I have read Leonardo Padura's The Man Who Loved Dogs – a great novel. I am surprised though that Padura describes Cubas as socialist – that he repeats the official line. It is another unfortunate position that does a disservice to socialism and strengthens the anti-socialist arguments: ‘Is that the socialism you want to live in?’. Over four years, 1.2 million Cubans – one tenth of the population – left the island. I have personally experienced life in two Cuban cities for six months. My answer is: No, I wouldn't live in Cuba, but I still defend the ideals of socialism and oppose the American-led imperialism against any anti-capitalist alternative. Padura admi ts ' the perversion of the great egalitarian utopia of the 20th century as manifested in socialist societies.’ Here is the contradiction: a 'perversion' and 'socialist society'. 'There is the productive inefficiency of its socialist, centralised economic system.' Note that Padura does never pu...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51