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The dark side of .io

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Re: The dark side of .io

#51

Post by chrislgrigg »

frozenport wrote: post #49
mrfrisby wrote: post #30

This thread is a depressingly self-serving reflection of this community. Few of you seem to have bothered to do anything but skim the article and come to a snap judgement based on what seems to be your idealised notion of how TLDs should be managed. For the sake of my own sanity, lets just be clear here: 1. An island chain was forcibly depopulated in order for the largest land mass to be leased to the United States a…

I don't find it pragmatic to revise history, I don't believe the Native Americans should get .us

This situation doesn't really seem like it's "history" in the same sense, considering it happened so recently, governments are still actively working against them as they attempt repatriation, and the TLD issue is fresh.

Re: The dark side of .io

#52

Post by ceejayoz »

notastartup wrote: post #11

I picked up http://getleads.io for only $40, it was ridiculously easier than I thought because somehow I remembered .io domains as being expensive. Seems like the competition has brought down the prices quite a bit in the past few years.

$40 is expensive for a domain.

Re: The dark side of .io

#53

Post by mrfrisby »

frozenport wrote: post #49
mrfrisby wrote: post #30

This thread is a depressingly self-serving reflection of this community. Few of you seem to have bothered to do anything but skim the article and come to a snap judgement based on what seems to be your idealised notion of how TLDs should be managed. For the sake of my own sanity, lets just be clear here: 1. An island chain was forcibly depopulated in order for the largest land mass to be leased to the United States a…

I don't find it pragmatic to revise history, I don't believe the Native Americans should get .us

I don't find it useful to play Human Rights abuse Top Trumps.

Re: The dark side of .io

#54

Post by M2Ys4U »

hansjorg wrote: post #15
jlangenauer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be extremely shocked if this was actually the case. Do you have any source for this claim?

I might me misremembering it, but I think this was told in the documentary Stealing a Nation [1]. According to Wikipedia, there is a commissioner with the Foreign Office that acts as administrator, but that commissioner is directly appointed by the Queen [2]. 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealing_a_Nation 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_the_British_India...

>directly appointed by the Queen

While this may be technically true, the monarch's powers (the royal prerogatives[0]) are almost exclusively exercised on the advice of the prime minister/cabinet.

In other words, while the power officially rests with the Queen, the UK government is the one to wield it in practice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative

Re: The dark side of .io

#55

Post by kijin »

mikeash wrote: post #45
kijin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your criticisms. 1) I'm not disputing that it was wrong for UK to evict the Chagossians. I'm only disputing that the Chagossians have some sort of fundamental human right to return all these years later, just because their grandfathers used to live there. 2) Yes, many leading philosophers of previous centuries used to think very highly of property rights, but this trend has greatly diminished in the last…

Hold on. You can't talk about your theories of how it's OK to displace people as long as they're compensated, then turn around and say "what's done is done" when presented with counterarguments.

"What's done is done," because we can't travel back in time.

I never said that what is done is OK, only that it is done. It was most definitely NOT OK for Britain to displace Chagossians the way they did, because adequate compensation did not occur. I think I made this very clear in the parent comment.

But Returning Chagos to the Chagossians now will not fix any of the million things that went wrong. We have plenty of nominally independent but barely subsisting island nations in this world, we seriously don't need another. What is needed is a concrete plan to get the Chagossians (and their descendents) out of those Mauritian slums in which Britain so carelessly dumped them 50 years ago. Returning them to Chagos might or might not be a part of this plan, but if they insist on it at the expense of more urgent material needs, so much the worse for them.

"What's done is done," but we can do more. For example: British passports, British pensions, British health care, British education for their children, a formal apology, and fair political representation. Keep adding to the list until their children can honestly say they're glad that their parents left their former home. That would count as adequate compensation.

Re: The dark side of .io

#56

Post by PythonicAlpha »

chrislgrigg wrote: post #51
frozenport wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it pragmatic to revise history, I don't believe the Native Americans should get .us

This situation doesn't really seem like it's "history" in the same sense, considering it happened so recently, governments are still actively working against them as they attempt repatriation, and the TLD issue is fresh.

I see some parallels, and time that has passed by is also a weak excuse. Even I think, that many native Americans also still suffer from the treatment their ancestors got.

But: You can't excuse one wrong with another wrong. The fight about the TLDs might be some little thing, but what happened to those people is an outspoken injustice and I can't comprehend, how modern countries could do such things in the last decades.

The comparison to native Americans is good, because it shows, that the methods are still the same, the deeds are just hidden better nowadays.

Re: The dark side of .io

#57

Post by iLoch »

Perhaps a good starting point would be allowing me to sign a petition when I order a .io domain. Obviously this would require action by large domain providers, but it would be a good way to raise awareness I think.

Re: The dark side of .io

#58

Post by sologoub »

thizzbuzz wrote: post #44
sologoub wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a straw man argument. If you read closely, the article says: "The Chagossians are largely descended from African slaves brought to the previously uninhabited islands, 2,200km (1,367 miles) north-east of Mauritius, by the French in the 18th century." Yes, these unfortunate souls have suffered generations of evil, starting with the slave trade and finish off with being expelled from the island(s). That…

> That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land. I don't see a good argument that any land belongs to any person on earth. That said, subsisting off a single piece of land for 250 years is a much better claim than "we want this for economic/military development". I also tend not to side with the party that gasses 1000 pet dogs as part of their forced relocation process.

Got a citation for that dog figure?

Re: The dark side of .io

#59

Post by kijin »

thizzbuzz wrote: post #47
kijin wrote: post #17

Okay, this is going to be controversial, but I have no problem whatsoever with moving people around like this, as long as: 1) the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss, and 2) they are given freedom to move to a place where they can enjoy human rights and make an adequate living. The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right. This applies at every scale from a sing…

> The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right. What? That's exactly what happened here. The Chagossians were forcibly removed, because a government(s) claimed "the right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates". If the Chagossians don't have that right, then no one else can come in and force them out.

Governments are not people. They neither have, nor claim, any human rights.

The UK and USA only ever claimed a legal right within the framework of their own laws. Despicable as their actions may be, they never pretended to claim a human right.

The displaced Chagossians, on the other hand, are claiming a human right to occupy the islands. That's different.

Re: The dark side of .io

#60

Post by sologoub »

geographomics wrote: post #41
sologoub wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a straw man argument. If you read closely, the article says: "The Chagossians are largely descended from African slaves brought to the previously uninhabited islands, 2,200km (1,367 miles) north-east of Mauritius, by the French in the 18th century." Yes, these unfortunate souls have suffered generations of evil, starting with the slave trade and finish off with being expelled from the island(s). That…

> That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land. The argument is that they had lived there for generations and made it very much their homeland - only to be turfed out at the whim of a remote, overbearing colonial power.

By that same token, the French that first colonized and settled the islands have a claim - they were there first. As do the British who conquered the possession from the French.

These situations are much more complicated than the surface view that the "big evil colonial empire" is picking on defenseless people.

If the original wrong of enslaving the population was corrected, the people relocated by force would have never been on the island in the first place. This of course is impossible.

There are many more similar arguments for either side that one could make. It just shows the unproductive nature of such disputes.

A much more productive approach would have been about compensation and rehabilitation of the displaced persons. Surely there are many things they need that can be provided to improve their lot in life. I strongly doubt that giving this island back (even if the military was willing to give it up) after all these years is going to do them any good.

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