Thanks to Minnow for coming through with the PDA situation!
Hartley, nobody on this site is disputing how lame it was that the bill was passed in that fashion. Nobody disputed it after the first article, or the second, or the 10th, and they won't after the 30th if we just keep saying the same things over and over again once or twice a week until there's a new administration. It's like complaining about the same bad beat over and over again forever. What's the point of the constant repetition of the sermon that's already been preached many times to the choir that already agrees?
I don't know of any evidence that suggests the US government is afraid that regulated online wagering within its own borders would be helpful to terrorists. Things are getting mixed together here that are separate.
The government opposes gambling of all types in general for moral reasons (note that casino gambling is illegal in most of the country except for areas that have carved out their own exceptions in limited geographic space).
The government is concerned that unregulated offshore gambling will provide a financial vehicle for terrorists to move money around easily and undetectably.
These are two separate things, and the government had dealt with them separately.
What Great Britain is doing has nothing to do with the terrorism issue because it's regulated within their borders. Great Britain isn't endorsing unregulated offshore gaming. The fact that they're regulating sites within their own country doesn't mean they're not concerned about what happens offshore.
You could say the US goverment doesn't want gambling within the US for moral reasons, and they don't want unregulated offshore gambling to exist because of the potential for money laundering and easy maneuvering someday for terrorist entities. Sticking the two together and saying the US shouldn't be afraid of terrorists using online gaming because Great Britain isn't misses the whole point. And sticking in Nazis and the IRA doesn't even belong in the same area code.
In the world of unregulated offshore gaming, all reasonable countries should be concerned about the possibility of evil-doers using unregulated financial vehicles to their advantage.
In the world of regulated gaming, Britain's government has chosen to embrace it, while the US government is continuing what they see to be a perpetual ban that's gone on for eons in this country. The US didn't attend the conference for obvious reasons. They're not interested in legalizing online wagering right now. They don't care what Britain does.
And, what Britain does within its borders has nothing to do with the exposure to terrorism from unregulated offshore places anyway. The threat from terrorism comes from the unregulated offshore places. I'm sorry I have to keep repeating that...but your last post is still linking things together in a way that doesn't exist. Could you please at least ackowledge that you get what I'm saying here, even if you disagree. Saying WE SHOULD LISTEN TO BRITAIN, WE SHOULD LISTEN TO BRITAIN a hundred times has nothing to do with the terrorism issue. Terrorism is a threat because of the unregulated offshore places, not the regulated on shore places...  |