[HN Gopher] The campaign to subvert Africa's internet registry
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The campaign to subvert Africa's internet registry
Author : greyface-
Score : 100 points
Date : 2025-04-21 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.capeindependent.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.capeindependent.com)
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| A horrid state of affairs. African countries have a right to
| develop their own Internet infrastructure without foreign
| meddling.
| derelicta wrote:
| Honestly, this warrants some complaint to the CPC.
| immibis wrote:
| The Communist Party of China? Why would they punish someone for
| bringing more wealth to China?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Because the resources and wealth are not going to China. He's
| reselling them to SE Asia and North America with the vast
| majority being routed from the US or Hong Kong. Especially
| right now, I'd imagine the CPC would be very interested in
| knowing about any Chinese citizens conspiring illegally to
| enrich companies in the US.
|
| That fact alone pretty much guarantees this guy gets F'ed
| over if the CPC starts to hear too much about what he's up
| to.
|
| Now I think about it, that's probably the reason he's so
| desperate to suppress any media coverage of the entire scam.
| He knows if the dictators back in China get wind of it, the
| gig is up.
|
| Probably also some less than savory people out of Hong Kong
| that would be anxious to, um, "cut out any loose ends" so to
| speak. Anyone, like the guy in this article for instance,
| that might inform their government as to the identity of his
| co-conspirators.
| immibis wrote:
| This sort of thing is happening to a huge number of organizations
| all around the world in all fields of expertise. Once power games
| replace the concept of competence, the collapse of a civilization
| is inevitable - and that has already happened.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It is often possible to simply ignore the power games. No need
| to depose them if they're rulers of nothing.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Hot take, but that's why I'm fed up with "anti-colonial"
| activists who act like it's time to just drop our
| responsibilities on the former colonies and now "third world"
| countries.
|
| It has been shown many times before, with this shitshow being the
| latest example, that most "third world" countries simply do not
| have a legal system in place that can cope with rich Western or
| new-rich Asian exploiteers. In turn, that means that yes, Western
| countries need to step in on all levels until these countries
| have robust enough systems to stand up for _their_ interests (and
| not those of rich "businessmen" and scammers) on their own!
| saagarjha wrote:
| Anti-colonial people will typically ask for reparations to
| solve exactly this problem. Coming in, ruining a country, and
| then bailing is exactly what they take issue with.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Coming in, ruining a country, and then bailing is exactly
| what they take issue with.
|
| I proposed doing exactly the counter: coming in and staying
| until the situation is tenable.
|
| > Anti-colonial people will typically ask for reparations to
| solve exactly this problem.
|
| Money isn't everything. When the judiciary is compromised
| and/or incompetent, no amount of money can prevent a
| situation like the one described here.
| mmooss wrote:
| > drop our responsibilities on the former colonies
|
| The West wasn't responsible, but rapacious. The colonialists
| are the "rich Western or new-rich Asian exploiteers", and
| always have been. That's who the anti-colonialists have pushed
| back against.
|
| > now "third world" countries
|
| Nobody in that field has used that word in a long time. Africa
| - an enormous place that can't be described in one way, has
| many countries doing very well.
|
| > Western countries need to step in
|
| That should be up to the people in those countries, not you or
| me or some powerful Westerner. Usually it doesn't work out well
| for their interests - the colonial powers use the countries for
| their interests.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Africa - an enormous place that can't be described in one
| way, has many countries doing very well.
|
| And a shitload of countries in the hold of some warlord or
| other despot, or like Libya or Sudan on the verge of
| collapse. Something needs to be done about these countries
| and their resources - they deserve to be utilized in a way
| benefitting _all_ citizens, not just the junta in power.
|
| > That should be up to the people in those countries, not you
| or me or some powerful Westerner.
|
| That assumes a democratic structure and the ability of the
| people in those countries to have a voice in said democracy.
| Both are _far_ from given. Unfortunately, democracy doesn 't
| come on its own, particularly not if the elites are the ones
| holding all the guns, so there needs to be a system in place
| to support actual democracy and getting rid of kleptocrats,
| autocrats and similar powers.
| gessha wrote:
| > Something needs to be done about these countries and
| their resources - they deserve to be utilized in a way
| benefitting all citizens, not just the junta in power.
|
| This utilitarian way of thinking mixed with a lot of racism
| is what led to colonists performing asinine acts of
| barbaric cruelty like slavery, massacres, etc. If I were to
| look up terms related to this type of thinking I would look
| up: Neo-colonialism, savior complex, and paternalism.
|
| > Unfortunately, democracy doesn't come on its own
|
| Who started the first democracies on Earth, aliens?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Who started the first democracies on Earth, aliens?
|
| The people - but at least back then, the rulers only had
| knives, swords, horses and maybe early versions of guns
| at their disposal.
|
| Today's rulers? They enjoy grenades, insane explosives,
| machine guns, sniper rifles, tear gas, tanks and the most
| capable surveillance gear that money can buy. It has gone
| exponentially harder to depose dictators, and outright
| impossible without serious amounts of external help.
|
| IMHO, it should be the responsibility of all rich,
| Western democracies to aid any and all democratic
| movements and to safeguard them against reactionary
| movements.
| gessha wrote:
| > They enjoy grenades, insane explosives, machine guns,
| sniper rifles, tear gas, tanks and the most capable
| surveillance gear that money can buy.
|
| Counter argument is it's incredibly cheap and easy to
| kill somebody in today's age. Guns are accesible,
| Americans will literally sell anyone their guns. Search
| engines can find you ways to synthesize explosives and
| other nasty stuff.
|
| > IMHO, it should be the responsibility of all rich,
| Western democracies to aid any and all democratic
| movements and to safeguard them against reactionary
| movements.
|
| Same response to this sentiment as my previous comment.
| Please respect other countries' sovereignty.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Counter argument is it's incredibly cheap and easy to
| kill somebody in today's age. Guns are accesible,
| Americans will literally sell anyone their guns.
|
| At scale, yes. But if you're some deep in the bush
| village in Africa you probably don't have the money to
| pay for American guns, and even if you had the money
| you'd still have to get the guns into the country and
| that _will_ raise eyebrows. That 's why many of the rebel
| groups in Africa are somewhat Islamist-affiliated, be it
| AQIM, IS or whatever - they got oil sheiks and their
| nation states backing their efforts. What remains is
| funded by Russia via its convenient Wagner proxy, or by
| looting some sort of natural resource. But there are no
| relevant actors funded by any Western nation, no
| movements for democracy ever since the Arab Spring. We're
| leaving Africa to Russia and Islamists - not a good thing
| if you ask me!
|
| And South America has it even worse with all the narco
| cartels. Some of them got more money at their disposal
| than the legitimate government.
|
| > Search engines can find you ways to synthesize
| explosives and other nasty stuff.
|
| These need precursor chemicals (which are, I'll admit
| that, available if you know someone in China or India),
| but again, getting hold of these in relevant scales to
| matter will raise eyebrows.
|
| > Please respect other countries' sovereignty.
|
| I only respect democratically backed governments.
| Authoritarians of any kind - military juntas, warlords,
| religion-based dictatorships, ordinary kleptocrats, why
| should I have any respect for those who enjoy no backing
| of their populace? Why should anyone have respect for
| those who loot the natural resources and exploit the
| labor of those without power?
| Symbiote wrote:
| Why does Africa only have 5% IPv6 adoption? With more, newer
| networks I expected it to be higher.
| toast0 wrote:
| Afrinic still has quite a lot of IPv4 addresses available.
| Networks in other places generally haven't really pushed IPv6
| until IPv4 addresses get hard to find.
| betaby wrote:
| Simple answer - Huawei. I know that may sounds controversial,
| but Huawei employees allocated to manage African networks have
| zero knowledge of IPv6. One would think they are trained in
| China and should know IPv6, but in practice that's not the
| case.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I worked for a registry for a while, and we'd have people who
| didn't really understand how any of this works making huge
| offers for huge chunks of IPv4. It happened more than once
| that I explained that IPv6 also exists, also can identify
| your computers on the internet, and is essentially free and
| unlimited, but you'll need your engineers to learn it.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| IP profiteers deserve the same hell as domain squatters and bad*
| landlords
|
| * s/bad//g if you're feeling spicy
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| The main link is 404ed now. Any other sources?
| Havoc wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250420211418/https://www.capei...
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(page generated 2025-04-21 23:01 UTC)