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NEW YORK (AP) -- Citgo will be allowed to pull 250,000 barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because of its inability to secure crude in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav. Venezuela's government-controlled Citgo Petroleum Corp. said Tuesday that supplies to its refinery in Lake Charles, La., were cut off when the Calcasieu Ship Channel closed. http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/03/news/international/citgo_reserve.ap/?postversion=2008090311

With pomp, ceremony and a massive dose of defiance, His Excellency Commander Robert Gabriel Mugabe was yesterday sworn in as Zimbabwe's president. Inside the oak-panelled rooms of State House, as fighter jets roared overhead, he declared himself winner of an election in which he was the only candidate. Even before he took the oath, he had set in motion bloody recriminations against those who worked against him. Secret documents outlining the strategy against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been seen by the Mail. They reveal that, in the runup to the polls, Mugabe had plotted to 'eliminate MDC...

Voters hope ink-stained finger will keep them alive CHRIS MCGREAL | HARARE, ZIMBABWE - Jun 28 2008 07:30 The young man who gave his name only as Wilson wanted just one thing from Friday's presidential election in Zimbabwe: the indelible red ink on his little finger to show he had voted. "They said they would come to see if we voted," he said after casting his ballot in a tent in a Harare suburb. "They know if we went to vote we would have to vote for the president. They were watching." Who are "they"? "The ones who made us...

The farcical presidential election run-off in Zimbabwe has come and gone. Predictably Zanu-PF used all sorts of intimidation tactics to force people to the polls so Robert Mugabe -- the only candidate after last Sunday's withdrawal by Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai -- will win by a wide margin. Reports from the country gave accounts of people being frog marched to the polls and instructed to write down the serial numbers of their ballot papers to prove they voted -- and the party functionaries checked who they voted for. But this was all expected in the culmination of...

And they said that Obama had zero appeal outside the guilt-ridden white wine liberal and African-American demos. Au contraire. OneFreeKorea is reporting that Kim Jong Il has endorsed OMessiah... If this is true, it would allow OAppeaser to check off the foreign terrorist/dictator faction much earlier than expected.

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed. An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window. The killing last Friday – one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime...

Residents from the mining town of Kadoma awoke Friday morning to the sound of Zanu PF thugs demanding they pull down their satellite dishes or risk having their homes burnt down. Frightened residents hastily took down their satellite dishes after the Zanu PF mobs moved around the suburbs to enforce their demands. They accused foreign news stations, accessed via satellite, of misinforming Zimbabweans on the political situation in the country. A woman told us that all the men from nearby Venus Mine were forced to join the Zanu PF mobs in ‘a war against the residents of Kadoma.’ Two trucks...

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe overnight said that "only God" could remove him from office, as the opposition MDC considered pulling out of next week's run-off election amid escalating violence. "The MDC will never be allowed to rule this country - never ever," Mr Mugabe told local business people in Bulawayo - Zimbabwe's second largest city - referring to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. "Only God who appointed me will remove me, not the MDC, not the British." Mr Mugabe - in power since independence from Britain in 1980 - has frequently accused his presidential run-off opponent Morgan Tsvangirai of...

Erroneously first reported to be the mansion of bruta tyrant Robert Mugabe, it is, in fact, the home of his COUSIN! Mugabe's mansion is even MORE opulent -- but has not yet been photographed (or maybe was but the photog wound up as crocodile chum in the nearest river). http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Zimbabwe/Harare/blog-219289.html As you stroll through this beautiful PALACE, be comforted that much of it -- as well as Robert's -- was paid for with YOUR "MONEY," sucked out of your pocket by the scum who run the UNITED NATIONS and the overeducated idiots who vote for and run the US FOREIGN...

Mugabe mob kidnaps wife and child of MDC mayor of Harare By Peta Thornycroft in Harare Last Updated: 11:44PM BST 17/06/2008 President Robert Mugabe's onslaught against his opponents widened to include their families when the wife and child of the mayor of Harare were abducted. Armed men raided the house of Emmanuel Chiroto, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and recently elected mayor. They burned down the house with petrol bombs and kidnapped his wife, Abigail, 27, and their four-year-old son, Ashley. The boy was released a few hours later, but Mrs Chiroto is still missing....

THE AGONIES being inflicted on Zimbabwe by its corrupt and brutal president are worsening. Last week, the government of Robert Mugabe ordered international aid agencies to put a halt to the operations that have been keeping hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwe's people alive. With most of the country's population out of work and in dire poverty, the food and other humanitarian assistance provided by groups like CARE and Save the Children are more desperately needed than ever. By shutting them down, Mugabe and his henchmen were knowingly condemning countless vulnerable Zimbabweans to death. Mugabe claimed, preposterously, that the humanitarian agencies...

MINSK (AFP) - Eleven US diplomats left Belarus Saturday after being expelled by the Minsk authorities, crossing the border into Lithuania just an hour before their deadline to leave expired, an embassy spokesman said. The diplomatic spat is the latest in a series of incidents between the US and a state Washington describes as the "last dictatorship in Europe." On Wednesday, Belarus gave the US embassy 72 hours to expel 10 of its staff who were no longer welcome in the former communist state, it said. The US had originally refused to reduce its diplomatic core in Minsk. It finally...

Zimbabwe’s political crisis lurched on last week as President Robert Mugabe, the strongman who has ruled the California-size country in southern Africa for the past 28 years, refused to release the results of the March 29 elections. In old-fashioned autocratic style, the government’s police began to round up opposition supporters. The world is losing patience, but Mr. Mugabe is only the latest example of dictators in Africa and elsewhere — some more bloodthirsty than others — who have overstayed their welcome, and whom the West have tried to winkle out of power. What lessons can be learned from past attempts...

With the fall of communism and the rise of globalisation in the 1990s, the West believed democracy had won. How wrong it was, says the neocon and foreign policy adviser to John McCain. He warns the forces of freedom are losing ground as the autocracies of Russia and China reassert themselves as world powers In recent years, as the great autocracies of Russia and China have risen and the radical Islamists have waged their struggle, the liberal world has been divided and distracted by issues both profound and petty. The great democracies have squabbled and jostled for the moral high...

As further evidence of the not-so-great minds inhabiting higher education, political science professor and director of the UCLA Globalization Research Center on Africa, Edmond J. Keller, recently made the following statement about Zimbabwe's destructive dictator, Robert Mugabe: Mugabe has tried to start programs that would increase indigenous business opportunities, but the high inflation rate, the worthless Zimbabwe currency; and a vibrant civil society which has become anti-government make it impossible for him to hold on to power.That's funny, last I checked, Mugabe had been in power for 28 years. And he's been destroying the country (once labeled the "bread basket...

Could a gene be partly responsible for the behaviour of some of the worlds most infamous dictators? Selfish dictators may owe their behaviour partly to their genes, according to a study that claims to have found a genetic link to ruthlessness. The study might help to explain the money-grabbing tendencies of those with a Machiavellian streak — from national dictators down to 'little Hitlers' found in workplaces the world over. Researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found a link between a gene called AVPR1a and ruthless behaviour in an economic exercise called the 'Dictator Game'. The exercise allows players...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Security agents and paramilitary police in riot gear are surrounding a Harare hotel housing foreign journalists. A man answering the phone at the hotel says they are taking away some reporters. The man refused to give his name but said about 30 police entered the hotel Thursday and were preparing to take away four or five journalists. Foreign journalists have been in Zimbabwe to cover elections in which President Robert Mugabe's party lost control of parliament. He is apparently facing a runoff for the presidency. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information....

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Robert Gabriel Mugabe once assured Zimbabwe's fleeing whites that "there is a place for you in the sun." Now his own place in the country he has ruled for 28 years is uncertain. Mugabe was born in 1924, the son of a village carpenter in Zvimba, 40 miles west of Zimbabwe's capital Harare. As a child, he tended his grandfather's cattle, fished for bream in muddy water holes, played football and "boxed a lot," as he recalled later. Few blacks at the time learned to write their names. But Mugabe went to school, where he was...

HARARE – The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Sunday warned the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party to desist from announcing results that have not been officially released by the commission. At a press conference in Harare, ZEC chief elections officer, Lovemore Sekeramayi said it was the prerogative of the commission to conduct elections and announce results. “The Commission notes with concern that some stakeholders are announcing purported results of the elections. “We would like to advise the nation that those results announced are not the official results because collation and verification of the results is still in...

Mugabe will fall  Mar 27 2008 4:37PM Chris Muronzi  Harare - President Robert Mugabe will this weekend face his stiffest election challenge. He has failed to campaign meaningfully against a background characterised by hunger and rapid price increases that have left citizens living from hand to mouth. What Mugabe failed to realise is that this election is different. This particular poll is about the economy. By failing to realise that, Mugabe has dug his own political grave. Although he has vowed that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who is attracting very large numbers to his rallies, will not rule in...

HAVANA (AP) - Ailing former leader Fidel Castro made a rare mention of his government's crackdown on political opponents five years ago, defending the action and exhorting the United States to treat its prisoners with the same humanity he said Cuba uses with its inmates. "What an enormous difference between the methods of the United States and of Cuba!" Castro wrote in an essay published Monday in state media, apparently referring to how the U.S. government treats terror suspects. "None of the mercenaries were tortured or deprived of attorney or trial," Castro said of the 75 dissidents rounded up beginning...

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has vowed that Zimbabwe's main opposition party will never rule during his lifetime and threatened to expel companies from Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler Britain ... Britain, which has led international criticism of Mugabe for violating political and human rights in his country and plunging it into a disastrous economic crisis, says only 40 British firms remain operating in the country. Mugabe's relations deteriorated with Western nations after he embarked in 2000 on a controversial land reform scheme that saw about 4000 white-owned farms seized... Mugabe also urged Zimbabweans yesterday to help acquire a majority stake in mining...

Zimbabwe has the highest proportion of elderly voters in the world, according to the voters' roll being used for elections next week. A glance at one page of the roll yesterday for a ward in the Mount Pleasant suburb of Harare turned up a Fodias Kunyepa, who was born in 1901. Over the page was Rebecca Armstrong, born 1900. Somewhat younger was Desmond Lardner-Burke, born 1909, who was the notorious Minister for Justice in the rebel Rhodesian Government and responsible for the harassment, arrest and detention without trial of tens of thousands of black nationalists, including President Mugabe, fighting against...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Grim tales of cannibalism highlighting the brutality of West Africa's civil wars emerged in testimony Thursday at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Joseph "Zigzag" Marzah, who described himself as Taylor's chief of operations and head of the death squad before Taylor became president, said African peacekeepers and even United Nations personnel were killed and eaten on the battlefield by Taylor's militiamen. Prosecutors described Marzah as a key witness with inside knowledge of the former Liberian president's operations in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone, where he is accused of responsibility for the...

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has signed a new law requiring foreign and white-owned businesses to hand over 51 per cent control of their operations to blacks

Bush Wants no Personal Ties With Kim Jong-il U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday said he has no intention to form personal ties with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. At a press conference at the White House, Bush stressed the need to build personal relationships with a new Russian president who will be elected in upcoming polls. But he said that establishing personal ties with the North Korean leader is impossible. "I learned that it's important to establish personal relations with leaders even though you may not agree with them -- certain leaders. I'm not going to have a...

Four dissidents freed this week after five years in inhumane conditions in a Cuban prison have revealed the dark side of Fidel Castro’s regime. The four...described regular beatings, humiliation and arbitrary punishment with long periods of solitary confinement in cramped cells with cement beds. They said they were deprived of food and water in conditions which resembled "a desert". Arriving in Spain to be reunited with their families, they exposed the routine abuse of political prisoners which marked Castro’s five decades in power. The four were part of a group of 75 dissidents who were jailed in 2003 by Castro’s...

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...

Cuba features a universal health care system, a minuscule 1.9 percent unemployment rate, near-total literacy, complete political "unity" — and hundreds of thousands of people ready to risk their lives to get the hell out. How could that be? Supermodel Naomi Campbell claims that Fidel Castro is "a source of inspiration to the world." Actually, in South Beach, dingbat stick-figures can pocket millions strutting down runways, but in Cuba, young women are destined to toil in a socialist economy with little hope. They aren't inspired by Castro. Suicide rates are estimated to have tripled since El Caballo began running things....

Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. Then he was widely recognized as a champion of a new independent Africa. Now he rightly is seen as a repressive old man desperate to hold on to power at any cost. Mugabe has turned Zimbabwe from the bread basket of southern Africa into a basket case. He has seized land for political purposes, displaced hundreds of thousands of suspected political opponents, trampled freedom of the press, crushed opposition demonstrations and rigged elections. At 83 years old, he is intent on securing yet another five-year term as...

Washington, D.C. — Fidel Castro is finally on his way out. After nearly 50 years of bloody, iron-fisted rule, the world’s longest reigning dictator — and one of the last communist tyrants on the planet — has announced that he is stepping down. That’s good news, but it’s not likely to change much for the 11 million captive people in Cuba. On February 19, Granma, the Cuban Communist Party’s organ, carried a letter purportedly written by the 81-year-old ailing autocrat, announcing that ill health prevents him from continuing to “discharge the duties” of president and commander-in-chief of Cuba's armed forces....

After 49 years of ruling Cuba with an iron fist, 81-year-old Fidel Castro has formally stepped down as president and head of Cuba's armed forces. But there will not be any election to determine his successor. Power in the tropical tyranny is a family matter and Raul Castro, Fidel's 76-year-old brother, will take permanent control of a country he has run for 19 months while Fidel has endured a lengthy illness. Little has changed during that time -- free speech is still suppressed, democracy is crushed, freedom of the press is forbidden, free enterprise is illegal, fair trails are the...

Fidel Castro Steps Down...

BLITAR, Indonesia - Hiding out in the dense, humid jungle, Markus Talam watched Indonesian soldiers herd manacled prisoners from trucks, line them up and mow them down with round after round of automatic weapons fire. It was 1968, and the killings were part of a final offensive by forces under Gen. Suharto to wipe out the communist party and secure his position as leader of Indonesia, now the world's most populous Muslim nation. "They gunned them down and dumped their bodies in a mass grave dug by other prisoners. I remember the sound of the guns clearly: tat-tat, tat-tat, tat-tat...

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Former Indonesian President Suharto, the U.S. Cold War ally who led one of the 20th century's most brutal dictatorships over 32 years that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday. He was 86. Suharto had been ailing in a hospital in the capital, Jakarta, since Jan. 4 when he was admitted with failing kidneys, heart and lungs. Finally toppled by mass street protests in 1998, Suharto's departure opened the way for democracy in this predominantly Muslim nation of 235 million people and he withdrew from public life, rarely venturing from his comfortable villa on...

Saddam Hussein initially didn't think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture. Piro, in his first television interview, relays this and other revelations to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley this Sunday, Jan. 27, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Piro spent almost seven months debriefing Saddam in a plan based on winning his confidence by convincing him that Piro...

JAKARTA (AFP) - - Indonesia's ex-dictator Suharto, who ruled the nation with an iron fist for more than three decades, suffered multiple organ failure on Friday and lost consciousness, his doctors said. Suharto, an authoritarian ruler for 32 years until he was forced from power in 1998, entered hospital a week ago suffering anaemia and low blood pressure, as well as heart, kidney and lung problems. He improved after dialysis and transfusions but his condition has since fluctuated, dramatically worsening late Friday as his extended family rushed to his bedside and the media crowded hospital corridors. "At 5:00pm (1000 GMT),...

Latin America: As Pakistan's tightening dictatorship draws global opprobrium, a curious double standard is emerging in Venezuela as democracy gasps its last and celebrities continue to file in. Where's the decency? That's what was seen in the message sent by the latest visitor to Miraflores Palace, supermodel Naomi Campbell, who gushed "amazement" at the "love and encouragement" in the Venezuelan dictatorship as students battled riot police in the streets below. It wasn't just an aberration. When the Rev. Jesse Jackson visited Hugo Chavez in August 2005, other street battles occurred beneath the balcony as the reverend praised the dictator. Hollywood...

http://www.dailynk.com/korean/read.php?num=46852&cataId=nk06000 Kim Jong-il May be Developing Dementia ... U.S./British Intelligence Investigating /begin my translation Kim Jong-il 'May be Developing Dementia' ... "U.S./British Intelligence Investigating" U.S. official "(Kim Jong-il)Shows symptoms of early stage of dementia... Kim Jong-il 'under the care' of the (personal) Secretary's Office" [2007-09-20 00:01 ] U.S. government picked up the intelligence that Kim Jong-il is suffering from the early stage of dementia, and is trying to verify it, it has been revealed. Credible sources in Japan told The Daily NK on Sept. 19 that they confirmed it from a high-level U.S. official on Sept. 14. The sources said,...

Campaign '08: An implied endorsement from a dictator is nothing to brag about. But Fidel Castro's mingles praise with contempt. Maybe Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should rethink their easy Cuba stances. Writing this week in a communist party newspaper, the jurassic tyrant picked a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket as a likely winner in next year's U.S. election. He cited it as one of many things he's been right about, alongside his prediction of the victory of Jimmy Carter, whom he now praises as much as he once rolled him like a fine Cohiba. Even as rumors swirl about how...

Jose Maria Sison, the former Communist leader in the Philippines, has been arrested in the Netherlands, charged with the murders of two former political associates. 66-year-old Sison has been living in the Netherlands since 1987, and was the founder of the Philippine Communist Party. The party's military wing, the NPA or New People's Army, is waging an armed rebellion across the Philippines that has cost 40,000 lives. The National Public Prosecutor for the Netherlands, John Lucas, explained the reasons for Sison's arrest. "He's suspected of involvement in the murder of two people in the Philippines. We think that he was...

(CBS4) "Fidel Castro will never die!" Castro’s friend and ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sent greetings to Cuba’s ailing leader during an address Saturday to thousands of supporters. "For those who want Fidel to die, they are going to end up frustrated because Fidel Castro will never die. He will always live on," Chavez said. Though much remains unknown about the state of Castro's health, Chavez has frequently offered general updates since the Cuban leader announced more than a year ago that he had undergone intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding power to his younger brother Raul. Since then, Castro,...

Upcoming cover, just leaked from one of my sources in the main stream media -- I can't tell you who as she would probably lose her job.

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...

There's an strangely ominous post on celebrity news site PerezHilton.com tonight wondering aloud if Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has died. Mr. Hilton has piqued our interest — as intrepid night reporter noted, "He's never wrong!" (Well, at least when it comes to celebrities, anyhow.) Here's what he wrote: Is Castro Dead??? We are hearing very loud rumblings that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has died, though it could be just a flare-up of the health rumors that have dogged the tyrant recently. No official confirmation yet, but we will be following this story closely. Post reporter Katie Rook spoke with Mr....

Usually very reliable Tampa-based Bay of Pigs vets say Castro is dead. UNCONFIRMED! These are the people who tipped us so we had invasion story 2 days before it happend at the old WLCY in St. Pete. More when available.

Castro's End Draws Near Humberto Fontova Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007 Fidel Castro's 81st birthday passed on Aug. 13 without an appearance by the dictator, not even a snapshot or salutation from him in the official press, and with little fanfare from the regime. A small fireworks show on Havana's waterfront, El Malecon, was the highlight. "The Comandante will never appear again in public," said a Cuban student to Yolanda Martinez, Cuban correspondent for Mexico's newspaper, Reforma. "He has been an imposing figure, but his role at Cuba's head is over." The regime's succession plans seem to be operating smoothly. This...

MIAMI: Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, to be released from a U.S. prison in September, was due in court Monday for a hearing on an extradition request from France, which wants him to be tried there. Noriega, 72, is to leave a Miami prison Sept. 9 after serving 15 years for drug trafficking and racketeering. He wants to fly immediately to Panama to fight a conviction in the slayings of two political opponents, his lawyers have said. But American prosecutors are pushing for his extradition to France, where Noriega was convicted in absentia in 1999 on money-laundering charges. He was...

Postapartheid Pretoria has become the free world's leading coddler of dictators. Last September, not long after the Israeli-Hezbollah war, South Africa's minister of intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, praised the Islamist group committed to Israel's destruction. The Iran News Agency, albeit prone to exaggeration, reported that Mr. Kasrils "lauded [the] great victories of the Lebanese Hezbollah against the Zionist forces" and "stressed that the successful Lebanese resistance proved the vulnerability of the Israeli army." The comment received no attention in the South African media; nor, for that matter, did the international press seem particularly interested. And yet, the scandalous comment occurred immediately...

The Iraq war has probably killed the idea of using U.S. troops to intervene in the name of Mr. Bush's "world democratic revolution." The Middle American revolt that killed amnesty for the 12 million illegal aliens has buried the idea of open-borders immigration. Come now the SWFs, which may bring an end to America's folly in her unthinking embrace of global free trade. What are SWFs? They are Sovereign Wealth Funds – huge capital funds controlled by regimes that are the big new boys on the block in the world of global finance. How are SWFs created? Primarily from the...