A US expat friend of mine (he left USA in the 1980's) repeats endless well known and debunked myths about Cuba, Russia, and the People's Republic of China. But he has inside information, he says, from expats from other countries including China, which is obviously (to him) superior to mine. He also recounts stories he has heard from such expats, and limited personal experiences in places like Cuba as proof of his assertions.
Any such stories and experiences are subject to a huge sampling error. Stories from expats should in no way considered to be "representative" of their home country, simply on first principles, that most people of those countries are not expats. (Or tourists, etc, that you are likely to meet.) Likewise one's own experiences are highly biased by one's own views and those one knows--a self-selecting sample--and how one gets into said country and for what reasons--all of which are surely unrepresentative of the people there. Even firsthand experiences ought to be considered first and foremost as anecdotal evidence and it is wrong to extrapolate from them and say things like "People in Cuba feel..."
But there's more. In addition to being not-very-representative on first principles, such individuals or groups to which they belong or attend may be part of or associated with well known regime change organizations, like the NED.
Shockingly to me, my friend had no idea what I meant by NED. I meant the "National Endowment for Democracy." So I searched for and found this classic article from a classic book:
https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/trojan-horse-the-national-endowment-for-democracy
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