The Wall Street Journal has an interesting interview with Cuban dissident Armando Valladares, an opponent of Castro's communist dictatorship who was imprisoned by the regime for some 22 years. Valladares' memoir Against All Hope is one of the better books produced by dissidents from communist states.

I discussed the Cuban government's massive human rights violations (the scale of which is still rarely appreciated) in this series of posts, where I also explained why its mostly mythical successes in providing health care do not come close to offsetting the harm caused by its political and economic repression.