White House Issues Fact Sheet on Cuba Policy

[magbana]

Comments prior to article are from Walter Lippmann

Some of this is very good news, some of it is dubious. It's going to
be necessary to go over all of it with great care. Expanding what now
defines a relative is much better. Restrictions on those not related
to anyone in Cuba remain in full force and effect. This ironically
will highlight the travel restrictions on everyone else. Cuba remains
the ONLY COUNTRY ON EARTH for which people from the US are required
to have a permission slip from the federal government to go for a
visit.

(Further, the idea that the United States will allow US companies to
set up satellite radio, television and internet services to function
IN Cuba is simply another way of saying money talks and the idea is
to create an alternative means to reach the Cuban people from the US.

(There are innumerable questions which will need to be asked about all
of this, and specific regulations which will be issued and which we'll
want to examine carefully to see what's actually going on here.

(And finally, as always with the kind of unilateral decisions made in
Washington for its own reasons, we can expect that Cuba's government
will make its own response, in its own way and time. Since this is
issued on the eve of the Summit of the Americans indicates that it's
part of a propaganda offensive aimed at the one country which is
excluded from being able to attend the conference: which is CUBA.)
==========================================================================

THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 13, 2009
Text
White House Fact Sheet: Cuba Policy

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/us/politics/13cuba-factsheet

The White House announced that it is abandoning longstanding restrictions on family travel, remittances and gifts to Cuba, and is also taking steps to open up telecommunications with the island, a significant shift in policy that fulfills a promise President Obama made during his election campaign. Following is a fact sheet provided by the White House:

FACT SHEET: REACHING OUT TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE

Today, the Obama administration announced a series of changes in U.S. policy to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country's future. In taking these steps to help bridge the gap among divided Cuban families and promote the freer flow of information and humanitarian items to the Cuban people, President Obama is working to fulfill the goals he identified both during his presidential campaign and since taking office.

All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects basic human, political and economic rights of all its citizens. President Obama believes these measures will help make that goal a reality.

Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the island. There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. Accordingly, President Obama will direct the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to support the Cuban people's desire for freedom and self-determination by lifting all restrictions on family visits and remittances as well as taking steps that will facilitate greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba and increase the flow of information and humanitarian resources directly to the Cuban people. The President is also calling on the Cuban government to reduce the charges it levies on cash remittances sent to the island so family members can be assured they are receiving the support sent to them.

Specifically, the President has directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to take the needed steps to:

· Lift all restrictions on transactions related to the travel of family members to Cuba.

· Remove restrictions on remittances to family members in Cuba.

· Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.

· License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba's telecommunications service providers.

· License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.

· License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba.

· Authorize the donation of certain consumer telecommunication devices without a license.

· Add certain humanitarian items to the list of items eligible for export through licensing exceptions.

REACHING OUT TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE

Supporting the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their future and that of their country is in the national interest of the United States. The Obama administration is taking steps to promote greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba and increase the flow of remittances and information to the Cuban people.

Lift All Restrictions on Family Visits to Cuba

We will lift all restrictions on family visits to Cuba by authorizing such transactions by a general license, which will strengthen contacts and promote American good will. We will ensure the positive reach of this effort by:

· Defining family members who may be visited to be persons within three degrees of family relationship (e.g., second cousins) and to allow individuals who share a common dwelling as a family with an authorized traveler to accompany them;

· Removing limitations on the frequency of visits;

· Removing limitations on the duration of a visit;

· Authorizing expenditure amounts that are the same as non-family travel; and

· Removing the 44-pound limitation on accompanied baggage.

Remove Restrictions on Remittances

We will remove restrictions on remittances to a person's family member in Cuba to increase Cubans' access to resources to help create opportunities for them by:

· Authorizing remittances to individuals within three degrees of family relationship (e.g., second cousins) provided that no remittances shall be authorized to currently prohibited members of the Government of Cuba or currently prohibited members of the Cuban Communist Party;

· Removing limits on frequency of remittances;

· Removing limits on the amount of remittances;

· Authorizing travelers to carry up to $3,000 in remittances; and

· Establishing general license for banks and other depository institutions to forward remittances.

Authorize Greater Telecommunications Links with Cuba

We will authorize greater telecommunications links with Cuba to advance people-to-people interaction at no cost to the U.S. government. This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba.

· Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.

· License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into and operate under roaming service agreements with Cuba's telecommunications service providers.

· License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.

· License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba, except certain senior Communist Party and Cuban government officials.

· Authorize, consistent with national security concerns, the export or re-export to Cuba of donated personal communications devices such as mobile phone systems, computers and software, and satellite receivers through a license exception.

Revise Gift Parcel Regulations

We will expand the scope of humanitarian donations eligible for export through license exceptions by:

· Restoring clothing, personal hygiene items, seeds, veterinary medicines and supplies, fishing equipment and supplies, and soap-making equipment to the list of items eligible to be included in gift parcel donations;

· Restoring items normally exchanged as gifts by individuals in "usual and reasonable" quantities to the list of items eligible to be included in gift parcel donations;

· Expanding the scope of eligible gift parcel donors to include any individual;

· Expanding the scope of eligible gift parcel donees to include individuals other than Cuban Communist Party officials or Cuban government officials already prohibited from receiving gift parcels, or charitable, educational or religious organizations not administered or controlled by the Cuban government; and

· Increasing the value limit on non-food items to $800.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================
__._,_.___

[magbana]

1. This an extraordinarily bad statrt for the Obama administration

by issuing this fact sheet -- actually this is not a fact sheet, it is a press release. What the gov't. has done is mix two main things in this announcement: First, family travel to Cuba which has been discussed extensively in the media and the announcement of which we knew was coming. The second is the whole telecommunications crap which, while not new, is now a wide-open authorization to "set up shop" in Cuba. I think these two issues were combined in one announcement so that the family travel part will get more attention in the US media -- the benevolent Obama administration. The telecommunications stuff is to keep Ileana and the rest of the Miami cabal happy without the US public realizing what a huge invasion of Cuba's sovereignty. With this announcement, Obama has established his Cuban carrot and stick policy and it ain't going to go over well in Havana, Caracas,etc. I can't wait to hear what comes out of the ALBA conference Chavez is sponsoring tomorrow and then the shoot out in Trinidad and Tobago on April 17.

Strap on your seat belts,folks, it is going to be a bumpy week.

[Mika]

2. magbana, Cuba controls Cuban airwaves.

US media will not set up shop as they see fit, it will be as Cuba sees fit.

Still, the whole g-damn approach is simply ridiculous and infantile (as a front) but centered in disaster capitalism - something that Cubans are well versed in.

I'm expecting Cuba to get a LOT of preposterous RW flak in future for doing things their way.

[magbana]

3. Yes, I know that Cuba controls Cuban airwaves. The "setting up shop" phrase I used,

referred to the the fact sheet's seemingly sweeping change in the telecommunications biz which makes it appear to the general public that one could go in and set up shop and that the right to do so is a fait accompli. I'll have to make sure that I re-read my posts before I send them!

[Mika]

4. Gotcha.

That's why I expect RW flak to be directed at Cuba (the Castro brothers, more accurately) for being authoritarian and resistant to new media and the opening up of Cuban society (as if Cuba has been in isolation from the rest of the world, as if the rest of the world IS the USA) for simply requiring their own national standards.

Glad to know we're on the same wavelength.

:hi:

[rabs]

5. Fidel responds to Obama announcements

Found this dispatch from Spanish news agency EFE (published in La Nacion of Santiago, Chile.) You get the sensation that Fidel was outraged?

(snips)

Fidel said Cuba "will never extend its hands asking for alms.

"Cuba will forge ahead with its head held high .... be there or not Summits of the Americas, presided or not by Obama of the United States, a man or a woman, a white citizen or a black citizen.

"Now the only thing that is missing is that Obama persuade all the Latin American presidents that the blockade is not offensive.

"Of the blockade, which is the most cruel of the measures, not one word was said.

More (Spanish)

http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias_v2/site/artic/20090414/pags/20090414013722.html

Magb, all that stuff about telecommunications by U.S. companies has me totally baffled !

[Judi Lynn]

6. You remember Venezuela started talking with Cuba about setting them up with broadband some time ago,

and has already done a lot of work getting them online. Here's a reference from a couple of years ago:

Chavez signed a presidential decree authorizing formation of a joint venture to build and administer an underwater fiber optics cable between the two countries meant to bypass the U.S. embargo.

http://cubajournal.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

Here's an article posted by Mika on the same subject:

Cuba may never achieve telecommunication infrastructure without U.S intervention
(A misleading headline, imo, as the second last para reveals.)

Cuba may never achieve telecommunication infrastructure without U.S intervention

The United States has a golden opportunity to help Cuban citizens obtain greater and faster Internet connectivity and the key, a fiber optic cable, is sitting in international waters off the coast of the island.

US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have both been to Florida to woo votes in the important swing state. Among their prime goals is to clarify their political stance regarding Cuba policy.

The candidates will have a chance to break with the current policy of excluding Cuba from new technology, which under the US blockade also extends to vital equipment in fields such as medicine, energy and the steel industry.

Allowing Cuba to hook up to the fiber optic cable would end the bantering over whose fault it is that more Cubans don't have Internet.

If the Cuban government decided not to provide greater access, even though it had the capacity, then US politicians and Cuban "dissidents" could argue that it was control of information, not a lack of access that blocked islanders from having Internet.

To date, the Bush administration has considered it more politically expedient to blame the Cuban government for the low percentage of citizens with Internet than help them gain access.


Internet in today's Cuba

While it cannot hook up to the oceanic fiber optic cable or contract the service of US Internet providers, Cuba advances in the development of a domestic fiber optic system and has made considerable progress in recent years with digitalizing around 90 percent of its telephone communications.

Nonetheless, telephone service is still limited to 10 phones for every 100 inhabitants, still below the average of 18 percent teledensity in Latin America and the Caribbean and nearly 60 percent in the US.

A home grown system, called the Intra-net, allows Cubans to receive e-mail and scroll domestic Web sites. A national network of computer clubs, post offices, and some workplaces and education facilities are the common places where people access. Some professionals with computers provided from their jobs also use the service from their homes. Demand still far exceeds supply.

Cuba's Telecommunications Ministry maintains that comprehensive Internet —connecting people to Web sites from around the world— is severely limited due to the slow and expensive satellite service currently available to the island. Thus, Internet is only available at home to researchers, journalists and some academics and executives, the prioritized groups. Hotels and cyber cafes offer the service to tourists.

For those who have Internet at home the low-bandwidth dial-up connection (between 16 and 50 kb/sec transmit speed) works OK for most sites, but is inadequate for many audio and video links.


Computers are first

Over the last six years I have witnessed a great expansion of computers on the island, an indispensable step towards both Intra-net and Internet access. The on-going nationwide strategy has targeted workplaces, businesses and schools as the top priority. Cuba assembles its own computers with components purchased abroad, largely from China.

The next step includes expanding on individual home PCs. "It's a great aspiration for all of us to have a computer," Deputy Communications Minister Roman Linares was quoted last week as saying. "But we have to be realistic, going step by step and attending the needs of the economy, the society and also the individuals," he added.

While the US could speed up the process for greater Internet access by allowing Cuba to hook up to the fiber optic cable, Linares noted that it is not the only option. He said a much more costly 1,500 kilometer cable project to connect Cuba and Venezuela and its broad-band capabilities could resolve the matter by 2010.

With Bush on the way out in January 2009, McCain, Obama or Clinton will soon have to make their decision of whether to continue trying to block Cuba's telecommunications development or take a good neighbor approach.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x5993

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You remember at CNN, we were discussing MasTec, Jorge Mas Canosa's company which he took to China as soon as possible, completely ignoring the fact he had been a psycotic anti-communist looney-tunes from decades ago: suddenly, there he was, trying to make money hand over fist from the Chinese government!

Then, we discussed his horrendously ugly debacle in Madrid, and the total screwing he gave Spanish workers, leaving them without jobs, and they set up a tent city right outside his business offices:

High-tech shantytown mushrooms in Madrid

High-tech shantytown mushrooms in Madrid
CNN.com, 1 June 2001, 9:56 AM EDT (1356 GMT)

MADRID, Spain (AP)—Beneath the tall, glistening office towers and government ministries, an unlikely camp of protesters has built a high-tech shantytown, complete with pirated utilities and computer access.

The nearly half-mile (one kilometer) long cluster of blue tarpaulin coverings and clapboard shacks has become a familiar sight to millions of commuters driving by on the Castellana boulevard since the first tents went up in January. The residents have pirated their electricity from underground road sensors, the water is tapped from city mains.

But the new guys on the tree-lined median of Madrid's central artery are not typical squatters.

They are skilled engineers and technicians, formerly employed by Sintel Telecommunications, a Spanish telecom company that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000. A move many of the squatters blame on alleged mismanagement at the hands of a U.S. cable installation firm.

With a mixture of ingenuity and tenacity, the workers have transformed their claim to $10 million in unpaid wages and refusal to accept forced resignations into a national issue.

“We’re not going anywhere until our demands are met, even if it takes years,” said Joaquin Dominguez, a former fiber optic network manager and local union organizer from the southern city of Malaga.

He placed his hand on a shopping cart filled with softball-sized rocks and said: “If they come to evict us we’ll be ready.”

Municipal authorities don’t appear willing to risk a violent confrontation between the police and protesters. And the squatters have drawn the support of workers across the city.

Now a bustling village
El Campamento de Esperanza (The Camp of Hope) is now a village of about 1,200 inhabitants, with libraries, bars, hot showers and cafeterias serving daily meals.

Workers have furnished their shacks with rebuilt televisions, video players, microwave ovens and computers recovered from garbage heaps around the city.

“The days are very long and you have to keep yourself busy,” said Jose Maria Casado, who used to install cellular antennas.

After stirring an enormous cauldron of white beans and chorizo sausages, Miguel Rastrojo, a line maintenance worker, opened a closet stocked with rice, canned vegetables and cured pork legs hanging on hooks.

“I used to watch my wife cook and picked up a few things,” Rastrojo said as he made dinner for his neighbors and a local firefighting company that had contributed to the food stock. Neighborhood bakeries and butcher shops have also donated food.

Workers say the demise of Sintel, which had subsidiaries throughout Latin America, began after it was sold for $40 million in 1996, the same time the government began to privatize Telefonica, Spain's then government-owned telephone company.

The buyer was Miami-based Mastec, headed at the time by late Cuban-American political leader Jorge Mas Canosa, who had ties to Spain's conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

Mismanagement allegations
According to union leaders, the Mas Canosa family mismanaged the company, neglecting to diversify activities and plundering its assets. Two years later, Mastec sold the firm to Sintel's current managing director Carlos Gila for $2 and assumption of a debt that now totals $102 million.

“They took everything and left us with nothing,” said Casado. Next to his shack hung a poster of Che Guevara, the symbol of Marxist insurgency and early ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Mastec is also in court with former Delaware-based partner Artcom Technologies over the alleged siphoning of $ 6 million from a former Sintel subsidiary in Puerto Rico.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/180.html

~~~~~~~~~~
I used to read your and Miami posters, like N.A., as you discussed Iglesias & Torres, and Mas Tec, etc. back on the great US/Cuba message board.

I am CERTAIN, since Obama was just speaking with CANF in the last few days, the organization chaired now by Mas Canosa's son, Jorge Mas Santos, that somehow this Mas Tec is going to be the company which will be getting the work, wouldn't you think?

They are trying to beat out Venezuela! They're pretending to be keeping the embargo in place, no American businesses doing business in Cuba, except for Mas Tec, which will be trying to stampede in there with fiber optics!

This is too crooked to believe, if I'm reading it right, rabs.

[rabs]

7. Judi, think you have nailed it on this telecommunication business

At first wondered whether it was a sop to placate the Ditzy-Balarts, Ilena Ros-, Mel Martinez and others of their ilk in the hardline Cuban community.

Then you remind us that Chavez has offered an undersea, optic-fiber connection to Cuba. So it does make a lot of sense that the Obama administration would try to stop Chavez and get to Cuba first.

Out of curiosity, went to revist the CANF White Paper that surprised everyone the other day. In it, found this little gem of a paragraph way down in the CANF babbling.

--------------------------

Telecommunications upgrades - The U.S. government should allow for the improvement, upgrading, and installation of telecommunications equipment that will facilitate increased telephone traffic between the United States and Cuba.

---------------------------------

Note the "improvement, upgrading, and installation of telecomunications equipment"

Then you mentioned MasTec. So went looking again and guess what?

Found this >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://www.mastec.com/

Chairman Jorge Mas and his family own about 34% of MasTec.

Yep, one would think that Mas is salivating to get his high-tech claws into Cuba.

One problem though. Cuba will have a big, big, big say in the matter.

Thanks for remembering the Venezuela optics cable offer and MasTec. :fistbump:

[Bacchus39]

8. ummm..... they can provide fiber optic cables to both Venezuela and the US

communications between the US and Cuba won't be increased too much by a fiber optic cable that is routed through Venezuela first. A direct US-Cuba cable is going to provide better communication to and from the US.

doesn't suprise me though, making an issue out of nothing, or actually a positive.

p.s. what's Venezuela waiting for???

[Judi Lynn]

9. Just found this in an article posted by magbana, re: Vene., telecom & Cuba:

From :

Waiting for Godot
April 15, 2009 · No Comments
Obama’s Cuban Dilemma

~snip~
And why the sudden rush to switch on the dormant undersea telecom cable between the U.S. and Cuba, after so many years of forcing Cuba to purchase costly and inadequate Internet bandwidth via satellite? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Venezuela and Cuba were about to run away with that monopoly, through the undersea cable that’ll finally be in place between Venezuela and Santiago de Cuba next year? Or would it? Could the timid changes to travel for one segment of the population have been meant to distract from the more substantive effort to extend the tentacles of the U.S. telecom oligopolies? Or make an offer that Cuba would probably refuse?

Machetera
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/waiting-for-godot/

~~~~~~~~

Interesting!