csteele:

Castro an "underdog?" A man with his own personal plantation almost twice the size of Tasmania and 12 million slaves whose only purpose in life is to obey his edicts and serve his interests? An "underdog" whose personal fortune Forbes Magazine puts at US$950 million? He ranks along with Queen Elizabeth as one of the world's richest rulers, and we know he didn't inherit his money.

It may interest you to know that the U.S. is now Cuba's #1 trading partner. The trade embargo has been gutted and in effect no longer exists except in name. Has it benefited the Cuban people? Of course not. It is Cuban exiles who send US$6 billon annually to the island in family remittances ("taxed" at the late of 20% by the dictator) who have saved the Cuban people from the famines which a failed economic system and a venal ruler condemned them

Somebody just said "The US may be a perfect example of an imperfect democracy...."
Whow! The US and democracy in one sentence? When you spend Billions of dollars to ""elect"" a president and others of the government, you call this a democracy? We used to call this CORRUPTION, or as the saying in the US goes: "we have the best President money can buy."
The US is a corrupt system of government, basta.
Any other system compares well with this one, definitely Cuba's!
Btw. we go to Cuba at least twice a year and are extremely fortunate to do so. We would not dream of stepping a foot into the US, not now, not ever.
And before you get guessing, we are white western Europeans living in Canada.
Viva Cuba!

Cubans certainly do vote – often with their feet or makeshift boats. And they tend to vote for the United States.

I'll believe this sort of male bovine excrement when I see hundreds of Americans fleeing to Cuba.

This is, as my five year old is wont to say, "too too funny."

LOL

Fielding Mellish

You've made a brave effort here but you're attempting the impossible. Trying to reason with Castro groupies is like trying to have a sensible discussion with Flat Earthers, creationists, Holocaust deniers and believers in astrology. It can't be done.

They will believe what they want to believe.

So Castro twice as rich as the Queen?($900 million vs $400 Million).

Malcolm Forbes, who began Forbes magazine, is also the honorary president of “The Commission for the Economic Reconstruction of Cuba,” a commission created by Ronald Reagan.

This is how Forbes magazine estimates Castro’s supposed fortune. The editors put together all the companies controlled by the Cuban state, (such as the building where the Cuban congress meets plus the stores and a company run by the Cuban state called Medicuba, which makes vaccines and medicines for commercial sale). The Forbes people then somehow determined the value of all these enterprises – which no individual actually owns – and assumed that Castro must have taken a cut. After all, they probably would have! The editors explain their calculation saying, “we suppose.”

Add to this the recent scandal where the Bush government (U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting )was caught bribing journalists in Miami to provide ongoing anti-Castro commentary plus the multi-million dollar government budgets of Radio Marti and TV Marti to broadcast constant anti-Castro propaganda into Cuba and you begin to wonder where the truth ends and the lies begin.

My guess is it’s somewhere in the middle.

The bottom line is that what happens in Cuba, like all foreign dictatorships, just doesn’t matter to us. Until Fidel appears on Dancing with the Stars, nobody here will give a toss.

Democracy is the institutionalized recognition by the state of an opposition party, of it's right to exist and of it's legitimate right to potentially become government through elections. Cuba doesn't have this legal figure; or if it does, the opposition is 100% with Castro (which means that the allegedly opposition is the government itself). In any of both cases the conclusion is the same: Cuba is not a democracy.
The rest is pure cheap propaganda, a make-up-for-free to the face of the leftist totalitarism, sponsored by Mr. Anderson, but in a very well intended fashion, no doubt about it.