Well without wanting to repeat too much of what Ryan said I am really wanting to write about Cuba right now.

We have been studying Cuba in Spanish this semester and it has been really rather interesting. However, while the rest of the class seems to be coming to the conclusion that Cuba is a “third world” country with a fascist government I am coming to think that it is really rather cool. I was wondering if I was just understanding really badly or if the fact that I so desperately want it to be working was clouding my judgement but it appears that, that may not be the case. I watched a documentary about it with Ryan, Jemma and David who I think are all very smart people and who have a fair amount of experience and they appear to have the same understanding as me. Especially Ryan who has done some economics thing that appears to show that the poor in Cuba are far better off than the poor in the rest of the world. So yay for Cuba then. Viva Fidel.

Don’t get me wrong there appears to be a lot of problems in Cuba, the people are struggling, their currency is worth nothing even inside Cuba, there is not lot of food or oil around (however that is probably getting better now that they are swapping oil for doctors with Venezuala) and rights for homosexuals and women are not great but well it appears to be far better off than the majority of the world and they appear to be really trying to make it better. They also have the best health care and education in the world which no one can really complain about and the people still believe in their government and their own ability to make cahanges which well is more than I can say for me.

And given that in Australia one in five people have a mental illness, one in four women are sexually abused, suicide is killing more and more young people every year and our indigenous people have a life expectancy twenty years less than the average Australian I’m not convinced we can say that our quality of life is that much better even if we do have a bit more money.