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Sunday, August 06, 2006

Losing Fidel

I don’t think about national concerns, unless I’m prodded by the newspaper. Maybe to make this blog current I should comment on newspaper clippings, the way Fidel Castro does in six or eight hour harangues before the people of Cuba.

There will be less of that from now on, of course. He’s just undergone surgery for a bleeding stomach and his kid brother Raul at 75 is exercising the powers of president. Folks in Miami are packing their bags already, hoping to return to Cuba under a new government when Castro dies. A good number of Miamians want their homes back. The folks now living in those homes in Cuba fear the return of expatriates, since the only homes some current residents know belong to those expats with the packed bags.

It’s hard to choose sides in a quarrel like this. Maybe all the folks who have homes now should stay where they are, either in Miami or Havana, and quit planning to repossess stuff that belonged essentially to forbears. Maybe that sounds harsh, but it does avoid needlessly putting folks on the streets.

The folks who went to Miami have had US residence and a great number of services provided them. The folks who stayed in Havana have known poverty and hunger and perhaps paid for their suffering big time.

My sympathy is on the side of those who stayed in Cuba. The folks who went to Miami have had the privilege of voting as a bloc to elect Republican presidents, and by confusing the electoral process, given us in effect the war in Iraq. They hoped the war would be waged against Castro's Cuba. George’s aim was a little off.

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