Food for thought — the impacts of the purchases we all make. To some extent, the fees associated with the domain “bmg.ma”, used on this fine website, go to the government of Morocco, who has control over this Internet suffix.
Morocco is:
- A whopping 43rd in gender equality according to the OECD.
- 135 for press freedom, according to Reporters without Borders. They show a consistent slide downward.
- “Partly Free” according to Freedom House. Its country report seems to make that designation seem generous.
- 80th in the world in transparency, according to Tranparency International.
- Controls the largest remaining swath of occupied land in Africa, and intent on keeping it.
Granted, Morocco isn’t the nastiest regime in Africa, but still far from a beacon of democracy. Is it oversensitive to question its patronage on this blog, or is there merit to this concern?
Please share widely!
I believe most of the fee goes to the domain registrar, which is a private company. Also, for example, among North African/Middle Eastern countries, Morocco is second only to Tunisia on the gender equality index. It’s not, perhaps, a worldwide paragon, but it’s doing reasonably well relative to other countries in its region.
<
p>I did actually give this issue some thought when we bought the domain. If .ma had been a different country, I might not have done it. For instance, if you’re really worried about this issue, I’d suggest you take it up with bit.ly, or any of the other numerous .ly websites out there. .ly, as I’m sure you know, is Libya, which does markedly worse than Morocco on all the indices you cite.
It’s good to examine these issues. But it’s also good to ask “compared to what?” and Morocco doesn’t do too badly compared to its context.
Why should we expect their culture to conform our values? Look at the non-european countries with functioning democracies. Most, if not all of them, got it by either being invaded by or top-to-bottom controlled by a European power. From India to Korea to South Africa, democracy (a work derived from GREEK) is something that is brought somewhere by white people.
<
p>Morocco was only ever a european protectorate, and never gave up an ounce of its arab-muslim north african identity during that time. Not since it was Mauretania Tingitana, Morocco has not been anything vaguely European.
<
p>If we are going to trade with countries around the world, we need to understand that their cultural values are not going to be our own. We are currently attempting to stuff democracy and equality down the throats of the Afghans, and it isn’t working out to well.
<
p>Look at the only “Muslim” country that comes close to what we would expect to see in our own country. Turkey sits on the foundation of the Byzantines and has played an active role in the affairs and trading of Europe since the fall of Constantinople. Even today it is attempting to Join the EU.
<
p>If I had to answer the poll, I’d say “.ma questions show a latent cultural superiority complex”, and that is not always a bad thing.
I though it was we liberals who were supposed to have a monopoly on relativism. Joe, if you want to argue that it’s fine for a country to jail anyone who disagrees with the royal family, keep girls uneducated, occupy its neighbors and kill its civilians because it can, and exist in a world of corruption, I guess that’s okay. I disagree, but hey. Not only that, but I’m far from comfortable from keeping such a place fiscally afloat.
<
p>Granted, it’s not bad as far as Northern Africa goes, but that’s setting the bar kind of low.
is it your position that the U.S. should not have any kind of commercial interaction with countries that don’t live up to certain standards? Should we, for instance, stop doing business in and with China?
We should not be doing so much business with a nation that continues to violate human rights, relies on child labor, has no respect for copyrights, etc. I’m sure we are strong enough to do without them and we never should have allowed them to become such a big creditor to us either. It’s about time our trade reflected our values, though I wouldn’t go as far as to tell countries they have to be exactly like us.
how do you draw the lines? You say we shouldn’t do “so much” business with China. How much is too much?
<
p>Also, you say other countries don’t have to be exactly like us. So, how much like us do they have to be before we’ll allow unrestricted trade? Restricted trade (and restricted by how much)? No trade at all?
<
p>Are you ready for the shock to our economy that adopting policies like these will involve? ‘Cause it’ll be a big one.
<
p>To be clear: I’m not necessarily an unrestricted free-trader. I just think it’s important to consider how these ideas would play out in the real world before advocating for them.
…don’t do them any favors by granting MFN status. I wouldn’t necessarily cut off all trade, but I think we can have certain standards, for example, we can say that we will not import any products made by child labor, or any products made in sweatshop conditions. We certainly shouldn’t reward countries which pirate products as that goes directly to economic factors. We would have to consider the totality of conditions, but I think we’re resilient and will do just fine without China’s business. After all, we fought a revolution in part on the principle that our economy doesn’t have to be tied to someone else’s.
Maybe that’s just the kind of shock to the system we need.
Stop FAVORing bad countries over countries doing it right.
<
p>Cambodia, last I checked, was trying to go the “fair trade” route – but they can’t compete with China and cheap labor and currency systems that are fixed instead of valued at their true value.
<
p>So what can we do to reward countries doing the right thing (but still have cheap ENOUGH labor to make good affordable) and how can we encourage OTHERS to do the same? Certainly more than we’re doing now.
I merely advocate being considerate of where one spends their money. There’s room between a boycott of non-democracies and spending without thought, contrary to the way your question was phrased. I understand that the editors thought buying the domain name was a worthwhile move despite the unsavory association. I don’t…it’s not as if “bluemassgroup.com” is that difficult to remember. I was wondering how the rest of the community felt.
<
p>I wrote what I wrote largely in reaction to Joe’s advocacy for relativism, that questioning the state of Moroccan civil society is somehow indicative of the cultural superiority complex.
and find that American culture is not superior to Moroccan culture?
we didn’t spend without thought. Like I said, I thought about it, and decided that it was a sensible expenditure. YMMV.
<
p>Obviously we are not replacing “bluemassgroup.com” with “bmg.ma.” We use bmg.ma for URL shortening, mostly in Twitter. Full-length URLs are not practical there.
links to Al Quaeda to see what really has been going on in the Western Sahara. Most of the kidnappings and murders there have not been commmitted by Morocco. Ironically, with their monarchy, ruling families kind of government Morocco has always been much more westernized than places like Algeria.
<
p>
Al-Qaeda is the new Marxism…any organization outside the developed world that can spell the word is accused of being an enemy. The Polisario predates al-Qaeda by decades, and the only way it’s going to become hard Islamist is if the West pushes it in that direction the same way we pushed Ho Chi Minh into Marxism.
predate al-qaeda by two millenia. Here is an interesting take, though I don’t know if the author’s statements re the cocaine trade up across the Sahara are valid: qontheshore.blogspot.com
This is a fantasy article if ever I saw one. Al-Qaeda as proficient drug-runners across deserts? A secret deal between al-Qaeda and Spain? Naturally, this comes from a website established in English by Moroccans for Moroccans.