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How will the easing of travel restrictions affect you?

IRBlogger — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:42:00 GMT

Are you in Cuba or are you a Cuban American?

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Cuba Faces tough US Choice

IRBlogger — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:33:00 GMT

As the US eases restrictions on Cuban Americans visiting relatives back home, the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana looks at the impact this could have on a 50-year-old conflict.

Havana airport's Terminal 2 is reserved exclusively for charter flights from Miami.

Every day, noisy crowds pack around the barrier in front of the exit from the customs hall waiting for their relatives to emerge.

There are screams of excitement and tears of joy as families rush to greet their loved ones.

Under the Bush administration, Cuban Americans could return only once every three years - and with strict limits on how much they could spend or send home.

"I feel great, I've got my family with me now, it's awesome," said Miami resident Roberto Grande after hugging his mother and sisters.

"I think things are going to get better now. I think there's a big hope with the new president [Barack Obama]. He's making a lot of changes for good."

President Obama recently said there were "no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans".

Similar arguments are now being used by those who are trying to push a bill through Congress that would lift the travel ban on all Americans visiting this Communist-run island.

There were some US citizens on the same flight as Roberto Grande.

All had special treasury department licences which are usually given on humanitarian or religious grounds, or for legalised food sales.

Now Cuba is abuzz with speculation that American tourists could soon be on the way, joining the two million other holidaymakers who come here each year, mainly from Canada and Europe.

In the US, shares in the major cruise-liner operators have jumped in anticipation of a change in policy.

At present any ship that docks in Cuba cannot enter a US port for six months.

Only one smallish cruise ship, sailing out of Nassau in the Bahamas, has docked in Havana in the past year.

Some Cubans believe that American tourists could be in for a big surprise if they are allowed to come.

"If we start to communicate then people will understand us," explained Armando, a pensioner who did not want to give his surname.

"Over there they tell lies about Cuba. Newspapers there don't tell the truth. They don't want their people to come here because they might discover how it really is."

Another important step is the lifting of restrictions on Cuban Americans sending money home as well as what they can include in care packages.

For a country where the average salary is around $20 (£13) a month, these remittances are an important economic lifeline for thousands of people.

President Obama is also allowing US telecommunications companies to bid for licences here, though it is unlikely the Cuban Authorities will co-operate.

But if this includes access to the internet through the US undersea fibre-optic cables, that could have a major impact.

At present the only internet available in Cuba is via satellite. It is expensive and slow.

The government here has long claimed that this is the reason why people cannot have the internet at home.

The announcement from Washington comes just days before the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, which President Obama will attend.

He is likely to face pressure for further moves towards ending the decades-long conflict which many see as a leftover from the Cold War.

Cuba is the only country not invited to the summit, a fact that many Cubans deeply resent.

"It's as if someone took a rubber and erased us off the map. We exist, we should be invited," said retired agriculture worker Eugenio Martinez.

There are no signs, though, that the trade embargo is about to be lifted.

The Obama administration continues to insist that Cuba must first make progress towards democracy and on human rights.

Cuba's President Raul Castro has pushed through some limited social and economic reforms. But this remains a one-party state with no opposition allowed.

'Totalitarian regime'

The European Union has taken a different approach and has already removed all its sanctions and recently announced a 40m euro development aid package.

The EU argues that engaging with the Cubans on areas of common interest such as trade and the environment could open the door to future discussions on issues such as human rights.

Dissidents such as Miriam Leiva, a rights campaigner, are sceptical of the approach.

"Its very naive what they are doing," she said.

"You can't expect a totalitarian regime to change just because you come along and say I want a dialogue. It's not a dialogue, it's a monologue."

She does welcome the moves on allowing Cuban Americans visiting relatives and sending remittances home.

The announcement from Washington did not make headline news on Cuban state television, but the statement by the presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs was shown and reported, including details of the telecommunications plans.

In one of his recent editorials, former President Fidel Castro wrote that Cuba "does not fear dialogue with the United States nor do we need confrontation to exist".

President Obama has made the first move. All eyes are now on President Raul Castro to see if he can offer any reciprocal gestures to help push the process forward.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2009/04/14 08:15:16 GMT

Turtles in race to the Caribbean

IRBlogger — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:24:00 GMT

Eleven leather backed turtles are being tracked over the next two weeks, as they swim 3,700 miles from Canada to the Caribbean, in an event dubbed "the great turtle race".

The race, organised by Conservation International, kicked off in waters off Halifax on Thursday.

Nesting grounds in the Caribbean will serve as the finish line, which the sea creatures are expected to reach by April 29.

The turtles have been fitted with state-of-the-art satellite transmitters, allowing people to follow their progress.

Data collected during the exercise will help experts learn more about their environment

If anyone has any updates on the Great Race, please let us know.

Coral Records Suggest Rapid Sea Level Rise

IRBlogger — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:15:00 GMT

Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2009, Time Magazine

Coral Records Suggest Rapid Sea Level Rise

By Bryan Walsh

Heat waves, droughts and mass extinctions are all potential threats from climate change. But the scariest risk has always been that of rapid sea level rise caused by the collapse of the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. There is enough water locked on Greenland alone to raise global sea levels by 23 ft. (7 m) if it melted, which would swamp coastal cities like London and Shanghai and all but wipe away small island states like the Maldives and Tuvalu. We can likely adapt, expensively, to higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, but it's difficult to imagine how we could cope with the oceans literally erasing some of our most valuable real estate.

While the geologic record shows that the Earth has experienced rapid sea level rise in the past, during the sharp warm-ups that follow the end of ice ages, those big melts have occurred when the world had much less ice than it does now. Scientists are unsure of how quickly rising temperatures from global warming could destabilize and melt our existing sheets — the working assumption has been that such major melting and subsequent sea level rise would take centuries, if not longer, even in a warmer world. (See TIME's special report on the environment.)

But a new study published in the April 16 issue of Nature argues that our ice sheets may be far more vulnerable than we believe, and that it may be a matter of decades before cities like New York are turned into swampland. Scientists led by Paul Blanchon of the National Autonomous University of Mexico examined sea level fluctuations during the planet's last inter-ice age warm period, about 121,000 years ago, and found that the water rose as much as 10 ft. (3 m) in a matter of decades thanks to melting ice sheets. That conclusion indicates in the current interglacial period, we could well be facing rapidly rising tides by the end of the century if warming continues unchecked.

Blanchon examined fossil coral reefs about 40 miles south of Cancun on the east coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. (The fossils had been exposed during the construction of a new seaside resort.) Working with his co-authors at Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Science, Blanchon calculated the age of the samples by measuring isotopes of thorium in the fossils, in a process similar to carbon dating. The patterns of the fossils indicated points where the coral died when the seas rose too fast for the organisms to adapt; each time the seas stabilized, the corals grew back, but at higher elevations and further inland, a process geologists call backstepping. The result is something like the ascending rings on a bathtub that indicate rising water levels.

Blanchon confirmed the age of the Mexican fossils at different elevations by comparing them to similar reefs in the Bahamas, and determined that the seas might have risen by 6.5 to 10 ft. (2 to 3 m) over the course of 50 to 100 years — far faster than scientists had assumed. Only rapidly melting ice sheets could explain sea level rise occurring that swiftly, which would indicate that the ice locked away in Greenland and Antarctica today might not be as safe as we had thought.

There are caveats: the interglacial period during which the Mexican coral fossils were deposited was warmer than the world today, and sea levels were as much as 20 FT. (6 meters) higher. And other scientists caution that Blanchon's work should still be viewed as preliminary and in need of independent confirmation at other, similar sites where old coral fossils have been deposited. (One obstacle is that only a few places on Earth — the Yucatan peninsula among them — have been seismically calm enough over the past several hundred thousand years to allow for such measurements.) But in the wake of the surprise breakaway of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica, which won't raise sea levels itself but will speed the melting of the remaining Antarctic ice, the Nature study is a grim warning of a potentially flooded future to come.

Obama Seeking New Beginning with Caribbean

IRBlogger — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:04:00 GMT

After a short trip to Europe and the Middle East, Barack Obama is now setting his political sites much closer to home, the Caribbean.

Courtesy of Caribbean Net News
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- US President Barack Obama will seek to establish a "new beginning" in hemispheric relations when he attends the Summit of the Americas next week, a White House adviser said last week.

Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow, the US official heading preparations for the conference in Trinidad and Tobago, said during a conference that Obama will pursue a closer, more equal partnership with Latin American and Caribbean countries.

The new administration is putting "a great emphasis on plans to work with, rather than plans for" the region, he said. "I think that day has passed."

But with much of the time leading to Obama's first trip south of the border focused on a potential thawing of frosty relationship with Cuba, Davidow warned the issue shouldn't get in the way of forging consensus on how to confront more critical needs in the region including the economic crisis and energy.

"I think it would be unfortunate, actually, to lose the opportunity for this hemisphere - at the beginning of the Obama administration - to set down some guidelines and make some progress jointly by getting distracted by the Cuban issue," Davidow said at a conference Thursday hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Calling Cuba the "odd man out," Davidow noted that the heads of all 34 governments attending the summit were democratically elected - even if the US has "difficulty with some of the governments."

One constant source of difficulty has been Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has promised to voice his protest at the summit over Cuba's ongoing exclusion from the events that have been held about every four years since 1994.

Obama has signaled plans to ease some restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba, as well as on remittances, which Davidow has said could be announced before the summit.

Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, said at the conference there's no question that Cuba has to be part of any US effort to improve relations with Latin America. But he agreed that it would be counterproductive for the summit to focus on Cuba.

Moreno welcomed the change in tone from the new US administration in showing a willingness to listen and learn from its neighbors, but said issues like Cuba, immigration and security can't be treated separately from the economic crisis.

"This crisis in the US is a financial crisis," he said, whereas Latin American and Caribbean countries are getting hit hardest in manufacturing and other parts of the real economy. The resulting layoffs have already started, which can lead to growing poverty and social unrest, he said.

Not only is the US a major engine of growth for the region, but its efforts to counter the crisis with stimulus and bailouts are "crowding out" other countries' access to debt markets, said Moreno.

"So a lot of how the US does this recovery is going to have a huge bearing on what happens in Latin America," he said.

Davidow agreed the economic crisis will be a major topic of discussion, at the summit, in particular the concern that recent progress in the hemisphere in growth and reducing poverty could be lost.

In addition, Obama is aware of "legitimate criticism" that the gains in many countries haven't been shared broadly enough in the population, he said, and thus the administration will place a stronger emphasis on social inclusion, education and health.

The US will also propose an energy partnership for the Americas, tying together concerns about energy and climate change, he said.

The Obama Factor - Impact on Tourism in the Caribbean

IRBlogger — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:55:00 GMT

When asked which of the Caribbean islands is the most beautiful, the debate is endless and almost always without consensus. Barack Obama may well change that. Very few travelers who have hiked the trails through La Sierra de los Organos to the spectacular Vinales Valley, or strolled the white sands of Varandne will vote for anyplace other than Cuba. The only factor standing between Cuba being a travel destination of choice for the U.S. traveler is of course, the U.S. Policy toward Cuba.

But what if the U.S. Policy would change? What are the implications for Cuba, as well as the Bahamas and the Caribbean countries whose economies depend almost entirely on tourism? When Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, there will be change. Only the nature and pace of the change is as of yet unknown.

During a campaign swing through Miami, celebrating Cuban Independence Day, Obama said, “My policy toward Cuba will be guided by one word: ‘libertad,’ the Spanish word for liberty. His promise to the Cuban-Americans was to lower travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans visiting family members, plus an increase in the allowable money transfers to Cuba. Many expect this promise to be honored in the first 30 days of the Obama Presidency. He is also expected to expand the people-to-people exchange policy initiated by the Clinton administration, and all but eliminated under the Bush administration. The number of academics, church groups, students and other groups without commercial purpose travelling to Cuba would increase dramatically.

The real question is whether Raul Castro will respond favorably to these changes in U.S. Policy and begin his own policy changes affording the Cuban populace more personal liberties. If that door opens would Obama and the U.S. Congress consider lifting the embargo and allowing unlimited commercial and personal travel? And what would that mean?

The U.S. traveler will win; Cuba’s economy will win, but I wonder what of the other countries of the Caribbean and their need for the tourist dollar? Is there enough to go around? While the residents of the Caribbean countries overwhelming favored Obama for president, citing “change” as the critical factor, many experts are concerned harder times are coming for the tourism industry. These difficult times would only be exacerbated by an increase in Cuban tourism.

Furthermore, the government coffers of many countries have grown fat with the influx of high end resort developments spending, and promises to spend, hundreds of millions of dollars to develop large tracts of land, often very remote, into high end developments featuring golf courses, casinos and marinas built for the largest yacht. These vacation, investment or second homes often are priced well over a million dollars. A cornerstone of the Obama campaign was his promise to raise income taxes for anybody who could afford one of these properties. An entry from an expat blog, the Belize Gringo, “………the tax reforms that Obama plans to put in place would severely cut the disposable income that this income tax bracket previously spent on vacationing and investing in Belize” is representative of the concern.

For those countries whose financial and banking sectors generate a significant source of national income, Obama policies may also have an impact. He is a staunch supporter of eliminating tax havens in the Caribbean, having proposed the “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Bill” while in the Senate. The French and Germans have suggested a primary blame for the world wide banking crisis is the existence of these tax havens and have discussed embargos to force change. It would be strange world if at the end of the Obama presidency the trade and travel restrictions now imposed on Cuba have been moved to the Caymans and other “tax havens.”

The first ninety days of any presidency is often viewed as a measuring stick for the next four years. No group will be watching the Obama Presidency closer than the Caribbean community.

IslandandResort is an Information Portal for the Bahamas, Caribbean and Florida Islands. Roger Washburn, editor of IslandandResort, invites you to comment on this article, Please visit us at www.IslandandResort.com

Welcome

IRBlogger — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:42:53 GMT

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