Obama: Cuba Travel Restrictions To Be Eased

President Barack Obama plans to loosen Cuban travel policy to allow students and church groups to go to the communist country, the administration announced Friday. www.huffingtonpost.com...

Speaking as a Canadian...
...well, there go the beaches.

But good luck to family reconciliation.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


I'm sure Floridians will be thrilled.

More American money to be taken back to Cuba. God bless if it really helps them out.

This is going to cause quite the stir.

~Namaste

to bad meyer lansky is dead, he would have loved the opportunity to re-corrupt cuba's government and turn the island into america's elites own private backyard holiday resort.

average americans and peasant cubans need not apply.

fidel castro and che guevara knew how to deal with nwo capitalist exploiters.

The quickest way to end Castro's regime there would be to expose it to America's pop culture. They should have done this 30 years ago, rock 'n roll music would have blitzed those commies right off the map.

But will the US Administration lift banned websites?

Since 2008

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.

Either way, there is no dispute that eNom shut down Mr. Marshall’s sites without notifying him and has refused to release the domain names to him. In effect, Mr. Marshall said, eNom has taken his property and interfered with his business

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

Mr. Marshall said he did not understand “how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law.” Worse, he said, “these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials

A Treasury spokesman, John Rankin, referred a caller to 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.

Mr. Marshall said he was uninterested in American tourists. “They can’t go anyway,” he said

For more information: US Watch List & Banned Websites

reply to post by Ellen15


US Watch List & Banned Websites

Peter L. Fitzgerald, a law professor at Stetson University in Florida who has studied the blacklist — which the Treasury calls a list of “specially designated nationals” — said its operation was quite mysterious. “There really is no explanation or standard,” he said, “for why someone gets on the list.”

Susan Crawford, a visiting law professor at Yale and a leading authority on Internet law, said the fact that many large domain name registrars are based in the United States gives the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, control “over a great deal of speech — none of which may be actually hosted in the U.S., about the U.S. or conflicting with any U.S. rights.”

“OFAC apparently has the power to order that this speech disappear,” Professor Crawford said.

The law under which the Treasury Department is acting has an exemption, known as the Berman Amendment, which seeks to protect “information or informational materials.” Mr. Marshall’s Web sites, though ultimately commercial, would seem to qualify, and it is not clear why they appear on the list. Unlike Americans, who face significant restrictions on travel to Cuba, Europeans are free to go there, and many do. Charles S. Sims, a lawyer with Proskauer Rose in New York, said the Treasury Department might have gone too far in Mr. Marshall’s case.

“The U.S can certainly criminalize the expenditure of money by U.S. citizens in Cuba,” Mr. Sims said, “but it doesn’t properly have any jurisdiction over foreign sites that are not targeted at the U.S. and which are lawful under foreign law.”

Last March, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights issued a disturbing report on the OFAC list. Its subtitle: “How a Treasury Department Terrorist Watch List Ensnares Everyday Consumers.”

The report, by Shirin Sinnar, said that there were 6,400 names on the list and that, like no-fly lists at airports, it gave rise to endless and serious problems of mistaken identity.

“Financial institutions, credit bureaus, charities, car dealerships, health insurers, landlords and employers,” the report said, “are now checking names against the list before they open an account, close a sale, rent an apartment or offer a job.”

But Mr. Marshall’s case does not appear to be one of mistaken identity. The government quite specifically intended to interfere with his business.

That, Professor Crawford said, is a scandal. “The way we communicate these days is through domain names, and the Treasury Department should not be interfering with domain names just as it does not interfere with telecommunications lines.”

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


It'll get a little more crowded, but not much yet.

I never could understand how the "land of the free" wasn't allowed to travel where they wanted.
I always thought that Americans that wanted to go to Cuba, would just travel there from Canada, but I guess that would have gotten them in a lot of trouble if caught.

Originally posted by snowspirit
reply to post by JohnnyCanuck

 

It'll get a little more crowded, but not much yet.
I never could understand how the "land of the free" wasn't allowed to travel where they wanted.
I always thought that Americans that wanted to go to Cuba, would just travel there from Canada, but I guess that would have gotten them in a lot of trouble if caught.

They do it anyway. Cuba issues visa cards and does not stamp passports. The old way was for Americans to fly out of Montreal, and 'lose' their passports while in Canada.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
The quickest way to end Castro's regime there would be to expose it to America's pop culture. They should have done this 30 years ago, rock 'n roll music would have blitzed those commies right off the map.

I'll let our Cuban contingent chime in on this, but lots of Cubans have TVs and I'm sure radios are ubiquitous. They are a musical people, and sure like American pop culture...plus baseball. How much American TV can be received, I don't know...but you can be sure that the US makes it its business to show as many Cubans as possible the marvels of the West.

It brought down the Berlin Wall.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
The quickest way to end Castro's regime there would be to expose it to America's pop culture. They should have done this 30 years ago, rock 'n roll music would have blitzed those commies right off the map.

Or perhaps the Cubans would have taught the rock and rollers how to read music.

www.youtube.com...

I can't wait to book a trip and go fishing down there for Bones, Permit and tarpon drink Mojito's and dance with some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Its not open to tourists just yet but I told my pops me and him are gonna open a "church" so we have an excuse to go down there lol. Ive lived in Florida almost my whole life and have been dieing to go and see Cuba. I hope they actually lift the travel restrictions once and for all because in all honesty, I dont think it does anybody any good or to have them. I also dont think it really "punishes" castro either. His country is still there and its not gonna change no matter what happens with travel restrictions.

Are there any other countries that are not allowed to travel to Cuba, besides the US? I can't find anyone else, I've been googling.
If everyone else is allowed to go to Cuba, except Americans, that's just punishing Americans. I don't really see the point.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

The quickest way to end Castro's regime there would be to expose it to America's pop culture. They should have done this 30 years ago, rock 'n roll music would have blitzed those commies right off the map.

I disagree. Instead introduce them to the modern American car. They will bankrupt themselves trying to fix them. They've been keeping their 1950's clunkers going so long, they won't know what to do with a piece of crap that literally self-destructs in 18 months.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Man. Don't wish American pop culture on those poor people. The less Cubans know about Justin Bieber and Oprah's thighs, the better (for them!)

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Well its certainly a step in the right direction because banning Americans from travelling to Cuba is on par with the sort of things that regime in that country would or had of done . Opening up Cuba to more income even small amounts of it from visitors or from the US could push the country leaders towards economic liberalization if not such things such as civil liberty's and other such democratic rights .

Cheers xpert11.

I wonder how many will take advantage of that great healthcare?

Wonder what Michael Moore thinks about this?

i see absolutely nothing wrong with this, did i just say that, yes i did. First cuba has been labeled as a communist country since this bullshizzle cold war scenario played out in 1945, but the united states has one of the largest naval bases in the world right on the tip of cuba, how convienent is that, and still have the odasity in labeling them commies, well if mexicans can come up to the states why in sam hill cannot a country that has been a blessing for the United States do the same

Someone might let them know that the once fabeled American dream is more of a living hell in of itself