A wave of the watch list, and speech disappears (US shuts down Euro. travel agnt.-Cuba)

[kskiska]

Source: NYT

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.

The sites, in English, French and Spanish, had been online since 1998. Some, like www.cuba-hemingway.com, were literary. Others, like www.cuba-havanacity.com, discussed Cuban history and culture. Still others — www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com — were purely commercial sites aimed at Italian and French tourists.

“I came to work in the morning, and we had no reservations at all,” Mr. Marshall said on the phone from the Canary Islands. “We thought it was a technical problem.”

It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html?_r=2&bl&ex=1204779600&en=fbfa2e2586c552a8&oref=slogin

[sarcasmo]

1. World Police strike again.

This nonsense never ends. When does it happen to D/U? Kick and Nom.

[ananda]

2. Is this kind of infringement and bullymongering by the USA..

.. ever.. going.. to .. end.......???

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Probably not. nt

[Politicalboi]

3. My guess is

It will get worse before it gets better. They could pull the plug on all of us not just sites like DU.

[strategery blunder]

4. This is why no one country should control DNS services. eom

[AnnieBW]

5. America! F*ck Yeah!

We don't even want Europeans to go to Cuba!

[LynnTheDem]

7. bUsh better shut down canada's TV stations! And England's!

Coz there are Travel Cuba ads on every single day.

OH MAH GAWD!!11!!1

[Canuckistanian]

13. Here's some startling news - Sears Canada is offering trips to Cuba

http://sea.sax.softvoyage.com/cgi-bin/resultadv.cgi?code_ag=sea&alias=sea&id=6222872&language=en&page=home

So here's an AMERICAN company that operates all over Canada - and their travel division is FREELY and OPENLY offering trips to Cuba.

So, can we expect Sear's websites to be shut down?

[peacetalksforall]

8. They just expanded the embargo. Did they ever stop ships? Did they ever stop the Canadian tourists

Did they ever stop the billions of dollars that have been sent to Cubans for Cuban Americans living in the U.S.?

There is either more to the story - OR - it's the beginning of the end if they remain in power.

Everyone keeps saying that they won't take down the internet because their kind need it for business. And spying.

We have a gang of people with wood and torches, hang rope (not made of hemp), pistols, fast horses, hats, spurs, and anger - they are going to torch, hang, or shoot.

They are their own posse and wild killers.

They are infatuated with endings and death.

Their last act against Castro?

Or is this businessman doing something legitimately serious?

Want to take bets?

If this guy has a back-up can he be up and running using some server that beanbrains can't touch?

[Ghost Dog]

9. He is back up and running, using mostly .net domains.

His servers are in the Bahamas.

Both, at least in theory, beyond direct US jurisdiction.

So pathetic. What is the US afraid of?

[superconnected]

10. Very Scary.

[ngant17]

11. That's actually more bad news for a US-based business

and this regime is willing to go to facist-like extremes to run the country into increasing poverty.

So you can't use US-based servers anymore. Stay away, America is bad for business. Take your business anywhere but in the USA.

[Nihil]

15. Bringing freedom to the internet - the Chinese way ...

> So you can't use US-based servers anymore. Stay away, America is bad
> for business. Take your business anywhere but in the USA.

Sad but true.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Damned decent of the NY Times to share this info. with us. Glad they decided to let the public in on

this particularly nasty bit of muscle flexing by the _Bush administration.

Is THIS what people really want from government? As far back as 2000, FBI agents were starting to haunt airline terminals in Canada, scouring passenger manifests, trying to discover which ones were Americans who were going to Canada to take trips to Cuba, or were returning from a trip.

We've gone WAY beyond that gestapo-like measure now, and it's everyone's loss, other than right-wing extremists' who couldn't be happier about this new level of control over people's lives.

Time to turn this wreck around and dismantle it all. This country will only look unrecognizably vicious continuing one step further in this direction.

(Don't forget the pathetic suit pressed by the U.S. Government on Canadian water purifier salesman, James Sabzali, who dared to sell his products to Cuba for use in their hospitals. They are also needed for dialysis machines, I believe. Here's a good look at his case:

The Long Ordeal of James SabzaliBy Paul Harris, Axis of Logic Columnist Apr 16, 2005, 10:08

~snip~
He was convicted of twenty counts of trading with the enemy and one count of conspiracy. At least seven of the charges on which he was convicted are for trades he made while living in Canada where the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Actforbids Canadians from complying with the US embargo. In fact, as a Canadian citizen, Sabzali was obliged to ignore the US embargo and to inform the Canadian government of any orders from the United States to refrain from trade with Cuba for political or legal reasons. Other charges related to shipments to Cuba originating in Spain, Italy, Britain, and Mexico; none of those nations recognize the US anti-Cuban legislation.

By the way, Sabzali’s crime was selling water purification systems to Cuban hospitals. US officials in the Justice and State Departments claim that water purification is a matter of ‘national security’ for the United States. It is unclear if national security is at risk by purifying anyone’s water, or only Cuban water, and there is no leeway given for the humanitarian aspect of purified water for hospitals.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:I7EUKjxQ3dUJ:www.escritoire.ca/images/Sabzali.pdf+James+Sabzali+water+purifier+trial+Cuba&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us

[Tyler Durden]

14. JESUS H. MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST, do we suck or what?

If there really is a Hell, there are a lot of people in this country that are going to slow-smoke on a nice warm spit.

How much do we have to suck before the rest of the world tells us to fuck off? We're like a bad neighbor, running down the property values by putting cars up on blocks in the front yard.