With China gradually and grudgingly adopting capitalist reforms, there are really only two countries left that are firmly in the grip of Communism.  One, of course, is Dennis Rodman’s favorite getaway, and the other is Cuba.  Who knows what will become of North Korea, but we’ll always have Cuba.  I hope.  Because any time someone begins to extol the virtues of the communist system, we can always inject a dose of reality by pointing to the island nation to our south that actually “walks the walk”, and to the deprivations its citizenry is subject to.

Michael J. Totten lends a hand with that with his two recent dispatches from the stronghold of the Castro brothers, the first of which is HERE.  A tidbit:

Police officers pull over cars and search the trunk for meat, lobsters, and shrimp.  They also search passenger bags on city busses in Havana.  Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote about it sarcastically in her book, Havana Real.  “Buses are stopped in the middle of the street and bags inspected to see if we are carrying some cheese, a lobster, or some dangerous shrimp hidden among our personal belongings.”  If they find a side of beef in the trunk, so I’m told, you’ll go to prison for five years if you tell the police where you got it and ten years if you don’t.

No one is allowed to have lobsters in Cuba.  You can’t buy them in stores, and they sure as hell aren’t available on anyone’s ration card.  They’re strictly reserved for tourist restaurants owned by the state.  Kids will sometimes pull them out of the ocean and sell them on the black market, but I was warned in no uncertain terms not to buy one.

Maybe Donald Trump could buy the whole she-bang and turn it into a tourist destination, like Disney World, except in this case it could be a giant “Museum To A Failed Political Ideology”.

The second of Totten’s dispatches is HERE.