That's a valid argument. And no I don't think ISPs, ICANN, or any other organization should get involved in political disputes. Where Russia has crossed the line, though, is in the way they are handling the situation. You bomb/attack government buildings/communication infrastructure/roadways/etc. Launch a party to assassinate the leaders. You *don't* attack apartment buildings, shoot citizens that are just in the street, target populated areas, dress up as the other party, use vacuum bombs. The problem here is not that there is a spat between Ukraine and Russia, the problem is that Russia has violated like 10 different things in the Geneva Convention on how you fight a war. On 3/2/22 11:38 AM, justin@xor.systems wrote:
The problem with all of these sorts of things and why respectable entities like ICANN should avoid such things is because its inherently subjective and prone to a sort of viewers bias that is moulded more or less by the propaganda of the state from which you come (in our case, North America/US et al).
For instance, an actually unpopular opinion is that this all started when a lawfully elected government was overthrown by a minority of the population (<1%) and that the majority of Ukrainians were disenfranchised as a result. This was particularly acute in the Donbass region that voted for Yanukovych very heavily. This brought about an actual rebellion, one that is flatly denied by the government in Kyiv, which in turn brought about the Minsk agreement where the breakdown was that the rebels sought to have local elections for their own governors/mayors that could not be dismissed by the federal legislature. For whatever reason, the Government in Kyiv found this unpalatable and never implemented this part of the agreement until finally the ceasefire broke down and a formal war ensued. The point of this paragraph being that discerning which side is representing "democracy" is a matter of perspective.
Because the shoe could easily fit on the other foot and also be legitimately correct and the same argument could be made to remove TLDs for UA or supporting countries and because which is correct is almost always a matter of perspective-- its best for any such governing entity to avoid allowing itself to be drawn into such ordeals.
As for their request, given that the country has more or less banned all periodicals in Russian from the news stand irrelevant of content, routinely shutdown independent media outlets and because this email simply acknowledging valid grievances in south eastern Ukraine could be cause for a 10 year term in prison if written from within Ukraine-- I will only say that I find the request by the government there to be "extremely consistent with Ukrainian values".
-----Original Message----- From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+justin=xor.systems@nanog.org> On Behalf Of Matt Hoppes Sent: Wednesday, March 2, 2022 5:54 PM To: George Herbert <george.herbert@gmail.com>; Nanog <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: Ukraine request yikes
My (unpopular opinion) Russia does not deserve any amenities of the modern world. They have made their bed and now they have to sleep in it.
On 3/1/22 3:16 AM, George Herbert wrote:
Posted by Bill Woodcock on Twitter… https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500?s=21
Ukraine (I think I read as) want ICANN to turn root nameservers off, revoke address delegations, and turn off TLDs for Russia.
Seems… instability creating…
-george
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