UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The UN General Assembly on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly for the 16th year in a row to demand an end to the crippling US trade embargo against Cuba, despite Washington's pledge to keep it in place.

By a vote of 184 in favor, [and 4 against], it reiterated its "call upon all states to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures (such as those in the US embargo) in conformity with their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and international law."

[But hey, when has the US ever listened to international law?]

What has worried the Bush brothers and their clientele in Florida is the fact that Raul Castro has inaugurated a debate on the island encouraging an open debate on its future. This is not popular with apparatchiks, but is undoubtedly having an impact.

Prensa Latina, Havana

Havana, Oct 8 (Prensa Latina) Cuban President Fidel Castro termed Commander Ernesto Che Guevara an exceptional combatant and a mastermind of consciences in our America and the world, on the the 40th anniversary of his death. In his article Monday entitled "Che," the Cuban Revolution leader highlighted the revolutionary struggle and example left by the heroic guerrilla fighter, of whom he said: he still fights with us and for us.

NY Daily News

An intimate memoir of Che Guevara by his widow is making the rounds of New York publishers this week as the 40th anniversary of his death approaches.

Aleida March tenderly describes the man behind the revolutionary icon in her manuscript, "Evocation." Her book details her experiences falling in love, marrying and raising four children with Guevara, who was killed in Bolivia at age 39.

Remembering His Death, Celebrating His Life

On October 9, 1967, 40 years ago today, Che Guevara was assassinated in Bolivia by his CIA-assisted and -directed captors.

He told the frightened soldier who was sent to execute him in the small room where Che lay, seriously wounded: “I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man."

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
Tuesday October 2, 2007 | The Guardian

The Bolivian soldier who executed Che Guevara 40 years ago has had his sight restored by Cuban doctors, turning him into an unlikely advertisement for the revolutionary's ideals.

In 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba experienced an 'energy famine.' Transportation and agriculture virtually came to a stop due to lack of diesel fuel and fertilizer shortages. This film explores what changes were put in place. The makers of the film "The End Of Suburbia" went to Cuba to explore it as a test case for what the conditions after Peak Oil would look like. This is that story.

HAVANA: Cuba has solved crippling energy shortages that plagued the
island as recently as 2004 without sacrificing a long-term commitment
to promoting environmentally friendly fuels, the head of the U.N.
Environment Program said Wednesday.

Canada has donated millions of dollars to the cause of rehabilitating and reintegrating child soldiers around the world, but no one in the Canadian government has ever attempted to help this country's own child soldier...On June 27, Omar Khadr, the last remaining Canadian citizen held at the American detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, will have been detained by the United States without trial for exactly five years. This September, Khadr will celebrate his 21st birthday.

The Cuban success story comes despite a total absence of the free market in the Cuban healthcare system. The US's infant mortality rate is 7 per 1,000 live births - just the same as in Cuba (but double that in the US if you’re Black)...Cuban health practitioners are some of the most highly skilled in the world...and outstrip the West in certain cancer treatments. This is all despite Cuban healthcare expenditure being amongst the lowest in the world, less than 1/25 of that spent in America.

Imagine five and a half years away from your family, your wife, your children. You can't call them. They can't visit. Mail takes months to get through. When it does, it is heavily censored. Imagine being beaten, stripped naked, humiliated, again and again and again. This is the life of [prisoners] in Guantanamo Bay.

...[In] the mid-1970s...anti-Castro Cubans bombed and shot their way through the hemisphere. The leading star of the 1970s terrorist show...was Luis Posada Carriles...Good reasons abound for [U.S.] officials to feel reluctant to charge Posada with terrorism. As soon as they open the files, they discover the U.S. government had trained and encouraged him to practice terrorism as a vocation...

The Military Commissions Act, which denies basic due process protections, including the right to habeas corpus, is a disgrace. But an even bigger disgrace is the concentration camp the United States maintains at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Act should be repealed and the Guantánamo prison should be shut down immediately.

"George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical values. The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House.