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The jubilation that greeted the announcement of U.S.-Cuban détente two months ago has faded to resignation for many Cubans who are realizing they’re at the start of a long process unlikely to ease their daily struggles anytime soon. Dreams of U.S. products flooding Havana stores and easy visits to family members in Florida have dissipated, in part because of a coordinated campaign by Cuban state media and officials to lower expectations and remind people that the main planks of the half-century-old U.S. trade embargo remain in place. As Cuban officials head to Washington for a second round of talks on...

As if to unintentionally discredit the phrase "income inequality" as a meaningful indicator of human regress, The New York Times today has a remarkable article lamenting that "As Cuba Shifts Toward Capitalism, Inequality Grows More Visible." Here's a taste: As Cuba opens the door wider to private enterprise, the gap between the haves and have-­nots — and between whites and blacks — that the revolution sought to diminish is growing more evident. […]Raising the [U.S.] remittance cap, along with allowing more Americans to visit Cuba and other steps toward normal diplomatic relations, will help "support the Cuban people," the Obama...

THE Eternal Love of The Father Virtue upon virtue , line upon line of My Word is truly a River of Life as you walk in My Love and not your own for as your Father in Heaven I AM with you always even onto forever but it is My desire you carry My Heart and not your own for your love can be injured But My Love for you ,in you and through you is an unstoppable Truth that sheds off the lies of the enemy and before which all condemnation Must Fall! For My Love is Sovereign and...

It’s a timeworn tactic of the Cuban Communists, something any good magician quickly learns: diversion is your best friend. On Monday, as American administration officials, members of Congress and exiles were making lots of noise about the weekend arrest of some 200 dissidents on the island, Raul Castro and Communist Party Central Committee were meeting in Havana to decide the political fate of the nation.

Cuban dissidents say that more than 100 anti-government activists have been arrested and they are awaiting word Monday on how many have been released. Berta Soler, leaders of the group Ladies in White, said that 53 members of her group and 36 other dissidents were arrested Sunday during the group’s traditional march through Havana after Sunday Mass. …

Was the real reason for Obama’s Executive Order opening Cuba to the United States his desire to fulfill the imprimatur of the Weather Underground to establish Communism in America? A FOIA request forced the FBI to open its top secret archives on the Weather Underground movement. Founded by several urban 1960′s revolutionaries including the husband-wife team of Bill Ayres-Bernardine Dohrn, the WUO grabbed the nation’s attention with its bombings, attacks on police and police headquarters and various acts of domestic terrorism. “The example of the Cuban revolution became the guide for the emerging American student revolutionary” states this FBI vault...

Below, we demonstrate that the U.S. keeps “losing” war after war. There are 3 potential reasons this might be happening: •Is this chaos an intentional way to implement regime change and grab resources? •Or is this a sign of the decline of the American empire … and we just can’t win a war anymore? •Or do those in charge just not really give a damn about winning … and are they just focusing on one short-term goal after another?

In the 2016 campaign, presidential candidates are, apparently, going to be responsible for what other candidates say and, what the heck, anything a former politician of the same party might say -- even if he last won office nearly 20 years ago.* ... (* Applies only to Republicans.)

Marco Rubio is hot again. The junior senator from Florida is in the midst of a comeback, fueled by a self-assured stand against easing relations with Cuba, some savvy campaigning in Iowa and a meeting that impressed well-heeled donors. He still faces a daunting path to the White House. Voters in his own state would rather he seek a second Senate term in 2016. He’s no longer the only bright young Republican star in the field. And he continues to come under fire for a shift on immigration, particularly from the Latino community that Republicans want to woo. Rubio seems...

Should have let him rot there... Cuban prisons are lovely. Remember recently when Obama was attempting to snuggle-up to the vile Castro regime? And how they laughed at our lil' useful idiot -took whatever they could- then asked for much, much more?  While offering us nothing of any significance whatsoever -not even a meager apology for almost bringing the world to the cusp of WWIII in the 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis...? Oh, except they released Alan Gross, the US government contractor working with USAID who smuggled computer equipment and satellite dishes to Cuba's small Jewish community on four separate occasions--...

We understand that Nancy Pelosi is married to a very successful businessman in California. We are very happy that the Pelosi family has enjoyed the fruits of capitalism. Of course, they've enjoyed those fruits because they live in a country that respects property rights and does not confiscate businesses. This week, Rep Pelosi went to Cuba and stayed at the Hotel Saratoga. Let me share this from our good friends at Capitol Hill Cubans: "The Hotel Saratoga is a beautiful neoclassical structure in Old Havana. It was purchased in 1939 by Blanco Lopez and Co., headed by Jose Blanco and...

Russia agreed to provide military training for three leftist regimes in Latin America and increase military visits and exercises following a visit last week to the region by Moscow’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Pentagon officials said. Shoygu met with defense and military leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and signed several agreements on warship visits and military training during the visit, which ran from Feb. 11 to 14. It is not clear whether any new arms deals were completed during the visit. Defense officials said the Russian leader is seeking bases in the region for strategic bomber flights that Shoygu...

Calling the twice-elected Ledezma "a vampire," Maduro vowed an "iron fist" response to the alleged coup plot.

Gerardo Hernandez, a spy for Communist Cuba and the man responsible for the murder of four humanitarian workers (three of whom were American citizens) over international waters, was freed from prison last year by the Obama administration, due in part to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This was revealed at a February 6, 2015, celebration of Hernandez’s release, along with two of his fellow Cuban agents (collectively known as the “Cuban 5.. At the beginning of the event, an IPS official thanked all who who took part in the 17-year campaign and singled out a number of organizations that...

China's Real Estate Market Crashing... Real Estate is the single biggest domestic lending segment in China. Combined with deflation in Iron Ore, Steel, Copper, and other industrial metals China's collateral quality is looking very very shaky compared to loan volume... SNIP While the world's attention is glued to events in Greece, the real action continues to evolve quietly thousands of kilometers east, in China, where the near record surge in new loans remains unable to offset the dramatic slowdown in shadow banking issuance. And while China's bubble-chasing, animal spirits have recently reoriented themselves from real estate to the stock market,...

At about $50 a barrel, crude oil prices are down by more than half from their June 2014 peak of $107. They may fall more, perhaps even as low as $10 to $20. Here’s why.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is leading a delegation to Cuba on Tuesday while Congress is out on recess. It is the first official House delegation trip to Cuba since President Obama announced lifting certain restrictions on Cuba in December. The delegation, which is comprised of eight other Democratic lawmakers specializing in foreign affairs, trade and agriculture, will meet with Cuban government officials, local community leaders, American officials stationed in Cuba, and Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, the archbishop of Havana. Pelosi said the lawmakers will discuss potential changes in U.S. policies toward Cuba regarding agriculture and trade issues....

Monday, February 16, 2015 A Revisionist Muslim History of America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blogTurkish President Erdogan’s claim that Columbus encountered a mosque in Cuba (the explorer actually saw a rock whose shape he compared to the dome of a mosque) and a Saudi Imam claiming that Columbus had sailed to America to attack Muslims are typical of an emerging genre of Muslim revisionist history that lays claim to America based on an imaginary earlier Muslim presence here. While these examples may be laughable, Muslim historical revisionism has taken root in academia. It can be found...

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/economics/2007/12/17/Why-Oil-Prices-Will-Drop

A new HIV strain in some patients in Cuba appears to be much more aggressive and can develop into AIDS within three years of infection. Researchers said the progression happens so fast that treatment with antiretroviral drugs may come too late. Without treatment, HIV infection usually takes 5 to 10 years to turn into AIDS, according to Anne-Mieke Vandamme, a medical professor at Belgium's University of Leuvan. According to the study, published in the journal EBioMedicine, Vandamme was alerted to the new aggressive strain of HIV by Cuban health officials who wanted to find out what was happening.

Senator Ted Cruz, the boat-rocking limited government constitutional conservative Senator from Texas, provided another one of his patented cross examinations of a smoke-blowing government official at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz, the son of legal immigrants from Cuba, asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about border security measures – the so-called “triggers” – contained in the “Gang of Eight's” immigration bill. Specifically, Senator Cruz asked, “If there are no objective metrics, if it is simply the subjective assessment of a host of factors, how can we have any confidence that the border will be secured and that any...

They have the heft of an ax, a blade nearly as long as a sword, and the intimidation power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Cheap and easily bought, machetes in America have commonly been reserved for underbrush and sugar-cane cutting. But now, in a spreading trend that so far has drawn little national attention, criminals are using machetes as weapons, striking fear in cities and towns across the country. Witness these recent incidents: In the heartland Indiana city of Evansville in February, a robber pulled a machete on a convenience-store cashier, who put...

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has proposed to Cuba the construction of a mosque on the Caribbean island during a visit to Havana, pushing ahead with a plan apparently inspired by his belief that Muslims discovered the Americas. After talks with Cuban President Raul Castro, Erdogan said on Wednesday he had sought approval for Turkey to build the place of worship in Havana that would be based on the model of a mosque in the Ortakoy district on the European shore of the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul. Erdogan also told reporters the Cuban government had agreed with Saudi Arabia on a...

It’s always a pleasure returning to the beautiful Lone Star State. This week I’m in Houston speaking with the industrious men and women of America’s oil patch at the North American Prospect Expo. These are the unsung heroes of our nation’s energy renaissance. In the brutal economic environment of the last six years, one sector had good news to report, and it came straight out of America’s oil patch. From 2007 to 2012, employment in the energy industry rose a dramatic 31.6 percent while employment nationwide fell 2.7 percent. U.S. oil production increased from 6.5 million barrels per day in...

Governor Palin wrote a great article for the Houston Tribune today loaded with a lot of good facts on energy.  She also notes an interesting flip flop from our president on the matter. It’s always a pleasure returning to the beautiful Lone Star State. This week I’m in Houston speaking with the industrious men and women of America’s oil patch at the North American Prospect Expo. These are the unsung heroes of our nation’s energy renaissance.In the brutal economic environment of the last six years, one sector had good news to report, and it came straight out of America’s oil patch. From...

U.S. officials consider removing Castro regime from terror listU.S. officials are considering removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, even as Cuban allies continue to launch military attacks and trade for weapons. As part of President Barack Obama’s announcement in December that he would normalize relations with Cuba, Obama instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to review Cuba’s terror designation and issue a report in six months. While reports indicate that the administration is leaning toward removing Cuba from the terror list, such an action would conflict with the Cuban regime’s support for Colombian militants, Iran, and...

Susan Rice pushed back on critics of President Obama's foreign policy Friday as she unveiled the White House’s new national security strategy. Rice, the White House's national security adviser, said in a speech at the Brookings Institution that the nation is “stronger than we have been in a very long time” despite the bitter debates raging in Washington. “Too often, what's missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there is a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World...

President Barack Obama’s eagerness to cut deals with Cuba at almost any cost could yield a “strategic disaster” in which the Russian military winds up controlling Guantanamo Bay, Cuba scholar Jaime Suchlicki told “MidPoint” host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV. The historic re-start of diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba ordered by Obama does not alter the fact that the communist nation’s rulers neither want nor feel they need improved relations with the United States, said Suchlicki, director of the Cuban Institute at the University of Miami. Just look at all the demands issued by Cuban leader Raul Castro, said...

Two distinct but ultimately inextricable controversies have swirled around U.S. foreign policy in recent days, both more or less involving Cuba. The normalizing of relations with Havana, which had slipped from the headlines, has returned with a vengeance thanks to Raúl Castro's ever-growing list of demands, which may eventually grow to include Pres. Obama's confession that it was actually he who ordered Navy Seals to assassinate José Martí in 1895. Specifically, Cuba's demand for the return of Guantánamo has enraged many on both the U.S. right and in Democratic circles. More importantly, Cuba's demand coincided with the onset of coverage...

The government says Nisman's allegations and his death were linked to a power struggle at Argentina's intelligence agency and agents who had recently been fired. One of those fired in a December shake-up was Antonio Stiusso, a senior spy who had helped Nisman with his investigation of the 1994 bombing that killed 85. The government has said Stiusso misled Nisman. Citing sources close to the investigation into Nisman's death, Argentine news agency DyN said that Stiusso had been called to testify at 11 a.m. (1400 GMT) in Buenos Aires. The lead investigator into the case, Viviana Fein, called upon him...

Cuba wants Guantánamo Bay back. And if President Obama wanted to, he could just give it to them. The White House has lately been pushing for normalizing relations with Cuba, which have been suspended since the 1959 communist revolution. President Raúl Castro said that one precondition for normalizing ties with the United States would be returning the 45 square mile U.S.-controlled territory at Guantánamo Bay. Though most noted for its terrorist detainee facility, the U.S. has maintained a naval station there for over 100 years. Last week, White House spokesman Josh Earnest rejected Castro’s demand, saying that while President Obama...

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach. From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic. They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an...

In 2008, then-candidate Obama made a promise to close Guantánamo Bay, which could be chalked up to political talk. However, every time the State of the Union speech comes around, he continues to talk of closing Gitmo. Using the same narrative numerous times, he has not come to grips with the error of his ways. What the president seems to be ignoring is the rate of recidivism. Liz Cheney noted that the Bush administration probably released more detainees than this administration. However, an important point she makes is that the Obama administration should look upon this as a cautionary tale....

Saying that President Obama’s apology for 50 years of aggression, discrimination, and abuse of his country by the United States government “was a good start,” current Cuban dictator Raul Castro demanded further concessions as the price for normalizing relations between Cuba and the US. First on Castro’s list was compensation for the economic damage done to Cuba by the US trade embargo. “Prior to this embargo Cubans had the highest standard of living in Latin America,” Castro pointed out. “Now, Cubans are worse off than any country in the western hemisphere.” Castro called upon President Obama to “use his executive...

U.S.-Cuba talks are getting more and more interesting. The Castro regime wants Guantanamo back, essentially the naval base, since the city of Guantanamo has always been part of Cuba, compensation for the U.S. embargo, and the cancellation of Radio & TV Marti. It won't happen. Another unresolved issue is the status of U.S. nationals living in Cuba, i.e. fugitives of U.S. law. We've all heard about Joanne Chesimard, who killed a police officer in New Jersey and was granted asylum in the island. However, there are others, and apparently we don't have a clue or didn't bother to ask the...

The construction of Cuba's first Roman Catholic Church since 1959 is set to begin in the village of Sandino in the province of Pinar del Rio. Cuba has recently experienced warming ties both with the U.S. and the Vatican. "There is money to begin, building materials to begin, and we have the permissions to start, so everything is ready," said Jorge Enrique Serpa Pérez, the bishop of Pinar del Río, according to Breitbart News. It is a significant development in the largely Catholic country, which had exiled and jailed a number of priests belonging to the Vatican following the 1959...

A few weeks ago, Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla made a surprise announcement that soon he would submit legislation that would give undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens the right to vote in island-wide elections. The move has been commended by immigrants’ rights groups, but is viewed by many on the island as a cheap move by an unpopular governor to try and fix the next election. It’s also left many people on the island asking: can the governor legally do it? The answer, it turns out, seems to be “yes.” Federal law doesn’t stop states or cities from allowing...

A request by US Republican Senator Marco Rubio to create an “independent” committee to investigate the death of Argentine AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman has been described by Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich as an “imperialist” approach to “sovereign” countries' affairs. “The Republic of Argentina is an autonomous, sovereign and independent country. (Marco) Rubio with his imperialist vision fails to recognize the United Nations charter since the intromission in the affairs of other states constitutes an interference of an imperialist vision,” the head of ministers said this morning during his daily message to the press at the government house. Rubio, he...

Enemies that self-perpetuate the cannons of destruction now permutating all facets of our lives You know, there is an old adage which claims that as we grow older we grow wiser. And so it is, as well it should be. There used to be a time when, politically speaking, I would always attempt to rationalize, legitimize, if you will, most antithetical historical events. I found myself invariably searching for yet genuine reasons on which to fault people’s adversative political incongruities, especially those that marked mankind and the human race in ways which we will never understand. The more I thought...

Now, to add insult to injury, Castro has started issuing his own set of demands. In a speech at the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States summit in Costa Rica on Wednesday, he said there'd be no normalization of relations unless the U.S. ends the trade embargo, closes the naval base at Guantanamo Bay and takes Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terror. Oh, and he also wants the U.S. to stop allowing Cubans to stay in this country just because they manage to set foot on American soil. That's been causing a brain drain from the...

Raúl Castro knows a sucker when he sees one. Having watched Barack Obama, the world’s worst negotiator, hand concession after concession to the mullahs of Iran, he is going for a big score in the current negotiations over resumption of diplomatic relations, at President Obama’s initiative. Far from being grateful that he has been handed huge plums, he is making ridiculous demands. (And given Obama’s track record, you can’t call them unrealistic.) Alastair Jamieson reports for NBC News: Cuban President Raul Castro has demanded that the United States hand back its Guantanamo Bay military base - an apparent bargaining tool...

Foreign Policy: Soon after President Obama announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba, Sen. Marco Rubio called him the worst negotiator since Jimmy Carter. Cuban officials are now proving Rubio right.

The good news: The discomfort over the embargo of Cuba has led to a good bargaining position in talks with the US. The bad news: Raul Castro’s the one that thinks so. Far from being grateful for the diplomatic overture from Barack Obama, Castro wants the US to pay reparations for the economic damage that Castro says the embargo caused, plus the immediate return of control over Guantanamo Bay, as the opening ante for normalizing relations: Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on...

Less than three weeks after President Barack Obama announced the loosening of a 52-year-old embargo with Cuba, a group of 18 people from Boulder traveled to the island nation. While spending American dollars on a beach getaway in Cuba is still illegal, the United States government has relaxed travel restrictions over the years so that American citizens can take "people to people" tours, which must be education-based and led by a Cuban government-approved tour agency.

More than 25 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall, Russian lawmakers are mulling a proposal to condemn West Germany’s 1990 “annexation” of East Germany as Moscow’s answer to Western denunciation of its seizure of Crimea. Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of Russian parliament’s lower house, on Wednesday ordered legislators to consider an appeal from a Communist Party deputy to denounce the reunification of Germany as an illegal land grab of East Germany by its western neighbor. The collapse of Socialist rule in East Germany—officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—heralded the end of the Cold War, and was met with jubilation...

Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations. Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but 'if these problems aren't resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn't make any sense.' ....The U.S. established the military base in 1903, and the current Cuban government has been demanding the land's return since the 1959 revolution that brought...

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica—Cuban President Raúl Castro demanded Wednesday that the U.S. return the base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations. Mr. Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but “if these problems aren’t resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense.” Mr. Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Dec. 17 that they would move toward renewing full diplomatic relations by reopening embassies in...

(Reuters) - Cuba will not accept any interference from the United States, President Raul Castro said on Wednesday, warning that meddling in its internal affairs would make rapprochement between the two countries "meaningless." His comments came after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, the highest-ranking U.S. government official to visit the island in nearly 40 years, last week met with dissidents a day after talks with Cuban government officials. "Everything appears to indicate that the aim is to foment an artificial political opposition via economic, political and communicational means," Castro told a summit in Costa Rica. "If these problems...

In December, U.S. President Barack Obama surprised the world by announcing that America would restore diplomatic ties with Cuba after 53 years of hostility. The terms of the deal completely favor Cuba. Cuba did not have to abandon communism or reform its dictatorial governance. The U.S. got nothing out of this deal. Then why did the president make this deal? Only our booklet America Under Attack fully answers that question! (Request your free copy.) What is this all about? We could write quite a bit about the president bypassing Congress and using yet another executive action to make this deal....