Dear friends:

Please click on this link to CubaGo to find out how you can help bring an
end to the travel ban on Cuba for ALL Americans!

On September 30, a national day of action  http://www.cubago.info/
will take place to call the offices of all the nation’s
congressional delegations and express our desire to end the travel
ban on Cuba.

Find all your members’ phone numbers HERE
You can also call the Congressional switchboard (202)224-3121 and
ask for your…

A great article by Margarita Alarcon.  There are many reasons for which the travel ban has a negative effect.   This article focuses on the hindrance it poses on people-to-people exchange that would bring two countries who have such strongly interlocked histories together.

So, now, today, the Treasury Department has finally gotten its OFAC to put in print the deregulations of the previous constraints, or at least the better version or a lesser…

Link to article

President Obama - who owes nothing to Florida’s powerful community of rich Republican Cuban expatriates - is trying to erase U.S. hostility toward the island 90 miles from Key West. …

Now, oddly, an expert says a loophole in U.S. law could give Obama a chance finally to erase the embargo. Writing in The Washington Monthly (a journal created by Charleston native Charles Peters), Patrick Doherty of the U.S.-Cuba…

From My Perspective June 17, 2009

The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to review the case of the Cuban Five will be seen in Havana as coming from the Obama Administration, thus casting further doubts on the potential for a real thaw in relations between Cuba and the United States.

Beyond the sheer injustice that has been done to these five men—whose only crime was not to have registered as agents…

from Dr. Eduardo Santana

Some public personalities, including editorialists at major newspapers in the United States, have expressed they are “puzzled and dismayed” by the unanimous “readmission” of Cuba to the OAS. Let me try to explain and comfort.

Cuba was suspended, not expelled, from the OAS, so it did not need to be “readmitted”. The OAS Charter has no clause whereby a state may be separated from the organization.  Cuba’s exclusion…

In this very cogent piece from The Havana Note, John McAuliff argues that the U.S. should remove obstacles to full membership. The following sums it up, but it is well worth reading in full.

As with the rest of Administration Cuba policy to date, trying to maintain leverage by incremental change is living in denial and counterproductive. Secretary Clinton should simply abstain if the OAS votes on ending Cuba’s suspension without conditions.…

From My Perspective.  May 13, 2009
Ricardo Gonzalez
In his budget proposal for 2010, President Obama included support for Radio and TV Marti, allocating $32.5 million for the broadcasting network that beams news and information to Cuba from its base in Miami.
Aside from the obvious waste of taxpayers’ money, at a time when the President is supposedly cutting ineffective and useless spending, continuing these broadcasts sends the wrong signal to Cuba if…

This piece by Louis A. Perez argues that U.S policy toward Cuba must be considered in the context of the purpose it is intended to serve, and that until the latter is changed, our policy will remain counterproductive.

We are witnessing a welcome change in U.S.-Cuba relations, but it does not go far enough.

President Obama has rescinded most restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged…

From My Perspective,  Ricardo Gonzalez

One of the most disingenuous statements I have heard in a while was uttered on April 29 by Robert Wood, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, regarding President Obama’s efforts to reach out to Cuba.  While acknowledging that the Administration was “interested in dialogue with Cuba,” Mr. Wood added that he thought the international community “wants to see some steps from Havana to . .…

Opinion piece from La Alborada

The US and Cuba have held at least two meetings recently. More meeetings can be expected, according to Thomas Shannon, the point man for the US in the discussions.

Yesterday, April 29, Raul Castro, speaking at the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, said that “The measures that President Obama recently announced, while they are positive, are minimal in their reach. The blockade remained intact.”

After pointing…