Predicting the past-- and I got it wrong

NOTE: I POSTED THIS COLUMN ON ANOTHER BLOG AS WELL, Coldheartedtruth. Commenters corrected me. I've edited this version to reflect the actual state of things.

Apparently, Fidel Castro has put his thoughts online in an internet column, saying he believes he won't be alive in four years.

Now, I've been wondering about whether he was alive at all since he was a no-show earlier this month at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Cuban revolution. I mean, the downfall of corrupt and despotic dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 was the high point of Castro's life and the start of his 'new Cuba.' It is hard to imagine that no matter how sick he was, he wouldn't at least have a photograph taken or something. But no, he did not show up, not even in the newspapers. However, he has been photographed several times since he dropped out of sight.

Here's what we know. We know that in July 2006, El Presidente abruptly dropped from sight and underwent emergency surgery for an intestinal blockage (according to some reports the 'blockage' was a very aggressive cancer.) Shortly thereafter official statements reported that he was resigning from the Presidency and handing the reigns of power to his brother Raul, who has ruled the island since then. Television news in the notoriously secretive and carefully controlled country have claimed that Comrade Fidel is alive and well, and is intently observing things. One of them included a statement from Castro in which he vowed to outlast the Bush administration (as he has outlasted the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton administrations.) He apparently took pride in the prospect. I mean, even look at this letter. He says he won't live for another four years. What is four years? A U.S. Presidential term. This guy has always loved to tweak U.S. Presidents for amusement. We've seen him send out written correspondence like this periodically, to be faithfully published in Cuban newspapers.

But live pictures? No. Televised pictures? No. Only a few photographs. He may be alive, but clearly not well.

I believed, and I originally went on record here-- that Fidel Castro did not survive much past his 2006 operation. He had vowed to outlive the Bush administration so we've seen every facade one might expect in a country where things are done in secret, to project the image that Fidel is still alive. We now get this penultimate letter (which may have been penned by Castro two years ago or may have been written by someone else), which is in effect a goodbye letter. Not long from now, just long enough to be believable, we will get an official death announcement. Maybe even a nice parade and a funeral with speakers lavishing praise on Castro and on the regime he created. But it will all be carefully choreographed to hide an empty casket, just like Castro's dream of a better Cuba through communism was carefully choreographed to hide an empty promise.

OBVIOUSLY I ERRED HERE. This is the tenth time I've had to publically acknowlege an error because a commenter caught it before I did. I've posted 816 times on Deep Thought so this reduces my fielding percentage to .988

Why can't we adopt the Cuban hurricane plan?

It appears that hurricane Ike is set to nail the Texas coast, the city of Houston and a quarter of American oil refining capacity. I've already heard that when we wake up tomorrow morning gasoline prices may be up by as much as a half dollar (we filled both our vehicles this evening and lent my daughter twenty bucks so she could buy gas in case those rumors turn out to be right.)

I hope and pray that there is little loss of life (I'd say none, but one man in Corpus Christi, two hundred miles away, has already drowned in heavy surf).

There are some troubling questions I have right now though. The first is why when a mandatory evacuation was ordered for Galveston, so many coastal residents-- as many as a quarter million according to one site I read-- didn't leave. I know that about two weeks ago a lot of them left for Gustav, which weakened and then hit over two hundred miles away in Louisiana. But this was cleary much more dangerous than Gustav, it just seems to me that it is incredibly stupid to hang out on a low lying coastal island with a major hurricane coming. Well, I guess I should feel lucky that I live in a place without many natural disasters.

Now, I know why they haven't evacuated Houston. There was a botched evacuation three years ago for hurricane Rita and the highways ground to a standstill so that more people actually died out on the highway (of both storm-caused and non-storm caused accidents and other problems) than would have died if they'd all stayed home. But the question that has to be asked then is this: why haven't planners over the past three years developed a better evacuation plan for Houston? They knew this day would be here sooner or later. Not only could they have developed a secure network of local shelters (more on that later) but if necessary the state police have the authority to close highways, and if they have to even reverse highways (so that all lanes would lead in the same direction.) That would double the number of lanes available for evacuees. But for some reason they twiddled their thumbs for three years so that now that Houston is again a target all they can do is tell people to remain at home. Let's hope that Ike doesn't flood Houston too badly and that the inevitable damage to homes won't lead to loss of life.

There is another question that will have to be asked if Ike kills a lot of people (or even if it does not): Ike, as a much stronger category four storm, raked every bit of Cuba, crossing the island near its eastern end, with the eye running parallel to and just offshore for a couple of days as it worked its way up the island and then coming back onshore and nailing Havana. It then exited the island at very nearly the same point as Gustav had (and remember that Gustav was also a category four when it encountered Cuba). Yet in spite of what could have been a horrific loss of life (as there has been in Haiti, where Gustav, Hanna and Ike have likely killed at least a thousand people together-- maybe more, maybe many more) the total loss of life from all three hurricanes (Hanna also brushed by Cuba on the northeast) has been five (all from Ike.) Why do these things kill so few people in Cuba even when they are directily in the path? The answer is simple. In Cuba they have a network of local shelters, similar to bomb shelters where local residents can report and ride out the storm. In urban areas they are close enough for most people to walk to, but even in rural ares they are ubiquitous enough that people won't have to take very long to get to one.

I know, Cuba is a repressive communist dictatorship. True, it is. But that doesn't mean they can't do some things right, and the network of safe local shelthers makes a lot of sense. It is a smart alternative to being forced to choose between two risky alternatives-- evacuating millions of people down a few highways within a few hours, or hoping and praying that nothing happens to people who 'ride it out' in their homes.

But building safe local shelters would make entirely too much sense here, so expect no one to suggest that we do.