Free Republic

HAVANA – Cubans are preparing for a new tax regime being designed by the Raul Castro government as part of its plan to widen the scope for self-employment and small business on the communist island. Communist Party daily Granma published an extensive report explaining the “redesign of tax policy in the country’s new economic scenario.” “More than just an administrative measure, this is also meant as a system of taxation that eliminates doubts, taboos and mistaken concepts,” Granma said. The daily accompanied its report with a kind of tax dictionary to clear up concepts that normally do not form part...

The Nobel Prize in literature brings a long-awaited accolade to Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, and also a new platform for him to assail leftist leaders Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba. The 74-year-old writer has been a combative political activist in denouncing what he views as threats to democracy and freedoms in Latin America. As he basked in praise for winning the prize Thursday, he pointedly singled out Venezuela and Cuba during a news conference in New York, saying those two countries represent a step backward for a hemisphere emerging from an era of strongman leaders....

Meg Whitman isn’t the only gubernatorial candidate with a legal skirmish in her past. Cuba expert Ann Louise Bardach reports that Jerry Brown violated U.S. sanction law during a trip to Cuba by using a CIA turncoat as a travel agent. Similar sanction violations were prosecuted extensively by George W. Bush. Plus: never before reported details of Brown’s mojito-fueled conversations with Fidel...the double agent who booked Brown’s travel; and Brown’s later concerns about breaking the law. It was well after midnight on July 24, 2000, when I heard a knock at the door of our room on the Hotel Nacional’s...

Let’s just jump right into it, shall we? It’s 2008 – pre-financial crisis. Deposed goblin king Gordon Gekko (actual goblin king Michael Douglas) is out of prison, trying to warn Wall Street about the coming collapse, and looking to get his claws on some doubloons and such.

Ironic that in the Age of Obama’s Hope and Change and the socialization of the US economy, Communist Fidel Castro pronounced that Cuba’s economic system, i.e., socialism/communism ”doesn’t even work for us anymore.” Furthermore, Communist Cuba has announced plans to lay off at least 500,000 government workers – nearly 10% of the total workforce! — by April 2011, forcing those workers to find employment in the now-practically non-existent “private sector.” Cuba has declared that this number will likely be increased to 1 million government workers of jobs shed by the overbloated Cuban government. “Our state cannot and should not continue...

Communism has been proclaimed dead more than once in the past couple of decades. But today, it's safe to say, it is really dead. Irreversibly dead. Cemetery dead. Consider this comment from a knowledgeable Cuban critic who was asked if the country's brand of socialism, created by Fidel Castro after his 1959 revolution, could be of use in other countries: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." That remark would have gotten him in trouble with authorities, if his name were not Fidel Castro. There may yet be admirers of Cuban communism in certain precincts of Berkeley or...

The word from on high in Havana shook the entire island. President Raul Castro had decided that Cuba's economy needs to be fundamentally restructured and, as a first step, 500,000 state workers are going to be laid-off by next spring. The government employs 90% of the country's more than 5 million workers and so Castro's stripping of what Cuba's official labor union described as "inflated payrolls" is sending shock waves through all of Cuban society. Some Cubans, however, sees opportunity in the uncertainty - especially in the President's declaration that private enterprise must take up the slack and absorb the...

Communism in Cuba is dead. A lot of people missed it but the Castros this week announced they have thrown in the towel on their failed economic system and are suddenly going to turn on a dime and give private enterprise a shot. The first clue came in August when President Raul Castro said in a speech "Cuba will no longer be known as the only country in the world where you do not have to work to live." And now word comes out of Havana of sweeping new changes to the country's economy - starting with the elimination of...

It was just days ago when a little heralded story by McClatchy hit the news with a stunning headline - "Fidel Castro says Cuba's economy is broken". The offhand statement was made to The Atlantic Magazine's correspondent, Jeffrey Goldberg... who then failed to press the former Cuban dictator more in depth. According to Goldberg's blog, Castro replied, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." Goldberg didn't pry into Castro's surprising statement, but said he believes it was clear what the aging leader meant. "He said it in an off-hand way, but not jokingly," Goldberg wrote The Miami Herald...

The Cuban labour federation said more than a million workers would lose their jobs - half of them by March next year. Those laid off will be encouraged to become self-employed or join new private enterprises, on which some of the current restrictions will be eased. It is biggest shift to the private sector since the revolution in 1959. Cuba's communist government currently controls almost all aspects of the country's economy and employs about 85% of the workforce. "Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls and losses that hurt...

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuban announced on Monday it would lay off "at least" half a million state workers over the next six months and simultaneously allow more jobs to be created in the private sector as the socialist economy struggles to get back on its feet. The plan announced in state media confirms that President Raul Castro is following through on his pledge to shed some one million state jobs, a full fifth of the official workforce -- but in a shorter timeframe than initially anticipated. "Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities and services...

There’s a wonderful riddle about the stranger traveling in the land of the two tribes — liars and truth tellers. Members of the two tribes look identical. The difference is that one tribe always lies, and one tribe always tells the truth. The stranger is walking along a road trying to reach the capital. Presently he comes to a fork, at which is standing one of the locals. The stranger is unable to detect whether the local is a truth-teller or a liar. But he needs to find out which fork leads to the capital. He is permitted one question....

Castro Says He Was Misinterpreted On Cuban EconomySep. 10, 2010 (AP) HAVANA (AP) - Fidel Castro said Friday his comments about the Cuban economic model no longer working were misinterpreted by a visiting American journalist - taking back an admission that caused a stir around the globe. The 84-year-old ex-president said he was not misquoted but meant "the opposite" of what he was reported as having said by The Atlantic magazine reporter Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg wrote Wednesday that during three days of interviews with Castro in Havana last month, he asked the former leader over lunch and wine if Cuba's...

What next? A razor with lubricating strips and a clean-shaven look? At age 84, after a half century of promoting world revolution, Fidel Castro is taking a fresh approach to life. Asked by Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, whether Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." He also expressed regret for advising Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. during the Cuban missile crisis. And he called on buddy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, to stop denying...

So, what has Castro learned that Obama still doesn’t get? ... Socialism caused Cubans to invest in Miami real estate one boatload at a time. Fidel has finally concluded that he was wrong. ... Barry lacks the clarity of hindsight that old age provides Castro, though chain smoking may well advance Obama’s date of demise (is next Thursday too soon?) Wed to near-socialist Keynesian economic dementia, Obama clings desperately to the notion that a few folks within the beltway can toss fiat money around in such a way that economic prosperity follows ... Now we learn that the acuity Obama...

The Young Castro Enjoys a Cubano With ConfidenceWhat type of man wants to live as an Elite Socialist Leader? The two leading Socialists of the Western Hemisphere can give us an inside look at the personality of an entry level Socialist President and the final days of a Socialist dictator. Jeffrey Goldberg writing for the Atlantic has scored a major scoop of an interview one of the first of the twenty first century, an interview with Fidel Castro. There were three profound subjects expressed by Castro that can and should affect the Socialist Ideology of our own President: the...

Fidel Castro has accused Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of antisemitism, in a passionate defence of Israel's right to exist. Cuba's retired president, a longtime critic of Israeli government policy, said Jews had been slandered and slaughtered for centuries whereas Muslims were not blamed for anything. The 83-year-old comandante criticised Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and urged Tehran to acknowledge the "unique" history of antisemitism and understand why Israelis feared for their existence. The comments will sting Iran's president and could prove awkward for Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, two presidents who revere Castro and have...

"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," Castro tells an American journalist when asked whether the Cuban economic and political system was worth exporting. WASHINGTON – Cuba’s Fidel Castro used an interview with a U.S. magazine to urge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to abandon Holocaust denial and refrain from “slandering” Jews and confess that the Cuban model doesn't work. Castro, whose recent public pronouncements have been dominated by warnings that a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran could spark a nuclear war, invited a journalist with The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to Havana to discuss the writer’s recent article...

No, that was not a quote from a conservative Republican or a radical right winger. Those pearls of wisdom came directly from the mouth of Fidel Castro. Liberals everywhere must be rolling over in their proverbial graves. Cuba has been held as the Socio-Economic utopia by liberals for so long one has to wonder what the reaction from the left will be. I suppose they could declare Castro insane, or perhaps cite some right wing misinformation campaign as the source of such blasphemy. In the end they just may have to admit they have been wrong about the whole big...

Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago. The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.