castro waves goodbye, bumbling in pakistan and non-brown amnesty...

fidel castro has stepped down...the man is too old and too frail to continue the work he began decades ago - giving a big middle finger to uncle sam. of course this pissed off quite a few administrations over the years...and now, as the boy king declared "the united states will help the people of cuba realize the blessings of liberty." of course, to do so, he requested cuban leaders begin to build the "institutions necessary for democracy that eventually will lead to free and fair elections." I'm assuming he means much the same way that we did in iraq. so by the iraq example, "institutions necessary for democracy" include unregulated trade and corruption, a weak manufacturing base, complete lack of middle class, absolutely no security, rampant corruption, executions, lack of due process, etc. (come to think of it, that is pretty much what he is trying to accomplish here in the states). but seriously, when one examines castro's career against other leaders, is it really too much of a stretch to not see a bit of the boy king in castro and vice versa? the only thing that pisses american president's of the conservative variety off about castro is not that his tactics may be brutal and that his people are living in abject poverty - it is that american business has not benefited from the afore-mentioned problems. the american government rarely has problems with harsh leadership as long as business interests are protected - hell, we've propped up more than one banana republic over the years. and in the end - one must wonder, if the united states government hadn't crushed the cuban economy out of spite - would the experiment have worked? would castro have been able to industrialize the nation? would economic equality have been possible? would cuba look an awfully lot like post-war america? and is that not exactly why our government made sure it was not possible - because what would it mean for us if it had?

while the boy king is galavanting around africa and claiming how much good he is doing there (a rather laughable proposition) something interesting is happening in pakistan. the boy king's boneheaded foreign policy decisions - supported by a handful of fools that got the president's ear not by being good at what they do, but by being around long enough - is seriously coming back to haunt us in pakistan (a nation with nukes...and now proliferation rears its ugly head again. see, that's the problem with proliferation to your "friends" - it just means more nukes out there which won't necessarily always be in the hands of your "friends"). musharraf got a big slap in the face from his country men as his party was slammed in recent elections...and one can't help but imagine much of it had to do with his relationship with the united states. and we have backed him to the end because he was doing what he could - although our leaders were not intelligent to realize that if he did any more, or what we wanted him to do, this would be the result. of course, in typical boy king style, the response of the united states was to use a unmanned aircraft to blow some shit up and allegedly kill a terrorist big whig within pakistan having never received permission for the mission from the sovereign nation. because one thing we need, it is another nation in the area with big time weapons to piss off. we now have a nation with nukes that we are violating international law against without a buddy of ours pulling the strings...thanks georgie.

and on a related note - how many times does our government need to applaud itself for violating constitutional, federal and international law before the streets are full of pissed off citizens?

speaking of violating laws - the conservatives have been up in arms for a while about granting "amnesty" to undocumented workers. of course, they only have a problem with amnesty if it is poor, hard-working brown folk that benefit...because when it is wealthy white fat cats that run huge communications businesses - then amnesty is all the rage, and failing to grant it is cause for charges of treason. your phone company violated the law (up until they didn't get paid) - and made a fortune off it. and now they get amnesty, because they can afford it. the hard-working people that risked life and liberty to make it here for a better life, the same people that form the foundation of an economy that is barely hanging on, they get shown the door and a barbed-wire lined wall...because we need someone to blame.

don't you think the sarcasm is a little hard to stomach? and the cynicism boring?