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Shortcuts y Delusions: Cuba’s Castro, Starbucks Racists & Ugandan Hummers

Dillon Eliassen
castro

Cuban President Rat-Faced-Dictator-Bastard Raúl Castro has officially stepped down today, Thursday, April 19, 2018, and handed power to his hand-picked successor Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. Hopefully this is a day that will be remembered past 4/20 by you filthy hippy pot-addicted libertarians, with your Cheech and your Chong, and your hacky sacks and your Cap’n Crunch Oops! All Berries cereal.

Almost exactly two years ago I wrote, in one of my favorite articles, click-baitingly titled “The Libertarian Case for Invading Cuba“:

Diaz-Canel is no reformer; if he was, he would not have been hand-picked by Raúl. The Castro brothers are not going to leave their legacy in the hands of a man with whom they have doubts that he will carry on the Revolution. Who better than the former Minister of Higher Education? If you think American colleges have become socialist indoctrination centers, how would you describe Cuban ones? Raúl’s closeness to the Cuban military all that ensures the transition to Diaz-Canel will be seamless. Raúl’s endorsement of Diaz-Canel allays their fears that the Revolution will be concluded.

What makes this news is that Raúl actually went through with this plan that is so crazy it just might work. Díaz-Canel is lucky that he won’t receive the fate that befalls most Castro loyalists, which is typically execution by firing squad. The New York Times reports:

Though Mr. Díaz-Canel’s path to the top office has been forecast for years, many an heir apparent before him has fallen by the wayside in the search for a successor to lead the country, whether because of party disloyalty, snide remarks or projecting too much power for the Castros’ liking…

Few American officials — even those in the United States Embassy in Havana — have spent time with him or can claim to have shared more than a few passing words. Even the most seasoned Cuba experts have only faint clues as to what he will do, how he will lead and how much latitude he will have to chart his own course.

Cuba’s next president could be hemmed in from multiple sides. For one, Raúl Castro is expected to remain the head of the Communist Party and wield great influence. Even Fidel, who ruled Cuba since the revolution, did not officially become president until years later, allowing others to occupy the post while he ran the country.

Beyond that, the diplomatic opening with the United States has closed abruptly under President Trump, limiting Mr. Díaz-Canel’s ability to maneuver economically.

“There is nothing in his résumé to suggest he is going to take risks,” Theodore Piccone, a Cuba scholar at the Brookings Institution, said of Mr. Díaz-Canel. “But that is the way the system works — anyone willing to take the risk before now would not be in line to be the president.”

Upon the completion of Díaz-Canel’s coronation, this song was heard from car stereos throughout Little Havana.

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Hey, what do you call it when you think that everyone who looks the same way all think and do the same thing and are inferior to you? You know, when one or two bad apples define an entire group?

Bigotry, prejudice?

Starbucks will force all their employees to undergo sensitivity training because one employee did something racially insensitive or whatever buzz-phrase you want to use. Apparently, if you wear a green apron, you have to be taught how to not be a secret racist. Talk about an H.R. nightmare. As Chancellor Palpatine would say, “There is no civility, only politics.” “Ironic, isn’t it?”

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The Daily Mail reports Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni “[H]as said he wants to ban the nation’s citizens from practicing oral sex because ‘the mouth is for eating’…President Yoweri Museveni blamed ‘outsiders’ for trying to convince Ugandans to perform oral sex on one another – and said he was issuing a public ‘warning’ about it.”

When I first read the story, initially I thought “Prudes, puritans and Jewish housewives everywhere would appreciate this.” But, this proposed ban is about enforcing the Anti-Homosexuality Act he signed into law in 2014. Not only is it illegal to be gay in Uganda, but life imprisonment is a possible punishment for homosexual Ugandans. This, of course, is not ironic at all since if there is one thing that never occurs in prison, it’s gay sex. Nope, no gay sex in prison, none whatsoever.
From the same Daily Mail story:

The act also made it a criminal offence not to report someone for being gay.

In 2014, after introducing the law, Museveni said oral sex could cause worms.

‘You push the mouth there, you can come back with worms and they enter your stomach because that is a wrong address,’ he said.

In January he said he regretted his decision to halt the country’s practice of executing criminals.

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The next time someone tells you fascism is rife in Trump’s America, remind them that our official leaders are elected rather than hand-picked by outgoing puppet-master tyrants, homosexuals can still go down on each other without the fear of life imprisonment and/or execution, and citizens aren’t forced by the government to attend sensitivity training classes indoctrination work camps (unless you count public schools & almost all centers of higher learning).
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And that’s the way it is, as far as you know.
Image: Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press
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Dillon Eliassen

Dillon Eliassen is a former Managing Editor of Being Libertarian. Dillon works in the sales department of a privately owned small company. He holds a BA in Journalism & Creative Writing from Lyndon State College. He is the author of The Apathetic, available at Amazon.com. He is a self-described Thoreauvian Minarchist.
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