Why can’t the US put our obsolete cold war animosities behind us and embrace what’s remarkable and good about our nearest neighbor – a neighbor that seems to have solved, even in its poverty, social problems that continue to plague us?

The equal civil and political rights for which the founding fathers of Cuban independence fought are still a dream for millions of people around the world, said Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, President of the Cuban Parliament on Friday.

...Cuban President Fidel Castro has revealed details of the large Cuban military participation in the war against South African troops in southern Angola in 1987-88. Some 55,000 Cuban troops aided the Angolan counter-offensive, that drove South Africans back to the Namibian border and to the negotiation table.

The island closes 2005 on an upbeat with a spectacular 11.8 percent GDP growth. Higher salaries and pensions, new education, public health, social security and power generation programs, and the pride of Cubans to be able to offer growing assistance to nations on several continents are part of the general optimism.

The Cuban economy grew by a stunning 11.8 percent in 2005, the greatest increase in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since the triumph of the Revolution, said the Minister of Economy and Planning, Jose Luis Rodriguez on Thursday.

On December 10, [Michael]Parmly invited several "dissidents" on the US payroll to his residence in Havana, delivering a speech full of lies and offenses against the Cuban Revolution...The diplomat launched into a series of insults, among them some aimed at university and other students and questioned the access of all Cubans to free health care services.

The exercises incorporate the population in every territory, testing the capacity to move in case of an attack and the state and functioning of shelters...These military exercises aim to prevent invasion or occupation by the organized, practiced, and permanent resistance of the population.

The Bush administration was shocked this past week by the unanimous adoption of a resolution denouncing the US blockade of Cuba at the Ibero-American summit in Salamanca, Spain.

The travel ban is a failed, outdated, Cold-War era policy. The current policy succeeds only in restricting the rights of U.S. citizens and hurting the Cuban people; it responds to the interests of a small group of hardliners in the Cuban-American community. It is time to create a forward-looking U.S. policy toward Cuba based on sensible foreign policy objectives.

"I am 73 and I have been in many countries. I feel as if I am a little tired. My heart wants to go on, but my bones are not letting it...I was fortunate enough that Fidel attended my concert in 1978 and I have always boasted about that. He is a star on my chariot. Who wouldn’t be excited about singing to Fidel?"

As American citizens we have been increasingly dismayed for some time at the policies of our government. "Lawlessness" - domestic as well as international - seems to be the basic thread which unites these policies - whether it is the violations of the United Nations Charter, the flouting of international agreements against torture and arbitrary detention, the theft of elections, or the undermining of constitutionally guaranteed civil rights.

The Bush administration doesn’t believe that people in the US should have the right to travel wherever they want. It believes that the US government has the right to restrict freedom of movement and to enforce laws selectively to punish people who do not agree with the administration’s foreign policy towards certain countries. The administration has specifically aimed the federal government’s resources at punishing those who travel to Cuba without obtaining a government license.

Citoprot-P, a new product designed in Cuba to treat diabetic ulcers, will be introduced into treatment regimens in hospital centers throughout the country.

This week's opening of the 61st Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights began with a call by the Cuban delegation for major reform in the Commission.

Bush administration works harder to enforce the blockade of Cuba than it does to to track real terrorists.