I remember everyone used to call them nards until Beavis and Butthead came along and it was nads ever since . <| sep |> My sincerest apologies for the wall of text . How true do you think is the portrayal of Cuba in the international mediaconsidering the fact that US has been antiCuba for a major portion of its existence and influences media a lotThere are three type of international media when it comes to Cuba . The ones that hate Castro , the ones that love him , and the ones that don ' t care . So , media portrayal is going to vary according to this . How to spot the difference ? The ones that sound North Koreaish and praise Castro as if he were an all encompassing saint are self evident . The ones who hate him are as well . The ones who don ' t car are a toss up , they can go either way in reporting on Cuba . Find your truth in the middle . Don ' t blindly believe what any one source tells you . How good is the economy doing ? Is it moving at a stable growth rate and will be sustainable in the future . This is a seriously hard question for anyone to answer . If you visit Cuba , and go into the streets , you will find that the economy sucks . People are not visibly going hungry , yet very few are actually working and have very little money . So where does the food come from ? Theft or farms . In the hotels , food is stolen like it ' s going out of style . That is the real reason why there is food for the majority of the people to eat . Also why you ' ll find subpar pizzas missing half their cheese , and a general lack of ingredients in every state run hotel or restaurant . Workers steal pretty much everything that is not bolted down . The government generally turns a blind eye to the thefts , but has to prosecute people for it so as not to lose respect , so they every once in a while will catch and prosecute a bunch of people . Also , how do the citizens there view the government and its leadersalso , is there any personality cult built around Castro or Guvera like ertswhile Soviet Union . This one is a rather funny answer to a serious question . Officially , there is no personality cult . But you can find pictures of Castro on just about every wall in Cuba . So it ' a a matter of let ' s not and say we did . No personality cult here ! Don ' t mind all the pictures of castro . Nobody I ' ve ever met gives three fuckas about Che Guevara except when the need arises to parrot the Che propaganda in front of some political group or person . We must all look like we ' re willingly following the official line . This mainly is what makes Cubans such perfect two faced liars . It ' s been forced on them since birth . Play the part , look the part , you ' re good . Slip , you ' re fucked . How possible is dissent there ? There is a state run newspaper , if I am correct , Cuba ranked low in journalistic freedom . What is your view of this ? Dissent is as possible there as it would be in the US . The US does not allow for political prisoners because they are a Democracy . How can you have political prisoners when this is a democracy ? So Cuba put in elections and forces people to vote , now we ' re a democracy ! So political prisoners a thing of the past . Why ? Simple , In the US , you have laws that make specific things illegal . Everything not outlawed is considered legal . In Cuba , it is sort of a reversal of this . Everything not specifically allowed by law , is illegal . Yes , there are laws that specifically forbid certain things , but many laws have to allow things , it ' s really a very fixed game where the state never loses . Having a zillion reasons to put anyone in jail , it becomes child ' s play to imprison any dissenter as a criminal and call it a day . Stealing food comes to mind as a very real example . Finally , what is your opinion of Guvera ' s commodificationhis image on T shirts are a big sell in most parts of the world , kinda ironical considering he was extremely critical of the system . Personally ? I see Che as an idiot play piece exploited by Fidel . After he took power , he cleansed his group of everyone he thought could compete with his popularity or power . Camilo and Che to name a couple . Che was a stupid idealist who really thought he had the answers . An idiot . So yeah , he ordered the deaths of thousands . All in the name of his ideals . You know , much like the Catholic church did during the inquisition . Yet surprisingly , here you have two instances where neither party is generally blamed or accused of such atrocities . Yet Hitler is hated for the holocaust , undeniably so , but my point is that all three are responsible for mass deaths , yet it seems like in order to forgive some and condemn the others , the number of deaths are the main score , not the fact that when you murder people , you are a murderer , one murder should be too many . The Castros are responsible for thousands of deaths directly and an insurmountable count of deaths indirectly . Yet they seem to have evaded all justice by simply being expert manipulators of the press . So to cut this off at the roots , media is a result of what these media companies believe people want to hear and distort this information in order to further whatever agenda they may have . Don ' t trust the media , hell , don ' t even trust what I say if it doesn ' t resonate within your parameters of truth .