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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...

A Martian visiting earth this week, coasting TV channels and perusing papers, would have to conclude that among the items that most interest this planet’s news bureaus is the plight of former political prisoners, especially black ones. Well, many Cubans (many of them black) suffered longer and more horrible incarceration in Castro’s KGB-designed dungeons than Nelson Mandela spent in South Africa’s (relatively) comfortable prisons, which were open to inspection by the Red Cross. Castro has never allowed a Red Cross delegation anywhere near his real prisons. Now let’s see if you recognize some of the Cuban ex-prisoners and torture-victims: Mario...

Reports coming out of Cuba this evening indicate that Berta Soler, the leader of Cuba's peaceful dissident organziation the Ladies in White, was arrested by Cuban State Security upon her return to Havana today. Her whereabouts and her condition are currently unknown. Her husband Angel Moya, a former political prisoner who was at the airport waiting for her, states he was told by a uniformed police officer that his wife had been arrested for agitation and challenging the order in Cuba.

“Havana is like Pompeii and Castro is its Vesuvius.” – Anthony Daniels Almost every picture I’ve ever seen of Cuba’s capital shows the city in ruins. Una Noche, the 2012 gut punch of a film directed by Lucy Mulloy, captures in nearly every shot the savage decay of what was once the Western Hemisphere’s most beautiful city. So I was stunned when I saw the restored portion of Old Havana for the first time. It is magnificent. And it covers a rather large area. A person could wander around there all day, and I did. At first glance you could...

Elian Gonzalez, the focus of a bitter international custody dispute after he was rescued at sea as a child, left Cuba on Friday for the first time since 2000, when the U.S. government returned him to the island. Gonzalez, who also turned 20 on Friday, traveled to Quito, Ecuador, as part of a 200-member Cuban delegation to a weeklong youth conference there. "Fidel Castro for me is like a father," Gonzalez said in the recent interview. "I don't profess to have any religion but if I did my God would be Fidel Castro. He is like a ship that knew...

In 2000, the American Jewish Committee canceled a Washington luncheon scheduled to honor Mandela after he said that 13 Jews tried for “espionage” in Iran were receiving a “fair trial”. Mandela laid a wreath on the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution, warmly greeting his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We are indebted to the Islamic Revolution”, Mandela proclaimed. It is the same Mandela who claimed that Communist Cuba had achieved the “systematic eradication of racism”. In 1990, Mandela likened Israel to a “terrorist state” and declared that “we do not regard the PLO as a terrorist...

Cruz’s father, Rafael, fled Cuba and the Castro regime for the U.S. as a teenager. | AP PhotoClose Sen. Ted Cruz said while there are some differences between President Barack Obama and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Obama is displaying “dictatorial� tendencies as president.During an interview by Jorge Ramos on Fusion, the Texas Republican was asked about comments his father has made comparing Obama to Castro and whether the analogy was “fair� and if he’d like to draw a distinction between the two.“Obviously, there are enormous differences; the United States is not imprisoning and torturing political dissidents,� Cruz said...

By Nick Miroff, Global Post HAVANA, Cuba — One country, two systems. The formula has worked for China’s business-minded communists. Can it succeed in Cuba? President Raul Castro’s government is building its own version of a Chinese-style economic zone on the banks of the Mariel Bay, 30 miles west of Havana, where the laws of scientific Marxism will not apply. Inside a 180-square-mile special economic zone, Cuban planners have envisioned a global capitalist enclave where foreign companies can install manufacturing plants, research centers and operational hubs. This island within an island will operate on the business principles of globalization --...

“I have a huge critique of the current government there (in Cuba) because it’s undemocratic,” snapped Bill de Blasio to a Cuban–American radio interviewer two weeks ago. “I also think it’s well known that there’s some good things that happened — for example, in health care.” Does it occur to people nowadays that Stalinist regimes might lie? For a guy who presumes to run New York Bill de Blasio sure seems bereft of one of natives’ most celebrated attributes: their “street smarts.” Who told de Blasio that Castro’s totalitarian fiefdom has good healthcare? Maybe he saw it on CNN? Indeed...

It may have been a mystery at one time, but not 50 years later. The fingerprints of the Soviet intelligence service and its Cuban affiliate are all over Oswald. One of the main controversies covered superficially in the program was Oswald’s trip to Mexico City—a favorite place for foreign communist governments to contact communist agents living in the U.S. PBS claimed that Oswald visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies looking for a visa, but was rebuffed by communist officials. It said, “…in the end both the Russians and the Cubans rejected him. All his plans to fight for Castro and...

Elian Gonzalez, the object of a 1999-2000 custody squabble involving Washington, Havana and family members on both sides of the Florida Strait, holds a piece of U.S. legislation directly responsible for what he endured then, Cuban official media said Monday. "They were very sad times for me, which marked me for my whole life. I was never given the chance to have a moment to think about my mother, who as a result of that (U.S.) Cuban Adjustment Act died at sea," the now-19-year-old Gonzalez said last weekend during a Union of Young Communists event.

Cyprus, a tiny island of less than one million people, is a small scale study in “big banking out of control,” “insane spending like there is no tomorrow,” coupled with “socialism runs out of other people’s money.” While researching the bailin and bailout of early summer, I found disturbing accounts of their socialized health care. In return for a 10 billion bailout for Cyprus, the EU bureaucrats have demanded a bailin (read confiscation) of Cypriots’ savings and checking accounts. One bank offered worthless shares but another did not. Cypriots felt that they were used as “guinea pigs” to test if...

Being a compassionate conservative I have taken pity on all those liberals out there who must feel like FOOLS for supporting ObamaCare especially if their insurance plans have been cancelled and replaced with much higher premiums as happened to that idiot Dylan Ratigan, former MSDNC host. As a way to wash away their incredible feeling of guilt and foolishness for having supported the worst piece of legislation ever, I have suggested the establishment of ObamaCare Confession Booths as you can see in this VIDEO. It is recommended that the liberal supplicants demonstrate their sincerity by wearing DUnce caps while...

President Obama told a group of donors at a high-dollar Miami fundraiser that the United States needed to be "creative and thoughtful" as it continued to update its policies towards Cuba. "We've started to see changes on the island," Obama told the crowd, which included Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Sen. Michael Bennett (D-Colo.). The fundraiser — with tickets that ranged between $2,500 and $32,400 — was held at the Miami home of Jeorge Mas, the chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation. The non-profit group dedicated to restoring democracy on the island is one of the most influential Cuban...

Cuba's Secret Side The Truth Revealed The Truth Revealed looks beyond the politics and propaganda at the Cubans themselves.

Philadelphia city council members have approved a resolution that calls for socialist historian Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” to be taught in public high schools. The resolution was backed by council members Jim Kenny and Jannie Blackwell, who believe that Zinn’s far-left socialist vision of American history is currently missing from high school textbooks. “Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ emphasizes the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history; not simply the version retold by those powerful enough to ensure history remembers their actions...

That Khrushchev swept the floor with Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis was mainstream conservative conclusion throughout much of the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, for instance, represented opposite poles of the Republican establishment of their time. "We locked Castro's communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal," growled Barry Goldwater about the JFK’s Missile Crisis “solution.” "Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” complained Richard Nixon. "Then gave the Soviets squatters rights in our backyard." Generals Curtis Le May and Maxwell Taylor represented opposite poles of the military establishment. "The biggest...

The father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that the "liberal media" in the U.S. has an "evil agenda" that reminds him of the “ministry of misinformation” in communist countries like Cuba. In an interview with radio host Glenn Beck, Cruz said that the media was interested in "destroying what this country is all about.” “In your previous segment you were talking about imagining America,” Cruz said, according to a video clip obtained by BuzzFeed. “I’ll tell you what, it almost seemed like I was listening to what was happening in Cuba during Castro. The very same thing, the ministry...

First term Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, represents Texas’ 20th congressional district, made up of the western half of San Antonio and Bexar County. The district reflects the 64 percent Latino population in San Antonio. Castro and his twin brother, Julian, the mayor of San Antonio, are considered rising stars in the Democratic Party. .... Castro shared his thoughts on what Texans are now thinking about the Republican junior senator, whose father is originally from Cuba. “During the government shutdown and now with the possibility of defaulting on the debt, Texans have realized his role and how extreme his voice is...

Leadership: Iran's back to chanting "death to America," China's calling for a "de-Americanized" world, Russia kicks us to the curb in the Mideast and Venezuela hauls off five of our sailors. And what does the White House say? The sharp rise in anti-American incidents from antagonistic regimes stands in stark contrast to the environment three decades ago, when Ronald Reagan was president. As Beltway intelligentsia derided the Gipper as an "amiable dunce," the world's leading troublemakers saw the U.S. president entirely differently: as someone they'd rather not tangle with. That's why Iran's ayatollahs dropped the U.S. diplomatic hostages they'd been...

A week ago, President Obama publicly threw his support to Bill de Blazio (shown in suit), the Democratic Party candidate for New York City mayor, joining Hollywood activists Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte — along with Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and a host of veteran “Progressives” who are endorsing the former NYC councilman and public advocate. On the same day that President Obama announced his endorsement (September 23), the New York Times published an extensive investigation of de Blasio’s radical Marxist background, focusing particularly on his devotion to the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. De Blasio also...

A United States Commercial vessel was seized by Venezuela as it was doing seismic testing in Guyanan waters for Anadarko Petroleum Corp, when a Venezuelan ship detained it and is now escorting it to Margarita Island in Venezuela. For decades Gyana and Venezuela have disputed the borders, but this is the first incident to come out of it. "It was then clear that the vessel and its crew were not only being escorted out of Guyana's waters, but were under arrest," the ministry said. "These actions by the Venezuelan naval vessel are unprecedented in Guyana Venezuela relations."

By New York standards the city’s (probable) next mayor Bill De Blasio wouldn’t merit a backstage pass at a Castro concert. The Stalinist dictator’s fan base in the city he craved to incinerate is much too vast and passionate to allow room in the long queue for pictures and autographs to any but the genuinely smitten, who literally swarm in New York City. “I have a huge critique of the current government there (in Cuba) because it’s undemocratic,” snapped de Blasio to a Cuban–American radio interviewer last week. “It doesn’t allow freedom of the press, and I think there’s a...

HAVANA (AP) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson ended a four-day visit to Cuba on Monday without getting to visit a U.S. government development subcontractor who is serving a 15-year sentence in the Caribbean nation. The civil rights activist said he had requested access to Alan Gross of Maryland, but island authorities told him it couldn’t be arranged in time. “I certainly inquired about him. No American can come here in good conscience and not ask about him,” Jackson said. “I would hope we would maintain our vigil in trying to gain his release.”

This morning a truck broke the security barrier in a Caracas highway exchange and got stuck in the middle of the highway. The truck carried packs of frozen meat. It was 6 AM. Within minutes there were already people trying to loot the truck instead than trying to save the driver, who ended up dead later. The cops came and stopped for a while the actions. But since the Caracas main highway was paralyzed, motorbikes came from all around and started trying to rob all the unhappy drivers stuck in traffic. At 9 AM about 300 bikers arrived and tried...

President Obama's on-and-off-again planned American attack on Syria is nothing new. Besides its five declared wars, America has a habit of intervening all over the world. Even apart from clandestine CIA operations, and even after the unhappy end of the Vietnam War, we have attacked lots of countries and non-state militias. The roll call of recent American military interventions is quite astounding: Cambodia, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Liberia, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Zaire and Afghanistan. Even the notion of Past American isolationism is a myth. In the four years between 1912 and 1916 alone, the U.S. sent...

"If Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Jim Baker, and the US Supreme Court hadn't tampered with the results,” raved Terry McAuliffe shortly after his election to Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in February 2001, “Al Gore would be president, George Bush would be back in Austin, and John Ashcroft would be home reading Southern Partisan magazine." No pussyfooter this Terry McAuliffe, now running for governor in Virginia. This “Lee Atwater of the Democrats” came out swinging. Republicans lie and cheat. Can’t trust ‘em. Years earlier McAuliffe claimed that the Reagan electoral team conspired with the Iranian Mullahs to release the...

The Obama administration has given Mexico enough input and authority over U.S. matters that its lawmakers felt emboldened enough to order the release of four communist spies serving lengthy sentences in federal prison. The Mexican Cámara de Diputados, which is similar to the U.S. House of Representatives, actually passed a measure this week commanding American officials to free the foreign intelligence officers, agents of Cuba’s communist government convicted in 2001 for espionage, conspiracy to commit murder and acting as an agent of a foreign government. One of the spies is already out on probation after serving a 13-year sentence but...

At 4 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1959, an hour when there never were commercial flights from Havana, David Atlee Phillips was lounging in a lawn chair there, sipping champagne after a New Year's Eve party, when a commercial aircraft flew low over his house. He surmised that dictator Fulgencio Batista was fleeing because Fidel Castro was arriving. He was right. Soon he, and many others, would be spectacularly wrong about Cuba. … In 1972, the Bay of Pigs made a cameo appearance in the Watergate shambles, which involved some Cubans and Americans active in the invasion. On the June 23...

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro has published an article applauding a Russian-backed proposal to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. … Castro also lauds Russia as a “brave country” that “stayed firm before the unusual pretension of the government of the United States, threatening to launch an overwhelming attack against the Syrian defenses.” …

On September 11, 1973 the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet slapped Fidel Castro so smartly that his Stalinist regime (and its dutiful U.S. Media minions) are still sniveling and sniffling and wiping away tears of shock, pain and humiliation. True to form, The New York Times leads the sniveling. They just published an article decrying the Chilean “tragedy” (i.e. Chile saving itself from Castroism with a military coup and today the richest and freest nation in Latin America.) The article’s author Ariel Dorfman is a former advisor to Chile’s Marxist president and Castro acolyte Salvador Allende. This same...

Hardly a week passes without Hillary Clinton providing yet more evidence that she intends to run for president. Clinton yesterday tweeted what was presumably intended as congratulations to Diana Nyad for her extraordinary feat of swimming 110 miles from Cuba to Key West, the first person to do so without the safety net of a shark cage. Here is what Clinton tweeted after Nyad reached Florida -- Flying to 112 countries is a lot until you consider swimming between 2. Feels like I swim with sharks - but you actually did it! Congrats! Best example of a humble brag in...

The Obama administration views Israel as one of the top spying threats facing its intelligence services, leaked documents reveal. A secret budget request obtained by The Washington Post from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden lumps Israel alongside U.S. foes Iran and Cuba as “key targets” for U.S. counterintelligence efforts. The document suggests Israel does not believe U.S. assurances that its interests are aligned with Israel's on crucial issues such as Iran and peace talks with the Palestinians. “To further safeguard our classified networks, we continue to strengthen insider threat detection capabilities across the Community,” reads the FY 2013 congressional budget...

HAVANA TIMES — Cuba’s Industriales baseball veterans finally have a stadium to play at in the Miami area.Somos Cuba, the organization promoting this sporting event, announced that the stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, had agreed to host the two matches scheduled for Saturday, August 31 starting at 11 in the morning..

<p>DIA senior intelligence analyst Ana Belen Montes originally came under suspicion of being a spy for Cuba's communist government in 1994. However, DIA and FBI counterspies could not prove she was engaging in espionage and Montes continued passing secrets to Havana until she was discovered in late 1999.</p>

To the soundtrack of fingers banging on keyboards, a cluster of Internet users recently caught up on their e-mails, updated their statuses on Facebook and looked for love on Match.com. The activity would seem unremarkable in any other Internet cafe except there were no lattes for sale and no soft-rock music being piped over speakers, and the owner of "the cafe" is the Cuban government. The "navigation hall" as such establishments are called here, is one of 118 government-run Internet access points that Cuban authorities opened in June, marking a small step towards greater connectivity in a country with some...

According to a CNN report by Jake Tapper the CIA and the U.S. State Department may have been trying to supply Syrian jihadists with Libyan arms from Benghazi when the operation blew up in their face last September. The UK Telegraph summed it up best: “The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports.” “Same as it ever was,” say some Cuba-watchers. “Déjà vu all over...

The Russian military recently dispatched a guided-missile warship to Cuba as part of what U.S. officials say are growing military, intelligence and economic ties between Moscow and Havana. [snip] “The cruiser Moskva and the large seagoing tanker Ivan Bubnov set off for Havana..." [snip] After Havana, the warship will visit Caracas, Venezuela; Managua, Nicaragua; and Praia Port in the Cape Verde Islands off eastern Africa. The visit to Cuba is part of what the U.S. officials said is a push by Moscow to boost relations with Cuba in the military, energy and transportation sectors. The effort was kicked off in...

Panamanian authorities have found two Soviet-era MiG-21 fighter jets aboard a North Korea-flagged ship seized this month as it tried to pass through the Panama Canal after departing from Cuba. The supersonic jets were found alongside missile and other weapons parts concealed in a shipment of sugar, in what could constitute a violation of tough UN sanctions on Pyongyang. Cuba has claimed the shipment, intercepted earlier this month, consists of "obsolete" weapons it was sending to North Korea to be refurbished and returned. UN sanctions experts plan to travel to Panama to inspect the shipment on August 5. Panama's President...

Investigators in Panama have found two MiG-21 fighter jets in cargo containers aboard a North Korean ship carrying weapons from Cuba. COLON, Panama — Panamanian investigators unloading the cargo of a seized North Korean ship that carried arms from Cuba have found the two MiG-21 fighter jets the Cuban government had said were on board, the government said Sunday. Alongside the two supersonic planes, originally produced by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, officials found two missile radar systems on board the Chong Chon Gang, President Ricardo Martinelli told reporters in the Atlantic port of Colón. The discovery, which...

Sen. Ted Cruz rejected questions Sunday over his eligibility to be president, saying that although he was born in Canada “the facts are clear” that he’s a U.S. citizen. “My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen by birth,” Cruz told ABC. “I’m not going to engage in a legal debate.” The Texas senator was born in Calgary, where his mother and father were working in the oil business. His father, Rafael Cruz, left Cuba in the 1950s to study at the University of Texas and subsequently became a naturalized citizen. President...

Western Hemisphere Threat This week Panama seized a North Korean cargo ship that was on its way back home from Cuba. Panamanian authorities were tracking the cargo vessel as it entered the Panama Canal as they believed the ship was carrying drugs. The ship was stopped and searched. The crew resisted the boarding for inspection as it turns out they really did have something to hide. After subduing the ship’s crew the Panamanians didn’t find drugs but instead turned up undeclared weapons in violation of UN sanctions regarding the North Korean Nuclear program. Denial In a display of sheer chutzpah...

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a military method for searching Guantanamo Bay detainees. The searches, initiated in the last few months, included frisking of the groin and anal areas before detainees are taken from their cells to meetings or to phone calls with their lawyers, and after they return. Lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners say some detainees found the new searches so disrespectful toward their religion that they choose to forgo talking to their lawyers to avoid them. In a one-sentence order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed a ruling by U.S. District...

The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida confirmed on Wednesday that the group's No. 2 figure, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Cuba has said missiles and fighter jets found buried under sacks of sugar on a ship bound for North Korea were being sent to the secretive state to be repaired. The Caribbean nation admitted last night that it owned the military equipment and said it was due to be returned to the island once repairs had been completed. [Snip] The 35 man crew--made up of North Koreans--tried to resist arrest by rioting with the authorities. The ship, which has been identified as the 14,000-ton Chong Chon Gang, was carrying missiles and other arms ´hidden in containers underneath the cargo

National Security: Cuba, long derided in international policy circles as a basket case and no threat to the U.S., has been caught smuggling weapons of war to North Korea in blatant violation of U.N. sanctions. This is a wake-up call. Sharp-eyed Panamanian authorities, watching the North Korean freighter Chong Chon Gang since June, received intelligence it might be shipping illegal drugs, something it had been caught doing before. As the vessel lumbered into the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal from Cuba, Panamanian authorities cornered the 450-foot rust-bucket, battled a maniacally violent crew who slashed ship lines to make it...

Panama stopped a North Korean vessel that President Ricardo Martinelli said had sailed from Cuba and tried to illegally sneak suspected sophisticated missile material through the Panama Canal. "The world needs to sit up and take note: you cannot go around shipping undeclared weapons of war through the Panama Canal," Martinelli said, noting that the ship had been inspected to rule out drugs and was found to have other cargo of greater concern. "We had suspected this ship, which was coming from Cuba and headed to North Korea, might have drugs aboard so it was brought into port for search...