Free Republic

It did not take long for the Cuban regime to bring up the embargo in the context of the coronavirus. This is from an NBC News report: The island faces chronic shortages in basic goods that have worsened with the Trump administration's tightening of the embargo, citing Cuba's human rights record and its support for Venezuela’s government. Long lines and crowds outside stores are a normal way of life here. Soap and detergent are difficult to find right now in ration stores, which are those that sell by the “libreta” or ration book. But they are available in dollar stores...

In a stunning announcement amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Justice Department plans to announce Thursday that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and other government officials have been charged with turning Venezuela into a narco-state by collaborating with a leftist Colombian guerrilla group that exported tons of cocaine to the United States. An indictment, to be unveiled at a “virtual” news conference in Washington, D.C., accuses Maduro and other top officials in his socialist regime of conspiring with the U.S.-designated terrorist group known as the FARC so that Venezuela could be used for narcotics shipments to finance a long-running civil war against...

HAVANA - Communist-run Cuba said it dispatched a brigade of doctors and nurses to Italy for the first time this weekend to help in the fight against the novel coronavirus at the request of the worst-affected region Lombardy. The Caribbean island has sent its “armies of white robes” to disaster sites around the world largely in poor countries since its 1959 revolution. Its doctors were in the front lines in the fight against cholera in Haiti and against ebola in West Africa in the 2010s. “We are all afraid but we have a revolutionary duty to fulfill, so we take...

Many Americans were offended by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s recent praise of Fidel Castro. Perhaps gratitude is in order instead. By candidly sharing his opinion of Cuba, Mr. Sanders exposes the depth of his socialist views. Mr. Sanders’s enthusiastic support for the Socialist Workers Party in the 1980s is well documented, as is his endorsement of Castro and Nicaraguan Sandinista Daniel Ortega, both of whom were Soviet pawns during the Cold War. On CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Feb. 23 we learned that Bernie’s ideology hasn’t changed much since he was advocating for tyranny in his youth. Interviewer Anderson Cooper played a...

... Harsh measures horrify civil libertarians, but they often save lives, especially when they are imposed in the early days. The best-known modern example is Cuba’s AIDS epidemic. In the 1980s, Cuba and the United States were both hit hard by the AIDS epidemic. In Cuba, the virus first infected thousands of soldiers, doctors and nurses who had served in Africa. The Castro regime’s response — roundly condemned by other countries — was to make H.I.V. tests mandatory, and to force everyone infected into quarantine camps. The camps were not hellholes: they had bungalows, gardens, theater troupes, medical care, more...

... Based on my observations and conversations with our translators, there are three classes of people in Cuba. The governmental elite live in gated communities and enjoy what Americans would regard as middle-class living standards. The average person who relies on his own income lives in desperate Third World conditions. In between are people with generous relatives in the U.S. They have more disposable income, but their living conditions are comparable to those of the poorest Americans. Income inequality is so extreme that Cuba has two currencies, one for tourists and senior government officials—and one for everyone else. Ordinary Cubans...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has come under fire for his inability to stop praising authoritarian communist regimes. "When dictatorships, whether it is the Chinese or the Cubans, do something good, you acknowledge that," Sanders said during the Democratic debate in South Carolina on Tuesday. The socialist septuagenarian has been particularly enamored of late with the "massive literacy program" implemented in Cuba under Fidel Castro, citing them as evidence that it's "unfair to simply say everything [in Cuba] is bad." Regrettably, the candidate's narrow focus on the educational achievements of his fellow communists is...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appeared on the front page of a Cuban newspaper Tuesday following his nuanced comments on the Cuban revolution. The current Democratic primary frontrunner was praised in a column published on the front page of Granma, the Cuban Communist Party’s official newspaper, for saying Fidel Castro’s communist regime was successful in expanding literacy programs in the island nation. However, Sanders went on to explain he did not support the country’s authoritarian leadership. “We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know it's unfair to simply say everything is bad," Sanders said on CBS' "60...

Plain ignorance is the most charitable explanation for the misleading defense of communist Cuba offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on CBS News‘ “60 Minutes.” While saying he was opposed to Cuba’s “authoritarian nature,” Sanders insisted that “it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?” Sanders correctly stated that education became universal in Castro’s Cuba, but he ignored the deeply Orwellian nature of the educational system. Literacy was not sought by the Cuban regime just for...

Sanders can’t acknowledge it, but the push in communist countries to make sure that everyone could read had a dark side -- the literacy programs were a massive indoctrination effort.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Monday doubled down on his praise of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and added praise for aspects of the Chinese authoritarian regime. “Truth is truth. All right?” Sanders said at a CNN town hall event when challenged on his previous praise for Castro’s regime. “If you want to disagree with me, if somebody wants to say that—and by the way, all of the Congress people you mentioned just so happen to be supporting other candidates…but you know, the truth is the truth. And that is what happened on the first years of the Castro regime.”...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is standing by the praise he extended to the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in wake of mounting backlash from a contingent of Democratic lawmakers. Sanders, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, came under heavy criticism on Monday from a swath of Democrats, particularly those representing districts in Florida, after saying in a "60 Minutes" interview that it's "unfair to simply say everything" about the Communist Cuban revolution was bad. He reiterated those remarks during a CNN Town Hall in South Carolina on Monday night, saying that he's always been critical of authoritarian regimes, but that it...

Florida lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are speaking out to condemn Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' comments about former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. During an interview with the CBS news program 60 Minutes on Sunday, the Democratic presidential nominee was questioned about comments he made in the 1980s about the former communist leader, who died in 2016 after stepping down a decade prior. “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad,” Sanders told Anderson Cooper. “When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He...

And if Cuba had trains, they’d probably run on time, too. Now that Bernie Sanders has the inside track on the Democratic presidential nomination, some of his more colorful defenses of left-wing dictatorships and communism have finally gotten attention from the mainstream media. Sanders sat down for a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, who played clips of Sanders praising Fidel Castro for having “totally transformed the society, you know?”Sanders didn’t disavow the sentiment, but instead praised Castro’s “literacy program”: Bernie Sanders defends his 1980s comments about Fidel Castro in an interview on 60 Minutes. https://t.co/ySqvQKoiBU pic.twitter.com/lTwuXWp9sA— 60 Minutes...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner for the Democrats' presidential nomination, doubled down on his support for some of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's policies, saying in an interview that aired Sunday, "it's unfair to simply say everything is bad." Speaking to CBS News' "60 Minutes," Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, pointed to social welfare programs introduced under Castro's regime that he described as redeeming, despite the communist dictator's often repressive human-rights violations against Cubans. "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into...

President Trump earned a standing ovation during his State of the Union Address this year when he recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó in the audience. For many, it was an electrifying moment – Guaidó is a symbol of courage and of freedom pitted against a bad and destructive anti-American dictatorship. President Trump said, "We are supporting the hopes of Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to restore democracy. The United States is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalizes his people. But Maduro’s grip on tyranny will...

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro’s quiet move to restore elements of free enterprise to his nation’s economy should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone listening to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ siren song of socialism in the Democratic primaries or who is still tempted by promises of socialist bliss. Maduro’s move represents a desperate attempt to dampen public outrage, and thus maintain his grip on power, in the midst of an astonishing economic collapse that economists view as the world’s worst in decades in the absence of war. Venezuela’s tale is hardly a unique one. In recent decades, socialist nations across the...

If the Democratic Party is so left wing, then why isn’t a single of the top candidates against Washington’s recognition of Juan Guaido as the country’s president? Oh wait, there is one who does not recognize Guiado. It’s Bernie Sanders. Sanders is not an Independent for nothing. Last week, Guaido, who was once the official head of the National Assembly of Venezuela until Socialists United politics orchestrated a vote to get him out, was singled out by President Trump at his State of the Union address. Guaido was the only foreigner highlighted by the president. It wasn’t that Trump and...

Joy Reid vouching for the veracity of a Donald Trump attack ad? Yup, it actually happened today! Reid seems supremely skeptical that socialist Bernie Sanders can beat President Trump. On her MSNBC show today, Reid told Sanders's campaign manager Faiz Shakir that the ads the Trump campaign would run against Sanders should he be the nominee would be "true" and "actual." She specifically mentioned video of Bernie praising Castro and "Russia" [sic, presumably meant the Soviet Union.] Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Better dead than red … said Chris Matthews. The MSNBC host went into a protracted monologue after the Democratic debate in New Hampshire Friday night in which he condemned the evils of socialism and warned of public executions in Central Park if it ever came to the United States. “I have my own views of the word socialist and I’ll be glad to share them with you in private and they go back to the early 1950s,” he told a post-debate analysis panel. “I have an attitude about them. I remember the Cold War. I have an attitude toward [Fidel]...