Can you hear them now?

As Cubans lined up for blocks to buy cell phones and sign up for service, Fidel Castro was opining that his people weren't really interested in these trinkets of imperialist technology.

Fidel's designated successor, his brother Raul, decreed that cell phones should be available to ordinary people, who responded enthusiastically, even though the prices are expensive even by U.S. standards and ridiculously so in Cuba where the average wage is $20 a month.

Raul Castro has taken a number of liberalizing steps that have sent his popularity soaring -- lifting bans on Cubans staying in resort hotels patronized by foreigners, renting cars and buying DVD players and easing restrictions on housing and agriculture.

The cult of Fidel still flourishes, and the Associated Press reports that the government, through the Communist Party newspaper Granma, insists that these popular measures were Fidel's idea all along.

Fidel has not been seen in public since July 2006, and it sounds like measures making life a little more bearable for Cuba have been taken not because of him but in spite of him.

AP's Havana correspondent writes that Fidel "has continued to pen essays every few days and recently criticized DVDs, cell phones, the Internet, e-mail and Facebook, asking: 'Does the kind of existence promised by imperialism make any sense?' "

The Cuban people evidently think it does.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)