Free Republic

THE TRAIL OF BLOOD AND SUFFERING LEFT BY THE CASTRO BROTHERS TERROR NETWORKThe Castro brothers, mass murderer tyrants who terrorized a whole Island for over 56 years who killed, imprisoned, and tortured more Cubans per capita than Stalin during his reign of terror and founded and headed the most lethal international terror network is honored, embrace and rewarded by comrades Obama and Pope Francis.The trail of blood and suffering left by Castro’s exploits, especially throughout Africa and Latin America, has had no bearing on the Pope and on the American sycophants support for the longest lasting and most brutal regime...

Today President Obama further opened the financial floodgates from the U.S. to the world’s most notorious deadbeat nation—who is also a “State Sponsor of Terrorism.” Quotation marks are now required around the term “State-Sponsor of Terrorism” when referring to Cuba because just this morning, as the 45 day notification period to Congress expired, President Obama officially removed Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, where President Reagan had placed it in 1982. “Laughing all the way to the bank,” hardly does justice to what the multi-billionaire Castro family must be doing this week. The $7 billion...

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger hammered John Kerry in 1985 for interfering in diplomatic negotiations with Nicaragua’s Marxist government as a Massachusetts senator. Thirty years later, Kerry is skewering Senate Republicans for their open letter to the Iranian leadership warning that any nuclear deal with the United States without the advice and consent of the U.S. Congress would not last beyond President Obama’s term. Kerry and then-Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin visited Nicaragua in 1985 to cut a deal with the Sandinista government, which was close to the former Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan, however, was already set on overthrowing...

Venezuela is afflicted with the world’s highest inflation, its second highest murder rate and crippling shortages of food, medicine and basic consumer goods. Its authoritarian government is holding some 70 political prisoners, including the mayor of Caracas and senior opposition leader Leopoldo López, and stands accused by human rights groups of illegal detentions, torture and repression of independent media. All of that is now pretty well known, and it is finally beginning to gain some attention from Latin American leaders who for years did their best to appease or ignore Hugo Chávez and his “Bolivarian Revolution.” What’s less understood is...

WHY THEY QUIT BEING LEFTISTS By Carlos Alberto Montaner The Independent Institute November 17, 2008 What led these people (along with Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa, Ernesto Sábato, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, and so many other valuable intellectuals) to abandon communism and begin to defend the values of liberty? In the first place, the painful realization that the communist governments, without exception, built societies that were very poor and brutal, from which people invariably tried to flee in desperation. All the communist experiments failed, regardless of the substrata on which they tried to erect their systems. The Germans, the Slavs, the Latin...

They say the Cold War is over, but Russia and the U.S. remain the leading supplier of weapons to countries around the world and are the two biggest military powers. Lately, tensions have been pretty high, too. The U.S. supplies much of NATO and Middle Eastern allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Russia supplies many BRIC nations, as well as Iran, much of Southeast Asia, and North Africa.

Russian may sell $5 billion worth of weapons to Venezuela, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday after a visit to the South American nation. Putin met Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas on Friday to discuss oil, defense and nuclear energy cooperation, although no new no arms agreements were signed. The United States expressed concern about possible arms proliferation following such a deal with Venezuela, one its most prominent foes in the region. Chavez says his growing arsenal is aimed at countering a planned increase in the U.S. military forces in neighboring Colombia, Washington's closest ally in Latin America....

A U.S. Spanish-language news network that lobbied Hillary Clinton’s State Department on U.S. policies toward Mexico reported on those policies without disclosing its lobbying expenditures and is covering the U.S. presidential election without informing views of its company’s donations to the Clinton Foundation. The network, Azteca America, has employed two Clinton confidantes since late 2008 to lobby the State Department on various initiatives affecting U.S. relations with Mexico, where its parent company is based, during and after Clinton’s tenure at the head of the agency. Mexican parent TV Azteca, a foundation associated with the company, and that foundation’s U.S. counterpart...

Political debates often pit fear against hope, and when it comes to international trade agreements, many Democrats prefer to scare. It's a durable strategy that they can't relinquish -- even though it usually fails. If you're going to make a horror movie, you need a villain who can make your blood run cold. Despite endless efforts to pump this one up, the audience mostly yawns. Americans have gotten too used to the obvious benefits of trade to be terrified by German cars, Canadian oil or Chinese toys. The Obama administration is currently negotiating with 11 other nations on a Trans-Pacific...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has promised to nationalize food distribution in the South American nation beset with record shortages of basic goods, runaway inflation and an escalating economic crisis. [Snip] Various estimates suggest the government already controls about half of the country's food distribution, but that hasn't stopped record shortages in shops and markets. Venezuela is struggling with a recession, 68.5-percent annual inflation and severe shortages of the basic goods that it relies on oil money to import. On any given day, people in Venezuela can wait hours to get some subsidized milk, cooking oil, milk or flour -- if...

President Nicolás Maduro raised Venezuela's minimum wage Friday for the second time this year to help workers being battered by the world's highest inflation. Speaking at a May Day rally, the socialist leader said he is boosting the minimum wage and pensions for retirees by 30 percent, with two-thirds of the increase coming this month and the rest on July 1. He also said he would raise salaries for government employees and military personnel. The wage increase, while a welcome relief for many workers, fell short of expectations that the embattled Maduro might use Friday's celebrations to expand state control...

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...

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini arrives in Cuba today (23 March) in a bid to spur sensitive talks aimed at normalizing ties with the Communist island state. The visit comes as previously icy relations between Cuba and the West are thawing, following the dramatic rapprochement between Havana and Washington over the last few months. […] In 2014, the EU launched its normalization process with the Americas’ only communist nation to encourage the country to pursue reforms allowing for private initiatives without having to change the one-party political system. The negotiating sessions earlier this month, initially scheduled for January, had...

President Barack Obama says Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will visit Washington this summer, nearly two years after she canceled a similar trip to protest U.S. spy programs. Her visit is set for June 30. Rousseff canceled a state visit to the U.S. in the fall of 2013 to protest an American spy program that targeted Brazil's government and citizens.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is the only major Republican likely 2016 presidential candidate who hasn't weighed in on the controversy over Indiana's "religious freedom" law that erupted this week — and his explanation for avoiding the issue is questionable.

An economic implosion is becoming increasingly likely in Venezuela , and the country's debtholders, trade partners and neighbors are bracing for the fallout. The country's energy-dependent economy requires oil prices above $100 per barrel in order to sustain itself. Oil accounts for 95 percent of the country's export earnings, and combined with gas, it's 25 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Internationally traded Brent crude prices have fallen more than 48 percent in the past year. Meanwhile, a combination of inflation and currency controls have generated scarcity of basic needs such as flour, toilet paper and medicine. Venezuelans stand...

...Brent for delivery in May fell 1.1% to $54.71 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in May traded at $45.64 a barrel, down 2% from last week’s close. Both contracts gained last week with U.S. crude snapping a four-week losing streak. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s influential oil minister Ali al-Naimi told a conference in Riyadh that there was no conspiracy behind the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision last fall to maintain its output target. He said the group could have lost market share if it...

hina will lend Venezuela around $10 billion in coming months, half as part of a bilateral financing deal and the other half for the development of oil fields, a senior official at state oil company PDVSA said on Thursday. Fresh funds are a boon for financially squeezed Venezuela and will likely increase market confidence over the OPEC country's ability to meet major debt payments and arbitration awards. Venezuelan bonds rose on Thursday following the news. However, relief may be tempered as the loans appear largely earmarked and will only go so far in countering the steep tumble in oil prices...

Many of you probably saw the network news reports about the United Airlines flight yesterday that returned to Dulles International airport when a crazed passenger yelling something about Jihad was restrained by other passengers. What you might have seen only on local but not on national broadcasts was a crazed Pennsylvania State University professor who began ranting loony left slogans on a flight from Nicaragua to Miami last weekend.  The Washington Post published a story about professor Karen Halnon whose rantings sounded too embarrassingly close to an MSNBC host for NBC Nightly News or the other national broadcasts to cover. Even the...

VENICE, Italy — President Reagan, who less than two years ago signed the most expensive farm aid bill in history, called Friday for the elimination of agricultural subsidies worldwide by the year 2000 as a way of promoting better world economic health.At the same time, Reagan said that the United States has made "real progress" in trimming its budget deficit, despite ongoing spending battles with Congress, thereby freeing for private investment abroad some of the foreign capital that has been tied up financing the U.S. debt.Reagan's remarks, made in a speech televised by Worldnet and provided to networks around the...