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What does the Obama Presidency mean for Assata Shakur?As president elect Barack Obama prepares to take office early in January 2009, a great number of urgent issues face his country.Ranging from the war in Iraq to the current economic crisis, there are a broad number of issues that are on the agenda Obama will inherit from George W Bush.One that has seems to have slipped through the public agenda is one that has been outsanding for more than 30 years: that of Assata Shakur.For the unitiated, Assata Shakur is an aunt of the late rapper Tupac Shakur who is currently partaking of asylum in Cuba, where she has been since 1984 when she escaped from prison.Between 1971 and 1973, Shakur faced criminal charges on seven separate occasions. Through the first six she was repeatedly exhonerated --...

privately owned farms produce more food. The big state collective farms in Cuba are an utter failure. Maybe the butcher mugabe should talk to raoul. marxism is a failure.Since the 1959 revolution, some Cubans have been allowed to run small family farms. But most agriculture has been placed in the hands of large, state-owned enterprises.Our correspondent says these have proved highly inefficient - half the land is unused and today Cuba imports more than half its needs. Rising world food prices will cost the country an extra $1bn this year.The presidential decree was published in the country's Communist Party newspaper, Granma....

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Not surprisingly, the dictator Fidel say no changes will come from his retirement.The suffering people of Cuba will have to endure their misery for even longer. Castro's retirement is but a hoax. Fidel will control things as long as he lives. That is the nature of the oligarchy that is communism. I still hope and pray that the Cuban people will one day taste freedom.Castro Rejects Idea of Political ChangeSunday, February 24, 2008Fidel CastroHAVANA — Fidel Castro on Saturday rejected the idea of major political change after Cuba's parliament chooses a new president — his final published comments as the nation's longtime leader.The article on the front page of the Communist Party Granma was one of a flurry of recent columns and announcements from Castro, who is retiring after 49 years...

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Cuba is a communist country with its own gulag. Perhaps leftists in this country want to avoid this nasty reality , but it is there for all the world to see. Castro seems to be retiring, but unfortunately his people are still imprisoned. castro will die in the lap of luxury, while his people live as cogs in his communist machine. This is a good piece in the Post.Cuba libre!!Don't support Castro's island prisonTheo Caldwell, National Post Published: Tuesday, February 19, 2008It grates against our national character that Canada continues to do business with Cuba, thereby helping to prop up Fidel Castro's tyrannical regime.Trade between our two nations is broad, encapsulating resources, mining, agriculture and beyond, but captains of industry are not the only ones who are complicit. During...

Yesterday, U.S. President George W. Bush took Orwellian audacity to a new level by calling the Cuban government “criminal.” In a speech, Bush stated that “America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimizing its own people…. The operative word in our future dealings with Cuba is not ’stability’.  The operative word is ‘freedom’.” (source) To the surprise of no one, the fact that this statement was akin to the kettle calling the teapot black was lost on the members of both the United States and the Canadian press. So, just to re-cap: U.S.:  One of the few countries left in the world which still executes children.  Moreover, “The country which has carried out more documented executions of child...

Okay, here’s a fun little intellectual exercise to try out: Let’s see if we can spot the irrational, blinded-by-ideology individual amongst these two writers using only a writing sample from each on a similar topic. Keep in mind, that some characteristics of irrational people are that they tend to: 1) Be incapable of using even-headed arguments without resorting to ad hominem attacks. 2) Unable to give an account of their opponent’s behaviour without using over-simplification or straw-men. 3) View those they disagree with as inherently evil, often attributing sadistic and/or even satanistic motivations to their opponent’s actions. 4) Ignore evidence which suggests that the subject of their attack is not the embodiment of pure evil seeking to destroy all of...

If thats the case , why does do so many want to leave the Cuban gulag? Perhaps Michale Moore could explain it.More Cubans leaving by sea again, many to Mexico By Anthony Boadle HAVANA (Reuters) - After a lull following Fidel Castro's illness last year, Cubans once again are taking to homemade boats or powerful speedboats manned by smugglers on a trip to the United States that often includes a detour through Mexico. Since May, the U.S. Coast Guard has been intercepting more boat people in precarious craft crossing the Straits of Florida in the calm summer waters. The U.S. Border Patrol also has been processing rising numbers turning up at the U.S. frontier with Mexico.Cubans coming across the 90-mile gap with Florida try to make it in anything that floats and has a motor -- from a hijacked...

This excerpt comes courtesy of Gay and Right. One of the all-time great lines I have ever heard is in bold. I wonder (not really) how the socialist Trudeau boys (I forget which one) would feel about this.The passage italicized is from a book by Ronald Radosh called Commies.In the 70s, Radosh and a group of lefties go to Cuba for one-month long visit, and they go visit a mental hospital:As the tour progressed, we couldn't help but notice the obvious glazed and drugged-out expression on the faces of most of the patients. Clearly they had been given massive does of tranquilizers, but when we asked the doctor in charge about it, we heard an even more shocking answer. "We are proud," he told us, "that in our institution, we have a larger proportion of hospital inmates who have been lobotomized...

This is despicable. The UN becomes increasingly irrelevant. The Cubans are celebrating. Now they can jail their dissidents and others with the tacit approcal of the UN.U.N. panel flunks test on CubaBy Andres OppenheimerMaking a mockery of its mission to investigate human-rights abuses around the world, the new United Nations Human Rights Council -- presided over by Mexico -- has decided to stop looking into rights abuses in Cuba.Before getting into the Geneva, Switzerland-based council's overall performance, and into whether Mexico is retreating from its commitment to universal human rights, let's take a quick look at the council's agreements at the end of its first annual session this week.At midnight on Monday, the council -- created last year to replace what the United Nations itself...

I wonder how long dion will tolerate wiping up le dauohin's messes before he gets rid of him. Le dauphin's family has dabbled in marxism for years and as the Post says Justin is caught in some 70's time warp. perhaps justin and his whole family could migrate to Cuba and live with Uncle fidel. Justin's foot in mouth disease is funny and frightening....Well, OK-- we're kidding about that last part. But the overall tenor of his remarks suggests that Mr. Trudeau's ideas may not have advanced very far beyond his birth year of 1971. The prize quote from the Windsor Star's account of his anti-capitalist speech has to be this highlight reel of the chief social and environmental injustices of our time: "We consume more water per capita than anyone else on the planet. We produce more solid waste...

Cuba is a police state. It's citizens have almost no rights. Dissidents are regularly jailed and even executed. The tyrants at the top live like billionaires, while their people eke out an existence. Even the Swedish understand this. Cuba is now leading the charge to strip the new UN human rights commission of the right to examine individual nations. Cuba wants individual nations to assess their own human rights.On the heels of a well-received report on Darfur by the newly revamped UN Human Rights Council, the body is in danger of having its power stripped away. The EU says, give the council more time.Cuba is leading a bid by a number of countries to strip the Human Rights Council of its power to investigate and condemn violations of human rights, a move some activists warn could...

I’m not one for hero-worship, but it’s hard to resist when listening to stuff like this.  Seriously, Noam Chomsky is amazing. Can anybody have any remaining doubts that Marx was right when he wrote that the ideas of the dominant class in any given epoch constitute the dominant ideologies of the populace? I’ll leave it for you to decide....