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Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has launched a "Spotlight on Spending" series to highlight items in his Control Spending Now Act, which includes 40 items that, the senator says, will reduce the government deficit by more than half a trillion dollars. The first provision featured by Feingold's press office is Radio Marti, launched in 1983 to broadcast 24 hours of programming designed to undermine the Castro regime. TV Marti debuted in 1990. Both are operated by the Office of Cuba Broadcasting under the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Feingold's office cites Radio and TV Marti as wasteful, among other reasons, because their...

Nearly 50 years after a botched US-directed invasion of Cuba, the communist nation said Saturday it is holding a military exercise next week to boost preparedness against any future US attack. "It is a necessity of the first order given the political-military situation that now defines relations between Cuba and the empire," Major General Leonardo Andollo warned, referring to the United States. He told the official Granma newspaper that the "Bastion-2009" exercises will "raise the deterrent capacity to prevent a military confrontation, under the principle that there is no better way to win a war than by avoiding it."

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is inviting his mentor Fidel Castro to visit Venezuela during the coming months. Chavez read aloud a letter to the 83-year-old former Cuban leader during a televised speech Saturday night, saying "Venezuela awaits you." Chavez proposed that Castro visit at some point between now and April, during a congress of his socialist party. The 83-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing a series of emergency intestinal surgeries in July 2006.

HAVANA – Think you're obsessed with President Barack Obama and the many challenges he faces at home and abroad? Well, you're not alone. Fidel Castro appears to have a fascination with the American leader that would make Obama Girl jealous, writing obsessively not only about his politics, but of his youth and vigor. And unlike with past American heads-of-state — he slammed President George W. Bush as a genocidal drunk — Castro seems to genuinely like the fresh face in Washington. Since handing over the Cuban presidency to his brother in February 2008, the 83-year-old has continued to publish his...

Think you're obsessed with President Barack Obama and the many challenges he faces at home and abroad? Well, you're not alone. Fidel Castro appears to have a fascination with the American leader that would make Obama Girl jealous, writing obsessively not only about his politics, but of his youth and vigor.

HAVANA — Fidel Castro has found something to sneeze at in Washington's decision to ease visits by Cuban-Americans to his island: He says more Americans mean more swine flu. The 83-year-old ex-president wrote in state-controlled newspapers on Saturday that many of Cuba's early cases of the virus were visitors from the United States and he used the occasion to take a jab at the U.S. embargo. "We had the strange case where the United States on one hand authorized more trips for a large number of people carrying the virus, and on the other prohibited us from obtaining equipment and...

Fidel Castro has found something to sneeze at in Washington's decision to ease visits by Cuban-Americans to his island: He says more Americans mean more swine flu. The 83-year-old ex-president wrote in state-controlled newspapers on Saturday that many of Cuba's early cases of the virus were visitors from the United States and he used the occasion to take a jab at the U.S. embargo. "We had the strange case where the United States on one hand authorized more trips for a large number of people carrying the virus, and on the other prohibited us from obtaining equipment and medicine to...

Samuel Johnson once remarked that seeing a dog walking badly using only its hind legs would not be surprising. What would be surprising, he said, was seeing a dog walking on its hind legs in the first place. Similarly, coming upon a poorly developed story on the Marxist network Democracy Now! having anything to say which would reflect unfavorably on a fellow Marxist would not be a surprise. The surprise would come with the realization that the story was run at all.

One of Fidel Castro's sisters says in a memoir released Monday that she collaborated with the CIA against her brother, starting shortly after the United States' failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Juanita Castro, 76, initially supported her brother's 1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship but quickly grew disillusioned. In a Spanish-language memoir published by Santillana USA and co-written by journalist Maria Antonieta Collins, she says the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to Cuba persuaded her to meet a CIA officer during a trip to Mexico in 1961. By then, her house had already become a sanctuary...

A sister of Cuba's former long-time leader, Fidel Castro, has admitted spying for the CIA in the 1960s. Juanita Castro, who now lives in Miami, said she had gathered sensitive information for the US for three years. In her memoirs, she said she had fallen out with Fidel and her other brother Raul - Cuba's current president - over the killing of their opponents. Ms Castro, 76, said she had helped to warn and hide Cuban dissidents before finally fleeing the island in 1964. There has been no immediate reaction from the US or Cuban governments.

MADRID - U.S. President Barack Obama asked Spain to send Cuba a message about reform when he met Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero earlier this month, the newspaper El Pais reported on Sunday. Six days after their meeting on October 13 at the White House, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos visited the Caribbean island and met President Raul Castro. "Have (Moratinos) tell the Cuban authorities we understand that change can't happen overnight, but down the road, when we look back at this time, it should be clear that now is when those changes began," Obama told Zapatero, according...

Havana's man in Europe is returning from Cuba with a simple request: For his EU partners to drop their focus on human rights. After a two-day visit with the Cuban government, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will press his Continental counterparts to scrap their 1996 "Common Position" on Cuba in order to fully normalize ties with Raul Castro's dictatorship. .. "Consider Mr. Moratinos a trend-setter in the age of Obama, as the U.S. president's own overtures to Castro (not to mention to Iran, Burma and now Sudan) follow a distinctly Moratinian philosophy. This holds that engaging dictators will yield...

Come for the Disaster Preparedness Lecture, Stay for the Totalitarianism   [Mark Hemingway] It was in the web briefing yetserday, but my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I finally read "New Orleans mayor learns about disaster response in Cuba." So one day after President Obama is in the Big Easy, Mayor Ray Nagin heads off to Cuba to learn about disaster preparedness? What does the Cuban government possibly have to teach us? Here's the Cuban disaster preparedness plan in a nutshell: Kill off the private economy for 50 years so that when a hurricane comes you don't have...

Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Probably not. But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior. For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance. The files in question, some released under...

To: US State Department & United Nations IN SUPPORT OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF HONDURAS. We the citizens of the world, lovers of liberty and democracy, concerned about the isolation and impoverishment which is being imposed upon the Republic of Honduras by; the United Nations, the OAS, the UNASUR, the EU, and the U.S, hereby set forth our intend, individually and organizationally, to demonstrate our support of the government of the Republic of Honduras, presided by Roberto Micheletti together with all the legitimate and constitutional bodies of said government. We strongly support the current government’s efforts to safeguard the constitution...

Chavez, Castro, the public and the MSM are missing is the big picture. Winning the Nobel, the UN declaring ‘MAJOR DISCREPANCIES’ in the Afghan election & Obama delaying the additional troops decision is all by design. Obama applied for the Nobel Piece Prize and was told he would win, back on Feb. 1st. Fully aware of the date of the Nobel Piece Prize announcement he would delay any decision on Afghanistan. He will then use the UN declaration, winning the Nobel and his hatred for America to back out of Afghanistan or do little as possible (I hope I am...

Former Cuban leader says award is a "positive measure" Former Cuban Leader Fidel Castro celebrated President Obama's controversial Nobel Peace Prize win early Saturday, saying the commander in chief's honor was a "positive measure" that was intended to criticize past U.S. leaders -- not Obama's achievements in particular. Castro wrote in a column for Cuban media that he didn't generally agree with the Nobel Committee's decisions but that their choice on Obama was one he could throw his support behind. "I'm obligated to recognize that in this instance it was, in my judgment, a positive measure," he wrote. The former...

The United States and Cuba are taking baby steps toward each other. Since President Obama called for a ``new beginning,'' his administration has allowed unlimited family travel and remittances, resumed migration talks, proposed direct-mail service and given its blessing to the concert by Colombian pop star Juanes. In the past 10 months, the State Department issued 5,500 more visas for Cubans to visit the United States than in the same period before October 2008. When news leaked that Bisa Williams, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, had traveled to Cuba, eyebrows were raised. Over six days,...

They say there is no such thing as a free lunch - but for years the majority of Cubans have been given free meals at state-run workplace canteens. But in a bid to balance the budget, the Cuban authorities are about to abolish the scheme. This week, four government ministries closed all their free lunchrooms across the country. Instead, workers are being given an extra 15 pesos (70 cents) a day to buy their own meals. If this trial is successful, then all such workplace canteens could be abolished. Monthly ration card It is a small tentative start to what...

Trade: Colombia got another brushoff Tuesday, when Commerce Secretary Gary Locke pronounced its free trade pact dead for the year because Washington is too busy with health care. Why doesn't Cuba ever hear that? Speaking at the sidelines of a conference in Chile, Locke told Dow Jones: "It's pretty doubtful that the pact will be ratified this year, although the Obama administration is pushing forward with Colombia, Korea and Panama." Yeah, sure. Pushing and pushing, it's all we've heard about from this crew. But the only visible moves on trade have a string of protectionist measures to make Big Labor...

A senior American diplomat has held high-level talks with the Cuban government in Havana, state department officials are reported to have said. The talks between the two nations were the first of their kind in years, the Associated Press news agency reports. State department official Bisa Williams held the unannounced talks with Cuba's deputy foreign minister during a visit to Cuba earlier this month, AP says. A US trade embargo on Cuba remains, but there are signs relations are easing. Earlier this month, Ms Williams, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, was part of a US...

Fidel Castro's Cuba Full Of His Offspring After Years Of Womanising By El Commandante Fidel Castro, Cuba's long-standing dictator, has fathered at least 10 children by a string of women, according to a new book. Philip Hart 26 Sep 2009 The Cuban leader with female admirers in New York, 1959 [Pic in URL] Fidel Castro is renowned in Cuba for his verbosity and longevity. But his long-suffering compatriots know little about another sphere where El Commandante has proved prolific - his private life. Discussing his womanising ways is strictly taboo on the Caribbean communist outpost, even on an island where...

El Libro Sensacional! Castro's Sis Dishes on Bro in New Book Exiled sister will publish book about brother Fidel Castro The world will soon get a rare glimpse into the life of one of the most controversial political figures of the past half century when the sister of Fidel Castro publishes her tell-all book next month. Juanita Castro has lived in Miami since 1964, when she fled her native Cuba, and now her book, Fidel y Raul, Mis Hermanos (Fidel and Raul, My Brothers) will finally hit store shelves on Oct. 26,according to the Miami Herald. The 432-page Spanish language...

Pink Flamingo confidant and friend Sally Vee has very good friends in Honduras. She received the following email this afternoon from her friend Fernando who lives in Honduras. “There is a rumor going on that they want the UN to send peace keeping troops to Honduras. It is going to be a bloodbath. The people of Honduras will rather die that have that guy back in power. Honduras is not Haiti. They will fight any foreign army…no matter what. Please let anyone know about this.�

The AP Reports from Havana, Cuba: —  Obama's anti-American agenda or a call for action on climate change and his admission that capitalist nations have a particular responsibility to lead has received strong praise from his communist ally — U.S. nemesis and mass murderer Fidel Castro.

The former Cuban leader on Wednesday called the American president's speech at the United Nations "brave" and said no other American head of state would have had the courage to make similar remarks. In a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, Obama acknowledged that the United States had been slow to act on climate change, but said Washington was now prepared to be a full partner as the world confronts the threat.

HAVANA, Sept. 20 -- Rock-and-roll diplomacy came to the communist isle on a smoldering afternoon, as hundreds of thousands of Cubans filled the Plaza of the Revolution on Sunday and sang along to a dozen international musical acts led by the Colombian singer and peace activist Juanes. The free "Peace without Borders" concert was criticized by hard-line Cuban exiles in Miami as a propaganda coup for the Castro brothers, and that it might have been. But for thousands of young Cubans, it was a rare treat to hear Latin music stars such as Olga Tanon of Puerto Rico and Miguel...

Jose Obdilio Duran's '57 Chevy has holes in its mottled floor, a passenger window that can't be rolled up and no inside panels on its doors. But the 71-year-old retiree wants to put the old car to work — applying for one of the first taxi licenses this communist country has granted in a decade. About 60 would-be taxi drivers lined up early Friday at a Transport Ministry office in central Havana to fill out forms for permission to use their own cars as taxis — a rare dose of the free market on an island whose economy is dominated...

Rev. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, the president of the United Nations General Assembly, bestows official hero status on Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere, and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. David Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy shares the good news: Morales is officially "the maximum exponent and paradigm of love for Mother Earth." Castro is "World Hero of Solidarity." The late Nyerere is "World Hero of Social Justice." General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann said, "What we want to do is present these three people to the world and say that they embody virtues and values worth...

Visiting Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo (L) shakes hands with Fidel Castro, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, in Havana on Thursday.

State Dept. awards 30 grants, but students stuck on islandCuban students who were supposed to travel to the States to study courtesy of U.S.-funded scholarships have been denied visa requests by the Castro regime, reported the Miami Herald. A total of about 30 students from the island were to be part of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs scholarship program, which is available to students around the world who are interested in studying at an American university. Agricultural science, business management, and journalism were just a few of the fields students were encouraged to explore at...

HAVANA -- At an age when most kids play stickball or videogames, Lazarito Castro focuses much of his energy on promoting Cuba’s socialist system, one speech at a time. The studious 14-year-old is not related to President Fidel Castro, but he is one of the comandante’s most passionate young disciples, a member of the Union of Young Communists who is known across Cuba for his fiery, fist-shaking speeches at massive government-organized rallies. Lazarito dreams of becoming a nuclear physicist when he grows up. But for now he sees himself as a soldier on the front lines of the “Battle of...

Aubrey O'Day really put her foot in her mouth this time. The former Danity Kane member dug herself into a hole Monday night in a heated debate on Fox News' "The Sean Hannity Show" when the 25-year-old singer spewed out claims that both Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro were "brilliant" men. "As someone who has met [Castro]... I met him and worked with him while I was in Cuba. I'm not defending his behavior, but in many instances, but I do have to say, I will 100% agree, he's an incredibly brilliant man, he has outlived tons of our Presidents,"...

Diane Watson is a racist Congressional Representative from California’s 33rd District, in Los Angeles. Just over a year ago, she chastised Ward Connerly for his having the nerve to wed a white woman. She’s telling us now that the only opponents of Barack Obama and his move to socialize America are those who object to socialism because, in her words, “[Barack is] the first President who looks like me.” In the same breath, she sings the praises of Marxist murderer Che Guevara and Marxist murderer Fidel Castro (who ousted Che). Hear it for yourself: Fact of the Day: Rep. Diane...

Diane Watson is a racist Congressional Representative from California’s 33rd District, in Los Angeles. Just over a year ago, she chastised Ward Connerly for his having the nerve to wed a white woman. She’s telling us now that the only opponents of Barack Obama and his move to socialize America are those who object to socialism because, in her words, “[Barack is] the first President who looks like me.” In the same breath, she sings the praises of Marxist murderer Che Guevara and Marxist murderer Fidel Castro (who ousted Che). Hear it for yourself: Fact of the Day: Rep. Diane...

Editor’s note: Get the whole story of the Left’s love affair with Castro in Jamie Glazov’s new book, “United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror.” The Left’s romance with tyranny and terror continues. This time it is Democrat Rep. Diane Watson picking up the torch for the fellow travelers, lavishing praise on Fidel Castro. Watson, evidently, is still riding the wave of ecstasy she experienced upon prostrating herself before Castro on her political pilgrimage to the dictator’s slave camp in April, 2009. Now, in a recent town hall meeting on health care, she’s touching base with the...

Earlier this year, I was the only panelist on a Toronto television show who admitted (or rather, boasted) that I had deliberately avoided watching President Obama’s “historic” inaugural address. To the audible gasps of my fellow guests around the table, I explained: “If I wanted to listen to a Marxist professor talk for an hour, I would have gone to college.” For some reason, Obama’s admirers balk when others call his policies “socialist, or “statist” (to employ Mark Levin’s preferred locution) or, as Rush Limbaugh started saying this week, “fascist.” That last term seems unduly incendiary. But how do Obama’s...

Castro: No win against TalibanPublished on: 8/26/2009 HAVANA - Cuba's Fidel Castro is criticising President Barack Obama's stepped-up United States' war in Afghanistan while backing Obama's effort to provide health care coverage for all Americans. The former Cuban president said in an essay published yesterday that he hadn't the slightest doubt that "the racist right" would do anything to stop Obama from succeeding domestically. Castro's remarks appeared on the Cubadebate website, which publishes his frequent essays on global affairs. He formally stepped down as Cuba's president in February 2008 after handing over to his brother Raul. "The strategy of withdrawing...

HAVANA (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is trying to make positive changes in the United States, but is being fought at every turn by right-wingers who hate him because he is black, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday. In an unusually conciliatory column in the state-run media, Castro said Obama had inherited many problems from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and was trying to resolve them. But the "powerful extreme right won't be happy with anything that diminishes their prerogatives in the slightest way."

According to recent news reports, Cuba is entering crisis mode: They are running out of toilet paper. Cuba both imports toilet paper and makes its own, but raw materials are hard to come by given the global economic mess. State-run company officials say that importing more toilet paper won’t be an option until the end of the year. However, in order to deal with the harsh economic crisis, the Cuban government cut imports by twenty percent, which reduced the number of goods available in state-run stores. In addition to cutting imports, the government lowered prices on “twenty-four essential goods” like...

HAVANA (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is trying to make positive changes in the United States, but is being fought at every turn by right-wingers who hate him because he is black, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday. In an unusually conciliatory column in the state-run media, Castro said Obama had inherited many problems from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and was trying to resolve them. But the "powerful extreme right won't be happy with anything that diminishes their prerogatives in the slightest way." Obama does not want to change the U.S. political and economic system, but "in...

A new picture of Fidel Castro has been published in a state-run newspaper, apparently showing Cuba's ailing former leader in much better health. The photograph in Juventud Rebelde, the Communist Youth newspaper, showed Mr Castro talking to Ecuador's left-wing president, Rafael Correa. Mr Castro, 83, was dressed more smartly than in other recent photos, wearing a white shirt rather than a tracksuit. He has not been seen in public since undergoing an operation in 2006. Mr Castro stepped down and his younger brother, Raul, took over his various offices.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has taken a swing at golf as the latest threat to revolutionary progress. In a national television address two weeks ago, Mr. Chavez denounced golf as a "bourgeois sport" for lazy elitists. Now officials in Venezuela are moving to close two of the country's best-known courses, in the cities of Maracay and Caraballeda, in order to make way for either public housing, parks or an extension campus of Bolivarian University. Mr. Chavez's regime is closing an average of three golf courses per year, and there are only about 20 left in the country. Leftists have long...

(English-language translation) HAVANA - In a column in a Cuban newspaper, former President Fidel Castro commented that the United States spends millions of dollars in the arms industry but its President Barack Obama has to "sweat blood" to offer healthcare to its population. "In 2008, some $1.5 trillion were invested in defense budgets. Forty-two percent of worldwide expenses in that sphere, $607 billion, belonged to the United States, excluding war expenses," the former leader added in "Reflections", the opinion columns he publishes in the Cuban media. "While those colossal expenses in killing technologies are produced in the United States, that...

HAVANA (Reuters) – Former Cuban President Fidel Castro marked his 83rd birthday on Thursday with a gloomy warning about the global economic crisis, which is hitting his country hard, and a vow to "carry on." Castro, the leader of Cuba's 1959 revolution that brought communism to the Caribbean island, has remained out of public view for the last three years and in 2008 handed over the presidency to younger brother Raul Castro for health reasons. But while he leaves day-to-day running of the government to Raul Castro, he remains influential behind the scenes and writes regular commentaries for state-run media....

There’s something deeply wrong with journalism that scrutinizes and criticizes the institutions of free and successful nations, but produces puff pieces on the supposed achievements of totalitarian dictatorships. On Thursday, CNN aired a piece of Communist Party propaganda about how Cuba could serve as “a model for health care reform” in the United States, complete with an authoritative sound bite from an American medical expert, identified only as someone “who’s lived and worked in Cuba for decades.”But the expert, Gail Reed, is a longtime admirer of the Cuban revolution, married to the Cuban official who served as ambassador to Grenada...

HAVANA – Cubans accustomed to hourslong speeches, thousand-word essays and lengthy interviews can now get Fidel Castro at a glance, thanks to a new dictionary of El Comandante's teachings. "Unemployment" and "History" are among the myriad words for which the 339-page paperback provides definitions — based on snippets of speeches, columns and statements dispensed by Castro during the 49 years he governed the communist-run island. The publication, which the government says is meant to provide guidance to Cuban thinkers, calls to mind the "Little Red Book" of the late Chinese communist leader, Chairman Mao Zedong.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's famous beret is gone. His iconic beard is filthy and matted against skeletal cheekbones. One bushy eyebrow arches over his half-open eyes. As a Bolivian country surgeon methodically saws off his lifeless hands, Che appears vaguely amused. Gustavo Villoldo, a stocky figure in green army fatigues, stands just inside the tiny laundry room where the Cuban revolutionary's corpse rests atop a sink. For five months, the CIA operative has led soldiers hunting Guevara through the rough crags and valleys of southern Bolivia. Less than 24 hours ago, his team had captured and executed him in a village...

HAVANA (Reuters) - President Raul Castro said on Saturday he would not change Cuba's communist system to make peace with the United States, but repeated his willingness to discuss all issues with the island's longtime enemy. In a speech to the Cuban National Assembly, Castro acknowledged the United States under President Barack Obama was less "aggressive" toward Cuba, but he expressed irritation with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for saying repeatedly that Washington expected Havana to make changes in exchange for better relations. "I have to say, with all due respect to Mrs. Clinton ... they didn't elect me president...

The United States has not had formal diplomatic relations with Cuba for more than four and a half decades, however since the Carter administration the U.S. has maintained an “Interests Section” in Havana. Ambassador James Cason (retired) is the former head of the U.S. Interests Section (USINT) in Cuba, and in 2006 he had an electronic news ticker installed across the windows of the top floor of the building. In June of this year the sign went dim, along with any hope that the Obama administration would take a stand in favor of liberty for the Cuban people who have...