thought of the day

so, fidel castro is reportedly recovering from his intestinal surgery now. but what if he doesn't? if i were raoul castro, as soon as fidel croaks, i put a bullet in him and claim that he was assassinated by an anti-cuban group. possibly america, but probably not; while it would be great to blame an outsider (because as much as cubans may dislike fidel, they probably dislike outsiders even more), but there's really not much that cuba can do to the US. no, i would probably blame cuban "exiles" (or whatever they're calling all those people that raft across to the US) and/or some internal group of dissidents. that would have the double benefit of taking an indirect swipe at america (bringing up the ghost of the bay of pigs) and making your citizens more suspicious of each other, which means they have less time to worry about what you're doing.

but then, i'm not overly familiar with raoul. maybe he won't need to go to those lengths to gain support, maybe he can let fidel die peacefully and everybody will just fall in line behind the new castro. discuss amongst yourselves.