This is a false comparison, Doug, and I am surprised that you fall for that crap. You need to compare apples to apples, that is, countries under similar conditions. So to compare NK or Cuba to the US - you would have to perform a mental experiment of imagining the US being under similar conditions to the two countries in question, i.e. the same level of foreign threat, foreign induced economic instablity etc. - and then try to imagine how much bourgeois freedom you would have in the US in such a situation. My educated guess based on the behavior of US sponsored "democracies" is that you would probably end up in a torture chamber, a concentration camp, or being thrown out of a military helicopter. So would not you rather be in a Cuban jail instead?
wojtek