TotallyOz Posted January 15, 2011 Posted January 15, 2011 Changes for America & Cuba Moments ago the White House announced that the President has ordered significant changes to policies regarding Cuba. Full announcement below: Reaching Out to the Cuban People Today, President Obama has directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Homeland Security to take a series of steps to continue efforts to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country’s future. The President has directed that changes be made to regulations and policies governing: (1) purposeful travel; (2) non-family remittances; and (3) U.S. airports supporting licensed charter flights to and from Cuba. These measures will increase people-to-people contact; support civil society in Cuba; enhance the free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people; and help promote their independence from Cuban authorities. The President believes these actions, combined with the continuation of the embargo, are important steps in reaching the widely shared goal of a Cuba that respects the basic rights of all its citizens. These steps build upon the President’s April 2009 actions to help reunite divided Cuban families; to facilitate greater telecommunications with the Cuban people; and to increase humanitarian flows to Cuba. The directed changes described below will be enacted through modifications to existing Cuban Assets Control and Customs and Border Protection regulations and policies and will take effect upon publication of modified regulations in the Federal Register within 2 weeks. Purposeful Travel. To enhance contact with the Cuban people and support civil society through purposeful travel, including religious, cultural, and educational travel, the President has directed that regulations and policies governing purposeful travel be modified to: * Allow religious organizations to sponsor religious travel to Cuba under a general license. * Facilitate educational exchanges by: allowing accredited institutions of higher education to sponsor travel to Cuba for course work for academic credit under a general license; allowing students to participate through academic institutions other than their own; and facilitating instructor support to include support from adjunct and part-time staff. * Restore specific licensing of educational exchanges not involving academic study pursuant to a degree program under the auspices of an organization that sponsors and organizes people-to-people programs. * Modify requirements for licensing academic exchanges to require that the proposed course of study be accepted for academic credit toward their undergraduate or graduate degree (rather than regulating the length of the academic exchange in Cuba). * Allow specifically licensed academic institutions to sponsor or cosponsor academic seminars, conferences, and workshops related to Cuba and allow faculty, staff, and students to attend. * Allow specific licensing to organize or conduct non-academic clinics and workshops in Cuba for the Cuban people. * Allow specific licensing for a greater scope of journalistic activities. Remittances. To help expand the economic independence of the Cuban people and to support a more vibrant Cuban civil society, the President has directed the regulations governing non-family remittances be modified to: * Restore a general license category for any U.S. person to send remittances (up to $500 per quarter) to non-family members in Cuba to support private economic activity, among other purposes, subject to the limitation that they cannot be provided to senior Cuban government officials or senior members of the Cuban Communist Party. * Create a general license for remittances to religious institutions in Cuba in support of religious activities. No change will be made to the general license for family remittances. U.S. Airports. To better serve those who seek to visit family in Cuba and engage in other licensed purposeful travel, the President has directed that regulations governing the eligibility of U.S. airports to serve as points of embarkation and return for licensed flights to Cuba be modified to: * Allow all U.S. international airports to apply to provide services to licensed charters, provided such airports have adequate customs and immigration capabilities and a licensed travel service provider has expressed an interest in providing service to and from Cuba from that airport. The modifications will not change the designation of airports in Cuba that are eligible to send or receive licensed charter flights to and from the United States. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/01/14/changes-america-cuba Quote
Members MsGuy Posted January 15, 2011 Members Posted January 15, 2011 And Raul Castro may be anticipating the early arrival of TY to sample some of that cock. Having to find some sort of employment for the 1,000,000 (+or-) workers scheduled to be laid off the state payrole in 2011, the government has designated 178 specific trades that will be opened for licensed private self-employment. Along with palm tree pruner (#34),shining shoes (#61), cleaning spark plugs (#62), and refilling disposable cigarette lighters (#125) is the trade of "dandy". Unlike the remaining 177 job categories, the trade of Dandy* is left without an explicit technical definition, but surely it can mean nothing other than male escort. ---- "Allow specific licensing [of visas for Cuba] to organize or conduct non-academic clinics and workshops in Cuba for the Cuban people." TY, you want to get together and work up a proposal to the State Department for a trip to Havana for the purpose of conducting workshops for all those newly minted Dandies? We have a moral obligation to help them elevate themselves to international standards of excellence after all those years of Communist repression. ---- * I promise I'm not making any of this up. See the Wall Street Journal, p.A15, 1/10/11, "So Much For Cuban Economic Reform" by Jose Azel. Quote
Members TampaYankee Posted January 15, 2011 Members Posted January 15, 2011 MsGuy, Your always sprinkling the scene with crumbs for thought. All sounds good to me. I agree that the designation of the employment code 'dandy' sounds just dandy to me. Now for Oz, it looks like it's back to school for him so he can become an exchange student to share profound educational experiences or... becoming a missionary in the Church of What's Happening Now so that he can save some of those dandies. Quote
