Oliver Stone ought to have learned an important lesson. That in a world in which freedom of communication achieves primacy, dictators and dictatorships can survive from the hands of their own people solely in special protected hothouse environments. Which is what Cuba has been since the early 1960s, when the Kennedy administration cut a deal with the Soviet Union to keep hands off Fidel Castro in return for the Soviets keeping weapons of mass destruction off that island. Otherwise, Castro and company would have gone the way of Nicolai Caeucescu, Benito Mussolini and others of their ilk.

Now it's time for Mr Stone to learn lesson #2. Which is that inexpensively and conveniently operated blogsites can mobilize more political power -- and do so more rapidly -- than political film makers such as Michael Moore. And Oliver Stone.

Sure, the Cuban-Americans have political muscle in the United States. They're smart, well-organized, know exactly what they want. And, mostly, they are absolutely right about Castro's dictatorship. And frankly, I am more interested in Val Prieto's slant on Cuba than I am in the one offered by Oliver Stone. Just as an old-time Chicagoan, I'm more interested in what Mike Royko had to write and say about the city of big shoulders than any comment that a visiting Canadian film maker would offer. After all, Val is a Cuban. What in hell would Oliver Stone know about it, just from interviewing that country's aging dictator?

In a few years, it will be over, more or less. Castro will bite the dust. His communist regime will give him a ceremonial funeral. Then, more rapidly than slowly, most of the socialist facade he carefully erected, and starved the Cuban people to pay for, will crumble to dust.

Does this mean the Cubans will put the modern successors to Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano back in power running that island's gambling casinos and whorehouses for visiting Yankees? Not necessarily. The world has changed since the 1950s.

But, above all, it's their island, not ours. I think Castro's successors will be free market people who will move rapidly to follow the path of China and Viet Nam, not that of North Korea.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I hate Castro and I hate everybody (like Oliver Stone) who sucks up to him.

The world has changed since the 1950s.

Nothing could be truer than this statement. I find it exasperating how some can laud the advances in healthcare, education and literacy in Cuba as pure products of Castro's revolution. While his regime may have taken the first steps in these areas, who is to say that some other Cuban leader, a democratically elected one, might not have achieved the same thing? It has been over forty years since Castro usurped power.Not only has he has had more time for these programs than any other "leader" ever, but the world around him has changed drastically.

While other poorer countries have flourished, Castro's Cuba has regressed. It is no longer an agricultural and economic power in the Antilles as it once was.

Some will argue this is the result of the US embargo. It may be a sympton of it, but definitely not the cause. To remove all US interests in Cuba is what Castro wanted and it's what Castro got. And for the most part, when receiving subsidies from the Soviets, Castro's Cuba survived. Yet, since the dismantling of the Soviet state Castro's Cuba has been in a steady decline while the bearded one stood by, stalwart, each day depriving his people of more and more.

The Oliver Stone's of this world look for the easy answer. The strawman put up solely for the admonition of America.

Castro may very well be a wise man as Stone said, but what good is wisdom if it is wasted on an ideal that history has proven, time and again, that just doesnt work to the benefit of man?

I must add that the difference between me and Oliver Stone is that I will defend to the death Stone's right to make propaganda movies glorifying Castro while he only defends Castro's "right" to imprison or shoot those who oppose him.