China Prepares to Launch Alternate Internet

Netfree writes "The Chinese government has announced plans to launch an alternate Internet root system with new Chinese character domains for dot-com and dot-net. This may mean that Chinese Internet users will no longer rely on ICANN, the U.S.-backed domain name administrator, and, as one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet."

Comments

Why we embargo Cuba

[typical]

Well, see, we've got two big parties in the US, and a handful of large states with a lot of electoral college votes. California and New York will go Democrat and Texas Republican. Florida is the only really big state that might go either way. So the opinion of Florida matters a *lot*.

When Castro took over, a lot of people that opposed him wound up in Florida, and have a lot of votes there. So anyone who raises the embargo on Cuba does little more than guarantee losing votes in a crucial swing state. Yes, the embargo has no national security justification any more, but it makes some Cuban expatriates happy.