Fidel Castro Dead?

Perez Hilton reports that Castro is dead and that it would be announced at 4:00 and is sticking by the story even though it's long past that time.

I think it's cruel to get the hopes of the Miami Cubans up again if this is just a hoax!

I thought the idea was to tear it down

This is a rather odd headline:

Can The Crumbling Berlin Wall Be Saved?

Artists want to preserve it:

The Berlin Wall has been battered by age, the elements, souvenir-hunting tourists and commercial development. This once-detested symbol of the Cold War and a divided nation is desperately in need of a makeover.

Now a group of artists is trying to keep the most iconic part of the Communist-era barrier standing.

The .81-mile stretch of the wall along the Spree River holds a Thierry Noir painting of bright tall cartoon faces and Brigit Kinder's famous image of an East German Trabi car breaking through the wall.

[...]

In hopes of keeping it intact as a reminder of the divided city, Alavi and other artists registered the stretch of wall as an art gallery. It is now formally known as Küstlerinitiative (artists' initiative) East Side Gallery e.V.

The 52-year-old Iranian-born Alavi has been the cornerstone of the preservation effort for nearly two decades.

"I come from a country where the wall is in the heads of the people, there are walls between the cultures, but in the end those people share the same fates," he said.

Tags: Berlin Wall

Chinese officials break "one-child" policy

Some are more equal than others, I guess:

Nearly 2,000 officials in central China have violated the nation's "one child" family planning policy, further revealing difficulties in implementing population controls.

Family planning departments have exposed 1,968 officials in populous Hunan province who have breached the law, Xinhua news agency said Sunday.

One "national" level official surnamed Li even went so far as to sire four children with his four different mistresses, the report said.

The local family planning commission caught 21 national and local legislators, 24 political advisers and 112 businessmen violating the birth control policies in the province that boasts a population of 66 million.

[...]

Generally, urban families can have one child and rural families can have two if the first is a girl.

But in recent years the policy has been routinely ignored in rural areas, while the newly rich in Chinese cities have opted to pay fines and suffer social penalties in order to have more than one child.

[...]

"However, there have been increasing reports of officials, tycoons and entertainment stars having more than one child, causing grave public concern."

This is why the pampered elites in our country don't have a problem adopting communism, nothing would change for them. They would be above the law just as officials and the rich are above the law in China.

Communism is a system that works counter to the nature man. Man is basically self-centered but communism calls for man to go against his nature for the greater good. Man really can't do that and wants more than everyone else. There is no true equality because those in power will inevitably take advantage of the system for their own comfort.