We did Nazi see this coming... Internet will welcome Earth's newest nation with, sigh, a brand new .SS TLD The internet will make space for South Sudan this month, with plans to create a new top-level domain (TLD) for the world's newest nation. There's only one catch: the new country-code TLD is .ss, which is formally listed as a hate symbol thanks to its use by the Nazi party's Schutzstaffel (or SS) in the 1920s through to the …
We learned from the best :-)
Seriously, as a Yank who has spent ~20% of his life in Blighty, you lot are slightly worse than we are. Not by a lot, mind. IMO, the GreatUnwashed on both sides of the pond need to pull their collective heads out. Neither side is exactly Humanity's gift to the Universe. One wonders if most people contributing to this kind of spat has ever traveled more than 40 miles from where they were born.
Ah, well. There is always beer. This round's on me ... the hand pump marked "Ale" is a rather nice homebrewed Bitter that I just tapped. Cellar temperature, of course.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness ..." --SLC
As in something to pi.ss on? That's gro.ss
Or a rock band might register ki.ss
And if you don't like it, you have no cla.ss
Can anyone gue.ss what domains the Swi.ss and Cypre.ss might register?
And the Church might like to register cro.ss and ble.ss.
Sorry I'm being such a bada.ss and a wisea.ss but don't be such a wu.ss
According to my fitne.ss watch it's getting late. Time to stop this madne.ss before I make a me.ss. With a .ss domain addre.ss the possibilities are limitle.ss!
"I see your Schutzstaffel and I raise with Secret Service (those people charged with protecting Trump, now not getting paid)."
He just caved (at least for 3 weeks) and not only claimed victory, but called all the poor saps who've lost out "heroes and patriots". Like they had a choice in the matter. So the Secret Service will now be back on the payroll.
"those people charged with protecting Trump, now not getting paid"
Certainly not true. The Secret Service has two missions; protection of the Pres, Vice Pres, foreign dignitaries, and others, as well as an investigative function to protect US payment and financial systems. Guess who would be the last US government entity to stop receiving their pay.
"don't you have a good champers?"
If you mean Champagne, no, I don't. But I do have a rather nice dry sparkling white wine made with the méthode champenoise from grapes grown here in Sonoma Valley, California. It's a rather nice vintage, one of the best in recent memory from our little AVA. Usually beats similar French stuff in blind tastings, much to their deep dismay.
Cheers!
I do have a rather nice dry sparkling white wine made with the méthode champenoise from grapes grown here in Sonoma Valley, California.
I took a bicycle trip around Napa valley while working in San Francisco back in 2000, and stopped off at various vineyards on the way. One was the Mumm vineyard, where they were calling their sparkling wine "champagne" at the time. I was quite surprised at the naming, since the "Champagne" name is strictly controlled. Turns out the reasons that US made sparkling wines could still be called Champagne is quite a fascinating one (well, at least I found it fascinating).
"I always thought that quote was from Mark Twain."
His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
My recollection of his travels in the world is that they often gave him the opposite conclusion. Which I paraphrase from my experiences as "Travel narrows the mind". However - don't quote me on that.
For many nationalities the ones you meet outside their own country are atypical. They are often the ones trying to escape some conservative parochialism. (There are many exceptions though). When you live and work in another country it is often a see-saw emotion of like/dislike of aspects of the actual culture.
You are right!
Up until now, our lot largely remained quiet.
Whilst your lot were whipped into action because they have been made to feel shitscared of commies and mexican immigrants, our lot were content to sit on the sofa aatching jeremy kyle, dreaming of the day they "make it" by appearing on the show.
Now our lot have been awoken by being made scared of Muslims enforcing Sharia law, and east europeans taking our jobs/welfare/hsalthcare/houses/wives.
We managed to keep them quiet, but now that's changed. We even now have our own tea-party types with mis-spelt signs spouting historical and political inaccuracies. ( Brexitter Tea Party )
Two countries seperated by a common bunch of loonies!
Dual 'B' Ark and stuff... I like the idea! And would strongly suggest to include in the right-poddian half also a whole lot of other loonies. They are aplenty! I've spent enough time on the continent to confirm.
Mind you, I am not going to join you on the Ark. But remain in calm and peace after all others left.
in other words, what my Hungarian friend, who lived and worked in London used to say: "They need a hitler, you know". And by that, she meant an image of a German truck parked across the street and armed people putting random passers-by against the wall, getting ready for the obvious, not a little hitler at the helm (which is always possible anyway). Misery brings wonderful clarity to people's minds and re-sets their level of expectations and entitlement. For a couple of generations.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness ..." --SLC
Um ...no? I recall once being abroad teaching at an international EFL school. One of the older teachers was explaining to a newbie that until you travel, forrigners are a single undifferentiated mass. One you get to know them, you learn which habits among which nations are the most disgusting, irritating or simply incomprehensible. Eventually you get rather good at knowing which foreigners to hate for what.
At this point,unprompted but with perfect timing, a teacher stormed in, flung a pile of textbooks onto a table and snarled 'God I hate the f*ing French!'
As someone who has recently returned to base, I can offer an additional insight - when you are traveling around you do indeed start to realize and find the annoying, stupid and ridiculous sides to the natives.. the real eye opener however is when you return home... and suddenly you see your "own" people for what they really are as well.
Travel opens the mind and removes prejudices and enables you to spot the assholes and the plain annoying everywhere. And then you cant un-see them. Of course the next step is some very careful searching of your own soul in front of a mirror :)
The trouble is that .gb excludes Northern Ireland. Given the huge efforts currently being made not to exclude it in other ways, this is an important point. The full title is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so using .uk is reasonable. One could argue that ISO got it wrong, but it as probably discussed at great length and the UK probably agreed to it.
I don't think so. Most of the time "Britain", "Great Britain" (GB) and "United Kingdom" (UK) are all just different ways of abbreviating the cumbersome expression "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
"Britain" can also refer to the island comprising (today's) England, Scotland and Wales. I think it would be somewhat unusual to use the expression "Great Britain" to refer to the island: Julius Caesar arriving in "Great Britain"? I don't think so. That would be "Britain".
There's no formally-defined meaning for the term "Britain" on its own (or "British" for that matter) even though it's often used as a synonym for the United Kingdom.
And if I wanted specifically to refer to the island, I *would* say Great Britain- or more likely "the island of Great Britain", since even though that name does have a defined meaning, it's often treated (wrongly) as a synonym for the United Kingdom.
Julius Caesar arriving in "Great Britain"?
I wouldn't think so either. He arrived in Britannia - a Latin name because Caesar, being Jonny Foreigner, didn't speak English. There are a couple of versions of why the island is called Great Britain.
One is that is was a coinage to include Scotland after the Act of Union.
The other is that it distinguished the original island from Little or Lesser Britain, Brittany which Caesar didn't call Brittany, either, he called it Armorica. It got its later name because it was settled by refugees from Britannia after the Anglo/Saxon[/Jutish/Frisian] settlement.
"I think it would be somewhat unusual to use the expression "Great Britain" to refer to the island:"
But that's exactly what "Great" means. It refers to the bigger, or "greater" island.
"Great" doesn't mean spiffingly brilliant...
<Obligatory brexit comment>
If it did, the brexit-aware world would sue us for misrepresentation.
</Obligatory brexit comment>
Sort of. Wales *used* to be part of England, which is why we weren't represented on the union flag.
Now, however, this should be the British flag (though there's not much point now, it won't be around too much longer if brexit goes ahead [Oglitatory brexit dig])
More than just the DUP, it would simply further confirm to somewhere between 900 thousand and 1.8 million people that the English really had comprehensively abandoned them. (Range is because numbers 900k-1.8M will take varying positions on whether that had already happened before the famine or the relationship had always been purely exploitative.)
regardless of whether the people of NI would like to merge with those of Ireland, that confirmation would be a good step to convincing them that the EU is more likely to look after their interests than the UK. Is there an equally straightforward way the English could pass that message to Scotland?
You think that recent events in Westminster have not engraved that message on the inside skull of every Scot on the planet, living or dead?
Come to think of it, the same probably applies to every English person too. Only this week we've had the "take back control" lobby suggesting that Parliament should be suspended in order to protect the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty.
"You think that recent events in Westminster have not engraved that message on the inside skull of every Scot on the planet, living or dead?"
You're probably right, but many people seem to think that because all constituencies of Scotland voted remain, that all Scots voted remain. 38% of Scots voted to leave the EU. It's no where even close to a "win" for Scottish Brexiteers, but it's still a sizable portion of the voting population at the time.
Except for .uk when ISO says it should be .gb
Yes, somebody there screwed up there in not knowing their British constitutional history/trivia, or looking up the name used internationally at the UN etc.
There are four countries in the UK. England, Wales, Scotland and (northern) Ireland.
England & Wales The Normans invaded England around a thousand years ago and took most of Wales at the same time, and their descendants kept successively chipping away at the increasingly small remaining bits until they basically ceased to exist, hence for constitutional purposes Wales is part of England.
Great Britain is a combination of England + Scotland, under the 1707 act of union.
If you don't abbreviate the UK's title then it's self explanatory without further explanation,The United Kingdom of Great Britain and (northern) Ireland, which came about in 1801.
Hence, if your from England or Scotland then you can correctly refer to your country as being England/Scotland as appropriate. You can also correctly say your from Great Britain, and you can also correctly say that your from the United Kingdom.
However, internationally speaking the UK is the name of our membership of the UN etc, not GB.
As I say, the ISO screwed up there, but it was then just quietly fixed it by assigning us the .uk domain name so life carries on without anybody caring about minor constitutional trivia.
"The Normans invaded England around a thousand years ago and took most of Wales at the same time, and their descendants kept successively chipping away at the increasingly small remaining bits until they basically ceased to exist, hence for constitutional purposes Wales is part of England."
That's either because we're (sheep) lovers, not fighters... or as Irish comedian Andrew Maxwell once said:
The Welsh slowed down the aggressors with confusion:
"sorry. I can't fight youse. I'm busy fighting me mate, Barrie"
"the South Sudanese government will need to invest in abuse mitigation domain services or it could find itself become neo-Nazi central online."
Given what's going on in that neck of the woods, I rather suspect that whoever is in charge of such things will make a small fortune offering "bullet proof" domain services to hate groups world wide. It's easily blockable, should anyone wish too. Note that actual people in South Sudan can still communicate with the rest of the planet's Internet population without going anywhere near the .ss TLD.
Given what's going on in that neck of the woods, I rather suspect that whoever is in charge of such things will make a small fortune offering "bullet proof" domain services to hate groups world wide.
I don't think South Sudan has the best infrastructure, and not just because it's on it's way to becoming an island. It has the potential to make a lot of money given the number of English words ending in 'ss'. Like busine.ss
Who ends up being the registrar could get interesting. I doubt nutjobs would try registering facist .ss domains unless they're exceptionally dumb, but if so, take money & registrant's details which can then get requested by TPTB who can give'em the hairy eyeball.
What infrastructure do you believe is required to host a top level country domain? Check out .tv for example which requires no Internet infrastructure in Tuvalu and is operated on the countries past by Verizon...
While .ss may scare away companies that are worried about reputational damage, I'm sure there will be someone to fill the void.
What infrastructure do you believe is required to host a top level country domain?
Strictly speaking, none as that's the done by the root servers, as in x.root-servers.net. Comment was more around infrastructure to run name servers for the 2nd level domain, ie x.ss or any content hosting. Those would be easily blocked, or ICANN could act if the operator's in breach of their ToS. See also ICANN vs EU and GDPR issues about providing registrant's details.
While .ss may scare away companies that are worried about reputational damage, I'm sure there will be someone to fill the void.
Again that'll be busine.ss .tv's been run by Verisign, who paid a lot of money to host it.. and has never seemed bothered about reputational damage in pursuit of .$$
they may not be greatly concerned about European sensibilities and besides it's very hard to avoid hitting on an acronym with multiple meanings.
I like the idea of three letter domain names to avoid problems, lots of possibilities like;
Oracle.ibm?
Brexit.wtf?
Ireland.dup?
1. Neonazis are not a serious political force. They are so irrelevant that most people don't even know what they stood for and think those in favour of reduced state power are nazis. And Shapiro too.
2. Dns registrars should not be editing the Internet. Their job is to be bulletproof services in every country. What if the .com registrar decided cnn's, buzz feed, washpo, and Twitter's politics were unacceptable and cancelled their domains. Is that the kind of Internet stability we want? Like what happened to gab? Remember the gay marriage argument, if you don't like it, don't do it. If you don't like it, don't go there.
3. Why would neonazi domains need blocking? Are people so stupid they a need big brother to take the decision to visit a site out of their hands? How elitist and condescending is that? If I were a nazi I'd point to the censorship and suggest that my opponents were afraid of my ideas and couldn't refute them. Stop social engineering. Persecution never works. People end up dead when you do that. You can't beat hate with censorship. That is a dangerous lie.
4. As the article points out, why would South Sudan care about avoiding the name of the German secret police 70 years ago. That's insane.
Yup, and there's another reason to not censor hate groups - when people have no outlet for their frustrations, pressure builds until they pop. Let them have their corner of the internet to bag on those who aren't part of the Aryan Nation. They blow off steam where they're safe so they don't blow up and go on a killing rampage, law enforcement knows where they hang out and can keep an eye on them, and the rest of us can ignore them.
I guess then that Chevrolet will have to kill off the SS branding of some it's cars and the ones out and already branded won't be allowed on the streets? I feel sorry for someone with those initials say someone named Steven Smith. Any documents he initials will need to be burned. But on the bright side, the SJW's, etc. will be happy as the final bits of the SS will be expunged from Earth.
"I know a guy with a 1961 Impala SS who might take exception to that."
Has he tried mounting rockets on the roof yet?
Juguar famously did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Cars
Whole company name was changed to that of their most popular model to avoid the branding issues the old company name acquired. Though that was in 1945.
Using SS is actually illegal in Germany, you can't have a car registration with the combination.
At a previous employer we had 2 letter usernames, apart from Simon S. he had to have a 3 letter username, because it would have been illegal to use double s as a username...
And to add that ß is not equivalent to "ss" in a word, they are subtly different, you can't just use one form or the other willy-nilly.
And in the case of a username, that would be two S from two different words, so grammatically impossible to replace with ß.
Considering all the sufferings these scums inflicted, I don't see that as political correctness.
The article states that "many were hanged in the aftermath of the Second World War", sadly it isn't true, many of these bastards didn't get the punishment they deserved.
Some examples:
@Potemkine!
"Considering all the sufferings these scums inflicted, I don't see that as political correctness."
What bothers me is the absolute hatred for the nazi (understandable) but the love for the communist (confounding). The hammer and sickle flag is flown with pride. People wearing tshirts with the face of communists and marxist symbols are available with no uproar. Yet for all the damage inflicted by the nazis it was still less than that socialist mess.
Perpetrators are still hunted for their actions in death camps but no such effort against those who ran gulags. The UK opposition has turned into a parody after their marxist shift. But dont receive the same kind of hatred as someone viewed right wing.
Civilisation generally works on the premise that you live longer by getting along with the crowd but killing opponents (actual or presumed) has been the norm since a handy rock was the method involved and is intrinsically understood by any group of three year old children, which is why we don't leave them alone or let them have anything dangerous even when they appear to be playing nicely with each other.
In this respect communism is an equal opportunity killer (at least in all the countries where it has been tried).
Nazi ideology on the other hand kills people based a racial ideal that precludes most of the planets population from having a right to exist. (as well as also subscribing to the terminal removal of political opponents). Other reasons for genocide are also available and receive similar general opprobrium. None of this is intrinsically understood by a three year old.
You can change your ideology to survive under communism, but you can't change your racial features if a Nazi kicks your door down.
So while both are best avoided as a method of government, communism probably appeals the general notion of fairness (as mad as this sounds) in individuals that haven't been subjected to it.
As the grandchild of someone who was given medals for shooting at both varieties I'm happy to believe I've had a fairly unbiased upbringing.
This post has been deleted by its author
A quick search of the ISO 3166 registry shows that EU was added as an "exceptionally reserved" code in March 1998, at the request of the ISO 4217 maintenance agency, so it could be used in ISIN numbers. Those are the numbers which the finance industry use to identify share holdings.
This is 7 years before ICANN launched the .eu TLD in 2005.
If you're going to write (yet another) anti-ICANN polemic, you should take the trouble to research your points. (I'm not a fan of ICANN, BTW.)
"Exceptionally reserved" codes are the ones in the standard that don't meet the criteria for being countries. For example, some are for islands, requested by the International Postal Union. "UK" is another such code, requested by the UK government.
SS is also short for Stosstruppen, German WWI assault infantry. They basically took all the developments in offensive infantry tactics everyone was developing and brought them together in a coherent whole. BTW, the first major, modern combined arms attack was also in WWI but the BEF.
The German Stosstruppen had lots n' lots o' grenades. Bags of the things. I'm not sure how safe it is running round with a sack of high explosives - but then I guess "safe" is a relative term.
Not only did the BEF do a lot of combined arms - but they also had a plan that was basically WWII Blitzkreig. It was called Plan 1919 or something, and devised in Haig's HQ by JFC Fuller. Who I think was a colonel in planning at the time. It called for re-constituting some of the cavalry units (that had been fighting on foot since 1915), plus lots of tanks and armoured cars. And the plan was to blast a hole in the German front lines with tanks and creeping artillery barrages - so the troops were just doing mop-up with much lower casualties. Then leapfrog more units through the hole to do the same to the secondary lines. Then break cavalry and armoured cars into the German rear (tanks were way too slow) - and send them off with lots of air support to interdict reinforcements and attack artillery and HQs - while the heavy forces expanded the breach in the German lines and slogged on slowly trying to capture troops.
Not sure it would have actually worked against a decent opponent. As the technology wasn't quite there yet. Radio comms weren't yet up to it - and there was none of the relatively fast mobile artillery, ammunition and fuel resupply trucks that you really need for an effective offensive armoured unit. Plus the planes at the time had very light weapons loads.
But interesting that the cliche of Haig as an incompetent dinosaur isn't actually true. Despite what Blackadder says. Turns out he had a cunning plan...
I sometimes wonder how many databases and bespoke software systems would be easier to use to support international customers if their developers had actually checked what the ISO/UN standards on things like telephone numbers (mobile or landline) are.
2 and 3 letter abbreviations are available, as is telephone number length and IIRC standards for name lengths as well. as opposed to using roll your own homebrew versions.
2 and 3 letter abbreviations are available, as is telephone number length and IIRC standards for name lengths as well. as opposed to using roll your own homebrew versions.
The 3 letter option may not be as lucrative. Or cause different 1st world problems. So SS is strictly the Republic of South Sudan, so should be .rss Or they're keeping their options open and can be r.ss for now, pending outcome of various civil and not so civil wars & coups.
I've recently applied online for a job with a very high profile semiconductor IP business, and their address dropdown included "state/province" .... which listed a random non-complete collection of English and Scottish counties, plus 'Wales', and a handful of cities. None of which were suitable for my address.
I couldn't say (possibly because ICBA to follow your link) but various flavours of non-democratic nationalist socialism have always been prevalent, and still are, and are adaptable to any local ethnography. Arguably China is our current best example, since they're running some top notch non-optional holiday camps for selected peoples, execute dissenters with mobile killing vans, build lots of physical infrastructure as a big job creation scheme, have a top grade internal surveillance and secret police, vice like grip of state administration etc etc.
And on the point of state administration, that is largely what the Nazi SS was - an all encompassing state administration service used to effect party controls on the economy and society. The Waffen SS who have the reputation as brutal but effective soldiers were only a small part of the whole (and not all of the Waffen SS achieved that standard). For those fascinated by such things, there's a very good book by Chris McNab on the history here. Don't worry, you won't finish it and start fashioning your own armband.
I worked with a German, in Frankfurt, whose initials where SS he was always a bit sensitive about initialing documents. There was also a time when a colleague, British, and myself were looking out of the office window and they remarked about all the modern (i.e. post war) buildings in the area...
I was working with a German transport company at a time when England was playing Germany at football, and everyone was gathered in the canteen to watch the game. As always England lost at the football. I had a 6'7" ish drunk German shout in my face that "ve has beaten you at your national sport", I turned away retorting that "we have beaten you at yours, twice!" I was escorted off-site for my own safety and was transferred back to Blighty the next day.
[This was a long time ago, before PC ever raised its head.]
First time I saw this line/phrase, in some comment thread or other, I laughed like a drain.
Then I saw it a lot.
Realised it was a cliche.
But, you know, it never gets old. It's spot on.
Well, except in this instance. Topic's nothing directly to do with veiled totalitarianism. But still... still made me laugh...
That this concern may well be empty fear-mongering.
We've had a .SA for some time, and there has never been a squeak of concern for it being co-opted due to the former existence of the Sturmabteilung
I have to admit, personally I think it's because it's so much harder a word to spell, never mind pronounce.
'My dear children,
By the time you read this I shall be dead, my dear hosts, for whose kindness in resuscitating me I assign all rights in any and all registrations I hold, will be taking care of my funeral obsequies, and at my request burying me in an unknown grave, saving you any agonies of visiting my tomb --- remember me well !'
Come to think of it, and I may say how refreshing to hear all that new stuff about the Nazi Republic --- especially since high-minded newspapers like the Mail in England and scholarly cable networks in America have a vow of silence on that unpleasantness --- I recall that in a book on WWII in Italy our Security Service ( prolly M15 ) took over an Schutzstaffel station somewhere in the hills, but inadvertently put their own initials up, leading to some mistrust from locals...
The Nazi SS used runederived characters for its SS notation, like U+16CB, not normal latin characters. As long as it is not an unicode domain, we're safe :-)
p.s. it might still be a good idea not to do it. Neo Nazis are not very literate, and the subtleties might be beyond them
Here we go again, another subject of EU propaganda.
Of course it's a customs union that's kept peace in Europe since WWII, absolutely nothing to do with NATO, move along, move along, nothing to see here...
What is now the EU has always been a protectionist, socialist, federal European dream, a bit like that of the National Socialist German Workers' Party one could argue.
Yours,
Not a socialist,
a Former Soviet Socialist Republic
NATO was set up only two years before the birth of what became the EU and both military co-operation and trade is what has kept the EU more or less together since. I suspect neither alone would have worked. What the EU has become might be open to debate, but what it's achieved in keeping negotiations at a talking level instead of possibly a shooting level should not be underestimated.
The forerunner to the EU who's president was a former Nazi you mean?
The forerunner that was to protect German coal mining?
Yeah, fuck the EU because "we've" gone from being a member of the USSR to a member of the EUSSR.
My local politicos will never give us the vote, but straw poll, more than 50% want out of the EU for that very reason. The rest see shiny, shiny, [nice big "paid for by the EU signs", that are a mandatory propaganda exercise with fines if not displayed!] and would stay
"Time to let go."
Maybe next generation. There's still a lot of people alive who suffered under the Nazis. And they made sure their children knew all about it. Maybe their grand children might begin to forget and "move on".
Having said that, most of Europe and her allies of the time have just spent the last 4 years remembering all the significant event of WWI as each 100th aniversary came and went. This year sees the start of the 80th anniversary of the start of WWII. I can't see the media outlets passing that up after the "bonanza" of the last four years.
Except the US government managed to supply a one-paragraph letter signed by Mr Razeeq several months after he had disappeared authorizing the handover. He then promptly disappeared again and has not been heard from since. You can still view the letter [PDF] because it makes up a part of the formal redelegation documents.
You are not meaning to say that the US produced a faked document to ICANN, do you ... because that would be felony, would it not ?
Repeat after me, please: WE liberate, THEY invade. WE help out freedom fighters to bring peace and prosperity, THEY sponsor terrorists to invoke fear and spread destruction, etc. (This is what I learnt from having lived for many years in one of those countries "liberated" by the Red Army :)
Or some slightly less white (on average) people just under 2000 miles away?
That said, I don't see any indication in the article that the Nazi association is actually the thing that's holding it up at ICANN. No quotes from ICANN or South Sudan about the matter, or what past objections have been. Could just be ICANN being slow, which makes most of the article just conjecture.
Edit, or a lot closer, nearly forgot this too, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43702764
Presumably as an African nation, they weren't all that bothered by a 70-year-old European problem
This.
It's a two letter identifier ... and there are only so many of 'em. For how long can we not use this one?
S is the 7th most common English letter, and not exactly rare in other languages.
There's not that many letters in the alphabet. If we keep dropping some because they offend we are going to have to go back to cuneiform. (Until someone realizes that the root word of cuneiform is 'cuneus' anyway.)
Personally I'd like to see 'SS' applied to everything from Sam's Sandwiches to Space Shuttles, until the abbreviation is so common that it is no longer azzociated (I'm being very careful here) with a murderous order of thugs from the previous century. So yup, the South Sudan TLD is for me a step in the not-left (still being careful) direction.
Good thought. Make it something special and some idiot will put it on a pedestal and worship it. The divisions have grown with the amount of PC force feed to the world. Just for those that have not been informed the U S Coast Guard made a determination that the "okay" (thumb and forefinger touching fingers up) is forbidden because it denotes white power.
if not deeply disturbing, that a piece on nazi / ss domain future is drawing more commentardation than the usual suspects, i.e.
- apple / iphone / screen / charger / customer service / is shit / ripoff / apple fanbois suck
- google is evil / shit
- facebook / Zuckerberg is shit
- Windows 10 is shit (likewise, Office, etc.)
followed, by, much less frequently:
- amazon is evil (they exploit people and don't pay taxes and we love them)
- ebay is evil (they exploit bots and don't pay taxes)
- wikipedia masters are evil scumbags sponsored by shady deep pockets (choose from the list above / below),
- mozilla is run by evil lizards intent on destroying our ways
(all true, more or less)
Alternatively, SS goes along nicely with, er... Friday?
...
ok, vaguely on the subject: a "war" movie, Der Hauptmann...
Re: Political correctness comments by code junky and bombastic bob
code junky said (and I think bob was generally referring to):
<<What bothers me is the absolute hatred for the nazi (understandable) but the love for the communist (confounding). The hammer and sickle flag is flown with pride. People wearing tshirts with the face of communists and marxist symbols are available with no uproar. Yet for all the damage inflicted by the nazis it was still less than that socialist mess.
Perpetrators are still hunted for their actions in death camps but no such effort against those who ran gulags. The UK opposition has turned into a parody after their marxist shift. But dont receive the same kind of hatred as someone viewed right wing.>>
...
Speaking as an educator, I think that one (simplified) explanation to this is that our educational institutions from Kindergarten upwards, are dominated pedagogically, administratively, and ideologically by descendants of Marxism. As a result, the horrors of Communism are brushed aside compared to the blood-boiling hate that is inculcated against the Fascists.
Indeed, the infiltration of our schools and universities could be seen as a central tenet of this particular branch of politics, namely, the dictum by the slogan coined by Rudi Dutschke, a student of the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci:
"The long march through the institutions",
that is, subverting social institutions such as universities to Marxist positions, not by working against them, but by learning from them and insinuating leftist ideology into institutional policy. It seems to have succeeded, which you might have noticed if you have worked at a school any time since May, 1968.
...
Interesting factoid – of course, "Long March" is directly derived from Mao's long retreat of the same name that ended in victory and remains a powerful symbol of China's now Fascist ideology.
...
Dutschke's 1980 posthumous work was entitled,"Mein langer Marsch (My long March)". I am being facetious, but of course, we might notice a parallel here with the work of another extremist who initially used socialism as a cloak, "Mein Kampf (My Struggle), by Adolph Hitler.
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Finally, the correspondent here who pointed out that Hitler's evil was magnified because of him targeting ethnic minorities might take time to recall Stalin's relocation of the entire population of certain Soviet, republics such as Chechnya and Kalmyks. To Siberia. Many did not survive the journey, with it being a little chilly at times. Fewer lasted the conditions when they arrived at their new homes with their new jobs. They were repatriated in Khrushchev's time.
We are only talking around 1,000,000 people killed in this particular chapter of Soviet History, but if you claim that the Soviets were less culpable than the Nazi's on ethnic grounds, please consider what a pile of 1,000,000 corpses looks like.
For a long time 'SS' has been used to symbolise hate and torment, mostly at the hands of nasty little men without the guts to stand on their own.
It has been granted some power by those who still insist on seeing what it used to stand for, rather than letting it be used elsewhere and removing the associated negativity.
By doing this, the association with Nazism and all it stood for begins to be broken down.
I also hope that SS has a largely 'black' population. I can think of no sweeter justice than the symbol that has been used with so much hate against 'people of colour' now is adopted as the ccTLD for one such country!
It's not only a primarily black nation, their citizens are mostly deep, deep black, not light or dark brown. Pitch black. As black as an albino Irishman is white.
As for me, SS will ALWAYS mean Super Sport. Mine's the 1970 SS396, sadly with the slush box and not the rock crusher.
"The best example is probably when Afghanistan's .af was handed over to the country's US-run transitional government when America invaded the country in retaliation for the Taliban government refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden."
Pretty sure that the Afghan government offered ObL up on a plate in preference to being subjected to "shock and awe". Hardly surprising, even for a bunch of statue demolishing nutcases. Even they were not so foolish as to ignore recent examples of US government lead mass incineration, as demonstrated in Iraq.
I've no sympathy for ANY of the above named nutjobs, none whatsoever, but I think it's generally a good idea to try to keep history factual, rather than merely convenient.
Ah, yes. Saudi Arabia. That well known bastion of human rights, woman's rights, freedom of speech and expression, religious freedom, and generally being all 'round nice guys. Definitely the kind of system that we fought for when disposing of Hitler & his cronies; I can totally see your point.
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