http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2006-08/01/content_654311.htm

Raul is the brother of, and most likely (and just as antiquated) successor to, Fidel. Thus, any type of bureaucratic crisis in the event of Fidel’s demise is unlikely, although Raul is overshadowed by Fidel in personality and is unlikely to gain the public relations status of his brother.

It was also announced at 9 PM EST on Cuban state television.

Meanwhile, Miami (or at least Little Havana) is partying like its 2012, or something like that.

Everyone’s reading as far as possible into the matter, especially Washington, which has long been preparing for Fidel’s death.

But I wonder, though: Fidel may be alot of talk (he’s a gifted orator, btw), but for all the verbal belligerence that has constituted the dialogue between Washington and Havana (which is 90 miles south of the Florida Keys), the guy’s outlasted 9 frickin’ U.S. presidents.

The U.S. has not sent an invasion force to Cuba since the Bay of Pigs (well, those were CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles, not U.S. military personel), and, despite the fall of the USSR, has only used an embargo to starve him out of power.

So it went halfway around the world to fight against threats to Western civilization by the likes of Iraq and (eventually) Iran, but can’t invade a country – one with which it has had bad relations since the 1960’s – that is 90 miles south of the border?

And what if the undying wishes of the Cuban masses are fulfilled? What if, tomorrow, the government throws in the towel and says “fuck it, let’s do elections!”? Cuba, most likely, would become yet another piece of shit Hispano-American nation for the U.S. to fuck deep in the ass for its sugar, tobacco, and other perishable cash crops (with an elite – yes, the elite that resides in Havana – to be used as garden hoes to tend the Cuban soil for U.S. enrichment); or, the U.S. could probably have enough of those already (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, etc.).

So, that’s just what I’m wondering at the moment.