Free Republic

Days after President Barack Obama’s historic visit, the leaders of Cuba’s Communist Party are under highly unusual public criticism from their own ranks for imposing new levels of secrecy on the future of social and economic reforms. After months of simmering discontent, complaints among party members have become so heated that its official newspaper, Granma, addressed them in a lengthy front-page article Monday. It said the public dissatisfaction over the lack of open discussion before the upcoming Communist Party congress next month is “a sign of the democracy and public participation that are intrinsic characteristics of the socialism that we’re...

The news editor of the official Cuban daily newspaper Granma defected a week ago during a business trip to Mexico and is now living in Miami. Mairelys Cuevas Gómez, 27, traveled to Mexico authorized by the paper’s executive editor and with the full knowledge of other Cuban officials and the elite in charge of the government media, according to a report published on the website Café Fuerte. Cuevas’ defection is a new blow to the regime’s news and propaganda operation. In recent months, at least four other members of the Cuban media also decided to ask for asylum in the...

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's famous beret is gone. His iconic beard is filthy and matted against skeletal cheekbones. One bushy eyebrow arches over his half-open eyes. As a Bolivian country surgeon methodically saws off his lifeless hands, Che appears vaguely amused. Gustavo Villoldo, a stocky figure in green army fatigues, stands just inside the tiny laundry room where the Cuban revolutionary's corpse rests atop a sink. For five months, the CIA operative has led soldiers hunting Guevara through the rough crags and valleys of southern Bolivia. Less than 24 hours ago, his team had captured and executed him in a village...

Today's online edition of the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma features a short article titled "Obama and McCain Keep an Intense Campaign During a Crucial Week", which includes a photograph of Barack Obama at a rally (nothing with John McCain, perhaps because of lack of space). I have translated the piece as follows: WASHINGTON, October 26. — Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain keep an intense campaign leading to the presidential election in the United States this coming November 4. Over the weekend, both candidates visited several Western states which are historically Republican, such as Nevada, Colorado, and New...

SUSPECTED robbers have broken into the home of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama's grandmother in a Kenyan village, local media said today. "These are just people ... who think that Obama has been sending me a lot of money," Sarah Obama, the Illinois senator's 85-year-old step-grandmother, said of the burglars. Nothing was stolen during the raid early on Wednesday, but senior police commanders and local officials visited the modest homestead in Kogelo village to investigate. Reports said the thieves used a ladder to try to steal a solar panel from her roof, but failed. They also broke into a small,...

A JAPANESE woman in her 50s gave birth to a child she had carried for her daughter, who was unable to conceive as she had her womb removed due to cancer, an obstetrician said on Sunday. The case is likely to further stir debate in Japan about births by surrogate mothers, which both the Government and a key medical association oppose. Yahiro Netsu, the head of a maternity clinic in the central prefecture of Nagano, told a news conference that the woman gave birth in the first half of 2005 using an egg from her daughter and sperm from the...

The Cuban authorities have launched an inquiry into how the official newspaper of the Communist party ran a front page photograph of Fidel Castro which appeared to have been doctored to make him look like Adolf Hitler. When the edition of Granma hit the streets this month party officials began to retrieve as many copies as they could, an operation which appears to have deterred foreign journalists based on the island from reporting the story. The picture appeared above a story which reported President Fidel Castro's meeting with North American students. Close examination of the photograph shows that the image...

THE Miami terrorists are not a priority for the FBI, affirmed Judy Orihuela, spokes person for the Federal Bureau of Investigations office in Miami, in an interview published by The Sun-Sentinel. The assassination in Caracas of Venezuelan Public Prosecutor Danilo Anderson ended up displaying, in all its horror, the result of that policy of tolerance on the part of U.S. authorities towards the Miami circles that openly preach and practice terrorism.