I don't buy the with-such-a-neighbour-how-could-he-do-different attitude.

Like all former revolutionaries Castro is getting too rigid and has lost the ability to listen to dissenting voices. He knows best and that's it. His biggest failure is that he has never thought of giving the Cuban population the freedom to say whether they want to be governed by him any longer or not.

His recent treatment of the Varela Project, an initiative for reforms in Cuba that had collected enough signatures for a theoretically possible referendum, shows his contempt for democratic reforms.

The factual moratorium on death penalty in Cuba has ended recently (I don't know any details of the trials but an execution less than two weeks after the crime doesn't make a favourable impression on me) and Cuba is now the second state on the continent to execute criminals.

A sure sign of rigidity in a former revolutionary is when he thinks about the future in dynastic terms. I still have a high respect for what he has done many many years ago. But my last respect for the Castro of today went when he joined the ranks of those dictators (Iraq, Korea,...) who preselected a family member as future successor.

Wolfgang