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Russia will join Google, Microsoft and the NSA in collecting data on Americans by reopening their Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) listening post in Cuba. Russia struck a deal with Cuba, a direct result of the deterioration of the relationship between Russia and the United States over the situation in Syria and the crisis in the Ukraine. In a recent visit to the Island nation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Cuba’s Raul Castro agreed to reopen the facility in return for Putin writing off 90% of Cuba’s debt to Russia. Lourdes The Lourdes SIGINT facility near Havana Cuba was the Former Soviet...

Facility at Lourdes was the largest Russian listening post abroad It was mothballed in 2001 after relations with the U.S. warmedBut relations with the West have deteriorated amid the Ukraine crisisMoscow has also shown a new interest in Latin America and CubaLast week, Russia agreed to write off 90 per cent of Cuba's debtRussia has agreed to reopen a major Cold War listening post on Cuba that was used to spy on America, it was reported today.Moscow-based daily Kommersant claimed Russia and Cuba have struck a deal 'in principle' after President Vladimir Putin visited the island last week.Citing several sources within...

Cuban authorities arrested an unusually large group of about 100 dissident marchers Sunday, breaking up a march by the Ladies in White opposition activists. Shouting "Freedom! Freedom!," the women offered no resistance as they were put on buses by dozens of police and plainclothes agents of the only communist-ruled country in the Americas. A group of about 100 government supporters, who arrived along with the authorities at the scene in Havana's Miramar district, angrily shouted "Viva Fidel, Viva Raul" as the women were whisked away. The women's group, formed in 2003 by wives and relatives of political prisoners, marches with...

MANAGUA, July 12 /ITAR-TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has changed the schedule of his Latin American tour and arrived in Nicaragua for a brief working visit. On his way from Cuba to Argentina on Saturday, the Russian leader decided to make a stopover in Managua, where he had been officially invited earlier. At the Managua airport, he was welcomed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. ‘Much is yet to be done to develop our relations, especially in the area of economy, but we have good base for that,” Putin said, adding that Russia and Nicaragua had long-standing good relations. “We admire...

HAVANA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to help revive Cuba's struggling offshore oil exploration on Friday at the start of a six-day tour of Latin America as Russia aims to reassert its influence on the communist-ruled island. Putin was joined in Havana by close ally and so-called Russian oil czar Igor Sechin, the chairman of state oil company Rosneft, to finalise a deal to explore for oil off Cuba's northern coast. The Russian president also promised to reinvest $3.5 billion of Cuban debt with Russia into development projects on the island, part of a deal in which Russia...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he was hopeful Russian oil company Rosneft and Cuban state oil company Cupet could begin jointly exploring Cuba's potential offshore oil reserves "in the very near future."

Many of the graphic images being shared on social media are really from Syria or Iraq, finds the broadcaster. […] “A #BBCtrending investigation has found that many of these images are not from the latest conflict and not even from Gaza. Some date as far back as 2009 and others are from conflicts in Syria and Iraq.” …

When Charlie Crist went to Miami's Little Havana recently, the Democratic candidate for governor of Florida stood before a crowd and said what few politicians have in decades of scrounging for votes in the Cuban-American neighborhood: End the trade embargo against Cuba. "If you really care about people on the island, we need to get rid of the embargo and let freedom reign," he said, shouting above a small band of protesters who responded with chants of "Shame on you!" Crist's supporters cheered louder. It was a scene inconceivable just a few years ago, when politicians were careful about what...

That National Public Radio has nice things to say about socialism shouldn’t be surprising. After all, “Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public,” explains NPR’s own website. “Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism…and eventually the loss of public radio stations.” NPR’s brand of journalism came under fire most recently when Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn sponsored a bill in 2011 to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. “Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds programming for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, has received...

In a public break with the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the U.S. should lift the half-century-old embargo of Cuba. “The embargo is Castro’s best friend,” Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations, while promoting her new book, “Hard Choices.” Clinton, who is considered the leading Democratic hopeful for president in 2016, said the Castro regime has used the embargo as a ready “excuse” to blame the U.S. for all its problems and foment anti-American sentiment. “I would like to see the excuse removed,” Clinton said. “It also would help our relationship with other Latin American countries ....

The U.S. government-funded Radio Marti will broadcast the NBA finals live to audiences in Cuba. The Office of Cuba Broadcasting announced Thursday it will air play-by-play commentary of this year's matchup of the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs.

It was called Operation Northwoods and it is no conspiracy theory. In order to justify a military attack on Fidel Castro in 1962, the highest military officials under John F. Kennedy considered generating fake terrorism in the United States and abroad as a pretext for war with Cuba as a part of “Operation Mongoose.” The Top Secret plan was endorsed by all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and offered various scenarios that would build public support for a war against the Communist regime. Forty years later, the report was finally declassified.

Havana (AFP) - A former Cuban spy urged Washington Monday to swap three detained agents for the freedom of American Alan Gross, citing the deal that saw a US soldier released over the weekend. Gross, 65, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Cuba in 2011 after being convicted of "acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state" for allegedly distributing communications equipment as a USAID contractor.

If one sets out to destroy the core pillars of a society, to incrementally break down the values of a country, and to dishearten its inhabitants, then Barack Hussein Obama has been a sterling success. He is no amateur; he is not a feckless individual who doesn't know what he is doing. His actions are deliberate, and his goals are in direct opposition to the vast majority of the American people. His so-called misdirections are calculated, and his leadership traits are not intended to support America. He knows exactly what he is doing, and far too many people still don't...

Moscow supports Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's efforts, in collaboration with the Vatican and the Union of South American Nations, to establish a negotiating process between the government and "a constructive opposition," Russia's top diplomat said. His comments came a day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to impose sanctions on Venezuelan officials accused of violating human rights during the last three months of anti-government protests in the Andean nation.Violence surrounding those protests has claimed the lives of 42 people, including both opponents and supporters of Maduro as well as bystanders and members of the security forces. Venezuelan...

U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia (D-FL) misstated basic facts while praising communism in an online video conference this week. Garcia, who represents southernmost Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives, told video conference participants, “We’ve proved that communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.” Garcia made his comments while discussing immigration, border security agents, and crime rates in El Paso, Texas. “Let me give you an example, the kind of money we’ve poured in,” said Garcia. “So the most dangerous — sorry, the safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be...

In an exclusive interview with NBC 6, Congressman Joe Garcia tried to clear the air about a recent analogy he made regarding communism. Rep. Joe Garcia told NBC 6 in an exclusive interview Wednesday that communism is "evil," as he tried to clarify a recent remark on communism that had sparked conservatives' ire. The freshman Democratic congressman had said during a Google chat about immigration reform that "communism works." He distanced himself from the comment Wednesday, telling NBC 6's Adam Kuperstein he had tried to make an analogy that fell flat. "Look, clearly I don’t believe it works," he said...

A federal judge in Washington has temporarily banned U.S. military officials from force-feeding a terror prisoner at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, at least until she can review his medical records and screen videotapes of authorities forcing him to eat during his ongoing hunger strike there. If U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler permanently bars the military from forcing all hunger strikers to eat, the Pentagon would have to come up with a new way to secure the health and safety of many of the 150 detainees who are on hunger strikes.

Miami will likely be underwater before the Senate can muster enough votes to meaningfully confront climate change. And probably Tampa and Charleston, too—two other cities that last week's National Climate Assessment placed at maximum risk from rising sea levels. Even as studies proliferate on the dangers of a changing climate, the issue's underlying politics virtually ensure that Congress will remain paralyzed over it indefinitely. That means the U.S. response for the foreseeable future is likely to come through executive-branch actions, such as the regulations on carbon emissions from power plants that the Environmental Protection Agency is due to propose next...

Charlie Crist gets protested and heckled at his Miami campaign office opening. They say they wouldn't let themselves get distracted, but.... Watch at :30 where Crist snatches the microphone away.

I had to lie to get into the country. Customs and immigration officials at Havana’s tiny, dreary José Martí International Airport would have evicted me had they known I was a journalist. Outside its small tourist sector, the rest of the city looks as though it suffered a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami. Roofs have collapsed. Walls are splitting apart. Window glass is missing. Paint has long vanished. Housing is free, too, but so what? Americans can get houses in abandoned parts of Detroit for only $500—which makes them practically free—but no one wants...

Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 science-fiction film Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, takes place in Los Angeles, circa 2154. The wealthy have moved into an orbiting luxury satellite—the Elysium of the title—while the wretched majority of humans remain in squalor on Earth. The film works passably as an allegory for its director’s native South Africa, where racial apartheid was enforced for nearly 50 years, but it’s a rather cartoonish vision of the American future. Some critics panned the film for pushing a socialist message. Elysium’s dystopian world, however, is a near-perfect metaphor for an actually existing socialist nation just 90...

Jon Stewart’s snark-fest against Fox News this week over Benghazi finally prompted a rebuttal (of sorts) from Greta Van Susteren: “Note to Jon Stewart (who I think is smart and clever …but like the rest of us, not always right…but a comedian has, of course, way more latitude – we in the media should get it right.)” This “latitude,” however, should not allow Jon Stewart to disseminate propaganda from Castro’s KGB-founded and mentored intelligence services uncontested. “I LOVE this book!” Jon Stewart gushed upon greeting author TJ English who a few years ago was publicizing his book titled "How the...

Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist has made no secret of his desire to end the U.S. embargo on Cuba, but he may go even further and take a visit to the communist nation over the summer, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The Times reported that Crist is “eager to learn more about the country as he call for normalizing relations with Florida’s neighbor." Crist’s calls to lift the embargo lines up with polling across the state and the nation that show majorities favor ending the U.S. policy.

Video of Marco Rubio on Cuba and Venezuela U.S. Senator Marco Rubio Senate Floor Speech February 24, 2014 A few moments ago, the body was treated to a report from the senator from Iowa about his recent trip to Cuba. Sounded like he had a wonderful trip visiting, what he described as, a real paradise. He bragged about a number of things that he learned on his trip to Cuba that I’d like to address briefly. He bragged about their health care system, medical school is free, doctors are free, clinics are free, their infant mortality rate may be even...

I thought Mika was going to cry as she presented the bad news in this new poll that basically shows that people are fed up with Democrats:

HAVANA TIMES — The return of property from the churches seized by the Cuban government after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 is more and more a fact.The old College of the Jesuit Fathers. “At this time, the correct word is ‘process,’ because it is an initiative begun some years ago that has not stopped,” says from Havana Msgr. José Félix Pérez, associate secretary of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba.“With this step we can rehabilitate places for services and pastoral action in cities where the religious communities had to meet in private homes or uncomfortable spaces,” the...

The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US’s indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America’s most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades. As Gordon Chang noted at a symposium in Los Angeles last month hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, since President Barack Obama entered office in 2009, the Chinese have responded to his overtures of goodwill and appeasement with intensified aggression against the US’s Asian allies and against US warships. In 2012, China seized the Scarborough Shoal from the...

----Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here.---- Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none. The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. Given that Bush had left office with polls similar to Harry Truman’s final numbers, this seemed to Obama a wise political approach. If Bush wanted garrison troops left in Iraq to secure the victory of the surge, Obama would...

In a heated competition, Brett Ratner and his RatPac Entertainment have acquired the rights to Jesse Katz’ article Escape From Cuba: Yasiel Puig's Untold Journey to the Dodgers. Ratner will produce the big-screen take with Beau Flynn via his FlynnPictureCo. banner.

A Russian intelligence-gathering ship has been operating off the U.S. East Coast and near the Gulf of Mexico for the past month, the Pentagon said Thursday. “We are aware that the Russian ships Viktor Leonov and Nikolay Chiker are currently operating in waters that are beyond U.S. territorial seas but near Cuba,” said Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman. “We respect the freedom of all nations, as reflected in international law, to operate military vessels beyond the territorial seas of other nations.” The Leonov is an intelligence gathering ship outfitted with high-tech electronic spying gear. The Chiker is an...

I was so naive when I went to Cal. I didn’t realize that, in my history and English classes, the material we read was either created in the first instance by Marxists or, if it predated Marxists, was first run through a Marxist analytical filter either before or immediately after we read it. All I knew was that I thought the material was nonsensical and, because of their adulatory prosing about it, that my professors were idiots. It says a lot about the quality of education at Cal that, simply by parroting the teachers’ stupidity back to them, I managed...

Caracas (AFP) - President Nicolas Maduro said Saturday that remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry on the unrest in Venezuela gave violent groups a "green light" to carry out attacks. In a tweet, Maduro also slammed the remarks made by Kerry late Friday as "arrogant" and "insolent." "John Kerry threatens Venezuela with more violence, with his statements gives the green light to violent groups to attack our people," Maduro wrote.

While much of the world has focused on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, opposition forces in Venezuela continue to battle the brutal regime of Nicolas Maduro. While opposition forces battle for their basic human rights, the world, and in particular the government of the United States has remained largely silent. In February of this year, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was arrested by government officials on charges of "inciting unrest" for leading, at the time, peaceful protests against the policies of Nicolas Maduro and his ruling United Socialist Party. Despite the overriding belief that he was being held illegally, few world...

The US military's top general warned Friday that forces unfriendly to the United States are brewing in the Americas, arguing that "together we need to do something about it." General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, singled out Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez who this week attacked President George W. Bush as the "devil" in a speech to the UN General Assembly. "There have been increases in government actions that are not friendly to us," Pace said in a question-and-answer session with Pentagon employees. "President Chavez is clearly not a friend to the United States." He said it...

Having traveled to well over 100 countries, I have seen some pretty shocking signs of poverty around the world.In parts of Asia, it’s not uncommon for parents in poor villages to sell their children for bags of rice… or for children to be stolen outright and sold as orphans to unsuspecting foreigners.In Africa, I’ve seen people who are so destitute they intentionally mangle and gash their own bodies just to give themselves good cause to shock foreign tourists into donations.But I’d have to rank poverty in Cuba as the most extreme.Going to Cuba is like going back in time....

Fresh violence has erupted in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, between police and opponents of President Nicolas Maduro. Masked protestors burned effigies of the president after a rally called "Resurrection of Democracy". Police responded to petrol bombs in the Chacao district with tear gas and water cannon..... On Sunday the rally started with a "Via Crucis" march, mirroring Jesus's walk to crucifixion. "We're staying in the street until we get our country back," student leader Djamil Jassir, 22. told Reuters news agency. Another protestor, Naybeth Ramirez, said: "There are many who have already died and it's for them that we're here....

“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty!” proclaimed Lynch and Hawkin’s Commander-in-Chief just three months earlier. “They fought like tigers,” writes the CIA officer who helped train the Cubans who splashed ashore at the Bay of Pigs 53 years ago this week. “But their fight was doomed before the first man hit the beach.” That CIA man, Grayston Lynch, knew something about fighting – and about long odds. He carried scars from Omaha Beach, the Battle of the Bulge,...

Happy Easter, Happy Passover. On this Good Friday, we mark the tenth anniversary of Mel's movie, and over the weekend we'll have something with a lighter touch. Caroline Glick, my old colleague from The Jerusalem Post, has a column using a very Steynian word, "The Disappearance of America's Will": The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US's indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America's most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades.

(You always hear and read of a “fiasco,” a “defeat” a “disaster” at the Bay of Pigs, 53 years ago this week. But you rarely hear about the cause. Here it is.) "They fought like tigers," writes the CIA officer who helped train the Cubans who splashed ashore at the Bay of Pigs 53 years ago this week. "But their fight was doomed before the first man hit the beach." That CIA man, Grayston Lynch, knew something about fighting – and about long odds. He carried scars from Omaha Beach, The Battle of the Bulge and Korea's Heartbreak Ridge. But...

Pilgrims gather in Cuba for Mass during Pope Benedict's visit in March 2012. Havana, Cuba, Apr 17, 2014 / 03:06 pm (CNA).- After granting temporary permission for Cubans to celebrate Good Friday in 2012 and 2013, the Cuban government has decided grant a request made by Pope Benedict during his visit to the country in 2012 to make it a permanent official holiday. Although the norm will not be in force until June, the Ministry of Work and Social Security issued a special resolution allowing Cubans to observe Good Friday this April 18. However, it said those who work in...

Fifty-three years ago, my father had a meeting on the other side of town in Havana where we lived at the time. Cuba was in turmoil and opposition to Castro was widespread as more and more people saw communists in positions of responsibility. At mid-morning, my dad called my mom and told her that something was happening in Cuba. Our phone kept ringing as friends and neighbors spread the news. Humberto Fontova recalls the events of that day: ""Freedom is our goal!" roared commander Pepe San Roman to the men assembled before him 48 years ago this week. “Cuba is...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tim Graham. For its second season, the creators of the FX series "The Americans" have chosen a new source for insight into the Cold War during the Reagan years -- one Lt. Col. Oliver North. It's a dramatic reversal from the first season, and it has infuriated some hard leftists. The show began with the shocking promise from creator Joel Weisberg that the series' heroes would be KGB agents: "We're making them the sympathetic characters. I'd go so far as to say they're the heroes." It quickly became apparent that these characters could...

"...And Leo was never a card-carrying communist; he was a Democrat all his life...he went to some meetings (Communist Party USA) and was interested in what they had to say..." - Eileen Ryan Penn, mother of Sean Penn, on her husband and Sean's father, blacklisted Communist...meeting attender...Leo Penn

When it comes to Krugman's views on any particular topic, he may be right and he may be wrong, but whatever his opinion he always has a much to say about it (even if the factual backing is of secondary importance or outright missing). Today, his chosen topic is inequality, and in an interview with Bloomberg's Tom Keene, shown and transcribed below, he certainly says much, encapsulated perhaps by the following gem: "There's zero evidence that the kind of extreme inequality that we have is good for economic growth. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that it is actually...

Cuba has now made Good Friday an official national holiday after restoring that Catholic feast as an "exceptional" measure when Pope Benedict XVI visited the island in 2012. The new Labor Code, passed by the National Assembly in December, established Good Friday as a holiday "every year," Communist Party daily Granma said Tuesday.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went after fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and President Barack Obama on This Week With George Stephanopoulos sunday morning, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Obama’s “five years of weakness� had emboldened Putin and that the U.S. needed to defend its values across the globe, in contrast to Paul’s less-interventionist foreign policy. “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul,� Cruz said, “but I don’t agree with him on foreign policy. I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But...

It’s not often that a U.S. government agency gets caught red-handed abiding by its charter and performing its publicly-avowed and legislatively-approved duties. But last week the AP "broke" a long and breathless story from Havana that nailed the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) for just that. In their own words, "a secret plan aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government," was courageously exposed by the AP’s intrepid Havana bureau. Such is the magnitude of the scandal that a red-faced and snarling Senator Patrick Leahy is now chairing hearings on Capitol Hill where he grills USAID director Rajiv Shah on...

This is a bad morning. I was greeted by a headline in the New York Times that said Defense Secretary “Chuck Mullet” Hagel was planning to submit a budget to Congress to cut the size of the military to a level not seen since 1940, before the U.S. entered World War II. The article went on to say that the Pentagon realized that this would be an inadequate force for even very small wars and certainly would not allow the U.S. to police the world and keep control of contingencies like a North Korean attack on the South or a...

Jay-Z causes controversy by wearing gaudy medallion of 'Five Percent Nation' group who believe whites are 'wicked and weak' • The Brooklyn-born rapper wore a medallion representing the Five Percent Nation at a Nets game last week • One of the main tenets of the Nation of Islam offshoot is that white people are 'weak and wicked' and that black men hold the power of God • When asked if the medallion holds any importance to him, Jay-Z said: 'A little bit' • Jay-Z was spotted wearing the nation's symbol last year while giving radio interviews for his new album,...