Free Republic

The crisis in Cuba has seen its government approach the United Nations for aid to address its food shortage, as residents take to the streets in a rare sign of social unrest Cuba is "on the verge of total collapse" as the country has been hit by blackouts with residents taking to the streets calling for "food and power". The crisis has seen the Cuban government approach the United Nations for aid to address its food shortage. As the Caribbean island goes through its harshest economic crisis in three decades, the communist regime is resorting to hitherto unseen cries for...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

An asteroid the size of a 50-story skyscraper will zoom past Earth Sunday (July 17), making its closest approach to our planet in nearly 100 years. The meaty space rock, dubbed 2022 KY4, will safely miss Earth by about 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers), or more than 16 times the average distance between Earth and the moon, according to NASA. This is considerably farther afield than the asteroid 2022 NF, which came within 56,000 miles (90,000 km) — or about 23% the average distance between Earth and the moon — on July 7. Asteroid 2022 KY4 is about 290...

When it came to deadly epidemics, the Soviets didn’t do half-measures. Not only doctors, but the police, army, navy, and even the KGB were all brought in to curb the spread.In 1939, microbiologist Abram Berlin brought a dangerous disease back with him to Moscow from Saratov. There in Saratov, during experiments on animals, he used the living causative agent of the plague, and was strictly confined to quarantine. However, an urgent call from Moscow forced him to go immediately to the capital, unleashing the plague. Berlin checked in at the Hotel National, dined there, and visited a hairdresser. Feeling very...

Ritchie Valens-Donna

Full title :Exclusive — Ret. Lt. Gen. Flynn: Terror-Linked Nations ‘Cutting Deals’ with Mexican Cartels to Enter U.S. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), tells Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM that countries that are known to support radical Islamic terrorism are "cutting deals" with Mexican cartels for access to human smuggling routes into the United States. Citing photos from the U.S. Border Patrol component of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency on Friday, Gen. Flynn also told Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle, host of Breitbart News Daily, that there are signs...

On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers. Death came suddenly to Dorchester County, S.C. Stressed insects tried to flee their nests, only to surrender in little clumps at hive entrances. The dead worker bees littering the farms suggested that colony collapse disorder was not the culprit — in that odd phenomenon, workers vanish as though raptured, leaving a living queen and young bees behind. Instead, the dead heaps signaled the killer was less mysterious, but no less devastating. The pattern matched acute pesticide poisoning. By one estimate, at a single apiary — Flowertown...

HAVANA (Reuters) - How did a well-to-do country boy with a conservative education called Fidel Castro turn into a fearless rebel and enduring leader of one of the world's last Marxist states? For Finnish documentary-maker Folke West, granted rare access to early Cuban state archives, the answer lies in Castro's formative years, long before he became a Communist. His 2-hour, 50-minute "Young Fidel" traces the Cuban president's life from his father's ranch through Jesuit schools and volatile university politics to a nearly suicidal raid on Cuba's second largest military garrison, prison and finally exile in 1955. "Most biographies jump most...

Founder of today’s China killed 45 million of his own people (TibetanReview.net, Sep05, 2010) Recently declassified Chinese Communist Party archives show that the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao Tsetung's regime cased the greatest "man-made famine" the world has ever seen, reported the ANI news service Sep 3, citing a new publication from Hong Kong. Mao's Great Famine, by Frank Dikotter, Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, is reported to show that 45 million Chinese people were killed between 1958 and 1961. Chinese propaganda posters of the late 1950s show smiling young workers marching jubilantly towards unity under the...

LAS VEGAS – The U.S. Air Force is giving an ultimatum to owners of a remote Nevada property that over time has been surrounded by a vast bombing range including the super-secret Area 51. They're being told to take a $5.2 million "last best offer" for their property by Thursday -- or the government will seize it through condemnation. The owners include descendants of a couple who lost their hardscrabble mining enterprise after the Air Force moved in in the 1940s. Nuclear tests then began in 1951, their mine mill mysteriously exploded in 1954 and they ran out of money...

We understand that Nancy Pelosi is married to a very successful businessman in California. We are very happy that the Pelosi family has enjoyed the fruits of capitalism. Of course, they've enjoyed those fruits because they live in a country that respects property rights and does not confiscate businesses. This week, Rep Pelosi went to Cuba and stayed at the Hotel Saratoga. Let me share this from our good friends at Capitol Hill Cubans: "The Hotel Saratoga is a beautiful neoclassical structure in Old Havana. It was purchased in 1939 by Blanco Lopez and Co., headed by Jose Blanco and...

They have the heft of an ax, a blade nearly as long as a sword, and the intimidation power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Cheap and easily bought, machetes in America have commonly been reserved for underbrush and sugar-cane cutting. But now, in a spreading trend that so far has drawn little national attention, criminals are using machetes as weapons, striking fear in cities and towns across the country. Witness these recent incidents: In the heartland Indiana city of Evansville in February, a robber pulled a machete on a convenience-store cashier, who put...

While Buzzfeed is mostly known for fun quizzes and amusing lists, the website also has trending posts on abortion. Over the past couple of weeks one such piece included “What Having An Abortion in 1959 Was Like,” by Buzzfeed contributor Diana Weiner. The headline reads: “Illegal, secret, expensive, and incredibly scary. A 74-year-old grandmother tells her story.” Emphasis is original. Diana Weiner’s story is personal and in many ways does seem “incredibly scary.” The piece fails to distinguish though how an abortion today is necessary different from those things. While it is no longer illegal to have an abortion, abortion...

THERE is no guerilla fighter in the world as famous as Che Guevara. The revolutionary’s face adorns the T-shirts of wannabe radicals everywhere and 41 years after his death he is still idolised by the Left. Now Ernesto Guevara, to give him his real name, is getting the big Hollywood movie treatment. Oscar-winning actor Benicio del Toro plays the Argentinian revolutionary in two films directed by Steven Soderbergh, the man behind Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. But while Soderbergh’s films — Che: Part 1 and Che: Part 2 — largely follow the predictable path of lauding him as...

On this day in 1959, rising American rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza plane crashes in Iowa a few minutes after takeoff from Mason City on a flight headed for Moorehead, Minnesota. Investigators blamed the crash on bad weather and pilot error. Holly and his band, the Crickets, had just scored a No. 1 hit with "That'll Be the Day." After mechanical difficulties with the tour bus, Holly had chartered a plane for his band to fly between stops on the Winter Dance Party Tour. However, Richardson,...

1959 memo lists government regulations for Yeti hunting. Really. If you're planning to hit the Himalayas in search of an Abominable Snowman, you better be ready to do things by the book. At least, that'd be the case if you were conducting your search in 1959. These days, if you head out in search of a Yeti, you'll probably get a lot of giggles and funny looks, but back in 1959, the American Embassy in Kathmandu was taking such expeditions seriously. In a memo issued on Nov. 30 of that year, the embassy listed three specific regulations for Yeti searches...

TCM is continuing its weekend of great movies by following their present airing on "Ben-Hur" with MGM's other big hit of 1959: Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest"- One of my 2 favorite Hitchcock films("Vertigo" is the other) and my favorite of his 4 with Mr. Grant.

The 1959 winner of 11 Oscars including Best Picture and Actor is on TCM tonight at 8:00 PM EST. It's easy to see how far our culture has fallen when a pro-Christianity film like this couldn't be made by Hollywood today. My favorite scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVlf7OiiTJE