Out with the old, in with the new

Fidel Castro has resigned as the president of Cuba.

In a way, it's not surprising.  He's 81 years old and has been in power for nearly fifty years.  That's a long time.  And hopefully, our president's smarmy-as-hell reaction won't put the Cuban people off from demanding democracy and justice.  In my opinion, the biggest problem with our perpetual embargo against them is not simply that it's absolutely retarded (which it is), but that it prevents us from addressing the serious issues.  Yes, the missile crisis was very scary and sure commies are bad.  Communism is an economic theory, though, and really has nothing to do with their justice system.  The cause for an economic embargo should have been human rights violations all along.  Give me the choice between a nice, shiny, capitalistic nation where journalists are tossed in jail for not censoring themselves, and a grittier, socialist nation that has a truly free press, I'll take the socialism any day.  So hopefully, Castro's resignation may be the catalyst the world needs to tell Cuba to knock it off.

In other news: welcome, Kosovo.  

I'm surprised that the burning and fighting took so long to start, but here it is.  Russia, of course, isn't pleased, but Russia as a general rule isn't a tremendous fan of change to political establishments.  

I'll be the first to admit I'm shamefully ignorant about the situation in that region.  But my point of view is that if you've got a group of people in a given geographic region who don't get along.  You can try to get along under the same rule, and inevitably fight and fight and fight and fight and fight.  Or, at some point you can say, "Look.  This just isn't working out between us.  How about you go your way and we go our way?  It's probably going to be easier to tolerate being neighbors rather than roommates."

Maybe something crazy will happen, the rioting will die down, the situation will stabilize without NATO or the UN stepping in too much, and everyone will be at least not terribly dissatisfied.  That would be a nice change, wouldn't it?