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Supporters of an old anti-Castro rebellion are having difficulties getting asylum in the United States because the Patriot Act labels them terrorists. WASHINGTON - Four decades ago, thousands of Cubans took to the Escambray mountains in a CIA-backed guerrilla war against Fidel Castro. Today, U.S. law brands them as terrorists.

On March 10, parts of the Patriot Act expire again. Section 215, most famous for the alleged threat it poses to library patrons ... doesn't single out libraries but relates to official requests for "... books, records, ... etc.". The provision is not known to have been invoked yet .... To hear the ALA talk, librarians are the last bulwark defending our most cherished civil liberties against government assault. Yet two recent examples show again that self-anointed guardians of the public good can be very selective about the people, and rights, they choose to protect. One example came from Newton,...

Tehran, 22 Nov. (AKI) - Iran's religious authorities in the holy Shiite city of Qom have officially invited Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, to convert to Islam, according to Hojatolislam Mohammad Reza Hakimi, quoted by Iran's Farda news agency. "I met Castro together with the Iranian foreign minister, Saiid Salili, and gave him some sacred Islamic texts translated into Spanish," said Hakimi, who recently returned from a government visit to Cuba. "We spoke with Castro for several hours, and I think I almost managed to convince him to become a Muslim," Hakimi added. "Castro certain that Cuba is suffering from...

'Two-faced French sell out Cuban dissidents' By David Rennie, in Brussels (Filed: 26/07/2005) A leading Cuban dissident yesterday accused a "two-faced" French government of putting trade ahead of the suffering of the Cuban people. The comments by Marta Beatriz Roque, a 60-year-old economist who was arrested during a protest outside the French embassy in Havana on Bastille Day, came after Paris unilaterally ended a European Union diplomatic embargo against the regime of President Fidel Castro, and normalised relations with his government. Apparently emboldened by the French overture, Cuban authorities responded by launching the largest wave of dissident arrests since 2003,...

In 1998.....Kay Elizabeth LiCausi, a 26-year-old graduate of Rutgers....started a job as scheduler.......for Representative Robert Menendez (D-NJ).....who was soon to become the highest-ranking Hispanic member of Congress. She quickly gained his trust, and less than three years later was promoted to director of his NJ headquarters. But in 2002..... Ms. LiCausi left his staff. Since then.......She has amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts as consultant, lobbyist and fund-raiser. Some of the work was orchestrated by Mr. Menendez, who steered more than $200,000 worth of political consulting and fund-raising contracts her way. Several of her clients are businesses and...

Right now, I’m sitting on my back deck smoking a Cuban Montecristo #2. Some call it breaking the law. But since the U.S. Army rejected my offer to go to Iraq to serve as an army sniper, the least I can do is help the troops by burning valuable enemy crops. After I finish this 52-ring by 6 1/8” figurado (and dispose of the evidence in my American-made toilet), I plan to watch that tape of Castro falling down the steps and busting his communist fanny on international television. The tape only runs about 30 seconds, butt (sorry) it is...

Since 1948 when, as a young student, Fidel Castro participated in the violence that rocked Colombian society and distributed anti-U.S. propaganda, he has been guided by two objectives: a commitment to violence and a virulent anti-Americanism. His struggle since and his forty-two years rule in Cuba have been characterized primarily by these goals. In the 1960's Castro and his brother, Raul, believed that the political and economic conditions that produced their revolution existed in Latin America and that anti-American revolutions would occur throughout the continent. Cuban agents and diplomats established contact with revolutionary, terrorist and guerrilla groups in the area...

A vintage blue taxicab converted into a seagoing vessel and carrying several Cuban immigrants was intercepted Tuesday off Key West by the Coast Guard, a television station reported.

Leftists accuse U.S. of harboring Cuban bomber By Anthony Boadle 45 minutes ago HAVANA (Reuters) - Left-wing politicians and intellectuals attending a conference on terrorism in Cuba accused the U.S. government on Thursday of harboring a Cuban exile blamed for the bombing of an airliner in 1976. They said the Bush administration had a double standard in its post-9/11 war on terror because it refused to extradite former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela to stand trial for the downing of a Cuban plane that killed 73 people. The meeting, headed by Cuban President Fidel Castro at Havana's convention...

<p>By U.S. Arrests Cuban Exile Accused in Deadly '76 Airline Bombing MIAMI, May 17 - Immigration officials arrested Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile suspected in a deadly airplane bombing and other attacks, on Tuesday, weeks after he slipped into the United States and shortly after he withdrew an application for political asylum.</p>

A little-noticed change in federal benefit rules has kept scores of older Cuban immigrants from collecting disability checks that are considered one of America's last-ditch social safety nets, according to a pair of public service lawyers. People like Barbara Diaz, who arrived from Cuba five years ago, are left with little or no income, say the lawyers who are trying to address the situation. ''I don't regret coming to this country because it's the best in the world,'' said Diaz, 71. ``But I thought I would have this help, and I don't.'' Diaz was counting on receiving Supplemental Security Income,...

HAVANA (AP) - With shouts of "Viva Fidel," female government supporters interrupted a weekly silent protest on Sunday by the wives of political prisoners after church services on the second anniversary of the crackdown that put 75 activists behind bars. No violence was reported and nobody was injured during the standoff between two opposing groups of women Sunday afternoon after Palm Sunday Mass at the Santa Rita Roman Catholic Church. But tensions ran high during the unusual, noisy confrontation, prompting curious neighbors to leave their homes and for cars along busy Fifth Avenue to slow down for a better look....

FROM FILMMAKER/PHOTOGRAPHER CARLOS M. AGUILAR Dear Cuban Music and History Lovers, I'm so happy that an actress, a songwriter and a producer were three of the Oscar nominated Latinos-Spaniards for the 2004 Academy Award but, we must correct a big mistake amplified in front of hundreds of millions of viewers during last night's gala. Jorge Drexler won the award for best original song for "The Motorcycle Diaries." It's a good film about the early young life of Ernesto Che Guevara before he left his home to destroy other lands in his distorted quest to change the world.

A Castroite state-controlled media organ reports that El Barbudo is incensed about Cuba not having enough doctors in Cuba in this news item here. Oh really? It's enough to make me wonder if he's almost as oblivious to economics as El Supremo. Of course there aren't enough Cuban doctors, Castro! You sent them off to be spies in Venezuela! Cubans have noticed this. And so have Venezuelans! Daniel researched that Misión Barrio Adentro program and found quite a bit of evidence of such shenanigans here. You've got plenty of Cuban doctors, Castro. It's just that when you send them to...

One of hundreds of Mariel Cubans being quietly released from prison by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Roberto Pedroso-Mesa had hoped to return to Florida, where he had lived. But because he had no one to call for bus fare, he was driven from a north Alabama jail to New Orleans. "Immigration brought me here, up to the Immigration building, and they let me go right there," he said through an interpreter Wednesday.But on Thursday, he had a work card — not a permanent "green card," but a temporary card showing it is legal to hire him. So did two...

Val Prieto, at Babalublog, has some fun at the expense of a restaurant in Minneapolis which serves "revolutionary Cuban cuisine" amidst portraits of Che and Fidel. Val writes what getting a real meal is like in Havana... It's a masterpiece of debunking. He floors the guy in that magnificent storytelling way that only he can. >>Revolutionary Cuban cooking!? I wonder if the maitre'd hands everyone a ration card when they walk in the door. Or if they make the cafe cubano like they have been making it in revolutionary Cuba. One thin layer of fresh coffee grounds, one thin layer...

The end of the cold war was cruel to Cuba. The country's trading partners, denied Soviet largesse, dried up. Hard cash ran low. What food the country could grow languished in the fields; trucks didn't have enough gasoline to bring the crops to market. And of course there was the US embargo. What Cubans call "the Special Period" produced one notable success: pharmaceuticals. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, Cuba got so good at making knockoff drugs that a thriving industry took hold. Today the country is the largest medicine exporter in Latin America and has more than 50...

The next time you meet a Cuban, say thank you. I am reading Ann Coulter's new book, How To Talk to a Liberal, when I came to her analysis on the Elián Gonzáles debacle. She devotes an entire chapter to this subject. I wondered why this injustice by the Clinton administration was any more significant than others about which she uses less space. Then I read the point of the chapter and realized why she saw the need to dedicate that much ink to the subject. In 1996, 40% of Cuban-Americans voted for Bill Clinton. In 2000, 77% of Cuban-Americans...

First they tried sailing to freedom in a retrofitted 1951 Chevy. Then it was a floating '59 Chevy pickup truck. Finally, the family of a Cuban migrant who masterminded the escapes in vintage trucks has found freedom. They arrived Wednesday in Costa Rica -- not in a vintage Chevy -- but on a flight paid for by the U.S. government. Luis Grass, 30, a master mechanic dubbed a ''truckonaut'' for his conversions of the classic vehicles into seaworthy escape vessels, was among the 20 migrants taken from the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay to Costa Rica on Wednesday. He...

Are you not inspired and uplifted by the story of Carlos Gutierrez? When Gutierrez was but six years old, he and his family left their home in Havana, Cuba, for a vacation in Miami, unaware that they would never return to their homeland. Fidel Castro and his communists took over the island, confiscated the pineapple exporting business and property of Carlos Gutierrez’s father, and prohibited his family from returning. The Gutierrez family was forced to start anew in an unfamiliar place with an uncertain future. Carlos’s father worked for Heinz and began another business, though it was hit hard by...