Fidel Castro's television appearance

Even an unburied corpse like Castro is entitled to few final spasms. It's a futile attempt to relive the relevance he once had during the last century. Now, now, it's time to climb back into your wooden coffin and disappear into oblivion.

According to the BBC correspondent in Cuba – there has been no report on the “dissidents “ being released. Now if that is not a sign of a government trying to hide something of strong national interest, I don’t know what is. But then again, if average Cubans learnt that being a political dissident may well result in facing time behind bars followed by a ticket to Spain – it may well be worth the short term sacrifice for living in freedom and the Cuban government could well see a revolt.

I am however glad that Fidel has been squished from his one-time high efforts of physically intervene in the domestic policies of other countries (and attempting to spreading communism internationally) to murmuring out ridiculous accusations.

As the reporter said, “if you missed his interview, you didn’t miss much”

@ maxine0008 – actually unlike FT, the Economist is an opinion lead journal. It is up to us the “intellectual” readers to absorb the point of view described in the Economist and make our own judgments on whether we like it, whether we want to research somewhere else, etc. The benefit we get with the Economist is that their writers are generally PhD experts in their respective fields who know the topic well enough to pass their own opinion – it is this opinion that has seen the Economist rise to become one of the most read magazines in the world.

Very simple really.

As for being an “US Government Puppy Dog”, you do realise that the Economist is not American and that it criticizes the US Government on a regular basis. The big difference is that the US government is mature enough not to throw a hissy fit when faced with criticism.

Castro can barely talk coherently and is showing signs of mental dementia. Time to put shoot the old horse and put the country out of its misery.

I agree with D. Sherman. The embargo and travel restrictions have only served to strengthen the Cuban authorities, as they provided for a convenient bogey man to blame all the economic hardships on. They are also used as a justification (however questionable) for the restrictions of civil rights by the government. Furthermore, the type of anti-American rhetoric we regularly hear from Cuba's leadership would be unthinkable if the government was hoping to attract U.S. investments or trade. Finally, while many European, Canadian and Latin American businesses have been establishing a foothold on the island, companies from next-door USA are being prevented from doing so by their own government. All in all, unless I am missing something big (feel free to enlighten me), this seems like a completely counterproductive and irrational policy that harms Cubans and Americans alike.

Economist really should learn how to repoert news without misleading and manipulating public opinion! Economist journalists must learn the basic news reporting ethics!

FT reported this news one day ealier than Economist with a very standard news reporting angle and attitude, however Economist's artical as always full of one sided misleading opinions, this is not news reporting, this sould be a personal blog article with the low critibility.

A news angency should just simply reporting what happend without personal opinions, so that people can form up their own opinions without being manipulated. If Economist keep reporting news like a US government puppy dog , it will loss its credibility and readers gradually.

It is hypocritical for Cuban American to demand a complete embargo of Cuba while demanding that they alone (with relatives in Cuba) be exempted from the embargo on gifts and remittances to Cuba. All US citizens should have the same right to send gifts to Cuba, if they so wish.

The previous President Bush at least sided with fairness by terminating the exemption in the embargo for Cuban Americans with relatives in Cuba. President Bush Obama promptly re-introduced this exemption without extending it to all americans and the stupid media hailed Obama for liberalizing trade with Cuba!

that's a complete lie d. sherman. it would, like its communist friend in north korea, simply use other reasons.

north korea use to tell all fellow north korea that south korea was desperately poor, much much poorer than the mighty socialist north. that all ended when south koreans kept smuggling in videotapes of south korean tv shows. unlike in your fantasy world did this cause the instant collapse of north korea? no, they simply started telling north koreans that south korea was desperately unhappy as the lapdog of the united states.

shocking how that happens.

The Cuban regime would have nothing to base its power on were it not for the anachronistic US trade embargo, and the US would probably have dropped the embargo years ago were it not for the fact that Florida has a lot of electoral votes and is usually a closely-fought state.