Free Republic

At least 28 Senate Democrats plan to spend hours Monday night and early Tuesday speaking on the Senate floor in a push for congressional action on climate change. It's a strategy that's been in the works for several months, organized by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who've been seeking to raise awareness about their concerns on and off the Senate floor. Adopting a strategy used in the past year by some Senate Republicans, the Democrats will begin speaking Monday night after a series of votes and continue until about 9 a.m. Tuesday, according to...

Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg minced few words in discussing the interview that President Barack Obama gave him on the eve of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's latest visit to Washington. Speaking with Charlie Rose, Goldberg equated Obama's threat to stop supporting Israel in international forums to the talk of a mafia don. Obama told Goldberg, that if Israel doesn't cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, "our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited." He added, "And that has consequences." That statement, Goldberg noted, was a "veiled threat" and "almost up there with, 'Nice little Jewish state...

A Georgia Tech graduate student who set himself on fire while apparently experimenting with bomb-making elements in his apartment last month has died, officials confirmed Thursday. Saamer Akhshabi, an Iranian national, had burns on more than 90 percent of his body following the February 4 explosion in his apartment near the university, where Akhshabi was studying in the College of Computing. Law enforcement officials investigating the case found in Akhshabi's apartment an apparent Molotov Cocktail and multiple plastic bottles filled with gasoline and kerosene. Following the explosion, 26-year-old Akhshabi was taken in critical condition to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta,...

The nation’s top military commander painted a dark picture Tuesday of future U.S. defense capabilities clouded by shrinking Pentagon budgets and adversaries’ technological advances that he said would erode American battlefield superiority. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided his sobering views as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated evaluation of U.S. military strength issued every four years. Dempsey predicted that it would become increasingly difficult to balance the competing demands of protecting allies abroad, securing Americans at home and deterring future wars. “The smaller and less capable military outlined in...

Joint Subcommittee Hearing: Iran’s Support for Terrorism Worldwide Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa 2172 House Rayburn Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Mar 4, 2014 10:00am

An Iranian parliamentary team has embarked on a six-day trip to Cuba and Venezuela despite attempts by the US to disrupt the visits by denying its airspace to the Russian plane carrying the lawmakers.

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog We should send many large ships to Cuba every day and offer U.S. citizenship to every anti-Communuist in Cuba We would have to offer bribes to the Cuban police and military guards, but by U.S. standards, it wouldn’t be expensive: a handful of U.S. currency, bottles of booze, toilet paper, chocolate bars, and pornographic magazines should be enough to get the job done. This would make the police and guards look forward to the arrival of these ships, instead of trying to stop them.After a few months, Castro wouldn’t have anyone to rule over, because everyone...

Huber Matos, a top commander in Fidel Castro’s army who broke from the Cuban revolution in 1959 over its tilt toward Communism, endured a harsh imprisonment for 20 years and became a leader of anti-Castro exiles in Florida, died in Miami on Thursday. He was 95.

(CNSNews.com) – At a time of escalated tensions with the West over Ukraine, Russia says it is negotiating with eight governments around the world for access to military facilities, to enable it to extend its long-range naval and strategic bomber capabilities. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday the military was engaged in talks with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Algeria, Cyprus, the Seychelles, Vietnam and Singapore. “We need bases for refueling near the equator, and in other places,” ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying. Russia is not looking to establish bases in those locations, but to reach agreement to use facilities there when...

A new low in the disgrace of the American political class was reached when Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) took the floor this week to extol the virtues of Cuban communism. A new high immediately followed, as Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) rose to annihilate Harkin, and all the other miserable apologists for left-wing tyranny. The civilized world continues to pay an appalling price for failing to cast out communism with the same vehement disgust we showed towards fascism. Among other things, the difference in our attitude toward these monstrous evils blinds us to their similarities. Too many Western politicians and academics...

In this excellent 14 minute speech, Marco Rubio explains that Venezuela is turning into a Cuban-style dictatorship. He asks what good is Cuba’s high literacy rate if the government prevents the people from reading the things that they want to read. He asks what good is Cuba’s medical care if doctors can make more money from driving a taxi than from working as a doctor. He asks why, if Cuba is as great as its supporters in the U.S. say it is, do so many refugees, doctors, and baseball players flee Cuba for the United States, instead of it being...

For some reason the left can never see the dark red side of communism. Yet they'll trumpet every flaw about America!Yesterday I posted in pictures the story of student protests in Venezuela and asked why the left was either silent in support or on the side of the oppressive government thugocracy? A day earlier, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), an arch liberal reported on a recent trip to Cuba where he swallowed every bit of left wing propaganda that was served up to him by the Cuban government. Senator Rubio (R-FL) followed Harkin to the floor with the real story about...

Using an American to reinforce a policy favored by Moscow is a technique from old Soviet propaganda operations. .... Direct attacks on the freedom fighters in Ukraine continue to come from the Alex Jones’ Infowars.com website, which supported the Russians against Georgia back in 2008, and is now siding with the Russians against the Ukrainians. The show is syndicated by the Genesis Communication Network on over 60 AM and FM radio stations across the United States.... An Alex Jones writer named Kurt Nimmo has said that those struggling for independence from Russia may well replace the Lenin statues being toppled...

(AFP)—A Russian warship was docked in Havana Wednesday, without explanation from Communist Cuba or its state media. The Viktor Leonov CCB-175 boat, measuring 91.5 meters (300 feet) long and 14.5 meters wide, was docked at the port of Havana's cruise ship area, near the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The ship is reportedly armed with 30mm guns and anti-aircraft missiles.

The U.S. Senator from Florida had listened patiently to Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa speak favorably about his recent trip to Cuba, all the while omitting any real references to the oppression of the totalitarian government there. To Rubio, like many Cuban exiles and their descendants, it was too much to bear. “Let me tell you what the Cubans are really good at,” Rubio said Monday when he took to the Senate floor. “What they are really good at is repression…They have exported repression in real time, in our hemisphere, right now.” This wasn’t some Cold War-era fulmination about Castro’s...

Havana (AFP) - A Russian warship was docked in Havana Wednesday, without explanation from Communist Cuba or its state media. The Viktor Leonov CCB-175 boat, measuring 91.5 meters (300 feet) long and 14.5 meters wide, was docked at the port of Havana's cruise ship area, near the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The Vishnya, or Meridian-class intelligence ship, which has a crew of around 200, went into service in the Black Sea in 1988 before it was transferred seven years later to the northern fleet, Russian media sources said.

Half as many Americans view Iran as the United States’ greatest enemy today as did two years ago. As a result, China now edges out Iran and North Korea atop the list. After the top three countries, 9% of Americans mention Russia, 7% name Iraq, 5% Afghanistan, and 3% Syria. Gallup first asked this open-ended question in 2001, and opinions have shifted over that time. In the 2001 survey—10 years after the Persian Gulf War but before the 2003 Iraq war began—Americans named Iraq as the greatest U.S. enemy by a large margin. …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI

MOSCOW, February 26 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is planning to expand its permanent military presence outside its borders by placing military bases in a number of foreign countries, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday. Shoigu said the list includes Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore and several other countries. “The talks are under way, and we are close to signing the relevant documents,” Shoigu told reporters in Moscow. The minister added that the negotiations cover not only military bases but also visits to ports in such countries on favorable conditions as well as the opening of refueling sites for...

SNIPPET: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg is among four people who have been arrested on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences, police have said. Mr Begg, 45, who was held by the US authorities for almost three years, was arrested earlier with two other men and a woman in the West Midlands. He was detained on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas." SNIPPET: "Mr Begg was arrested in Hall Green in Birmingham. The other people arrested - a 36-year-old man from Shirley, a 44-year-old woman and her son, 20, both from Sparkhill - are being...

“How many people here actually want to move to the U.S.?” I said. Her eyes widened and she looked at me like I was stupid even for asking. “A hundred percent,” she said. “Well, maybe not a hundred, but close.”

In the face of the massive violence taking place in Venezuela, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, in a statement released today, sharply criticized Venezuela President and hand-picked successor to Marxist Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro as using strongman tactics similar to Cuban communist tyrant Fidel Castro: “As opposition protests drag into their second week in Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro is taking a page out of the Castro playbook to violently oppress Venezuelans who are demanding an end to his disastrous rule. Activists have been detained and abused, and even shot dead in the streets.” Cruz went onto call out Maduro for arresting...

Three Cuban men attempted to windsurf to Florida on Tuesday, crossing the shark-infested and notoriously turbulent Florida Straits to escape communist rule. Henry Vergara Negrin was the only member of a group leaving Jibacoa (near Havana) to arrive in Florida. Negrin is also the first documented windsurfer to safely reach Florida soil in 20 years. He arrived at the luxurious Reach Resort in Key West 9.5 hours later, after traveling almost 97 miles, and was immediately aided by hotel staff. He was briefly hospitalized, and will be allowed to stay in the United States because of a provision in the...

Venezuelan political opposition leader and founder of the Popular Will Party, Leopoldo López, will spend the next 45 days in the Ramo Verde jail in Los Teques. During that time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office will decide whether it seeks to convict him of the alleged planning of the violent incidents that happened after the opposition rally on February 12 in the center of Caracas. Judge Ralenis Tovar Guillén delivered the detention measure today at 1:00 a.m. inside the military prison where López is held. She made use of a “mobile court” unit — basically a bus repurposed to function as...

"Those numbers aren’t even close to reality, bro. Do you think all the bodies are taken to the morgue? Sometimes the CICPC shoots down gangsters that no one cries for or even asks about, so they stay there in the neighborhood — or if they were too evil they throw the corpses into “special” places."

Snippet: "Iran and its terrorist proxy groups’ influence in Latin America remains a troubling security threat to the region and world, experts said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday."

I just got back from a business trip to Mexico. While there, I met with some Mexicans who had recently traveled to Cuba. What they told me was shocking. The Cuban people are being held on the edge of starvation. According to my Mexican friends, ordinary Cubans are not allowed to eat beef. Instead, what beef there is in Cuba is reserved for the nation’s rulers and for tourists who can pay for it with foreign exchange while staying at the all-inclusive resort hotels. It is in fact illegal to sell beef to a Cuban — not that any...

TECHNOLOGY 7887 kHz, Your Home for Classic Cuban Espionage Radio The shortwave radio signals that the alleged Russian spies were using are still surprisingly effective. By Brett Sokol Posted Tuesday, July 6, 2010, at 1:53 PM ET The FBI documents that accompanied last week's arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies are alternately creepy—who knew the Tribeca Barnes & Noble was a hotbed of espionage?—and comical—turns out even foreign spies wanted to cash in on suburban New Jersey's real estate boom. With a nod to Boris and Natasha, the accused are also said to have used short-wave radio, a 1920s-era technology...

Young Venezuelans have been rallying for two weeks, despite a security crackdown, a local media blackout, and attempts by the government to censor the web and the airwaves. President Nicolás Maduro remains in control, but without Hugo Chavez’s as the unifying behind "Chavismo," there is a chance the unrest may shake the balance of power in Caracas. Wondering why Venezuelans are protesting in the first place? Watch our video:

Che Guevara has the most effective public relations department on earth. The Argentine guerrilla and modern Cuba’s co-founding father has been fashioned into a hipster icon, a counter-cultural hero, an anti-establishment rebel, and a champion of the poor. As James Callaghan once put it, “A lie can be halfway round The truth about Che now has its boots on. He helped free Cubans from the repressive Batista regime, only to enslave them in a totalitarian police state worst than the last. He was Fidel Castro’s chief executioner, a mass-murderer who in theory could have commanded any number of Latin American...

Storyleak: A man who fled Cuba’s communist regime in the 1960s blasted Oregon lawmakers Thursday during a public hearing on proposed gun control legislation. Manuel Martinez, who narrowly escaped Cuba in 1962 after being imprisoned for opposing Fidel Castro, passionately defended the Second Amendment in front of Oregon’s Senate Judiciary Committee, comparing the state’s attempts to pass gun control to moves made by his former government. “Don’t sell me this. A very powerful man tried to sell me this 50-something years ago, I didn’t buy it,” Martinez said. “This is Marxism, plain and clear.”

At a public hearing on proposed gun control legislation, Manuel Martinez, a man who escaped Cuba in 1962 after opposing Fidel Castro and being imprisoned for it, blasts Oregon gun control lawmakers in an impassioned speech that only someone that has lived through communism and Marxism, only someone that watched innocent men, women and children murdered by their own government, only someone that fought against his whole country being enslaved by a dictator, can give. “They come here in those dog and pony show and cry that their going to protect people. You’re going to protect nobody! I want to...

Sympathizer: Tom Harkin, or "Comrade Harkin" to some, says Cuba's health care system is "remarkable." Maybe a better name for Iowa's senior senator, would be "Useful Idiot," a term the USSR used for gullible leftists in the West. Harkin, a Democrat, recently spent a week in Cuba, apparently taking in all that the island prison has to offer. On his return, he told reporters that Cuba is a "poor country" — did he think they didn't know this? — but gushed that "they have a lower child mortality rate than ours." "Their life expectancy is now greater than ours," he...

Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean began arriving in Cuba on Sunday for a summit of a fledgling regional bloc that was conceived as a force for integration and a counterbalance to their most powerful neighbor, the United States. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC for its initials in Spanish, was formed in 2011 and comprises every nation in the Western Hemisphere except the U.S. and Canada. By Sunday, Presidents Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and several foreign ministers were already in Havana for the meeting. […]...

...It is said that wherever Iran goes, Hezbollah is not far behind.”...Iran continues to actively cultivate ties among its allies in Latin America, including Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, a policy that some have warned could bring terrorism closer to U.S. borders. Iranian media has been filled with reports over the past week touting the ten-day visit to Latin America by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for European and American Affairs Majid Takht Ravanchi. In Havana on Thursday, senior Cuban officials praised Iran and expressed interest in further strengthening ties with the Islamic Republic. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parilla said his...

Maria Conchita Alonso, the Cuban-Venezuelan actress who counts as one of her best-known films “Moscow on the Hudson” with Robin Williams, is drawing controversy over a political ad in which she appears with a California Tea Party lawmaker who is running for governor. Several Latino organizations criticized the actress for endorsing Tim Donnelly, an assemblyman who founded a state chapter of the Minutemen, an armed vigilante border patrol group, and who has pushed for a hard line on immigration.

At the Modern Language Association’s “Cuba on Stage” panel in Chicago, which only had eleven people in attendance, (excluding the moderator and three panelists), Fidel Castro escaped criticism and mention by name from several art and music professors. David Lisenby of Albany-SUNY, Elena Valdez of Swarthmore College and Bretton White of Colby College, gave their presentations on Cuban music and art. Lisenby focused on one Cuban playwright, Estorino, and how his play illustrated the plight of gay plays and art pieces. He said, “…the institutionalized homophobia of the performing arts” limited and handicapped Cuban plays in the 1970s and it...

Just dig a little deeper into who has been driving the anti-Gitmo disinformation campaign these past 12 years, and we discover an international, fervently anti-American, far-left coalition attacking the nation through a savvy propaganda effort. This includes those linked to Al Qaeda financiers, communist groups, anarchist movements - backed by sympathetic press and politicians. Regrettably, it’s a coalition President Barack Obama has sided with in his priority to release as many Al Qaeda, Taliban and “affiliates” as humanly possible.the State Dept. will finally designate ex-Gitmo detainee, Libya’s Sufian Bin Qumu, and his group, Ansar Al-Sharia as “foreign terrorist entities” for...

"Cuba's achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [Cuba] demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities - health, education, and literacy." -- Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, April 11, 2000 When Cuba's revolution came to power in 1959, its model of development aimed to link economic growth with advances in social...

A 5.1 earthquake rattled Cuba and Florida yesterday afternoon. No damage, It was a rare event. There are earthquakes in Cuba, but they're mostly in the south. There were reports from Florida of swinging lamps and rattling objects. I felt it as a slight vibration under my forearms as I leaned on my desk. My husband and son, working downstairs, did not feel it at all.

Cubans have reacted with shock after foreign-made cars went on sale for the first time since the 1959 revolution at what some termed "crazy" prices. The state has a monopoly on new car sales and has set massive mark-ups. A Peugeot 508 is listed at $262,000. Peugeot's UK website puts prices from $29,000. State salaries in Cuba average about $20 a month. Freeing up car sales is the latest in a series of reforms. A permit to buy new vehicles is now no longer required. However, only a minority will benefit. The BBC's Sarah Rainsford, in Havana, says the stream...

Over the last 12 months some 3,000 Cubans, mostly doctors, have arrived in the United States after deserting one of the Venezuelan government´s social programs they staff. This accounts for a 60% increase as compared with 2012. In 2012 there were about 5,000 refugee Cuban doctors and nurses in the United States coming from all over the world. Through December 1, 2013 this figure had surged to 8,000, 98% of them came from Venezuela. These are estimates by Dr. Julio Cesar Alfonso, head of the South Florida group Solidarity Without Borders Inc. (SWB), which helps Cuban medical professionals who try

The first commercial passenger flight from Key West to Cuba in more than 50 years has landed in Havana. The nine-passenger flight departed Monday morning, more than two years after U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave Key West the green light to resume flights to and from the island country. …

President Raul Castro issued a stern warning to entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of Cuba’s economic reform, telling parliament on Saturday that “those pressuring us to move faster are moving us toward failure.” Castro has legalized small-scale, private businesses in nearly 200 fields since 2010, but has issued tighter regulations on businesses seen as going too far or competing excessively with state enterprises. In recent months, the government has banned the resale of imported hardware and clothing and cracked down on unlicensed private video game and movie salons. …

U.S. and Cuban officials have held mid-level discussions in Washington and Havana 'We're in talks' with Cuba on a wide range of issues, agreed Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes on Tuesday Middle-men including Latin American diplomats have also been carrying messages back and forth between Washington and Havana The handshake seen 'round the water cooler was no fluke, it turns out.

"There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba's struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people," Obama said, stabbing his finger in the air in the rain-sodden stadium hosting the event.

U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-8th Dist.), who immigrated to the United States from Cuba as a child, today slammed President Obama for shaking hands with Cuban President Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa.

www.tedcruz.orgWhen Cuban leader Raul Castro, brother to Fidel Castro, began speaking at the service memorializing Nelson Mandela, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas walked out. “Senator Cruz very much hopes that Castro learns the lessons of Nelson Mandela,” said Sean Rushton, Cruz’s communications director, according to National Review Online. “For decades, Castro has wrongly imprisoned and tortured countless innocents. Just as Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, Castro should finally release his political prisoners; he should hold free elections, and once and for all set the Cuban people free.” President Obama had earlier shook Castro’s hand, which stirred...

(Reuters) - Russia and Cuba have quietly signed an agreement to write off 90 percent of Cuba's $32 billion debt to the defunct Soviet Union, a deal that ends a 20-year squabble and opens the way for more investment and trade, Russian and European diplomats said. The two sides announced an agreement to settle the debt dispute earlier this year and finalized the deal in Moscow in October. It would have Cuba pay $3.2 billion over 10 years in exchange for Russia forgiving the rest of a $32 billion debt - $20 billion plus service and interest, the diplomats said....

Iran is using diplomatic pouches to smuggle weapons into and out of the country, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Monday. “The Iranians are taking advantage of diplomatic mail in order to transfer these items,” Yaalon told Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, who is visiting Israel. “They are taking advantage of the drug smuggling routes from South America into the United States in order to move weapons there,” he said. Iran, said Yaalon, was pulling out all stops in order to export its Shi'ite Islamic revolution to the West, preparing communities of Shi'ite Muslims for the day they must help Iran...