The forgotten...

Been catching up on some old news and came across some extraordinary events in Cuba... hmm, well, maybe not in the same league as Lebanon and Iraq but interesting in it's own right. So anyway, seems that Castro had surgery and decided to turn over his authority to his brother Raul (every time I think of "all hail Raul" I can't help but laugh... but that's beside the point), so seems that this unprecedented event was to be followed by mass uprisings of the Cuban people, democracy flowing through the streets like an off season flood, and apparently a US invasion? The last part seemed particularly ridiculous, I mean it's not as if Cuba has any oil or anything, and I doubt that Bush is a cigar smoker (though his predecessor apparently loved them... a lot).
In the end, nothing really happened - Castro had surgery, recovered and if the news I read was semi-accurate, people just went about their daily lives. ... but I still can't get over the fact that people were actually expecting a US invasion to take advantage of Castro's surgery - maybe after having US attention for so long Cuba is getting a bit jealous of Iraq... okay, that last sentence was stupid enough to be insulting so best to ignore it (I could have deleted it, but really who has time delete things nowadays).
Anyway from what I gather, Cuba isn't doing too badly in comparison to other Latin American countries, it does seem that inspite of being under a dictatorship Cuba is stable and progressive in education and medical needs. However, one has to wonder what will happen once Castro's reign ends? Will Cuba fall into chaos akin to what happened to Yugoslavia once Tito died?
Ah well, one can only ponder so many crises at once, and I think at least for now Iraq and Lebanon have the unfortunate honor of taking centre stage.