Spreading the word. Still.

While those Cubans with access to hard cash are queuing up in Havana to buy mobiles phones (for the first time!), the Castro regime continues to sell its old message around the world that capitalism is bad and socialism is good. Very good.

The latest example is an interview published by The Daily Times of Malawi with the Cuban ambassador to Zambia, Francisco Viamontes Correa.

A true apparatchik of the old Soviet school, Mr Viamontes Correa told the paper that capitalist policies simply do not work in countries such as Cuba. Or Malawi, for that matter.

Why? Because while capitalists only wanted to make money (so they can buy mobile phones and stay in luxury hotels ... just like the Ambassador), socialists were more interested in providing free education, free health services, full employment and housing.

“The West is wrong,” he told the paper. “Their democracy is not our democracy. Their system is not our system.”

As for all that negative media coverage about the Castro regime, Mr Viamontes Correa said it was part of a “misguided and aggressive” misinformation campaign “propagated by the American government and some Western countries which follow American policies”.

Spoken like a true Cold Warrior …