Many thanks for the comments. Yes Cuba’s contribution to the earthquake effort was immense and showed how people living in different ends of the world can help each other and be connected. Cuba clearly has a strength in the medical sector which other countries can learn from.

I have added CubaNews to my bookmarks.

Cuban society today represents an effort to build an alternative to the way life was under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who ran Cuba before Fidel Castro led a revolution there. No one complained about a lack of human rights and democracy in those days, but U.S. businesses were protected.

Some things work, some don’t. Like any society, Cuba its flaws and contradictions, as well as having solid achievements. No society is perfect. But we can certainly learn a few things from Cuba’s experience.

Since August 2000, the CubaNews list, a free Yahoo news group has compiled a wide range of materials, pro and con, about Cuba, its people, politics and culture, and life within the island and affecting it in the Cuban diaspora abroad.

p.s., My father and his parents lived in Cuba from 1939 to 1942. They were German Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and not political left-wingers. That family history is where my own interest in Cuba comes from. If you want to learn more about Cuba, may I modestly recommend you check out CubaNews?

Thanks again for this note.