Australia's development and time are its greatest proof. (Although I suspect Sydney's reputation hasn't changed ...much.:-))

I believe Chisholm was the mother of modern Australia and she was once honoured on our currency.

A sure way to test whether country A is more democratic than country B is to see the number of people emigraing to that country. There are more people leaving Cuba for the US than the other way round. So I reckon that Cuba is less democratic than the US.

Castro has been in power since ..... time immemorial, like Mao when he was alive. Is China a democracy? If the article were written in April 1st, I'd say its an April fool joke, since its not I am still looking for a word to describe it.