The global or package qualifier was originally going to be simply "::" with no dot after it.
However, it seemed like this qualifier might be very useful for doing things like referring to
methods as members and universal function call syntax. Since global and package qualified names are
likely to be very rare, it made sense to give them a longer syntax. However, no other symbol seemed
to make sense for them. The additional dot was therefore introduced to distinguish them from any
possible future use. The "::." syntax seems to make sense because it is as if the global, unnamed
namespace appears between the "::" and the ".". Perhaps that means that they should be separate
operators so that ":: ." would be a valid qualifier.
C# imports namespace members with a using directive. Many other languages use the import keyword
for this. At first, the using keyword was used in Azoth without much thought. However, it was
pointed out that "using" is a rather generic, non-specific word. Whereas, "import" directly states
what is happening. For that reason it was decided to switch to import. I think C++ and C# may be
the only languages that use using.