CUBA Update for the Center of Cuban Studies

End of Summer Sale 2012

cubanartspace@gmail.com (David Harvell) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 22:37:28 +0000

End of Summer Sale
August 20 - September 8, 2012

Vicente Feliu September 15

cubanartspace@gmail.com (David Harvell) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 23:40:21 +0000

Important Article about U.S. - Cuba Travel

cubanartspace@gmail.com (David Harvell) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 23:03:29 +0000

Ellen Creager: Is the door slamming shut for travel from U.S. to Cuba?

Gore Vidal

cubanartspace@gmail.com (Administrator) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:31:27 +0000

Wednesday, 08 August 2012 18:16
By Saul Landau

Gore Vidal died July 31. In 2005, I interviewed him for my weekly TV-radio show Hot Talk. We had first met years before at a dinner party at Marc Raskin's house in Washington, DC, where I had watched him monopolize the conversation by verbally destroying the head of a major museum. "He's a phony, you can smell it," explained Vidal later as the reason for his ferocity.

"And he does so little for the public's benefit. He thinks only of each exhibit in his museum as another notch on his career gun a typical Washington bureaucrat. I despise them."

In the TV interview he showed his loathing again, this time for the people who ran the country, not a museum. "The Founding Fathers feared kings and tyrants, so they made it clear in the Constitution that no one man can declare war; only Congress. We've had many wars after World War II: Congress has not declared one of them."

The man who wrote Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and "Dreaming War: The Bush-Cheney Junta" excelled at essay writing, but became better known as America's historical novelist and play and screen writer. His script for The Best Man, a fine movie, is currently re-running on Broadway.

Health Care for the Elder Population in Cuba

cubanartspace@gmail.com (Administrator) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:58:08 +0000

By Dr. Babette Becker
Psychotherapist, Geriatric Care Manager, Writer

Introduction

I visited Cuba for 18 days to learn about the physical and mental health care and the response to the social and familial needs of the elderly. As a practicing psychotherapist and geriatric care manager in New York City, this trip was to be a preliminary attempt to see what I could learn, with whom I might be able to talk, and what sites I would be given permission to visit.

I put together a list of questions that I hoped would be flexible enough to include the range of health care professionals I wanted to interview and/or the sites I hoped to visit. My next task was to find out whom I had to see to secure the permission(s). Once I started interviewing, I revised my list of questions a few times to more appropriately reflect the Cuban health care system as I learned more about it.

Untold Story of the Bay of Pigs

cubanartspace@gmail.com (The Center for Cuban Studies) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:30:12 +0000

CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE FROM THE DAILY BEAST

From a transport ship floating in Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, CIA operative Grayston Lynch knew the U.S. mission to overthrow Fidel Castro was faltering. The Cuban exiles he had brought with him had abandoned their posts, so he grabbed the boat’s recoilless rifles and machine guns and began firing at the aircraft overhead.

On a day of chaos and infamy in April 1961, Lynch would soon understand the consequences of his shooting. He had fired on his agency’s own planes, which were trying to protect the U.S.-led Cuban exiles invading the island from being slaughtered by Castro’s forces. “We couldn’t tell them from the Castro planes,” Lynch later explained.

New guidelines from OFAC about licensed travel to Cuba

cubanartspace@gmail.com (Frances Robles, The Miami Herald) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:32:23 +0000

SOURCE: The Miami Herald

Under the official rules:

• Religious and educational groups can travel to Cuba for certain types of events or study without a specific license.

• “The commercial marketing, sales negotiation, accompanied delivery, or servicing in Cuba of telecommunications-related items that have been authorized for commercial export” can travel without a specific license.

• Americans can send up to $2,000 annually to Cuba. There will be a quarterly limit on the amount any American can send: $500 per quarter to “support private economic activity.” The Clinton administration had set that figure at $300 a quarter.

Cuba Devalues Peso, Pegs it to U.S. Dollar

cubanartspace@gmail.com (David Savona of Cigar Aficionado) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:41:02 +0000

Source: CIGAR AFICIONADO, Cuba Devalues Peso, Pegs it to U.S. Dollar by David Savona
Posted: March 15, 2011

Cuba cut the value of the Cuban Convertible Peso by 8 percent yesterday, returning it to equal value with the U.S. dollar. The change, effective immediately, is meant to boost the Cuban economy, which depends heavily on income from tourists.

New travel regulations opening educational travel to Cuba

cubanartspace@gmail.com (Bob Guild - Marazul Travel) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:10:41 +0000

28 January

To whom it may concern:

On January 14th, President Obama announced new categories of legal travel to Cuba and further details were published yesterday in the Federal Register. They go into effect immediately.

Educational Activities in Cuba
- Accredited schools and universities will no longer need to apply for a Specific License for travel by their students, faculty and staff (including but not limited to adjunct faculty and part-time staff) to Cuba. Under a General License ( no application necessary) the following travel is now permitted:

New travel regulations: legal analysis

cubanartspace@gmail.com (Michael Krinsky) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:48:11 +0000

To whom it may concern:

At the request of the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, we have prepared the attached memorandum on the Obama Administration’s January 28, 2011 amendments to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations.

Please feel free to distribute or post the memorandum as you like.

We understand that the Obama Administration is working on potentially important Guidelines to the
amendments, which it hopes to issue within the next two weeks or so. In addition to analyzing the January 28th amendments, we flag some of the issues that the Obama Administration may address in formulating the Guidelines. We will supplement the attached memorandum after the Guidelines are issued.

Sincerely,
Michael Krinsky

Michael Krinsky, Esq.
Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, P.C.