September 19, 2010
Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, met yesterday with Cuba’s de facto president Raúl Castro. Castro and Amorim discussed current international and regional issues, and characterized bilateral relations as excellent. Brazil has invested $1B in various projects in Cuba including the reconstruction of the Port of Mariel. And, Brazil has also extended lines of credit to the island as an [...]
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July 21, 2010
Alvaro Vargas Llosa on the Castro brothers as masterful tacticians: Other releases have lifted people’s hopes in the past. In 1969-70, about 1,300 prisoners were deported. In 1979, after a controversial negotiation with some exiles, 3,600 opponents were set free – and expelled. In 1998, Pope John Paul II’s visit was followed by the release of [...]
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CIA director and Cuban soap operas
July 27, 2009Last September, Gen. Michael Hayden (Director, Central Intelligence Agency) addressed the ODNI Open Source Conference in Washington, D.C. about the importance of open source intelligence collection. General Hayden made an interesting anecdote (as follows) about his visit to a Key West open source facility wherein he watched a Cuban program and observed what analysts were [...]