.....while dissident writers and bloggers rot in jail
Above: US gangster Meyer Lansky's dream project - the Havana Riviera - remains as though steeped in aspic. The hotel's L'aiglon restaurant carnival mural by Hipoilito Hidalgo de Caviedes is as stunning as it was when painted in 1957.
By Leonard Doyle in Havana,
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Rose first passed on some harmless gossip about Fidel Castro's extensive private ranch, some twenty miles outside Havana.
She had been a regular visitor in her youth and she described for me a bucolic scene of rolling hills, bountiful fields and plenty of horses for the Commandante em Chef to choose from in his younger days.
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She talked freely about the frustrations of life in contemporary Cuba and how her pathetic wages as a marketing manager of a top hotel barely paid the bills.
As we enjoyed expensive mojitos, I asked how the rather dowdy European tourists all over the city could afford the extortionate hotel rates I had encountered . The hotel we were sitting in charged in excess of $300 a night, for example.
"Oh, they don't have to spend that kind of money to stay in a five star hotel," said Rose, "People who support Cuba simply book through havanatour.co.uk and get that same room for $25".
"Is it surprising now that we have many friends and around the world?" she asked with a wink.
The penny dropped and I understood why so many otherwise thoughtful social democrats in Europe and Canada have a blind spot when it come to repression in Cuba.
They can get real excited about the inequities of the US embargo, but remain silent about the democratic opposition.
"The opposition is riddled with CIA spies," a Spanish diplomat cautioned, "we don't trust the them."
Meanwhile Spanish businesses are busy signing deals with the 'trustworthy' Communist regime and the embassy is a 'no go' area for Cuban dissidents
These $25 night, bargain basement vacations are, of course, not available to Americans, who are still banned by their own government from going to the island.
The elegant bar on the Hotel Nacional De Cuba terrace is where European diplomats like to meet their contacts. Most Cubans are too poor to buy a drink here, but strangely the bar is usually packed with poorly dressed European living it up on thecheap. It opened in the late 1950s as the country's premier hotel with a prominent seaside location fronting the Malecón in Vedado, (the famed avenue stretching for more than four miles along Havana's seawall). In the bad old days, the Hotel Nacional de Cuba hosted presidents, royalty and stars . Now its stuffed with $25 a night "friends of Cuba". Those not in on the game pay $250 a night.
European and Canadian business executives are also very keen on coming to Cuba. They buzz around Havana hoping to strike deals for luxury resorts or the chance to open that Shangri La of all capitalists, a luxury golf resort with owner apartments.
Its never going to happen, because the Cuban regime, (which carefully follows the Chinese model) will see to it that it gets all the profits.
Deafening silence
Why is there such a deafening silence about Cuba's repression of the media both in Europe and the US? Anyone with even a passing interest in the island knows that Cuba gives journalists and bloggers an especially nasty time and has sentenced many to decades in jail.
The American media finds the opposition in Cuba hard to embrace, because so many of its members oppose Washington's embargo. Its a simplistic, 'if they're not with us they must be against us,' analysis.
The embargo has been in place since the early 1960s, but behind the scenes, American business does very well in Cuba. Trade is worth in excess of $800 million pa, justified on humanitarian grounds and coming in the fork of frozen chickens from the Mid West, all paid for in hard cash.
Its a good deal for the US farm sector and the Cuban regime pays for the food with the money it makes through its monopoly on the tourism sector.
European attitudes towards repression in Cuba are troubling. On the left and the right. Europeans like to pass over the Castro regime's repression of journalists in the country and blame the entire situation on the US embargo.
Thus when William Hague, the foreign affairs spokesman for the conservative opposition traveled to Cuba recently on a trip funded by a multimillionaire businessman and important benefactor of this party, he completely ignored the opposition and stayed in the billionaire Michael Ashcroft 's luxury yacht in the Hemingway Marina.
How will a new Conservative British government will behave towards Cuba?
The Conservative leadership (possibly soon to take power after the upcoming elections) has been calling on President Obama to lift the half-century-old American blockade of Cuba, perhaps a laudable aim in itself.
Above: Perfect at $25 a night, the Havana Riviera's L'aiglon restaurant remains frozen in time and thronged with wealthy European and Canadian businessmen as well as numerous "friends of Cuba"But the policy reeks of conflict of interest as one of the big beneficiaries is likely to be the billionaire Ashcroft who has extensive Caribbean business interests.
The European left is, if anything worse. The dirty little secret of left wing 'friends of Cuba' organisations around the world - the British House of Commons is stuffed with fellow travelers of the Cuban regime, as is the European Parliament and the Spanish Cortez is the access it gives to cheap getaway in the Caribbean.
With its discount vacations for "friends of Cuba,"the regime has figured a way to both bribe activists on the European and Canadian left and cozy up to businessmen.
In this way the regime maintains a wide and powerful network of influence around the world - especially in international organisation like the United Nations Human Rights Council.
This explains, in part at least, the deafening silence around the world for the Cuban regimes gross abuses of the rights of dissident writers, bloggers and journalists in Cuba.
Cuba's wide circle of influence on the left and on the right ensures that the dissidents voices are hardly raised in Europe or Canada.
That and Washington's hamfisted foreign policy over the years has helped the regime survive intact. Cuba has all the bases covered...
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