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Domains Blocked By US Treasury 'Blacklist'
yuna49 writes "Adam Liptak of the New York Times reports today about the plight of a Spanish tour operator whose domain names have been embargoed by his domain name registrar (eNom). They pulled his domains after they discovered the tour operator's name on a US Treasury blacklist. It turns out he packages tours to Cuba largely for European tourists who can legally travel there, unlike Americans. The article cites 'a press release issued in December 2004, almost three years before eNom acted. It said Mr. Marshall's company had helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba and was "a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people." It added that American companies must not only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets, meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do.' The only part of the operator's business in the United States is his domain name registration; all other aspects of his business lie outside the United States."
... are breaking the law if they go there?
*gets out his eraser and starts removing that "Land Of The Free" line from all the songbooks...*
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
How many here would decry the Chinese and assorted third world countries for censorship of the internet, and yet, here we (in the US) act no differently. It makes me wonder how many things we just don't see, because the DNS entry doesn't even show up.
Are we truly free? Or is that just an illusion?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
They are mostly free too because no one has bought them. But perhaps useful in this case,
My little Linux and tech blog
...to the EU's argument that censorship restricts free trade. This looks to be a fairly clear example where censorship caused direct economic difficulties.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
But, this travel company has learned another lesson: Don't buy domains from eNom, they suck in so many ways....
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You mean things like providing a never ending stream of very real examples of how America wants to meddle in internal Cuban affairs, thereby providing an instant excuse to play the nationalist "they want to topple your government from Washington! Ignore the abuses you know about and rally together as a nation to resist them as a people!" card?
I mean, this has me chilled to the bone. Ignoring the ridiculousness that in a "free" country we have "travel restrictions", the fact that they can legally perform such blocking with little or no recourse alone has me shaking.
I fear we are too trustworthy in the robustness of the internet and I'm even more afraid of the day if the powers at large decide the bring the hammer down. I don't think net neutrality legislation would be effective against a determined oppressor, it only takes a few dragging anchors for them to tear through a few laws.
All those who happily denounce the (despicable) proposed actions of Iran in censoring the 'net during their elections take note- The world takes its lead from the US, and the US is not currently living up to this responsibility (though many of its citizens kick ass in many ways).
Please Americans, I love lots of what you stand for, now kill off the right-wing cancer that eats at your nation's heart.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Just go with a non-american ISP/domain name reistrar. It's not as if the US rules the planet, there are plenty of ways to continue working without their say-so or approval. Just move to a free locationa and continue with your legitimate business.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No issues then, any european who trades with an american firm is asking for problems.
This is not the internet that Al Gore had in mind when he invented it!
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
It sounds as thought the great firewall of America will be installed sooner or later. Apparently all it would take is a judge and software that has already been developed, tested, and deployed by American companies in China. Not that it's anything new... we've been censoring the internet for more than a decade now in the name of copyright with the 1997 NET Act. It appears the nationalist crowd has modded you flamebait early... maybe some sane meta-mods will take care of that.
You can't take the sky from me...
Undoubtably I'll be modded down to flamebait, but as a non-US citizen I get pretty tired of the US trying to be the 'policeman of the world' and at the same time pull these underhanded tricks.
Another example I came upon today is how the White House was planning to overthrow the democratically chosen Hamas party, because it didn't stroke with their plans.
What happened with "With great power comes great responsibility"? The US is just acting as the schoolyard bully.
Note that I understand that "The US" != "all US citizens", but please, you're the only ones that can do something about this. So please do so.
We can trade out the ass with Red China, and cozy up to Uzbekistan, but Cuba, no es posible. Why? Because Cubans who fled Cuba after the revolution because they wanted their comfort and money more than they wanted to stay and fight, now control a lot more political power in America than they should. We can ask if Cuba really has it that bad. Its major export is educated people. Doctors, mostly. Can we acknowledge that maybe individual greed doesn't steer everything in the right direction all the time? Sure Cuba has poor folks. Do we care about poor folks in Cuba more than we care about the Americans that were left stranded in New Orleans after Katrina for political reasons? Not this year. The US has more people in prison than any other country in the world. Yes, and that is not by percentage. Cut the bullshit, we need to get over our sense of exceptionalism.
1. Don't have anything to do with the USA.
Non-Americans already have to do ridiculous things like obtain visas to just to make a flight connection in the US. Soon we're not even allowed to overfly the US. That's fun if, like me, you live in Canada.
To hell with them.
you had me at #!
any US citizen that wanted to vacation in Cuba could easily go to Mexico (maybe Canada too) and i am sure there are travel agencies that could get you to Cuba cheaper than flying to the EU...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It's almost like we're kind of pissed at the Castro family for encouraging the Soviet Union to launch those nuclear missiles he had on his island. And maybe we'll even encourage friends and allies for being pissed at them too. And maybe, just maybe the companies that do business with Cuba are not welcome on our DNS servers.
You know, because of that whole trying to murder tens of millions of us and all.
Yes, -1 Not conforming with majority opinion
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
So what domain name provider do we use now? eNom is the provider used by my current reseller, NameCheap.com.
Why dick around touring Cuba when you could go to China? Everythings bigger and badder there. China is positively booming with US trade, so it should be more fun to visit - especially if you have a lot of money like Bill Gates. Shoot, what's Cuba got? Biomed, underperforming sugar cane and orchards, fishing and PBS backed artists? China's got toxic PC production and "recycling", every good geek's dream vacation. If you look up WHO health statistics, you will see that Cuba has edged the US out of several categories and China is at the bottom where statistics can be collected. Healthy is the opposite of fun, so you have the obvious ranking China, US, Cuba. Why go to such a boring old place?
What's more, you have to have respect for China. They have got nukes out the yin-yang and submarines that can deliver them when they don't sink. They are all into African and Mid East oil and are becoming a real economic and military force. Cuba? Ha! It's been thirty years since they could field a good army in Angola. The Soviets were never very good to them and now that sugar daddy is gone. Poor old Raul would have a hard time fighting his way out of a paper bag.
Given all of that, who would you rather give your money to? That's what I thought any good American would say.
It's a good thing the US Treasury department is helping US Citizens do the right thing. Thanks George, don't let that pesky first amendment get in the way of your fight against real tyranny. Every dollar spent by bleeding liberals in Cuba is one dollar less that won't be able to make its way through Walmart to China.
... do you realize that these restrictions have been in place since 1962 because the Cuban government expropriated the property of U.S. citizens and corporations in Cuba?
Do you also realize that it was made law in 1992 under the title of Cuban Democracy Act by U.S. Congressman Robert Torricelli (D)?
Once again, those who seem historically ignorant are quick to condemn the current administration for something that has (arguably) been in place for over 40 years...
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
Didn't you get the memo?
Its now "Land of the Incarcerated" .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States
Most of you can figure this out yourselves, I'm sure, but just in case, here's one way:
/etc/hosts"
$ whois cuba-hemingway.com
[...]
Name Servers:
ns1.digitalpanorama.net
ns2.digitalpanorama.net
[...]
$ nslookup www.cuba-hemingway.com ns1.digitalpanorama.net
Server: ns1.digitalpanorama.net
Address: 24.244.141.113#53
www.cuba-hemingway.com canonical name = cuba-hemingway.com.
Name: cuba-hemingway.com
Address: 24.244.141.117
$ sudo sh -c "echo 24.244.141.117 www.cuba-hemingway.com >>
Repeat for each domain.
...a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its peopleWell what about the billions in military aid given to Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes in the world?. Cuba is Disney Land compared to Saudi Arabia. What about all that money going towards oppressing the Saudi people? Imagine some big democracy movement started in Saudi Arabia and tried to overthrow the dictatorship. The Saudi government would no doubt use all the weapons we have been selling them against their own people.
US policy toward Cuba is not about the dictatorship. The US has supported and created many dictatorships in that part of the world. The US policy towards Cuba is based on anger over losing control of the country. It's like Britain banning citizens from travelling to the US because the US had the cheek to declare independence.
The fact there is a US base in an 'enemy' country is a little clue as to how Cuba has been treated in the past. Don't expect the mainstream media to talk about it though. The US occupied Cuba after independence from Spain and refused to leave unless the Cubans agreed to a list of items (the Platt Amendment). Among that rather imperialistic list of requirements was a permanent military base at Guantanamo bay.
Of course if Castro had been a business friendly right-wing dictator, it could have been a smooth transition from Batista's rule. You wouldn't be hearing the US making big noises about the lack of democracy at all.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=389&year=2007 USA 16th
But do you really expect people to think freely if they've been spouting the pledge of allegence since they were 5?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I suggest that everyone check to see from whom your domain name provider buys your domains. eNom.com is the real provider for NameCheap, one of many who buy from eNom.com.
eNom has been competing with its re-sellers with eNomCentral.com. Note that eNom is doing what GoDaddy does. In my opinion, GoDaddy tries to get more money by confusing people who have little technical knowledge.
I moved all my domains away from GoDaddy for many reasons, not just those reasons given in a Slashdot story, to NameCheap.
I don't know any domain name reseller that is inexpensive, reliable, and honest.
Hopefully, today, Obama will win the Dem's vote. But to be honest, I do not think that McCain or even Clinton will be that bad. None of them are neo-cons. The odd thing is that all talk about our diminished reputation in the world while also speaking about our deficits. All 3 have experience beyond our shores. I think that all 3 will work to rebuild our relationships while solving some major issues (in particular, china).
The interesting issue is all 3's money handling. I noted that after Super Tuesday, McCain and Clinton had run out of money and really had no plans in place. OTH, Obama had a great deal less money than either of these, and he was not only not out of money, but had a plan for afterwards. It says a lot about the man vs. the other 2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Prisons? Aren't those a French invention?
I thought we were calling them "Freedom Houses" now.
The enemies of Democracy are
Enom are the people who took over registerfly's expired domains (expired because you had no means renewing them), and then tried to get a $200 extortion fee for your domain to give it back to you.
So what do you expect from companies like that? I would personally open an international lawsuit against them, and there is absolutely no way Enom can win that.
If the company operates exclusively in Europe, why is it using a .com extension? Isn't the idea that they are supposed to be using .eu? I am actually not clear on whether .com was meant for the us only commercial interests or for commercial interests that were international. But I am pretty sure that any interest that are limited to a specific territory that has a designated extension are supposed to be using that extension. Which, of course, begs the question, how the hell can allmp3.ru be breaking US law?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This problem, like many others, can be fixed by one simple thing. FORCING OUR DAMN GOVERNMENT TO ABIDE BY THE CONSTITUTION.
Our Constitution is quite possibly the greatest piece of law ever written in the history of mankind. Unfortunately, the politicians (both democrats and republicans) have decided it can be ignored at will. We need to change this. We need to force every aspect of the government to operate under the full strength of our Constitution.
No more seizing property without due process.
No more stifling free speech just because it might offend somebody.
No more wiretaps of citizens and legal residents to fight terrorists without a court order signed by a REAL judge.
No more government agencies that aren't sanctioned by the Constitution (list to long to put here).
I am sicked by any politician who doesn't consider the Constitution the most sacred document in existence. Which means I'm sicked by ALL politicians.
-- Will program for bandwidth
It's all a plan by the Right to keep Michael Moore out of Cuba. Or at least people looking for cheap healthcare, or researching Cuba's health system. The health insurance lobbyists are very powerful in Washington. Even if we national health insurance, health insurance companies will probably administer the system, as they do now with Medicare, for large sums of money.
Anyways, I know but eNom probably means eName in some Romance language, but NOM NOM NOM NOM. Basically what happened to that guy's site.
In light of this and the wikileaks thing, I think it's interesting that the best we can do to censor foreign websites, is mess with their DNS registrar. Long term, that is just not going to be a viable tactic. It's like wack-a-mole, except that after the first mole, the remaining moles are out of reach.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Slashdot stories about Godaddy:
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover?
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy?
One Slashdot reader's experience: What needs to change. Quote: "... the catch was that it'd cost $80, as opposed to the $10 it normally costs."
I don't think you understand censoring. Censoring is if the domain was managed and hosted in Cuba and access was blocked to the site. They just won't let the domain be managed/hosted in the States, not the same as censoring, maybe not right, but not censoring.
i read about it in a blog once
We need to back off Cuba and start being friends. Give them back Guantanamo Bay and get out of there. Start trading with them. I know it sounds crazy.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
So, in other words, the only difference between United States and countries like - say China, Iran and North Korea - is that the technology used to censor the Internet in United States is significantly weaker and easier to bypass.
It's pathetic! I fart in your general direction.
Too bad I was on the caging list and had my vote thrown away. Gotta love Florida. Gotta love being black!
Wasn't that list for stopping companies that transit money and support for terrorist organizations? Is Cuba a terrorist country now? I thought they were merely oppressive to their own people and mildly annoying.
This is all getting really out of hand. The no fly list, which doesn't have any actual terrorists on the list because the CIA doesn't want to tip them off they're being watched. Real ID, passports to travel to nearby countries, Iraqistan, Homeland Security...it's all just nuts. We got burned because we were arrogant and weren't paying attention. In response we've stomped all over the liberties that made this country great and squandered billions, put ourselves on the brink of bankruptcy, all to create the world's most expensive false sense of security.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I highly doubt we are speaking about mass internet outages. Likely, the blockages will affect vocal civil rights organizations (ACLU-types), hated minorities (Arabs, Muslims, etc.) and others disliked by the current ruling party. Doubt me? My management consulting career essentially ended as 1hr flights started taking upwards of 3hours just to print boarding passes. You cant fly from city to city if you are spend 3hours trying to print your boarding pass (in the worst case, it was 5hours + 12hours waiting for the next flight.) Laptops are confiscated never to be returned. The careers of dozens of law abiding minorities suddenly ended in 2003 and 2004 as these policies were instated. But being a white, you wouldn't know anything has changed. I'm sure it will be the same thing with websites.
Yet another reason why .com/.net/.org (and the stupid newer ones) should be abolished and all domains should end in their country codes. There is no such thing as not being under the control of SOME countries laws.
the US government don't want their citizens going to Cuba is because they might see a national health system that works and is 10 times cheaper to run. Yes Im being sarcastic..
IANAL, but the operator may be able to sue for damages in the EU.[1][2] [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms-Burton_Act [2]http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31996R2271:EN:HTML
eg. Several pages of it are fuzzy variants of...
LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Grigorievich (a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich); DOB 30 Aug 1954; POB Kopys, Vitebsk oblast, Belarus; President (individual) [BELARUS]
Some bloke "Hassan the Old" (Sort of like George Sr.)
And oh yes, for the US's latest bestest allies Columbia, there are 784 entries.
to all of the americans here trashing their own government:
if you as a cuban tried this in cuba, it is in the law of the land to arrest and jail you
if you doubt that, i'm not going to be your google monkey: go to the massively neocon sources of amnesty international and human rights watch and tell me what they say about the law in cuba about saying bad things about the government
so please, by all means, bash the us government: it's your right, you are respected as an american to bash your own government. just try to understand exactly what the real enemy is here. some people have a colossal lack of scale and perspective
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Manufacturers /retailers of hunters camo gear.
Is it certain that Gandi.net is not an eNom.com reseller, at least when they sell U.S. domain names?
That's war for ya
What?
The ability to own other people.
The lack of universal suffrage.
The electoral college and variegated citizenship.
The concept of equality and fairness.
It is folly to assume a document written in the 1700's would be a very good fit for the 2000's.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
It created lots of jobs in the local arms industry... guys who are now scrabbling to compete in the global arms market.
America is by several orders of magnitude a larger player in that market (indeed, by way far the largest arms dealer on the planet)....
Thus odds the main permanent effect of the embargo was the creation of an industry selling weapons to countries America won't.
ie. I bet American troops are saying, "Gee thanks for that embargo folks! That was a really well designed bit of munitions that blew my leg off."
The "screeching Cuban expats" are American VOTERS. Democracy works this way.
This is precisely why an organization like ICANN should be an international organization. Why should American voters have any say whatsoever over a firm operating in Europe, Canada or elsewhere? That is certainly NOT how democracy is supposed to work. It is, quite literally, none of their business, as long as the company does not operate in the US.
So far these legal attacks/enforcement have been restricted to the registrars so presumably the lesson is never use a US registrar if you don't want to be affected by US law. However ultimate responsibility rests with ICANN so how long will it be before these inane US laws start getting enforced on ICANN itself? This is why ICANN should be an international organization above any single country's law.
Just in case, here's the IP address of www.cuba-guantanamo.com, another site owned by the same company:
24.244.141.117
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
24.244.141.117 is the IP for all the virtual addresses listed. You can add it to your hosts file to see the virtual host. Also many of the host names are not down, for example, the Hemingway one can be seen here:
http://www.cuba-hemingway.net/
Again, I don't support US citizens violating the embargo, nor do I necessarily support the embargo itself. But I do support reading whatever you want whenever you want.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Wait, i thought that Iran was the using the "America card"? You mean there are two of these cards!!!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
getting tired of the USA doing it's damnedest to fake the whole 'liberty / freedom' thing?
This democracy thing must be really great, because there seem to be no rules which one must follow in order to give it to others. Kill them, take away their properly, ban exports to them... just to give them democracy.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
So what exactly is the difference between Cuba and China? Oh, that's right! China makes cheap shit for Walmart. And they support American corporations, which is what you right-wing loonies really mean when you talk about "spreading democracy." That is, spreading corporate influence around the globe. That's Cuba's real crime. They won't let the American corporations back in. Does anybody not understand this?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Disclaimer: I tend quite a ways to the Right.
Castro and his cronies need to go. Sadly, I tend to think that the embargo and such isn't doing anything for that - probably far on it's way to hindering it.
On the other end - right now, it's US law. It has been for all of my life and a little bit more. That doesn't make it right, but as no one (Democrats or Republicans) are interested in changing it enough to risk the political hit from the Cuban-American community AND OTHERS that seek to maintain the status quo, this is the way it is.
On the other hand, I noticed that this was a 2004 ruling, but was only acted on now. It makes me wonder if someone in the government is putting out a few reminders as the fake transition of power in Cuba goes on.
Anyway, back to the program.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
Check your history... Many South American nations were pushed into fascism when elected governments were covertly overthrown by the US. Few nations have escaped interference in democratic process (including Australia. 1975 was a big year for the CIA - they did Brazil that year too).
you had me at #!
This may be somewhat OT, but eNom are known well in the anti-spam community for being one of the largest registar choices of spammers. They are almost 100% likely to do nothing to discourage spammers from using them as a spammer-safe haven for registrations.
This is further supported by taking a glance at data from the URIBL "Realtime URI" feed for Abused/Abusive Registrars. A glance at their website shows they rank second out of 250 registrars for hosting blacklisted domains.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
They turn a country, a nation into a military camp. What liberties, what democratic process can be in a military camp?
For example they put the embargo for Zimbabwe and then cry bitterly over the hunger there. They criticize the lack of new democratic ideas in Cuba and at the same time restrict travel of people who could bring and exchange these ideas.
Why they still do it? Look into a history for an answer. 1953. The leader of Iran, Mossadek, dared to demand from British Petroleum part of the oil revenue - 50%. Looks like a fair deal. But he was chased out for this and replaced by a puppet shah. By the way that is the real reason of the Islamic fundamentalism of today.
It is not a democracy they are interested in Cuba. They want somehow to overthrow the government and get hold of its country resources, to receive them for free.
They use for these the systematic approach. Institutions, agencies, think tanks of thousands and thousands specialists in political technologies are busy day and night, analyzing situation, studying local politicians, suggesting actions which could be taken to destabilize the situation, to prevent any improvements in the target country, to prevent the democratic process.
There are departments for every country which has got any resources worth taking: Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Iraq, etc. They just use the words "democracy", "freedom" to disguise the real targets - getting an unrestricted access to resources. This tactic was invented by Napoleon who used the ideals of French revolution as a propaganda disguise to conquer the world.
They pulled his domains after they discovered the tour operator's name on a US Treasury blacklist.
Just another reason for people around the world to have second thoughts when they think about doing business with an American company.
You'd think that'd be a prime candidate for censorship.
Especially seeing as he's directly competing with them by offering cheap trips to Guantanamo!
The list _is_ the topic. What? Can't you guys cope with the reality of looking at the original data? Must you only have it fed sanitizing medium like The new York Times?
Is Gitmo not in Cuba? Therefore should the assets of whichever department runs it, or even the whole federal government, not be frozen?
In Iran, well, its illegal to even be jewish.
That is plainly false. Iran, for all its faults, legally recognises Jews and has the middle east's largest Jewish community outside of Israel. Some 25000 Jews live there. Iran, while being rabidly anti-Israel, makes a distinction between Jews and Zionism (not that that justifies their policies in any way)
I thought we were calling them "Freedom Houses" now. That was last week, we are calling them "Free Speech Zones" now.
"It's called an embargo, not censorship. And it's what's necessary and just to put pressure on Cuba to stop being a vicious dictatorship and actually respect its citizens' human rights. I'm not being sarcastic."
Oh, you mean just like the way we embargo the vicious dictatorship in Saudi Arabia that has 1/2 the population reduced to sub-human status???
And do not forget that the US not only penalizes foreign companies, which refuse to follow US boycotts, but also penalizes those which adhere to boycotts not originating from the US:
http://www.bis.doc.gov/antiboycottcompliance/default.htm
(needless to say, I do not support these non-US boycotts, either...)
So this has been going on for decades, right? You'd think we'd have some results by now. But Castro stepped down not because of discontent among the people, but because he simply got too old.
"WHEN is this country going to f*king LEARN!!!???? You DO NOT successfully, peacefully advance rogue countries by ostracising them."
South Africa.
You're wrong, and there is no rebuttal.
"Why? Because the US government..."
What branch of the US government is eNom?
So, no, that's not why. It was a nice troll though.
Sure, we have our problems. Less than the USA at the moment, but we do have problems. However, through our problems we have a system that (so far) has been seen to work. The single most popular (and most powerful) man in the county is being prosecuted for corruption. Nelson Mandela, through immense empathy and obvious love for his country, stopped South Africa from splitting apart. We have a society where the VAST MAJORITY of blacks and whites (ane everything in between) get along a co-operate with each other. We have a strong economy (which is under pressure at the moment - similar to the US economy) that appears to be more than able to ride out the coming recession.
There are problems. But I wouldn't trade our problems for any other countries. We've got a proven track record of fixing our problems. Sometimes it takes a while, but it does get done.
Right now, in South Africa, human rights are threatened by black racism against whites. Corruption is still a problem. And xenophobia in the poorer quarters is rife. How does this differ from the US? Or the UK? From what I've seen, though, Cuba has less problems than all of us, even if she does have a few of her own.
But maybe when you said BANANA republic yuo were talking about our exports? 75% of the world's platinum. Around 75% of her gold too (do you use anything that uses gold?). We produce more than enough food to feed ourselves and our neighbours. Until recently, we were producing enough electricity to supply our neighbours too, and it was some of the cheapest electricity in the world (and even with our current problems, most blackouts are carefully controlled and seldom last more than 4 hours). Our bad hospitals are bad, but our good hospitals (which are available all over the country, despite being a bit procey) are the best in the world bar none. Fre health care to everyone who can't afford to pay for it. My medical cover (and I'm by no means anywhere above middle class) give me free, unlimited hospitiliasion in the best private hospitals available, including medication. My chronic medication is also free. Then there is SAB Miller. The SAB stands for "South African Breweries". But then I don't drink, so we should probably drop that factoid.
You know, I look at some of our politicians, and on a good day I laugh, on a bad day I shake my head. But there are many who hold public office who actually love their country. How many other countries can say that? Our people, with all their problems, tend to be caring and compassionate. With the exception of extremists (who are statistically irrelevant) we are all against torture of anyone other than Australian rugby players (that part is a joke - we have a sense of humour about many things, including our problems. Actually, we don't joke about rugby, forgot that one). We have great sport teams who compete in the top levels around the world. Our individual sport men and women are amongst the best in the world.
And, we're hosting what will probably be the biggest sporting event in the history of sporting events - The 2010 Soccer World Cup. We're also friendly with Cuba.
The US Treasury Department is the branch that stole the domains, they ordered eNom to remove them, you can twist it anyway you want. If it wasn't for the US government's interference they'd still be up and he'd still be making the usual amount of money.
They did it on purpose, would you RTFA already...
"they ordered eNom to remove them"
Source?
"would you RTFA already..."
I have. What you claim isn't in it.
This, however, is
"the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog."
So, a source that says the Treasury Dept. ordered him to take it down please, or an admission that you don't have one.
And if you're going to suggest someone RTFA, you might want to do so yourself.
Just like we don't have handcuffs anymore ... we have "Freedom Fetters".
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
I think the Cuba embargo doesn't accomplish anything, and the deletion is pointless. But I've got to ask the obvious question.. if it's a UK based travel agency, then why don't they register a .co.uk instead of .com and put their domain under the UK's authority instead of US authority. I mean I know having invented the fucking internet the US is pretty cool, but living in Germany, I don't see many German websites operating under .com instead of .de
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin