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Cuba: Self-Employed Workers Now Exceed 300,000

celia_arevalo

As of April 30, some 309,728 people in Cuba were officially self-employed (private) workers, and 221,839 of them were new, having obtained their licenses after October of last year. Of the latter group, 22 percent, or 49,349, were involved in making and selling food, according to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the Granma

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Four lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

A tide of reform spread in the socialist states in the 1980s. However, just like running faces bigger risk of falling down than walking, the reforms in socialist countries are even vulnerable. Firstly, the party should not give up its leadership of the country during the reforms. Secondly, reforming should not abandon the principle of public ownership as economic foundation. Thirdly, reforming doesn’t simply mean denying previous leaders. Fourthly, the reform should not rely on external powers.

Opinions »

What Obama could not possibly say

Barack Obama

Facts on the ground will decide whether the United States really “values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator”. So let’s start with a fact. For US President Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia is not in the Middle East. Maybe the House of Saud has relocated the deserts and the oil to Oceania without telling anyone. In his major speech on Thursday from where the opening quote comes, and where, according to the Reuters gospel, he would “lay out a new US strategy toward a skeptical Arab world”, the skeptical Arabs, and the whole world for that matter, never heard these fateful two words, “Saudi” and “Arabia”. Even India, Indonesia and Brazil were mentioned.

Opinions »

Lots of rhetoric – but very little help

Barack Obama

And then, I guessed it before he said it, he compared the Arab revolutions to the American revolution. We hold these truths to be self-evident, etc, etc. That many Arabs fought and died to be free of us than to be like Americans was quite lost on him. And then we had to hear what America’s “role” was going to be in the new Middle East. We did not hear if the Arabs wanted them to have a role. But that’s Obama for you. Always searching for a role.

Reflections by Fidel »

The Unsustainable Position of the Empire

The Unsustainable Position of the Empire

Nobody can assure us that in its agony, the empire won’t be dragging human beings down to catastrophe. As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible. I remember well that one day, almost 20 years ago, I said that there

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Andrew Breitbart’s ‘electronic brownshirts’

Andrew Breitbart holds a news conference on Acorn Revealed: The Philadelphia Story at the National Press Club. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Judy Ancel, a Kansas City, Missouri, professor, and her St Louis colleague were teaching a labour history class together this spring semester. Little did they know, video recordings of the class were making their way into the thriving sub rosa world of rightwing attack video editing, twisting their words in a way that resulted in the loss of one of the professors’ jobs amid a wave of intimidation and death threats. Fortunately, reason and solid facts prevailed, and the videos ultimately were exposed for what they are: fraudulent, deceptive, sloppily edited hit pieces.

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Cuba in Geneva: Health is a Basic Human Right

Derechos Humanos

Geneva, Cuba on Wednesday defended health care as a basic human right and expressed concern for the financial, food, energy and environmental crisis gripping the world. Addressing the 64th Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO), Cuban Deputy Health Minister Jose Angel Portal stated that the current international situation is affecting many countries.

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Orlando Bosch And Bin Laden: A Tale Of Two Terrorists

Orlando Bosch / Osama Bin Laden

The recent deaths of two terrorists – one famous, one not so much – provides an illuminating examination of how America continues to conduct its controversial war on terror. Making headlines across the United States and called a defining moment in Barack Obama’s presidency, the dramatic raid into Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden is one side of the equation. The quiet passing of Orlando Bosch in Miami that elicited scant attention outside the confines of the South Florida community, is the other.

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No End to the “War on Terror,” No End to Guantánamo

The US Congress

With the death of Osama bin Laden, there is a perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to bring to an end the decade-long “War on Terror” by withdrawing from Afghanistan and closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The justification for both the invasion of Afghanistan (in October 2001) and the detention of prisoners in Guantánamo (which opened in January 2002) is the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on September 14, 2001, just three days after the 9/11 attacks..”

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Cuba Denounces U.S./European Misinformation Campaign

Bandera Cubana

Cuba denounced the misinformation campaigns orchestrated by the United States with the complicity of its European allies and the interests that control the corporate media, in an editorial published Monday in Granma newspaper. The most recent campaign is the distortion of the death of the counterrevolutionary Wilfredo Soto Garcia, the editorial said.