wobbles:

Malcom Forbes has been dead for 20 years. He was never a conservative and would have welcomed the resumption of diplomatic and trade relations with Communist Cuba (as most U.S. capitalists would).

Forbes Magazine bases its calculations of Castro's wealth on the same criteria which it uses to determine the wealth of other plutocrats. It is not an exact science and he may well be worth US$2 billion instead of US$1 billion. Of course, all companies in Cuba are state-owned and Castro is the state. Their profits are Castro's disposable income. His assets continue to grow and he recently purchased a 32-floor hotel in China. Castro has 600 mansions in Cuba at his personal disposal and owns palatial estates throughout the world in case he should have to relocate for political reasons (such as the advent of freedom and democracy to his country).

When American tv debuts a series entitled "Dancing with the Corpses," you can expect to see Fidel Castro there. I think he could probably manage a little Hitlerian jig.

This debate, if you can call it that, is useless and it is not going anywhere. People call others names, groupies etc. My guess is most of you have never been to Cuba or talked to the people IN Cuba. Most of these forum experts live thousands of miles away and have all their information second hand. And we should know how information or disinformation is created and targeted at the public, the public mostly to uneducated (or outright dumb) to realize what they are being dished out.
We keep going to Cuba and help them as long as we can to resist the evil empire next door.

Just a small correction - "rate of imprisonment in the US, which has more than two million prisoners, is far higher than in Cuba (or indeed any other country)." - I believe the claim in brackets is incorrect. Russia tops the list, followed by USA (from aneki.com)

When Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959, Cuba had a population of 6,600,000 inhabitants. Its population is now 11 million. Since 1959, more than 2 million Cubans have been jailed by Castro. No other nation of comparable size has had a greater percentage of its population incarcerated than has Communist Cuba. Add to that number the 2 million Cubans who are exiles of the regime and the dimensions of Castro's historic crime come into greater focus. Add, finally, the 102,000 Cubans whom Castro has killed over 48 years of unelected rule (and the number is still increasing by the hour) and what you have is the most ruthless tyranny in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Personal politics and wishful thinking aside, keeping Cuba and the USA as they are; now reverse the population numbers, size, and natural resources available. Now how benign is Kooba. Oh, look the United STATE (singular)is such a quiet lovely resort stradling the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. There goes Cuba again. Dictating to the world. Would any free thinking person be surprised? Not.
Why is the USA a democracy and Cuba is not?

aqvarivs:

Reverse everything, you say? So the United State [so-called] would be a tyrannical state like Cuba, and Cuba would be a democracy like the United States? That would certainly solve Cuba's problems, but it would hardly decrease the hagemonic potential of a country that would still stretch from ocean to ocean.

By the way, Cuba is not a small country as islands go. At 121,514 km, you could fit several U.S. states in its territory.