Forty years of folly

In case you've been living in a cave for the past week or so, the US is pretty excited about this: Fidel Castro has temporarily stepped aside and handed presidential power to his brother, as Castro undergoes stomach surgery.

The American government, of course, is really hoping that there'll be complications, or that Castro will resign, or that some almighty deity will shoot some lightning bolts at Castro, or something. They've been trying to get rid of him since he came into power, and the fact that Castro is the longest-sitting head of state in the world probably makes some US officials slightly uncomfortable. Why? Well, there's the part where we sort of embarrassingly tried to get rid of him and failed pretty terribly, for one. And we all know that Cuba is the home to numerous human rights violations, and imprisoning people without a trial is wrong.

Anyway, so a whole bunch of CIA types are probably really hoping that the Cubans are bluffing and Mr. Castro is not recovering well. Personally, while I'm not a big fan of dictatorships, I think that as far as non-democratic nations go Cuba's pretty nice. According to the CIA World Factbook, their death rate is 7.22 deaths per 1,000 people; infant mortality rate of 6.22/1,000, HIV infection rate less than .1%, and a 1.9% unemployment rate.

The US, by contrast, has a 5.1% unemployment rate, .6% HIV infection rate, 6.43% infant mortality rate, and 8.26% death rate.

Clearly, the communist menace of Mr. Castro - him with his 97% literacy rate - must draw to an end, and soon.