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Cuba's iconic revolutionary Fidel Castro warned that the world was on an "inexorable" march into the abyss this year because of climate change and the threat of nuclear war. In an article published Thursday -- Castro's first since November 2011 -- the 85-year-old retired leader also took aim at the United States and at gas shale "fracking," a new source of fossil fuels condemned by environmentalists. He did not, however, address rumors of his death, which were denied by an official Cuban blogger after they surfaced on Twitter earlier this week. "Many dangers threaten us, but two of them, nuclear...

Buddy of mine just heard it on a Dominican radio station Can anyone confirm this?

...Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far left and far right: that the shadowy Bilderberg Group has become a kind of global government... The 84-year-old former Cuban president published an article Wednesday that used three of the only eight pages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma to quote — largely verbatim — from a 2006 book by Lithuanian-born writer Daniel Estulin. ..."The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club," argues that the international group largely runs the world. It has held a secretive annual forum of prominent politicians, thinkers and businessmen since it was founded in 1954 at...

Did you know that deep down inside (when he’s not silencing his opposition, supporting the FARC, sponsoring drug trafficking, and courting Hezbollah and almost every other enemy of the West) Hugo Chavez is a good, admirable man? Yup, he is—according to Leftist filmmaker Oliver Stone. The filmmaker, along with the upcoming release of his “Wall Street” sequel, has a new documentary called “South of the Border” that praises Chavez, Castro, their allies, and highlights other South American leaders. But, apparently the Venezuelan people aren’t as hot on the near-dictator as Stone is: The documentary is bombing in the country. Personally,...

Three times last week CNBC aired an hour-long special titled “Escape from Havana. “  “Between 1960 and 1962, more than 14,000 Cuban children were secretly flown to the United States to escape Fidel Castro, “reads the catchy CNBC teaser.  “Today, many of the Pedro Pans have thrived in America… Each has walked a long road and fought to overcome profound obstacles on their way to the American dream.  In our documentary, you’ll meet a big-city mayor, an accomplished author, a singer, an activist, a professor, and a business leader. They were all part of a secret and improbable plan to...

Ten years have passed since federal agents seized a Little Havana home snatching a 6-year-old boy from his Miami relatives and reuniting him with his father who lives in Cuba. The Elian Gonzalez saga had major political implications and some credit that single episode to the reason George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000. Elian Gonzalez survived a dangerous journey from Cuba after his mother and others died trying to reach South Florida. A fisherman found the 6-year-old boy holding onto an inner tube on Thanksgiving Day in 1999. Now, the fisherman who found him and his Miami relatives...

HAVANA: Fidel Castro is calling President Barack Obama's accepting of the Nobel Peace Prize a "cynical act," given that he is sending 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. The 83-year-old former Cuban leader initially applauded Obama's selection, but he has backed off that recently. In a column on a government website on Wednesday, Castro wrote: "Why did Obama accept the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to take the war in Afghanistan to its ultimate limit?" Castro said Obama "was not obligated to commit a cynical act" by accepting the prize. He said Obama's Dec. 1 speech during...

HAVANA (AP) - Michael Douglas staged an impromptu walking tour of the Cuban capital's historic district Tuesday, posing for photos with construction workers and surprised residents. His visit came two days after fellow Oscar-winner Sean Penn arrived in Cuba, reportedly seeking an interview with 82-year-old Fidel Castro, who has been little seen since announcing he was suffering from an unspecified illness in July 2006. He stepped down as Cuba's president in February of the following year and was replaced by his brother Raul. Penn traveled to the Isle of Youth, off mainland Cuba on Monday to meet with local artists....

One of Fidel Castro's sisters says in a memoir released Monday that she collaborated with the CIA against her brother, starting shortly after the United States' failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Juanita Castro, 76, initially supported her brother's 1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship but quickly grew disillusioned. In a Spanish-language memoir published by Santillana USA and co-written by journalist Maria Antonieta Collins, she says the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to Cuba persuaded her to meet a CIA officer during a trip to Mexico in 1961. By then, her house had already become a sanctuary...

If Fidel Castro and Sean Penn are in the same room, which one do you think hates America more? Such a question doesn't seem to concern Vanity Fair who according to the website TMZ has hired Penn to write an article about how Barack Obama and his administration have impacted Cuba.

HAVANA – Cuban state media have released a second recent photo showing Fidel Castro in regular civilian clothing instead of the track suits that he commonly wore after falling ill in July 2006. In the picture, the 83-year-old Castro is shaking hands with the visiting head of the Chinese parliament in the walled backyard of an undisclosed home. Castro is wearing a red, short-sleeve dress shirt as he greets National People's Congress leader Wu Bangguo. ..

"The Kennedy family, in particular the assassinated President, John F. Kennedy, were representative of a new generation of Americans confronting the old and dirty politics of men in the mold of Nixon...The Kennedy family's (role) in Barack Obama's electoral victory should not be overlooked. Without that moral, political and financial support, the dirty saga of the Bush and Nixon clans would be continuing." That was a portion of an editorial last week in Stalinist Cuba's version of Nazi Germany's Der Sturmer. But no one familiar with Cuban history should doubt the editorials' sincerity. Fidel and Raul Castro, after all, owe...

Diane Watson: "You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met."

HAVANA (Reuters) – Former Cuban President Fidel Castro marked his 83rd birthday on Thursday with a gloomy warning about the global economic crisis, which is hitting his country hard, and a vow to "carry on." Castro, the leader of Cuba's 1959 revolution that brought communism to the Caribbean island, has remained out of public view for the last three years and in 2008 handed over the presidency to younger brother Raul Castro for health reasons. But while he leaves day-to-day running of the government to Raul Castro, he remains influential behind the scenes and writes regular commentaries for state-run media....

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said on Friday. Officials said they were lowering the prices of 24 basic goods to help Cubans get through the difficulties provoked in part by the global financial crisis and three destructive hurricanes that struck the island last year. Cuba's financial reserves have been depleted by increased spending for imports and reduced export income, which has forced the communist-led government to take extraordinary measures to keep...

Last week, seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus...returned from a visit to Cuba where they met with the dictators of Cuba, Fidel and Raul Castro. They were quite impressed with Fidel Castro...

HAVANA -- Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro demanded on Thursday that President Barack Obama return the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo to Cuba without conditions, and he accused the new U.S. leader of supporting "Israeli genocide" against Palestinians. Castro, who had recently praised Obama as "honest" and "noble", lashed out at his administration for stating that Washington will not return Guantanamo if it has any military use for the United States and without concessions in return. "Maintaining a military base in Cuba against the will of the people violates the most elemental principles of international law," Castro wrote in a...

Havana - For more than a century, the United States has controlled the Guantanamo naval base in eastern Cuba for a measly $4,085 in lease fees per year. Cuba has long refused to cash the checks. Now, with President Barack Obama ordering the prison for terrorism suspects at the base closed within a year, Cuba is renewing demands that the U.S. hand over the entire base. "We have always said that Cuba expects to recover this territory," Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Wednesday, after announcing that Cuba was inviting the U.N. special investigator on torture to visit the island...

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday it is unlikely that ailing former Cuban leader Fidel Castro will ever appear in public again.

MIAMI - Fidel Castro has been booked in Miami for allegedly driving with a permanently revoked driver's license, police say. Before anyone storms Calle Ocho to celebrate, it's Fidel Christian Castro, 32, not the octogenarian Cuban dictator. The younger Castro appeared in Miami-Dade bond court this morning after his arrest, the Miami Herald reports. Castro was arrested Friday about 1:31 a.m. in a white Ford pickup truck on Southwest 23rd Street and 34th Avenue, police say.

As Cuba prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's revolution on 1 January, most of those in power are the same people who fought alongside him half a century ago. ...But there is a new generation of communists waiting in the wings. ...The youngest, Liaena Hernandez, is just 18 years old. A petite young woman with long black hair and an engaging smile, she has been a political activist since her early teens... "Having young Cubans in parliament shows that the revolution continues. It isn't just something from our history..." Her father is in the army and she...

Fidel Castro, the former President of Cuba, has offered to talk to Barack Obama, in Havana's latest overture to the US President elect. "With Obama, talks could happen anywhere he wants," the former head of the Communist regime wrote in the latest of a series of columns he has published in state-run media since falling ill in 2006. His remarks follow an offer from his brother, President Raul Castro, to meet Mr Obama "on neutral ground" to try to end the 40 year long conflict between the two countries. If taken up it would be the first meeting in half...

IF there was any question as to whether Steven Soderbergh's "Che" portrays the Marxist revolutionary as a hero, the four-hour movie will be shown next month in Cuba at Havana's New Latin American Film Festival. Event president Alfredo Guevara said in July that "Che" would not be shown if it included any "attacks" on Fidel Castro, who was Che's comrade in arms. But the film, starring Benicio Del Toro as the T-shirt icon, evidently passed muster with the dictator's regime. The stars and filmmakers will have to get US permission to attend the screenings, unless they sneak in like most...

Fidel Castro 'bedded 35,000 women'! From ANI New York, Sept 18: Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has slept with 35,000 women in his 82 years of life, according to an upcoming documentary. "He slept with at least two women a day for more than four decades - one for lunch and one for supper," the New York Post quoted an ex-Castro official named "Ramon" as telling filmmaker Ian Halperin. "Sometimes he even ordered one for breakfast," the official said. "I don't think he would have stayed on as long as he did if not for all the incredible women he...

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban shoppers are snapping up DVD players, motorbikes and electric rice cookers that are going on sale to the general public for the first time. Lines stretch out the doors of major government department stores as Cubans gaze at the new gadgets on display. The goods that went on sale Tuesday previously were available only to foreigners. But the government of new President Raul Castro has lifted that ban. There was no sign yet of two highly anticipated items: computers and microwaves, though salespeople said computers would soon hit the shelves.

Andy Garcia is urging fashion-conscious rebels to stop wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the image of Latino revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara because they remind Cubans of terrible times. The actor accepts that Guevara stands for rebellion and is seen as a hero to many, but he sees the revolutionary as a butcher who killed millions of his countrymen. Argentine-born Guevara helped current Cuban leader Fidel Castro overthrow General Fulgencio Batista's government in a guerrilla revolution in the late 1950s. Garcia, who left Cuba when he was five, says, "I'd be curious to go around and ask them how much they really...

McCain hopes Castro to "meet Marx soon" Fri Feb 22, 2008 11:18am EST By Jason Szep INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner John McCain suggested on Friday that he hoped retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro would die soon and said Castro's brother will be a worse leader. "I hope he has the opportunity to meet Karl Marx very soon," McCain told a town-hall style meeting of about 150 people, referring to communist theoretician Marx who died on March 14, 1883. Castro, 81, announced on Tuesday he was stepping down as president and commander-in-chief of Cuba's armed forces after 49 years...

HAVANA (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said the U.S. government misinformed Americans and the world about 9/11, echoing conspiracy theories about the terror attacks against the United States six years ago. In an essay read by a Cuban television presenter on Tuesday night, Castro said the Pentagon was hit by a rocket, not a plane, because no traces were found of its passengers. "Today one knows there was deliberate misinformation," wrote Castro, who has not appeared in public since July of 2006 when life-threatening surgery for a secret illness forced him to hand over power to his brother...

The networks are preparing for death of Fidel Castro. Writers, producers and most telling, union engineers and tape editors on expensive overtime stayed late at one network in NY tonight, updating Castro's obit tape. In addition, both network owned and leased satellite uplink trucks headed for Miami fast tonight after covering the Lisa Nowak arraignment in Orlando. My Tampa-based Bay of Pigs survivors (after miscalling Fidel's death last week) are withholding data until confirmed. Right now, it's all rumors,.... but.... -30-

Sources reveal exclusively to PerezHilton.com that U.S. officials will be holding a press conference shortly to announce the death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. PerezHilton.com was the first media outlet in the world to break the news of Castro’s death. We posted THIS ITEM on it last week!!!! A Cuban broke the story of the oppressive ogre’s passing. We are soooo proud and happy!!! We’re so sad we can’t be in Miami this weekend. There’s gonna be a big ol’ party en Calle Oche, mi gente!!!! And, in the words of Gloria Estefan… “Quiero my Cuba libre!”

My cellphone has not stopped ringing for the past ten minutes. Various sources inform that an announcement will come within the next few minutes from the Cuban government on Cuban TV and media. Stay tuned and we'll see if we've been manipulated once again or if today is the birth date of Cuba's liberty. Update: Here's the deal and what I know up to now, as of 1500 hours, August 24, 2007: First, South Florida Law Enforcement is on alert. An EOC (Emergency Operations Center) has been set-up and manned somewhere in Homestead. Im also told Local and State government...

In an essay entitled "You will never have Cuba" published by the Cuban Communist Party's newspaper Granma Monday, Castro stated that U.S. efforts to overthrow him and seize power of the country will never materialize. The 80-year-old leader reportedly continues to suffer from ill-health and has not been seen in public since last July. His manifesto, however, was signed Sunday afternoon, and he made clear in his statement that Cuba would not only retain its anti-U.S. stance, but it would also continue to follow the communist model of economic growth. "From one year to the next the standard of living...

HAVANA - There was no sign of a convalescing Fidel Castro as hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched through Havana's Revolution Plaza to celebrate May Day, casting new doubts on his recovery and whether he will return to power. Tuesday marked only the third time in nearly five decades that Castro has missed the sweeping International Workers' Day festivities — a major celebration here and around the world. While recent images of Castro meeting with Chinese leaders indicated he had improved considerably since undergoing emergency surgery nine months ago, his absence at the parade through the Revolution Plaza raised questions...

Latin America: Nothing exposes the myth of Cuba's vaunted health care system quite like the news that ailing dictator Fidel Castro refuses to use it. Instead, he prefers care from Spain. What hypocrisy. Over the weekend, Cuba flew in Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, chief of the gastrointestinal care unit at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon Hospital, to look over the aging dictator and see if there was anything he could do. Spanish medics also brought in new capitalist-world medical equipment, part of a series of such shipments the Cuban government has been quietly provisioning for Castro since June, well before he...

HAVANA - Celebrated American writer Gore Vidal slammed the four-decade-long U.S. trade embargo against Cuba on Sunday, saying during a visit to the island that he hopes recent changes in U.S. politics will help end the sanctions. "I've never been here before and it's a fascinating country," Vidal said, touring Old Havana. He arrived late Sunday and is scheduled to return to the United States on Thursday. Vidal said the United States is "undergoing tremendous political change," referring to growing opposition to the war in Iraq and the Democratic Party's return to control of both houses of Congress in November...

Cuba's President Fidel Castro holds the Saturday edition of local newspaper Juventud Rebelde in Havana October 28, 2006. Castro defiantly dismissed rumors that he was dead on Saturday in television images showing him. http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20061029/i/r2759604312.jpg?x=230&y=345&sig=1gDS5RitziNysvfqnvSY4A--" height="230" width="345">

Historians Have Absolved Fidel Castro Humberto Fontova Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2006 "You may pronounce me guilty," declared Adolf Hitler during the trial in 1924 for his failed Rathaus putsch, "but the eternal court of history will absolve me." "Condemn me, it doesn't matter," declared Fidel Castro during the trial in 1953 for his failed Moncada putsch. "History will absolve me." The young Fidel Castro was a keen student of Nazi pageantry, often seen around campus with his well-thumbed copy of "Mein Kampf" alongside his pistol. His title of Lider Maximo perfectly mimics the German term Fuhrer. Over the years a...

IF IT’S BAD form to speak ill of the dead, it seems to be even worse form to speak ill of the almost-dead tyrant. When I’ve written before about the monstrous regime of Fidel Castro — one of the longest-standing abusers of human rights on the planet — I’ve been deluged with e-mails and letters accusing me of everything bar incest. Despite the pictures of him that appeared on Monday, it’s clear that he is on his last legs. And when he does finally pop his clogs, the mourning of left-liberals will be intense. Such hero worship of so brutal...

The Drudge Report posed an important question today: "Read or Fake?", referring to the recent photo of Castro holding a copy of a current Cuban newspaper. I decided to find out since the link to the article didn't answer the question. I saved the photo and ran it through my well-trained Photoshop eye. Upon initial review, the photo appears legitimate. However, after zooming in 400% on the photo, the truth is revealed - the photo is a fake.

HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban minister said on Friday President Fidel Castro was recovering as the country, anxious to see him reappear almost two weeks after undergoing surgery, prepared to celebrate his 80th birthday on Sunday with or without him. "We are waiting for new messages but I can say with complete confidence that he is recovering," said Culture Minister Abel Prieto upon opening a photo exhibit of Castro in Havana. "The people are waiting. Fidel asks us to be patient because what's at stake is more than the health of one person," said Prieto, who sits on the powerful...

HAVANA - It was supposed to be the ultimate tribute, several days of parties and concerts to mark Fidel Castro's 80th birthday. But instead of listening to folk music and attending conferences on his legacy, Castro is expected to spend his birthday Sunday in bed, recovering from surgery for intestinal bleeding. Cubans have cultivated a myth over the last half-century that Castro is invincible, but now confront the fact that he is an octogenarian — and frail like other elderly mortals. A few Cubans say it won't be long before Castro is giving five-hour speeches once again, but many believe...

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, 77, is ailing, and we don't mean just mentally. "He seemed very sick to me," Bogota Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzon, a former communist union organizer who met with the tyrant in December, told Caracol Radio today in Colombia. "You could tell he had physical limitations, especially in his speech." Garzon expressed disappointed with Castro's dictatorship. "One expects debate ... but in Cuba, everything is driven and controlled by one party," he admitted. "That's not right." Garzon, however, has threatened to oppose the efforts of President Alvaro Uribe, one of the few U.S. allies left in Latin...