My dear friend, Please let me begin by apologising for expressing myself very poorly, not for one moment was I suggesting support toward the current Cuban regime (indeed it is to be most fervently hoped that it will collapse inward, upon itself, very shortly). I was just expressing the, widely held, belief that their cigars are a superior product (as has been stated on more than one occasion by luminaries such as, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Richard Nixon and Clint Eastwood, to name but three).Smatter Noguts wrote:Well, sorry my dear Palinka but bullshit on Cuba and the fraudulent mobsters who rule it, may they burn in Hell. And anyone who supports thier terrorist regime, and by that I mean anyone who travels to or conducts business with psychotic killers like the Castro brothers, needs be ashamed of themselves...
Sadly, it is a fact of life that we often have to make "Faustian Pacts" in order to do good and/or get what we want. There are very few heads of state of OPEC countries that one would want to take home and introduce to the family. Then there are the deals with the devil that we have to make just to get to provide humanitarian aid to Haiti and many South American and African countries (and let's not even get into the way we stumble over ourselves to make concessions to Putin).
It's an ugly World.
Most of the Havana cigars that are available in Europe are the result of a straightforward exchange for humanitarian, medical aid (through such organisations as "Medicins sans Frontieres").
And really, when we think about it, smoking is a stupid, self-destructive, anti-social habit (or more correctly, addiction) but since many people, throughout the World, indulge in it, it becomes a widely available drug. It also says something that a pack of smokes will cost a third of the price in Virginia (a tobacco growing state), than a pack of the same brand of cigarettes would cost in New York (a non - tobacco growing state) and were it possible to scrutinise political donations (in the form of both money and time - many people standing for office are "lent" people, from extant companies, to assist them in electioneering). And I am a smoker.
However, to get back to the original theme of the thread, we are talking about cigars and, as Sigmund Freud famously noted, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".