Several bloggers, including Precinct 333, John Ray, Peggy Kaplan and David Huber, have linked to this article by August Nimtz in the RedStarTribune, who clearly has better whiskey than me.

In 1959 the Cuban masses did something that working people have yet to do in this country: They took power out of the hands of a tiny privileged minority and began to exercise it for themselves. They became the makers of their own history. Unlike in the United States, where politics is reduced to a boring spectator sport and working people are treated as mere consumers -- thus, the high abstention rate -- Cubans vote with their feet every day in defense of their revolutionary conquests. More than 1 million took to the streets in Havana May 14 to protest the Bush administration's latest moves. The social gains that the Cuban people enjoy, as in education and health care, are possible because they possess political power -- in other words, real democracy. Precisely because U.S. workers lack such power, their social wages continue to erode.

So I thought it would be good to Google Prof. Nimtz. It turns out he's a tired old leftist who's been honking Castro's horn for years. Here's one other example of his views:

For August Nimtz, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota and political activist who grew up under Jim Crow segregation in the south, the flag represents something entirely different than it does for Orr.

�Many people see the flag as representing imperial conquest, exploitation and oppression,� said Nimtz. �Because of our history of lynching, dispossession and repression at the hands of people waving the flag, many Black people have a healthy suspicion about flag-waving.�

�The flag doesn�t give me a warm fuzzy feeling � rather, it reminds me of Billie Holiday and the images of brutal lynching she conjures up in the song Strange Fruit,� Nimtz explained.

He is also the author of a book titled "Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough." So yeah, I'd guess he likes Castro more than he likes the U.S. And if you follow his vita around the University of Minnesota, you find the usual suspects.