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<p>HAVANA - Secret police agents abducted and beat award-winning blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose online reports chronicle the dark side of everyday life in communist Cuba, on her way to a march for non-violence, she said Saturday.</p> <p>Three agents in street clothes snatched her and friend Orlando Luis Pardo off the street in the Havana district of Vedado.</p>

<p>Wonder why Mikey isn't going to Cuba all the time for medical care, it's so great? Wonder why he's still a capitalist charging money from people to see his propaganda and make greedy profits? Why hasn't Mikey decided to live in a full-fledged, socialist country yet?</p>

SNIPPET: "Lula and Chavez have established a "strategic relationship," and recently agreed upon a joint Brazilian-Venezuelan oil venture worth billions of dollars. Lula and Chavez have joined with Daniel Ortega, the returned Nicaraguan Marxist dictator, to form an anti-U.S. Latin American military alliance - all with Russian assistance - funded by the region's abundant oil reserves. Brazil is engaged in its own arms build-up and Lula is determined that Brazil will become at least a first-rate regional power. Unfortunately, Lula is establishing Brazil as an anti-American military power by aligning with nations hostile or potentially hostile to the U.S. Lula...

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...

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...

Sean Penn is exercising his journalistic skill, reporting from inside Cuba. The Oscar winner has embarked on a short trip to the island on assignment for Vanity Fair and The Huffington Post. Rumours have circulated that he might interview Fidel Castro. But his rep told E! News that there were no plans to meet up with the ailing former leader. If he were to, it would not be the first such encounter. In 2005, his family held a lengthy meeting with Castro whilst holidaying in Cuba. ... Past overseas assignments for the actor turned journalist include stints in Iraq, Iran...

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...

As he returns to New Orleans today after a six-day junket in Cuba, Mayor Ray Nagin almost certainly will face questions about the latest addition to his collection of controversial comments. Nagin told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he thinks Cuba's repressive regime does "a much better job" than U.S. officials of identifying citizen needs and deploying resources in the face of hurricanes, which routinely batter the Caribbean nation. Though Hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma all struck the island last year, only seven Cubans were killed, in part because authorities use soldiers to close highways and enforce evacuations. Harking...

MADRID -- Spain's announcement that it will seek a major improvement in European ties with Cuba's dictatorship once it takes over the presidency of the 27-country European Union on Jan. 1 is bad news not only for pro-democracy activists on the island, but also for oppositionists in several other authoritarian-ruled Latin American countries. During a 48-hour visit to Cuba earlier this week, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said that Spain will take advantage of its upcoming six-month presidency of the European Union to try to change the group's ``common stand'' toward Cuba, in place since 1996. Under the policy,...

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...

New Orleans, Louisiana, Mayor Ray Nagin arrived in Cuba late Friday on a mission to learn about how to deal with storms, a spokeswoman said. "We understand we may have a lot to learn from the Cubans in terms of disaster preparedness and how they have dealt with hurricanes," spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett said. Cuba is internationally applauded for exceptional disaster management, according to a news release from Nagin's office. In the Cuban capital, Havana, Nagin plans to meet with several officials, including some from the Latin American Medical Centers for Disaster. He will also learn about preparations the Cuba Defense...

I am a little delusional. Until a minute before the Maria Moors Cabot prize ceremony – held yesterday – I thought the Cuban government would change its decision and let me leave. So I saved the recording I made at the Immigration Office on Monday, October 12. Today, seeing that I am in the same place, I have decided to publish it, thinking especially of all those who are going through the same experience. Emotion – having so much to say – did make me speak at a velocity difficult to subtitle, but I feel the relief of having said...

Meet Marina Kalashnikova: a Moscow-based historian, researcher and journalist. Last August she criticized foreign “experts� for suggesting that a conflict with Moscow will not happen because Russia’s elite is too closely associated with the West. According to Kalashnikova, “The West does not care to wake from the dream of its wishful thinking, even when Moscow turns to … reanimating Stalin’s cult of personality together with the ideology of the Cheka [i.e., the secret police].� I’m afraid that Marina Kalashnikova is right. The West has been dreaming, and the West will suffer the consequences. If the Kremlin likes Stalin, then there...

NEW ORLEANS ― Ray Nagin will become the first mayor in 50 years to make an official visit to Cuba when the leader of New Orleans travels there with a delegation of officials for a disaster preparedness exchange. New Orleans is serving as a living laboratory for techniques on emergency preparedness and response, including implementing plans that include assistance for residents who are unable to leave the city. During Gustav in 2008, the city helped more than 18,000 residents evacuate as the hurricane approached. The tour is scheduled to meet with the Latin American Medical Centers for Disasters and will...

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...

A small Miami-based company said the U.S. government has given it permission to lay the first optical communications fiber from the U.S. to Cuba. That could drastically cut the cost of calling the island nation and make the Internet more accessible to Cubans.

A fugitive who has been living in Cuba for four decades to avoid prosecution for his role in an airline hijacking surrendered to federal law enforcement authorities in New York on Sunday, ending his distinction of being one of the F.B.I.’s longest-known fugitives. Louis Armando Peña Soltren, 66, was arrested at 1:30 p.m. after debarking his plane from Havana...An F.B.I. spokesman said Mr. Soltren had arranged his return to Kennedy International Airport with the F.B.I. and State Department because he wanted to see his family, including his wife, who lived in either Puerto Rico or Florida.*** Nearly 41 years ago,...

An Aeroflot Airbus A330-200, registration VQ-BBF performing flight SU-334 (dep Oct 7th) from Havana (Cuba) to Moscow Sheremetyevo (Russia), was enroute overhead the Atlantic at FL350 about 320nm southeast of New York, when the crew talking very good English reported a passenger (German citizen) had become sick and requested to divert to New York's JFK Airport, but changed their diversion destination to Toronto,ON (Canada) just before reaching the top of descent into JFK about 120nm southeast of JFK. The airplane landed safely on Toronto's runway 24R about 2.5 hours after the first decision to divert and about 4.5 hours after...

Forty two years ago today, Ernesto "Che" Guevara got a major dose of his own medicine. Without trial he was declared a murderer, stood against a wall and shot. Historically speaking, justice has rarely been better served. If the saying "What goes around comes around" ever fit, it's here. "When you saw the beaming look on Che's face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad," said a former Cuban political prisoner, to your humble servant, "you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara." As commander of the La Cabana...

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...

Aired Live on October 5, 2009- Michael Savage has a direct message for Michael Moore.

Cuba is ready to use just about everything at its disposal, from its well-oiled civil defense system to the soldiers of a totalitarian government, to keep swine flu cases to a minimum. Everything but a vaccine. As the U.S. prepares an extensive health survey for side affects from its extensive inoculation plans, Cuba’s No. 2 health official says relying on a shot to contain a world pandemic is risky as best — and demoralizing at worst. "Nobody knows if it would work," said Dr. Luis Estruch. "How safe would it be?" Cuba’s sophisticated public-monitoring system and geographic isolation as an...

U.S.-Russia diplomacy is currently dominated by issues such as Iran, missile defense, and the post-Soviet republics. But the Obama administration must not ignore Moscow's role in facilitating the dangerous Venezuelan arms buildup and the nuclear ambitions of Hugo Chávez. On September 13, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez announced triumphantly that Russia had agreed to extend his government a $2.2 billion credit line for the purchase of sophisticated military hardware, including tanks, missiles, and air-defense systems. Chávez insisted that these arms purchases "are necessary for our national defense." But U.S. officials think otherwise--and with good reason. "What they are looking to purchase...

ABC News' Kirit Radia reports: Senior US and Cuban officials held talks in Havana earlier this month that were longer and more wide ranging than previously revealed, the State Department said today. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Bisa Williams traveled to the Havana, Cuba for talks on restoring postal service between the two countries, but officials now say she also held additional talks in western Cuba about the status of the US Interest Section in Cuba and migration, among other topics. Bisa Williams took advantage of the opportunity while in Cuba for postal talks to have...

SPY THREAT: CATCH AND RELEASE -- A Veteran Counterintelligence Officer Warns America International News Analysis Today September 30, 2009 By Toby Westerman America is about to be forced into a dangerous game of catch and release with deadly spies, threatening both national security and the morale of the U.S. intelligence community, warns veteran counterintelligence officer Christopher Simmons in a exclusive interview with International News Analysis Today. Christopher Simmons is director and founder of the Cuban Intelligence Research Center. International coercion, attacks on national security, lies and misinformation spread in the media, and the murder of American citizens are part of...

Liberals have oft exalted communist Cuba’s “free” health care system. Isn’t it wonderful? Why can’t we do that? Of course, for one thing, the “free” system in Cuba isn’t nearly so wonderful as “Sicko” Michael Moore made it in his propaganda film. Frankly, I wouldn’t take my dog to a Cuban hospital. It isn’t just Michael Moore; CNN depicted the Cuban system as a model for America, too.

The Post & Email has received tonight a decclassified FBI report admitted in evidence in the case brought against W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller by President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Griffin B. Bell. This document was obtained by an American citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, via a FOIA request. Mr. W. Mark  Felt is none other than the informant who spoke with reporters from the Washington Post, exposing the Watergate Scandal:  who went by the name “Deep Throat” a fact that points to his political neutrality in American politics.What is not know about Mr. Felt...

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...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Dynamite video just released by Honduran Government on the tense situation in Honduras upon reports former President Zelaya (supported by Chavez, Castro and Obama) is now in the country in the Brazilian Embassy.Gutsy, clear, unequivocal Honduran Government video (in English and Spanish). Breaking!Government spokesman Carlos López Contreras.

Pitcher Chapman awaits MLB's ruling Comment Email Print Share By Jorge Arangure Jr. ESPN The Magazine Archive Aroldis Chapman, the Cuban defector considered to be one of the top pitching prospects in the world, petitioned Major League Baseball for free-agency status recently and is likely only weeks from becoming a free agent, according to his agent. Early Monday, Chapman's representatives announced that the left-hander has established residency in Andorra, a tiny country of about 84,000 that borders Spain and France. By establishing residency outside the United States, the 21-year-old Chapman avoids being subject to baseball's amateur draft. MLB must study...

ACORN Registration Forms Found In Apartment During Drug Bust. “A search of a northeast Albuquerque apartment as part of a drug investigation led to the discovery of about a dozen voter registration forms, police said. The forms were filled out and had dates from late last month, Albuquerque police said. Authorities had not determined the authenticity of the forms. The occupant of the apartment, a Cuban national, was arrested on drug charges. He told authorities he obtained the documents while working for the Association of Communities Organized for Reform Now or ACORN.” (“Albuquerque Police Find Voter Registration Forms At...

HAVANA, September 18 (RIA Novosti) - Modernization of the Soviet-made military equipment and training of Cuban military personnel will be the focus of Russian-Cuban military cooperation in the near future, the chief of the Russian General Staff said on Friday.

Cuba's foreign minister on Wednesday lashed out at US President Barack Obama for keeping in place a crushing, 47-year-old trade embargo against the communist island, despite having recently eased travel and money transfer restrictions. "The economic blockade policy remains in place," complained Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, as he unveiled a report to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly on the negative impact of the embargo. "The arrival of a new US president has not meant any change at all" for Cuba Rodriguez said.

After taking steps towards healing the longstanding rift between the U.S. and Cuban governments, President Barack Obama recently renewed the economic embargo against the island nation. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act, established after World War I, U.S. companies are banned from trading with what are determined to be hostile nations. In a Sept. 11 memo written to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury chief Timothy Geithner, Obama said, "I hereby determine that the continuation for one year of the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba is in the national interest of the United States,"...

(English-language translation) Havana - The Cuban authorities authorized the celebration of Evangelical services and Catholic Masses in all of the country's prisons. Cuba Council of Churches (CIC) spokesman José Aurelio Paz told AP on Tuesday that they were informed of the decision on September 10. He added that, on that day, CIC leaders met with Religious Affairs officials from the Communist Party, including [Religious Affairs] head Caridad Diego, and with prison officials. "It involved an informative meeting," Paz stated. He explained that, prior to the decision, there was "personal-level religious attention", in other words, when a prisoner or his family...

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has announced that the country will soon take delivery of Russian missiles with a range of 300km (185 miles). Returning from a 10-day tour of Africa, Asia and Europe, including Russia, Mr Chavez is also planning to buy Russian T-72 and T-90. "Soon some little rockets are going to be arriving... and they don't fail," he announced at the presidential palace. But he denied they would be used for offensive purposes. "We are not going to attack anybody, these are just defence tools, because we are going to defend our country from any threat, wherever it...

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...

HAVANA (AP) - A Cuban appeals court upheld a two-year prison sentence for "public dangerousness" against a man who became an Internet celebrity after......(click here)

America and its allies in the past 20 years have assumed that the best way to stabilize the developing world is to export democracy. As a result, the ballot box has become a stand-in for substantive political reforms, resulting in chronic instability or – worse yet – elected autocracies.By Gerard DeGroot Anastasio Somoza, the notorious Nicaraguan dictator deposed in 1979, was no great believer in democracy. "I would like nothing better than to give Nicaraguans the same kind of freedom as that of the United States," he once remarked. "But, it is like what you do with a baby. First...

BP has announced the discovery of yet another huge oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, communist Russia is ready to work with Cuba to begin drilling 50 miles offshore Key West in the Gulf, and China is negotiating with Canada for the right to develop the vast oil resources in Alberta. Still, the Obama administration has remained resolute in opposing U.S. offshore drilling, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports. Found 250 miles southeast of Houston, the Tiber well was found under 4,132 feet (.8 mile) of water and was drilled to a total depth of 35,055...

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...

The Treasury Department formally lifted nearly all U.S. restrictions on family travel to Cuba on Thursday, along with limits on how much money families can send to relatives on the island. The department also eased regulations prohibiting U.S. telecommunications and satellite linkages between the United States and Cuba and licensing requirements for visitors engaged in agricultural and medical sales. President Obama first announced most of the changes in April as part of a general opening that he said would allow Americans to reach out to the Cuban people, and he ordered Cabinet departments to take steps to implement the changes....

HAVANA – Cuban state media have released a second recent photo showing Fidel Castro in regular civilian clothing instead of the track suits that he commonly wore after falling ill in July 2006. In the picture, the 83-year-old Castro is shaking hands with the visiting head of the Chinese parliament in the walled backyard of an undisclosed home. Castro is wearing a red, short-sleeve dress shirt as he greets National People's Congress leader Wu Bangguo. ..

Your humble correspondent is a huge fan of the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods hosted by Andrew Zimmern. Some episodes I have even watched several times over in repeats. However, I was a bit concerned when I heard that Zimmern would be visiting Cuba in the first episode of his new Bizarre World show. Would he show the brutal truth of the harsh life led by the people on that island or would he gloss over the facts and present a happy face view of reality there such as happened when Lucia Newman was relaying propaganda for the Castro dictatorship for...

Americans with "close relatives" in Cuba can visit the island as long and often as they would like under new rules lifting some travel and telecommunications restrictions, the U.S. Treasury said on Thursday. The rules, effective immediately, fleshed out an announcement by President Barack Obama in April to ease the U.S. trade embargo enforced on Cuba after Fidel Castro's leftist revolution half a century ago. But the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control said Americans could spend only $179 per day on visits to family members in Cuba, including aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins.

The US Treasury Thursday eased restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba, a move aimed at promoting "greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba." The move follows an April 13 announcement by President Barack Obama that Washington would lift curbs on travel and money transfers by Cuban-Americans to the island. The 47-year-old US economic embargo on Cuba however remains.