Time: Castro likely has terminal cancer

Lyman:

There are some differences between Cuba and South Africa.

In the 60s and 70s, I didn't see a problem with sanctions against Cuba. It's a dictatorial regime, they were a client state of the Soviet Union which was our chief rival, and any money spent in Cuba, because of the severe nature of control over individual citizens would mean the money ends up with Castro.

The problem is that the Soviet Union and their subsidization of the Cuban economy ended in 1991. The sanctions aren't working and probably end up helping the Castro dictatorship - Fidel blames all of his problems on the big, bad U.S. of A. - and that happened when Clinton was president as well as Bush.

Real stupidity is when you keep doing the same things which weren't working.

The other thing is that there are millions of Cuban exiles and their children living in the US - in Florida but also in places like Union City, N.J.

With South Africa, there never was a travel ban for Americans to go to South Africa. There never was a ban on investments - indeed, American investment supported the racist regime in South Africa.

Ronald Reagan, when asked to comment on South Africa, said South Africa and the US were allies in World War 2. That might have been a fact in terms of government, but it is well-documented that the white Afrikanners who came to power in 1948 were Nazi supporters and their government and politics were not unlike the Nazis.

The sanctions against South Africa weren't by the federal government - they were by individual athletes (John McEnroe among them) and entertainers. The question is about the affect of sanctions. Arthur Ashe said sports was the achilles heel of South Africa and not having top-flight sports competitions did have an effect.

There were state government pension systems which moved to ban investment in South Africa. Although these actions were political, you could make a very strong free-market argument that any investment in South Africa was a bad thing because it was only a matter of time before the apartheid government in power was overthrown - the only question was when and how violent it would be. We are fortunate that the transition was relatively peaceful in terms that there wasn't a bloody civil war - the black majority governments were a fair thing in terms of democracy, although the ANC should be ashamed of their efforts to combat AIDS