D-Fence.

Raúl is out of change. Literally and figuratively.

Desperate Cubans waited with their still empty glasses of milk to see if their new leader would offer up a timetable to make good on the promised “structural changes” which he announced in his now famous glass of milk speech a year ago.

But no, Raúl did not announce any change or make any other assurances to the Cuban people other than warn them that things are going to change from bad to worse. Like with all thugs, warnings are really promises.

More sacrifice, more struggle, more of the same. Not a warning put a promise.

Like the much ridiculed exiles across the straights in Miami, Raúl looked back to the good ol’ hey days of the Cuban republic when sugar was king and Fidel wasn’t and reminisced about the day his brother started the bleeding and then promised more blood.

Raúl “warned:”

''We shall continue paying special attention to defense, regardless of the results of the next presidential elections in the United States,'' Raúl said.

Defense.

Raúl, of course, means defense of the revolution, of the status quo, of his regime.
And who exactly does he have to defend the revolution from?

Jamaica? The Dominican Republic? The Cayman Islands?

Those bitter exiles in Miami clinging to their nostalgia of Batista’s Cuba? Hardly, the United States government makes dam sure that will never happen.

The US-The Empire just 90 miles due North? If the US was serious about getting rid of the Castro Nostra, they would be gone in about 12 hours and they know it.

The real enemies of the so called Cuban revolution are its victims-the Cuban people. It is the Cuban people that Raúl was warning in his speech.

He wanted to assure them that his priorities have not changed. His number one priority is to stay in power come what may even if it’s the audacious Barry O.

The real estate market in South Florida is tanking, foreclosures are sky high, gasoline prices are in the stratosphere and the dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to, all of which is cutting into the regime’s remittance business.

Times are tough. It’s going to cost more to arm and train the regime’s goon squads. The price of surveillance equipment is going up. Ramiro needs cash to subdue the “wild colt” that is the internet. The Cuban armed forces need upgrades to defend the regime against the dangerous Ladies in White, the FLAMUR women, kids wearing “cambio” bracelets, assorted writers and poets and the 98 pound blogger Yoani Sanchez. Repression can’t be done on the cheap, you know.

Therefore, Cubans will have to be a little hungrier and a little more miserable so that Raúl can continue to defend them against freedom, happiness and prosperity.