The Clueless on Cue

There’s not too much Cuba related online today, being Good Friday and all, so I was looking around to see I could find something interesting and I came across this headline: Toasting Raul, the next Gorbachev: Foster. From a Canadian web site no less. Hmmm?

But I’m desperate, so I click, cringing. As the page loads…A Big picture of Raúl. And so I figure its one of those folks that has bought the propaganda that lil bro is Mr. Pragmatic, etc, etc. and I brace myself,

As I read on, though, I find that this is not the case. Far from it:

Cuban President Raul Castro’s recently revealed economic “reforms” brought to mind two quite unrelated characters: Lewis Carroll’s White Queen, and an old Cuban exile acquaintance of mine named Ignacio.

President Raul, the sprightly 76-year-old who was “elected” to the presidency of Cuba on Feb. 24, thus replacing his ailing octogenarian brother, Fidel, is reportedly planning to grant his enslaved nation access to more consumer goods. Citing “the improved availability of electricity,” the new Maximum Leader will offer for sale computers, DVD players, pressure cookers, and microwave ovens. However, air conditioners are not to be made available until next year, and electric toasters – those ultimate consumer luxuries -- not until 2010. That’s what prompted my thoughts of the White Queen, who famously said to Alice “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday -- but never jam to-day.” In Cuba, yesterday is 1959.

I like this Foster guy! And his article gets better, tying the failures of socialist command economies to “sustainability”- a word that I’m personally developing as strong a dislike as I have for “reforma agraria”:

President Raul will almost certainly wind up as his nation’s Mikhail Gorbachev. That is, he will preside cluelessly over its collapse. But the passing of the old Cuban regime will be mourned by neo-socialists not because they see a world without air conditioning as a problem, but as a model.

I'll toast to that!

And, just as if on cue, we have this pathetic piece from, where else?, the New York Times lamenting the economic chaos that will befall our homeland once those eco-friendly commies are recycled.

Through accidents of geography and history, Cuba is a priceless ecological resource. That is why many scientists are so worried about what will become of it after Fidel Castro and his associates leave power and, as is widely anticipated, the American government relaxes or ends its trade embargo.

… Cuba has done "what we should have done -- identify your hot spots of biodiversity and set them aside," said Oliver Houck, a professor of environmental law at Tulane University Law School, who attended the conference.

In the late 1990s, Houck was involved in an effort, financed in part by the MacArthur Foundation, to advise Cuban officials writing new environmental laws. But, he said in an interview, "an invasion of U.S. consumerism, a U.S.-dominated future, could roll over it like a bulldozer" when the embargo ends…

“Hot spots of biodiversity and set them aside” Freedom, happiness and progress-all hotspots- also set aside. But, doesn’t bother these eco-fascists. These “collectivists” like my friend Tomas would say, are all about exerting their elitist crackpot ideas on the rest of society. That’s really why they are mourning the inevitable demise of Castrolandia form the comfort of their temperature controlled homes with a fully belly and the freedom to write all the inane nonsense that comes to their minds, without ever thinking of the implication that their ideas mean for human beings.