Domains Blocked By US Treasury 'Blacklist' 525
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."
A generator of resources that the Cuban regime... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Pay Attention (Score:3, Interesting)
Please Americans, I love lots of what you stand for, now kill off the right-wing cancer that eats at your nation's heart.
Re:And yet... (Score:2, Interesting)
I even write to my representative in congress when I notice that it's being done, so y'can't say I'm not doing anything about it.
You're only as free as you want to take the effort to be.
There's a lesson in here somewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You have to love our freedoms (Score:2, Interesting)
Cf. the number of Vietnamese living in the United States and their level of affluence and growing political influence (a community with which I am very familiar; my wife, as well as most of our friends and relatives, are Vietnamese), yet we have full diplomatic relations with Viet Nam. The difference? Viet Nam has not only returned confiscated property (the former US Embassy in Saigon is now the US Consulate General building there), but has been very helpful in locating the remains of US military personnel lost during the war and not recovered at the time. Cuba has done nothing to try to improve relations with the United States, and in fact has resorted to things such as dumping the Marielitos on us. The Cuban government has completely brought its situation vis-a-vis the United States on itself, period.
When the Cubans want to come to the table and talk, starting with compensation issues, I'm sure they'll be welcomed, the Cuban-American lobby notwithstanding. When will they be ready to? Not until sometime after Fidel's grave - and probably his brother's as well - has grown quite cold. They have too much baggage for it to happen before that.
What do you expect from ENOM (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:You have to love our freedoms (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely. The amount of U.S. debt they hold is a gun pointed at our head that could wipe out our power as effectively as any nuke.
Mind you, we'd take them and the rest of the world down in the process. When you owe the bank ten million dollars, you have a problem. When you owe the bank ten trillion dollars, the bank has a problem.
Tried That... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not Everyone, Just (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:eNom is the REAL provider, others only re-sell. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The underlying problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to think there was hope for this country. I now realize this country was lost a long time ago. Thanks for giving it the interest groups, asshole.
FYI, I can't stand Ron Paul.
Re:Country level TLDs only (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that, for the sake of clarity, the .com/.org/etc TLDs should be reserved to "international" organizations (whatever that can possibly mean in legal terms), and all American domains should have been placed into .us. But that's not going to happen simply because no one would go through the hassle of converting all the existing American domains over to .us and forcing everyone to update their bookmarks and finger memory.
(And now witness a horde of American slashdotters coming along proclaiming the supremacy of the US over the Internet ("because we invented it!"), and in particular their inalienable right to shorter domain names ;)
Re:With great power.. (Score:3, Interesting)
My suggestion would be to have a third house, selected at random from the entire pool of individuals in the United States with demonstrably high IQs and/or EQs and/or education. They don't have to be registered to vote, born in any particular country, they just have to be US citizens at the time and eligible for jury duty. This jury, however, is rather unusual. Aside from being randomly selected from a tiny subset of the jury pool, and not being in a criminal or civil case, that is. It would be supervised and moderated by a senior judge, since the house activity is cast in the form of a trial.
This jury would have the power to try and "convict" (ie: veto) any one single bill that is submitted at the time the jury is in session. Just the one. The bill must be submitted for trial by national referendum. After they reach a verdict of guilty beyond reasonable doubt or innocent (by a majority no less than 9 of the 12), the jury is disbanded.
They would also have the power to try any one individual in Government on a charge of "no confidence", including the President, but again that trial would be their sole action. They couldn't do anything else if they did that. Again, who they tried, if anyone, would be decided by national referendum, not by the jury, but because it's a much more significant action, I'd argue that it would require a 2/3rds majority of votes cast to put a member of the executive on trial in this way. The verdict must again be beyond all reasonable doubt, but also must be unanimous. A verdict of guilty authorizes a national vote on whether to recall that individual. Again, because impeachment is supposed to be extremely hard and this circumvents most of the existing system, I'd argue this would need a very substantial majority. 3/4 of all votes cast or 2/3 of all voters (whether they voted or not) would seem reasonable.
Since this would be essentially a para-justice system, appeals would be through the Federal court system, but those appeals would be heard under the legal code established for this system, rather than for civil or criminal law. The interesting problem would be a Supreme Court appeal on the recall of a Supreme Court judge. Would you need the judge to recuse themselves, or since the full court would presumably be needed, would they by definition be amongst those hearing the case?
This would put the powers of veto and impeachment in the hands of the citizenry, but in a way that is very tightly controlled. The idea is to slow angry and resentful people to the point where they can see if their anger or resentment is even real, have that checked over impartially, and if it's valid, then give the reasoning and feeling that is expressed by the general populace as anger and resentment power to hold the Government responsible. Not during election season, when politicians play nice and bribe their voters, but at any time.
The idea is to also prevent such power from ever being controlled by outside sources (hence the jury pool mechanism) amd to prevent mood-of-the-week attitudes from having that power directly.
Of course, there are a million and one reasons why this won't work, but if the circle is to be truly complete and democracy is to be functional, then the current election system is inadequate for a feedback loop and has become far too severely corrupted. There needs to be an uncorruptable feedback loop, even if the requirement to keep it uncorruptable makes it slow, careful, limited and itself subject to higher authorities.
I propose this, not on the chance anyone'll give a damn, but because I think the current system lacks any kind of idiot-proof feedback system and that won't happen if nobody considers the possibility that there might actually be an idiot-proof system.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Use a european registrar (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me if you want a
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Interesting)
The US is just in a near-conniption fit that the North has not collapsed, imploded, or exploded. It's a major embarrassment that multiple US administrations just ineptly cannot figure out how to have state-to-state talks with the North and get out of the way of confederation leading to reunification. Don't like MY perception? Read...on
Check out "Korean Endgame" by Selig S. Harrison...
The first two chapters show how ignorant the US can be when it comes to taking sides and coercing what it thinks are its client states (and is instead manipulated by the South, as was Russia by the North), yet (the US) ends up delaying reunification because if later finds it NEEDS and DESIRES a 'clear and present danger' of sorts in order to justify $42B a year in deployed US military assets around Asia, and $2B a year going directly to the South.
The South recently offered citizenship to people of the North. The YOUTH of the South probably care less about politics, but wealthy in the loop with military and economic assets at risk don't want to be besieged nor bothered by a massive influx of poor Northerners. In general, though, many if not most Koreans (North and South are torn by the division instigated by by Kim Song Il, after duping Stalin and getting assent from China.
The US *claims* it wants to aid Korea Unify, but so far it mostly has obstructed or ineptly carried out talks, bullied the North, and placated the South, enable the South to experience as little pain as possible in the march toward confederation. The North expected (rightfully) confederation and a formal declaration of cessation of hostilities, but the US botched things imposing its OWN view on BOTH Koreas. However, Seoul, for its part, never signed the armistice...
Now, what is going on is the Russians no longer sell much of anything military to the North, but is instead selling to the South and to others. The upshot is that the NK "regime"/government/Workers' Party isn't likely to go out with a bang. It'll just muddle along, and reunification (50% thanks to the US) will happen DECADES later than it could have or should have.
For what it's worth, i feel sorry for BOTH halves of Korea and i hope history takes in hand all those who did their bit to undermine and humiliate a great people, and wrought them great humiliation.
i hope the Coreas reunify SOON (less than 10 years). I hope they shift to indigenous local partners of the regional defense, and I hope they PROVE to Japan that a unified Corea purged of US occupation is NOT a threat to the Japanese peoples. i don't think there will be any wars unless puppeteers from afar instigate things.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why TLDs that don't contain country names should not be in the hands of any one government, but that is just wishful thinking. Maybe we will see
Re:So what exactly is the difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:1, Interesting)
Freedom, heh.
You seem smug in yours. We made that mistake.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:So what exactly is the difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, (and the reason the embargo was created in the first place) when Castro took over in Cuba, he appropriated a large amount of property formerly owned by Americans without giving them any compensation. This is the reason the embargo was created in the first place. The first is the reason the embargo has continued. There was no similar US investment in China before the Communists took power.
As to whether or not Cuba would allow American corporations back in, no one knows. It has been illegal for American companies to do business with Cuba since Castro took over with no evidence that that law will change.
Re:So what exactly is the difference (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So what exactly is the difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Cuba was just a bit more outspoken during the Cold War and the US wet it's panties when their constituents could virtually see the nuclear warheads pointing at them using binoculars. The only reason the embargo is there was to punish the Cubans for their Soviet involvement. There is no reason currently there should be any embargo since opening the people up to the westerner world would lead them to think more freely and force their government to give more freedom, just like is happening now in China. By blocking all access from the US to Cuba, Cuba has to be supplied from elsewhere and they're doing a pretty good job at that. At the same time, their government can say: it's the American's fault that you're poor and they keep them poor that way. Forcing freedom by embargo hasn't worked for the last 40 years, it won't work for the next 40.
And yes, China did send Chinese over to the US. About a million young Chinese people are currently in the US studying at Universities, I work with one of those guys (Postdoc, has his PhD), they basically get selected and supported by the government to study certain subjects abroad. As soon as they get their PhD's they will go back so they can support their community in whatever they learned.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:2, Interesting)