Damn. You Europeans get ALL the fun. 
-XT
Ermmm . . . Yes, they are. Since 1959.
Hope mixed with grief, I should think. It’s hard to gauge public opinion in Cuba from the outside, but from all I’ve read, a lot of Cubans, perhaps a majority, sincerely admire Castro even if they don’t give a rat’s ass about socialism. They admire him because he’s the only leader they’ve ever known, kind of a father figure; but more than that, they admire him because he’s the only Cuban leader since the Spanish-American War to stand up to the U.S. and make it stick. America went to war with Spain with the stated goal of winning independence for Cuba, but it turned out “independence” meant keeping Cuba under America’s thumb as a puppet state from 1898 to 1959. The Cubans still remember that, and resent it, and respect Castro for putting an end to it – and for making Cuba something of a minor military power and player in international politics for the first time in its history.
OTOH, I bet they’re really looking forward to that embargo coming down, and getting the chance to visit with relatives in Miami without burning any bridges behind them, and putting an end to these 47 years of mutually paranoid hostility with their biggest and richest neighbor.
So we Yanks have something besides Cuban cigars to look forward to! 
Hell if Pope John Paul II didn’t get the Queen what chance does Fidel Castro have? Castro has ruled longer than anyone save Elizabeth II and Rama IX. Raul has 2 maybe 3 years tops of power.
The UK has the same sort of problem with sending the Queen (the Supreme Governor of the Church of England) to a Pope’s funeral as the US would have with sending Shrub to Castro’s- only this is a five hundred year disagreement, not a mere fifty!
OTOH, if Shrub snuffed it, I am sure that he would get both Blair and Queenie at his funeral. 
Dream on.
What’s wrong with C anyway? "So many possibilities . . .
Not obvious at all. There has been way worst dictators than Castro who have been sincerely and deeply mourned by the population. See Stalin, in particular.
Commie Bastards: Cuba imposes normalcy with Castro ailing
Leader gets a little sick, and they put a stop to all the strange stuff!
What is up with headlines this week? Is it the heat?
Bush Looks to UN for Mideast Solution
Yep, normal
I was hoping Fidel would spill his guts about how he conspired to kill Kennedy! This would tie the whole thing together-but nuts! Maybe castro will have a relapse! :smack:
Hard to tell what’s really wrong with Fidel but if he took the unprecedented step of yielding power to his brother then one must assume either he’s not sure of making it or he’s testing the water for when he dies years from now. If he dies, this would be a lovely time for the US to normalize relations with Cuba under the guise that the embargo was aimed at Fidel, not the Cuban people. Especially now that they have oil. My guess is Fidelliburton is just around the corner.
Let’s get one thing straight. The United States does not have and has never had the slightest objection to undemocratic dictatorships if they are in line with US ideology and foreign policy interests.
Vicious, repressive and thoroughly undemocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia or the government-sponsored murder squads in San Salvador, or Augusto Pinochet’s Chili in the 70s and 80s are 100% acceptable to the US, and the CIA is perfectly willing to help them train torturers and “special operatives” (i.e. terrorists) to keep down “insurgents”.
Castro’s “crime” is that he took what was virtually a US colony, Cuba, and made it stand up for itself. This is what the United States cannot tolerate: states in the Americas with a backbone and a mind of their own.
You left out the voting block of Cubans who want Castro out.
But how can we know how many they are? Or with what, exactly, they would like to replace him? Saying “democracy” doesn’t answer the question, it only begs the next one: If the Cubans had a democratic choice of economic systems, would they choose a “free market,” some form of democratic socialism, or what? I don’t think they would want to end up like post-Soviet Russia!
Raul’s getting groomed, so the outlook for Fidel must be bad.
They’re grooming him with beer? I thought that was just a 70s fad…