Slashdot Mirror
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."
... 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
...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.
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 asked for evidence, and you provided gibberish and cut-and-paste from Sun Tzu. Bravo.
The embargo won't end anytime soon - the Helms-Burton act specifies that as long as a Castro remains in power, the embargo will remain enforced.
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.
I'm afraid you're too young to remember. Cuba could have gone either way, to US support (as its nearest and wealthiest neighbor) or Soviet support (as the other world superpower, and only other possible counter). But Castro successfully led a revolution against Batista (a US supported and amaziingly corrupt dictator, as bad as the Shah of Iran or Manuel Noriega, who both also had been close friends to the USA).
Cuba could have been an ally after that revolution, but Castro nationalized the major factories and plantations. With cause: the Americans running them had been very involved in Batista's corruption, and the many poor in Cuba were starving and under threats from the corrupt government every day. They needed the money, and they needed control over their own economy. And then that amazingly incompetent Bay of Pigs assault was tried, and it was clear to many, not just Castro, that he had no chance of cooperation with the USA. So he cooperated with the Soviets, who helped provide foreign currency and trade as a showpiece of Communism in the Western hemisphere, and as a critical military base.
So, historically, the US priority is hardly one of "no threat". It's one of "Castro out" and "we want control back" as well.
Claims that the South African Apartheid regime collapsed due to pressure from sanctions are a whole bunch of popycock.
As a white South African (emphasis needed only for this article), I can ensure you that for most of my Apartheid South African life I was completely unaffected by sanctions. I kept a journal, so I can say with certainty that I was 15 before I even realised that there was such a thing as apartheid. As for sanctions, they didn't affect me.
The problem with things like sanctions is that they hurt the people they are trying to help. Sanctions caused price increases in most items - increases that barely affected my family, but hurt the poorer (mostly black) population. My parents, and other adults of the time (myself included) complained about high prices on all sorts of items, but we had access to them and bought them in any case. Most of us didn't really know any better. About the only thing that I can remember happening that actually hurt us was the move away from the gold standard. There was a time when the South African Rand was one of the strongest currencies in the world due to the vast number of gold mines in the country.
What would have been a better strategy would be to flood the market with products that exposed more people to the fact that there were differences between whites and blacks. More of an effort to help people to recognise that they COULD do something would also have been useful.
A lot of people outside of the country don't realise that for most of their lives during the Apartheid regime, white South Africans could choose to vote either for the Conservative Party (who were for taking away more black rights) or the National Party (the "liberal" party, and the party that was eventually responsible for the process that ended Apartheid). Through my entire childhood, the National Party was in power. The people I spoke to were scared of blacks coming to power (the ANC was a terrorist organisation that regularly bombed civilian targets*), but were against the current situation. We didn't see how the situation could change.
What ended Apartheid was the then president of the country (FW de Klerk - who won a Nobel Piece Prize for it) giving the country a choice - vote yes to end Apartheid, vote No to keep Apartheid. It was my first election, and I voted to end apartheid, with the majority of the country. Because the majority of South African's didn't believe it was a good system, and we finally had a choice with a plan that seemed viable. We were still scared, and with good cause, but we did it. The very fact that we were so scared and yet did it in any case should indicate that this was a decision that was motivated by a belief in what was right and not simple economics. People don't trade safety for money. You give up safety for ideals.
The only argument that can counter this is that we actually had nothing to fear. The easiest way I know to discount that is to point to this website. It's a website dedicated to Jacob Zuma, president of the ANC, and most likely the next president of South Africa. These are his supporters, and more of a concern, the comments are moderated. I.E. This is what he is comfortable with pepole seeing his supporters as.
There is another problem. If you're interested check out what I've started saying about these things.
Jason
(* Yes, they did. I was there. In fact, many of the dustbins and other container type items found in the streets in major cities were specially designed to turn to powder instead of shrapnel when they exploded - necessary because bombs were regularly placed inside container type items around popular civilian attractions - shopping centers, movie theaters, etc...)