Peter, a little bit of solipsism has never hurt anyone who's been shared around and prodded like a lab animal. After so many broken promises of the collective society, I'm not surprised that many Cubans fancy indulging in some form of self-absorption. I don't blame them.

There are limits to the "you need to be X to know X". The two examples you provided were not good. We can't travel in time to Nazi Germany and we still don't know much about Mars to ascertain if human life can be sustained there. Empiricism can only take you so far.

But to come back to my earlier point, analysing a real, flesh and blood country like Cuba, from a distance (and this is me speculating. Maybe you have lived there as a ration book-dependent Cuban. Who knows?) and taking sides (as you did in your article). is not OK. In fact, it could be seen as yet another way of conquering a country, but from the left this time. I've also penned my own reflections on the current situation in my country of birth. Unsurprisingly, most comments have been laudatory. Because you can see that is a Cuban who sides neither with the Florida lot, nor with the Díaz-Canel lot , who's written it.

The word embargo has various meanings, amongst which "a restraint or hindrance; prohibition" is the one more appropriate for what I described. So, there's a Cuban government-imposed embargo in Cuba. I hope that clarifies matters.