Fidel Castro is in Limbo

… at least until the new Dictator of Cuba figures out what to do with the body. Mora at Babalu Blog is confident the weasels are upon the carcass and the last thing they want is a bonehead publicity hound knowing the truth before the truth is packaged for release.

Aug 25: raul castro cannot stand the big lunkheaded Thug Of Caracas. Sure he likes his money, but Hugo Chavez's persona is a different matter. raul, after all, is a disciplined military man of sorts. He's also a Marxist ideologue, far more so than his evil bearded brother. raul's vulgar, uncultured, ill-read and likes toilet humor, but knows his place and prefers not to open his mouth in public. He lingers in the shadows. He keeps secrets.

On the surface, the two are friends of course. … When castro first took sick last year, Chavez flew into Havana unannounced on a detour from some overseas trips and raul told castro's best friend to beat it, he wasn't gonna see fidel no matter how slurpy the two of them had been in the past. Tail between his legs, Chavez reboarded his plane and continued on to Caracas.

raul had his reasons. He knew Hugo couldn't keep a secret. The situation was in flux, from his point of view, and telling Chavez would be about the same thing as announcing it on a megaphone at an international press conference. That may be what's gone down now.

Today: Does anyone remember Yurii Andropov's eternal "cold"? (The enraged wife of a cashiered KGB agent is believed to have shot him.) Does anyone remember all the phoney pictures the Mao swimming released by the ChiComs and the gang of four as that dictator lay on his deathbed? Does anyone remember Kim Jong Il's lingering death? All these communist dictatorships deny their supreme leaders' deaths right up till the end and beyond because all the minions in the dictator's inner circle are engaged in a power struggle over who will rule next. There's never any orderly handover of power in a dictatorship because there are no rules or laws or institutions. There's just the leader's word and that leader is ... unavailable. There's no doubt the castroite toads are busily fighting it out tonight and for the next several nights.

Even if Fidel Castro isn’t dead, he is dead. The heirs have no concern about the official time of death because this ain’t no court case. No rule of law is going to care what hour the physician is told to put on a piece of paper. I suspect the time in purgatory will be brief because the ticket to Fidel’s final destination was punched long ago. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.