The White House press office sent out a release saying Obama had directed the changes, which do not need congressional approval. They will be put in place within two weeks.

Changes Obama made last year already increased Cuban-Americans’ ability to visit family and send money to relatives. The changes are similar to the travel policies under President Bill Clinton.

“Loosening these regulations will not help foster a pro-democracy environment in Cuba. These changes will not aid in ushering in respect for human rights. And they certainly will not help the Cuban people free themselves from the tyranny that engulfs them,” said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and the House Foreign Affairs Committee chair. “These changes undermine U.S. foreign policy and security objectives and will bring economic benefits to the Cuban regime.”

Sen. Bill Nelson’s office earlier confirmed the changes after the State Department briefed him on them, but Nelson was traveling and couldn’t be reached for comment on the plans.

Pepe Hernandez, head of the moderate Cuban-American National Foundation, called the changes very positive, most importantly the decision to allow all Americans to send money to Cubans.

“It’s going to help the interaction between regular Cubans and U.S. citizens, it’s going to help Cuban people inside the island to gain independence from the Cuban government, especially now that roughly a million will be without jobs,” he said referring to Raul Castro’s decision to reduce the government workforce.

Hernandez said the Cuban government would get some benefit from the remittances, but that he could live with that because Cuban citizens, particularly dissidents, would now have another source of support.

——

Associated Press writer Matt Sedensky in Miami contributed to this report.

To others, the 82-year-old is simply the farmer, a harmless relic living out his twilight.

Lawyers began picking jurors Monday in El Paso, Texas, to hear Posada’s trial on federal charges connected to the decade-old bombings that killed an Italian tourist.

The case has been four years in the making, and Posada has spent much of that time painting his thoughts and memories. His art says much about the cagey former CIA asset, who remains a lightning rod in much of Latin America.

Publicly, Posada has remained much like the first painting — defiant. Cocky even.

“If Castro came through the door, I’d kill him, not because I hate him but because I’d kill a cockroach too,” Posada told The Associated Press during a series of interviews in Spanish and English from the home where he has stayed since he was released in 2007.

Privately, the fear of a long prison sentence has weighed heavily.

Posada painted several versions of the turbulent waters following his arrest in 2005 on charges of lying about how he arrived in the U.S., and about whether he tried to cover up involvement in the 1997 hotel bombings so he could obtain U.S. citizenship.

The Texas case likely marks the last opportunity, albeit indirectly, for Posada to be tried in the bombings or any other terror crime.

“The CIA created and unleashed a Frankenstein,” said Peter Kornbluh, head of the independent National Security Archive’s Cuba project. “We unleashed him on the world.”

Cuba contends Posada hired two men to carry out the hotel attacks as part of a plot to hurt tourism on the communist island. U.S. prosecutors have filed detailed FBI documents linking Posada to the bombings, including reports from Cuba.

The trial also could underscore what critics consider the lax treatment Posada has received compared to others accused of orchestrating terrorist acts outside the U.S, and it will likely antagonize some of Miami’s politically powerful Cuban-Americans, neither a welcome prospect for the Obama administration, which inherited Posada’s case.

Posada claimed to have sneaked across the Mexican border into Texas. Prosecutors say he actually arrived in Miami on the boat of a longtime benefactor using a fake passport.

Although he pleaded not guilty, Posada did not deny prosecutors’ version to the AP, noting that for years he entered the U.S. under false identities while working with the CIA and other organizations.

On good days, Posada believes the U.S. government won’t try to put him away for long. He has done too much for it, including informing on fellow exiles as far back as the 1960s and helping Oliver North supply Nicaragua’s Contra rebels two decades later.

He hopes his knowledge about U.S. intervention in Latin America will protect him. Much of the evidence in the trial has been sealed at prosecutors’ request.

On bad days, Posada recognizes times have changed, that he’s no longer useful enough to the U.S. to be immune.

The white-haired, slightly stooped octogenarian’s face is pocked with bullet scars from a 1999 assassination attempt that makes speaking and swallowing difficult.

“The people who worked with me from the government are not the same the ones there today. It was other times. For those there today, I am a bad guy,” he acknowledged.

Under his bail agreement, he was not allowed to associate with many of his oldest friends, and an electronic ankle bracelet was a constant reminder of the limits of his freedom.

Still, he did manage to see a number of his former associates and passed the time with his children and their families.

“If I go to jail, my life ends in jail,” he said in a darker moment. “Everything is finished.”

——

Posada prefers talking about his art and is quick to show off self-portraits drawn from half-century old photos of himself as a dashing young Castro opponent with a shock of black hair.

The Posada from the sketches, a chemist by trade, arrived in Miami in 1961. Like many of his contemporaries, he participated in the U.S.-backed, ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. He joined the U.S. military, graduated from officer training at Fort Benning, Ga., and soon became a CIA asset, maintaining contact with the agency even after he moved to Venezuela in the late 1960s to head that country’s intelligence agency.

Secret files from the 1960s, released in 2009, showed Posada’s CIA contacts considered him a moderate if calculating player in covert operations back then, no risk at all to embarrass the agency or the U.S.

“A15 is not a typical kind of ‘boom and bang’ individual,” CIA handler Grover Lythcott wrote on July 26, 1966, using a code name for Posada. “He is acutely aware of the international implications of ill-planned or overly enthusiastic activities against Cuba.”

The CIA has since said it cut ties to him around the time he was linked to a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that took off from Venezuela.

The explosion killed all 73 passengers, including members of the Cuban national fencing team. Posada was acquitted twice by a Venezuelan court, and in 1985 escaped from prison there while being held on a government appeal. Soon after, he began helping the Contras, who were fighting Nicaragua’s leftist government, according to congressional testimony. He is wanted in both Cuba and Venezuela, but the U.S. does not extradite to those countries because of fears he could be tortured.

Posada is well aware of the international attention he draws. For Cuba, Posada signifies Washington’s hypocrisy — the U.S. lists Cuba as a state sponsor of terror yet refuses to hand over a man who admitted in a 1998 New York Times interview that he was involved in the Havana bombing plot.

Posada has since repeatedly denied any involvement. When asked about the interview and the crimes by the AP, Posada initially said he didn’t hear or understand the questions, then mentioned his lawyer, then stopped, laughed and shrugged.

For some Cuban exiles, Posada represents defiance of U.S. politicians’ desires to placate the communist island and their seeming preoccupation with human rights abuses there only during election cycles.

“He’s a hero,” said Blanca Hidalgo, 62, who helped organize a daylong fundraiser co-sponsored by a Miami radio station for Posada’s legal defense fund. “He’s the only living leader who continues the fight. If others had been like him, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

——

There is something else. Next to the self-portraits, a sketch of Mother Teresa and a tasteful nude, sits a drawing of former Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso — a reminder of how many powerful people have protected Posada over the years.

After he was convicted in Panama in connection with a 2000 attempt to assassinate Castro there, all three members of South Florida’s Cuban-American congressional delegation at the time, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, wrote letters to Moscoso persuading her to pardon him. He was released in 2004 and disappeared until he popped up in Miami in the spring of 2005.

Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado was among those who petitioned for his release from federal custody two years later.

And he maintains his international contacts. Following the coup in Honduras in 2009, Posada informally advised Joaquin Nodarse, whose family owns one of the country’s biggest TV stations, as he briefly considered a presidential run.

Posada sees no reason not to stay in the thick of it. Even he says if Castro truly wanted him dead by now, he would be.

——

Besides the 1990 attack by unknown assailants in Guatemala, Posada was the target of at least one other assassination attempt. And it is Posada’s survival that is perhaps his greatest achievement.

Much of his efforts could be said to have been in vain or backfired. Whether he was involved, the airline bombing became a cause celebre for Cuba, as did the Havana bombings.

Castro, though he turned over power to his brother and his health is failing, remains influential in Cuba, and Posada must still send money to the island to help feed his aging sister and brother.

These days, visitors don’t come around to see Posada so often. His painting sales have fallen off.

He has even begun to talk about one day going home.

Among the accused terrorist’s latest works are paintings of trees bursting with flamboyant red blooms. Beneath them, a man boats along a tropical river toward a stretch of sunlight.

——

Associated Press writer Will Weissert in El Paso, Texas, contributed to this report.

What few observers seem to have noticed, though, is a bizarre clause Snyder included on page 3. Even if an officer has “reasonable suspicions” over a person’s immigration status, the bill says, a person will be “presumed to be legally in the United States” if he or she provides “a Canadian passport” or a passport from any “visa waiver country.”

What are the visa waiver countries? Other than four Asian nations, all 32 other countries are in Western Europe, from France to Germany to Luxembourg.

Others detained by the police would need to carry papers proving that they’re in the U.S. legally. Because, I guess, Canadians and Europeans are never in the U.S., on expired or no visas, working jobs illegally. It’s just the Mexicans.

(One more thing that will be tough for Florida’s law enforcement: Cubans that make it to the U.S. — including those who enter from Mexico — are allowed to be here. Just no Mexicans!)

Many of those to be let go will be urged to form private cooperatives. Others will be pushed into jobs at foreign-run companies and joint ventures. Still more will need to set up their own small business — particularly in the areas of transport and house rental — according to an internal Communist Party document obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

The 26-page document — which is dated Aug. 24 and laid out like a PowerPoint presentation with bullet points and large headlines — explains what to look for when deciding whom to lay off. Those whose pay is not in line with their low productivity and those who lack discipline or are not interested in work will go first. It says that some dismissed workers should be offered alternative jobs within the public sector.

The document hints at higher wages for the best workers, but says, “It is not possible to reform salaries in the current situation.”

The document says workers at the ministries of sugar, public health, tourism and agriculture will be let go first, with layoffs having already begun in July. The last in line for cutbacks include Cuba’s Civil Aviation, and the ministries of foreign relations and social services.

The outline includes a long list of “ideas for cooperatives” including raising animals and growing vegetables, construction jobs, driving a taxi and repairing automobiles — even making sweets and dried fruit.

But it warns that one of the main challenges the country will face is that many of the fledgling businesses won’t get off the ground.

It lists the main problems for newly laid off workers seeking to make it on their own as a lack of experience, insufficient skill level and low initiative.

“Many of them could fail within a year,” the document says.

Goldberg asked Julia Sweig, a Cuba-U.S. policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, to accompany him, and the pair spent portions of three days talking with Castro.

Cuba’s state-controlled media reported Aug. 31 that Goldberg and Sweig met with Castro and attended the dolphin show at Havana’s aquarium, but the blog was the first to reveal details of what they discussed.

Goldberg said their first meeting lasted five hours and featured appearances by Castro’s wife, Dalia, his son Antonio, and several bodyguards, two of which held his elbow to steady Castro when he moved.

“His body may be frail, but his mind is acute, his energy level is high,” wrote Goldberg, who also noted Castro’s self-deprecating humor.

The 84-year-old ex-president wore full military fatigues and an olive-green cap while addressing university students last week, and had previously appeared in public in a military shirt. But Goldberg saw Castro in a red shirt, sweat pants, and black New Balance sneakers.

He said Castro, who himself has been a fierce critic of Israel, “repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism,” chiding Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust. Castro said that Iran could further the cause of peace by “acknowledging the ‘unique’ history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.”

The gray-bearded revolutionary related to Goldberg a story from his childhood that has been detailed by some biographers: that he overheard classmates saying Jews killed Jesus Christ.

“I didn’t know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a ‘Jew,’ and so for me the Jews were those birds,” Goldberg quoted Castro as telling him. Castro later added, “This is how ignorant the entire population was.”

According to Goldberg, Castro said, “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims.”

Castro also said that the Iranian government should understand that the Jews “were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God.”

After undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006, giving up Cuba’s presidency and dropping out of sight for four years, Castro has begun making near-daily public appearances to warn of a nuclear war pitting the U.S. and Israel against Iran and also featuring a Washington-led attack on North Korea.

“This problem is not going to get resolved, because the Iranians are not going to back down in the face of threats,” Castro told Goldberg.

Goldberg also said he revisited the Cuban Missile Crisis with Castro, asking if once “it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S.”

“Does what you recommended still seem logical now?”

Castro’s answer surprised him: “After I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn’t worth it all.”

Online:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/fidel-to-ahmadinejad-stop-slandering-the-jews/62566/