OP, some context from the other side might be helpful.
Yes, there are fines for American companies if they do business with Iranians. That's how sanctions work as I'm sure you're aware. But the story doesn't stop there.
If an American finds out they are transacting with a sanctioned individual, or citizens of a sanctioned country like Iran or North Korea, the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison if they don't immediately cease all communication and break off contact. Hence why they ghost you and remove your data from prod. It sucks, but I would do the same thing in that situation. Nobody should be expected to take that risk.
This is partially true, but not the entirety of the story.
There are blanket sanction waivers (General License) by OFAC to allow certain things. There's also the possibility to get an OFAC license (as GitHub did.)
The real issue is there is little to no advantage (realistically no money to be gained from Iran) or even awareness (sometimes the cloud infrastructure bans Iran by default and you don't have enough users to even know that's the case to care.) The legal counsels would generally be conservative and advise against it; there needs to be someone from the business side, e.g. a product manager that cares enough to try to push back on the legal. There often is not or it is hard to justify the tiniest risk, hence you block.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
This kind of assumes Microsoft has not already tried to get an exception, or that its legal team considers it likely that an exception will be granted.
Various tools hosted on Github can be considered dual-use (i.e. AES/TLS libraries). Furthermore, Microsoft was made to apply sanctions against Karim Khan of the ICC for his involvement in investigating the genocide of Palestinians; I doubt Microsoft would be granted an exception so they can serve Hamas' greatest supporter after that.
I don't know if Microsoft has applied for any exceptions, but even if they did, I doubt they'd be able to get them. That's on top of the probability of bad publicity ("Microsoft wants to cut deal with Iran") and the lack of incentive you mentioned.
I explicitly mentioned GitHub, a Microsoft subsidiary, did in fact get an OFAC license. I was suggesting them as an example of how it can be done, not the other way around.
> I doubt Microsoft would be granted an exception so they can serve Hamas' greatest supporter after that.
"greatest"? Hardly. A charge was brought before the ICC from South Africa which required the ICC to investigate.
There are much bigger supporters of Hamas, the sanctions against employees of the ICC is just the current US government flexing its retribution muscles.
This is a bit of a tangent, but its a pet peve of mine
You are mixing up ICC and ICJ. South Africa brought a case to the ICJ. This is the country equivalent of suing another country so its not really forcing ICJ to investigate so much as south africa is presenting a case which icj will decide on (eventually anyways, icj is famous for being slow).
The ICC on the other hand makes its own decisions on who to investigate/charge. Countries can file referrals to it, but the ICC prosecutor has discretion on what they want to investigate and pursue.
[Anyone who thinks the ICC likes hamas should remember that the icc also filed charges against a hamas leader too. Its difficult for them to investigate hamas because they are only allowed to charge people who are currently alive]
I used to agree with this line of reasoning, but then I saw that the same process was used to block war crimes investigators from using Microsoft's software.
Does that affect the reasoning? Even though I think it is profoundly wrong, I am not going to risk 20 years in prison for something realistically nobody is going to care about.
Obviously untrue. Iran has 90 million citizens, and multitudes of that number do care out of principle. I am not trying to change your mind, but hope you would be more precise in your language next time to describe why you don’t care.
Sounds more like "nobody I care about is going to care about", which seems rather reasonable and eminently human. But maybe a useful increase in precision.
Who said I don't care? I care a lot, I just don't care more than I care about staying out of federal prison. It would be one thing if you'd be carrying the torch and the public would be behind you if only you'd be so courageous. But that is a naive fantasy: I know, and you know, that you'd be hounded as a "terrorist", they would throw the book at you and throw away the key. Approximately 0.01% of your fellow citizens would even understand the issue, let alone be on your side.
Petition for change, sure. Complain in public. Protest. But don't martyr yourself for nothing.
Historically, the rounding-up were not meant to straight-up murder people, but to get rid of undesirables..
Now, if we read the original parent post wrote:
> [..] the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. [..] you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison if they don't immediately cease all communication and break off contact
That sounds a lot closer to "rounding-up" than "a strong attempt to prevent technology transfers supporting unwanted regimes."
Now for the kicker. Taking into context the US developments of the past 9 months, the people affected by such legal threats are a lot closer to the indiscriminate "rounding people up" part than to the "balanced and reasonable legal consequences" part.
Just a small thing to ponder about before blurting out things such as
> I am not going to risk 20 years in prison for something realistically nobody is going to care about
Yesterday, one might not have cared about communists being rounded up, today it might be "illegal" migrants being ICEed up, who knows what it will be tomorrow.
If you hear about someone getting actually punished for this then I would probably agree with you. But I (and I think everyone else in the thread) was talking about whether people in the US should risk that punishment in order to support our Iranian friends. OP would not do so and neither would I, because the risk is too great. But I've said repeatedly, I oppose the law, you can't then spin around and act like I'm advocating for rounding people up just because I don't think it's worth my while to break it.
If you want to break that law, go ahead, I will support you all the way, and you will end up in jail anyway.
Of course it did, it's been extensively covered in European newspapers and the article you linked doesn't even refute it happening. Microsoft is just twisting the truth to make themselves look less bad. Don't be so gullible.
Just a casual “pound-me-in-the-ass prison” top comment on HN (no this type of prison isn’t civilized or the mark of a mature criminal justice system or society).
Totally agree. But tbf you look at modern media and these things are still perpetuated. Just look at violence done on camera and off camera in TV shows and to whom. Which jokes are made and about whom - many don't even notice because it's so acceptable to treat a class, gender, etc a certain way that it doesn't even cross anybody's mind.
To be actually fair, the notion that OP's comment was referring to only men is entirely left to the reader to decide.
Women can be SA'd in prison by other prisoners, and additionally have to contend with the petty humiliations from guards taking unnecessary sexual turns that they wouldn't with men.
You have to figure out how to make Americans stop feeling schadenfreude. They love the idea that these thugs/criminals in prison are being subjected to such conditions. The cruelty is the point.
We simply love to inflict pain and suffering. This is why we circumcise, why we ear crop, tail dock, create animals, put people in solitary, etc.
In all of these situations if you want to do the right thing you need plausible deniability. Network block IPs from Iran, don't block VPNs, done, users from sanctioned countries can use your software but you're also going by the rule.
This also has plausible deniability on the other side. If Iranian government thugs question a citizens VPN use to access subversive content (women's rights, LGBT content?), they can say it was to evade US sanctions, wether true or not.
So should we (people outside US) sanction these companies, so that they put the same pressure on US government to stop forcing them from applying sanctions?
If you want to, sure. Kind of a side point, but that's not really what sanctions are for. It's more of an economic blockade, which stymies the growth of the country. Even if there is no regime change, it makes the country less of a threat over time.
* May 22, 2023, Meta €1.2 billion.
* July 22, 2024, Uber €290 million.
* April 23, 2025, Apple €500 million.
* September 4, 2025, Google €2.95 billion.
I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
Their authoritarian militaristic government that doesn't care for human rights.
If you apply the same standard to the North Korean citizens, that they should not be expected to "take that risk", they your country's sanctions are pure collective punishment with no strategic value. You just tortured people for fun.
> I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries...
"You all" is a weird way of putting it. I don't support my government levying sanctions on these countries, but I have zero power to change it.
It's funny, as the gist author points out that he doesn't support the actions of the Islamic Republic, and has no power to change it because it's minority rule by a theocratic dictatorship.
But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.
I think sanctions are largely pointless if their stated goal is to get citizens to rise up and change their governments. Asking people to risk their lives (when you're not risking anything at all) is an awful thing to do, and this sort of thing isn't likely to work.
But it's probably not really that; the idea is to choke the economies of these countries so they can't do whatever Bad Thing the sanction-leviers are worried about (like developing nuclear weapons). How effective sanctions are at achieving that goal is an exercise left to the reader. And even if they are effective, there's a lot of collateral damage that hurts people who have no say in the matter.
> But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.
Not saying Obama’s foreign policy was perfect, but he did do the Iran nuclear deal which lifted some sanctions, and started the process of normalizing relations with Cuba. Like so many other things, these were immediately undone by his successor…
Obama acknowledging that the US overthrew an Iranian democracy for the benefit of oil companies definitely helped and could have ushered in a new era of understanding. Sadly, America then decided to elect someone with a toddler’s understanding of history and geopolitics which destroyed all that opportunity for a generation.
If you are referring to the Mosadegh story, that “apology” started with Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright trying to appease the current regime in Iran. Sadly, the “apology” itself is meddling with the historical facts. The Mosadegh government was no more or no less democratic than any other Prime Minister in that era. He had prorogued the parliament and waged a war against the Constitution and tried to elevate himself over the law and depose the ruling monarch. The Soviets and their affiliates and comrades on the ground supported the move (hoping to remove him next and extend the Bolshevik revolution to the Persian Gulf,) and the US and many Iranians did not want him to succeed.
In any case facts of the story are so brazenly changed in the apology’s telling of the story that regardless of which side you are on, in and of itself is a political interference against the will of the Iranian people. Please also note that the golden era of Iranian prosperity was the decade and a half when he was removed from power by the monarch.
Proroguing in parliaments is nothing new or anti-democratic. Canada had its parliament prorogued for the first 4 months of this year yet I didn't see calls for violent US-backed regime change and political suppression like there was under the American puppet Shah. Same with deposing a monarch (getting rid of monarchy is "anti-democratic" now?).
More information on the "Iranian golden age of prosperity" you mentioned:
>During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship",[1] or "one-man rule".
> Proroguing in parliaments is nothing new or anti-democratic.
He prorogued the parliament and was calling for a referendum to overthrow the monarchy against the Constitution. He was terminated by the monarch per Constitution, but he would not leave the post which resulted in uprising from both sides.
> During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship",[1] or "one-man rule".
Yeah if you read biased and debunked media and the Mullah supporters and comrades[1] (which is the source of Wokipedia) during the Cold War era, and by the way both sides conspired to get rid of the monarch for different reasons, you might believe such propaganda. If you'd talk to the actual industrious people who experienced it, you might get a very different perspective. Double digit annual GDP growth, #1 is number of international students in the US (not per capita, absolute.) So yes, golden era, indisputably.
[1] Interestingly, we see the same Marxist-Islamist alliance has now hit the West.
Strange that the mighty USSR broke down 10 years after that.
In retrospect, the astute mind would recognize the two may have just been interrelated. In fact, one may have been part of the plan to accomplish the other.
Are you seriously claiming that SAVAK wasn't a thing, or that it didn't employ torture? Or are you saying that the "golden era" justified such measures?
If you want to really argue this, you need to bring out specific claims one by one, as many have been either fake or overblown, or misattributed to SAVAK (acknowledged by the terrorists who taken over and are in charge now.) But in general, I do not believe it was anything out of the ordinary of the statecraft employed by the US or Britain in the Cold War era or arguably even the Bush era. In fact, post hoc, it is obvious they were too soft, as they released all these terrorists in the wild and let the country taken over. It is a failure of SAVAK and the security apparatus.
So yes, I would unequivocally argue to any extent the intelligence apparatus was actually operating, not only golden era objectively justifies those measures, but even for lots of the troublemakers themselves, turns out letting criminals loose to take over the country actually makes things worse; many of such Marxist-terrorists who claimed they were mistreated under the old regime were treated much much worse, or lost their lives, during the first years of the Mullah regime.
Long term foreign relationships cannot be built on top of four year presidential terms. Besides Israel, I'm not sure any country has continuity between recent administrations.
> Long term foreign relationships cannot be built on top of four year presidential terms.
Yes indeed, I agree.
Although: long term foreign relationships certainly can be un-built on top of four year presidential terms. See: current US president and rest-of-the-world.
It's very rare that international relations get poisoned for generations without some ongoing work from both involved parties. Populations tend to forget things on the timeline of a decade or so.
The US can rebuild most of what they destroyed. It's gone now, and some of it they were already on the process of losing and can't get back. But no country is beyond reconstruction.
As someone who grew up in Russia in the 90s, that McDonald's actually did wonders! The problem is that y'all figured that if you help people who say that they are "democrats" maintain control over the country, it'll all work out, somehow. What actually happened is that many of those people were grifters, some others idealistic incompetents who thought they had all the answers after reading Ayn Rand. On the whole, the people - who were very enthusiastic about the changes in late 80s - by mid-90s felt like they've been robbed, quite rightly so (read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia for some examples), by people now firmly associated with the West and with words such as "liberal". This is the big reason why Western-style liberal democracy very quickly became a marginalized minority political opinion in Russia, and why the likes of Putin could easily take power by promising people that they'll fix the mess.
Well, it sounds like you should rise up against your government in violent revolution, then! After all, that's what's expected of Iranian, Cuban and Venezuelan people when the West destroys their countries with sanctions. Get to it!
Sanctions are not designed to coerce a populace into rebellion, in order to facilitate regime change.
Sanctions are designed to prevent an enemy government from profiting from our western economy. Sanctions are designed to bring hostile entities to the negotiation table. Sanctions curtail the worst behaviors of enemy nations because the sanctions deny those enemies money. Money is power. Little money = little power.
For the most part, sanctions are designed to be "something" in the infamous "SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!!!1!" mantra. They rarely achieve any of the goals that you enumerate, disproportionately inconveniencing regular citizens - government actors have the means and the know-how to work around them. But mob justice demands an eye for an eye, which is to say, someone must be made to suffer - and sanctions provide a way to do that, even if the people actually suffering are rarely morally responsible.
> I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government
That's a total non-sequitor.
GP stated that he will personally face prison time for going against the laws of his country.
Why would anyone risk jail time for you? For your countrymen? Why don't you risk jail time for some other country?
> You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
I think the argument is that you deprive belligerent companies from the resources they need to attack and harm others. The suffering their citizens endure is unfortunate, but why should Americans take the blame when Kim Jong Un is so obviously culpable?
So without sanctions or a military strike, how will a nuclear program will evaporate? spontaneously? Or do you think that nuclear blackmail like the NK case is something that should be accepted
Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good. From that perspective, sanctions aren’t meant as “torture for fun,” (as you put it) but as a way of creating pressure so governments change their behavior without having to resort to war. They’re basically a tool to raise the cost of bad actions and make it more attractive to adjust course.
At the same time, sanctions also work in other ways: they punish governments that break international norms, they send a signal to the world about what’s considered unacceptable, and they reaffirm shared values. That’s why they’re still used despite the harsh effects on ordinary people. They aren’t a perfect solution, but in Western thinking their role is to combine pressure, deterrence and symbolism, rather than just collective punishment for its own sake.
The poster above was pointing out that this is a double standard. You don't expect a US citizen to risk their livelihood to help an Iranian, but you then expect an Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood AND life to topple a regime that is doing things that the USA doesn't like.
So, you either take personal responsibility for enforcing sanctions yourself, or you admit that sanctions are a form of collective punishment for no reason. You can't have it both ways.
I don't think that's the premise, though. The idea is that the sanctioned government will, under pressure from the sanctions, change without the need for regular citizens to start some sort of armed uprising. (Though certainly an armed uprising is a possible outcome.)
Maybe the government will do this because the sanctions hurt their people enough to the point where things are too unstable for their liking. Maybe their economy becomes so trashed that the quality of the leaders' lives is impacted too much. Etc.
I don't think anyone in the West genuinely believes that sanctions will lead to citizen uprisings and overthrown governments. At least not after decades where no such successful uprisings have taken place in long-sanctioned countries like Iran.
But it should also be pretty clear that sanctions on countries like Iran aren't causing their governments to choose to change their behavior either. But I think arguably sanctions on Russia since they invaded Ukraine have had a useful effect. While the war hasn't stopped, it's possible that sanctions have slowed down Russia's progress quite a bit.
Not sure what the alternative is, though, aside from just giving up, lifting sanctions, and letting things develop where they may.
>It's possible that sanctions have slowed down Russia's progress quite a bit.
They did slow down all kinds of progress in Russia except the progress towards the full blown fascism and the progress of the military complex at the expence of its citizens
I think Western leaders are clear headed enough to understand that sanctions do not cause people to raise against their leaders. This has been known since bombing Germany and Japan in WWII (a different, more violent kind of sanctions). However sanctions weaken the adversary technologically, economically, and ultimately militarily. This is a pragmatic reason to enforce sanctions on the adversary.
That's reasonable for a "short term" military conflict, but if you keep a country under sanctions for decade and deliberately reduce the quality of life in that country, that's essentially a message to the population that they don't count.
It is far less of double standard than what you think. The key question is the legitimacy and mandate of the government. Western governments can claim legitimacy and mandate through democratic process (even if it is not perfect), which forms a social contract for their citizens to follow their laws. But if government is tyrannical and does not enjoy legitimacy then it's very different situation
I've never understood how that legitimacy extends to foreign policy though, especially the "coercive" kind.
Like, democratic elections obviously give the elected legitimacy to govern the populace that just elected them. But sanctions (or military interventions or wars) by their very definition are enacted on a different population, that had no democratic means to influence that decision.
UN sanctions are at least somewhat different because they are supposed to be decided by vote of the constituent countries.
But US sanctions are essentially "some people elected the President because they liked his views on domestic tax policy or trans people, therefore he gains the right to call airstrikes on some place halfway across the world or forbid the entire world from doing business with that place".
This goes into what is meant by "expected". There isn't a strong expectation on any one Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood and life. There is small encouragement, that they may choose to act on or ignore.
The leadership of countries under sanctions rarely change their behavior due to sanctions. However the effect on the population of the countries is that they turn against the countries applying the sanctions. It becomes easier for the leaders to sell the sanctions to their populace as the enemy action. If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it.
However, sanctions do have a symbolic value. And I also can't think of anything else short of military action to express displeasure.
Both are true. Less access to materials, components, IP, and skilled labor all diminish a country's war fighting ability. There aren't unlimited funds you can take from citizens, and money you do take has effects on your labor force and talent pool.
Would Russia perhaps have already conquered Ukraine without sanctions? Would Iran have destroyed Israel by now without sanctions? Would NK have become a nuclear power much earlier, and have a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons today, were it not for sanctions?
I don't know the answers to those questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was "yes".
> Iran is not the only example in which sanctions have resulted in unintended consequences. Since 1970, unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. have achieved foreign policy goals in just about 13% of cases, according to one study. A recent Congressional Research report evaluating U.S. sanctions in Venezuela found that sanctions “exacerbated an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis caused by government mismanagement and corruption that has promoted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” U.S. sanctions also exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Korea, reported UNICEF, putting 60,000 vulnerable children at risk of starvation due to limited humanitarian aid.
Russia lost (in a real sense), when their blitzkrieg of Kiev failed. From that point on, it’s just how much they turn the crank on the meat grinder that is trench warfare. It’s the nature of the bet that is inherent in Blitzkrieg. Ukraine/Russia is about who is going to lose more after that, not who can win. No one can win anymore.
Sanctions or lack thereof definitely impacts quality of life, but Putin put everything on a war economy footing pretty quickly anyway, and in that environment (especially in Russia), it’s suffering all the way down. And Russia excels at Suffering. Russia has oil too, and plenty of minerals, so if anything I expect by now they’re just getting stronger (economically), barring Ukraine wrecking their shit from time to time with a well placed drone strike.
Iran/Israel is an interesting question, but near as I can tell, Iran doesn’t really want to destroy Israel. They just want to make them as miserable as possible, and show they can ‘do harm’ to them when they need to prop up domestic support among the hardliners.
Israel provides a good scapegoat for the Iranian leadership.
With Israel gone, who is the Ayatollah going to use as the big bad? The Great Satan (USA) isn’t as tractable a target when they don’t have a designated ‘local’ they can go after, and if Iran actually meaningfully hurt the US (nuked the White House?), Iran is glass regardless of how otherwise strong they are.
NK got sanctions because they love playing the crazy-dude-with-a-gun-that-just-wants-a-handout, which is also why they eventually got nukes. They might have gotten nukes a little faster without sanctions, but sanctions definitely gave the hardliners huge leverage in the country. Hard to be friendly with the west (as a civilian!) when the west is literally openly starving the country, even if the leadership of your country is egging them on eh?
Near as I can tell, the USSR fell because of jeans and rock and roll. So yes, I think the ‘good guy’ sanctions BS is ultimately self defeating.
It can work if someone is either a) in a tenuous economic position, and b) the ‘sanctioningish’ behavior is not existential.
But any good authoritarian would rather throw their entire population under the bus ‘for the greater good’ than give in on something important for them…
And countries know how to deal with being at war (generally), even if it’s a weird only-semi-economic one.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think one aspect of sanctions that you are missing a bit is that they stifle growth (especially long-term) by forcing the victim to waste ressources on unwanted/inefficient industries or convoluted procurement.
Basically, you are hurting your own economy (non negligibly in the EU-Russia case for example!) to make sure that you outgrow the sanctioned opponent, making any future conflict more favorable for yourself.
There is a lot of evidence that this aspect works pretty well; even if you can sidestep the sanctions with middle-men or substitute local industry, this always comes with additional friction/costs (just consider German synth fuel industry during WW2-- that was an insane amount of ressources that could've gone into planes or tanks or somesuch instead).
For an example of sanctions directly effecting diplomatic outcomes, just consider Jordan over the Gulf wars: They stayed neutral during the first one (which Bush did NOT like), got sanctioned (without western citizens even noticing too much), suffered a lot from that, then during the second Iraq war they basically cooperated with the US (grudgingly!).
I think it is difficult to find many clear examples for this because sanctions typically mostly work as a threat, and being put in place is a kind of failure mode for them already.
How can Russia be economically stronger under sanctions? Before the war they were able to manufacture some goods (Volkswagen had a couple of factories. I think Unilever was making some washers/ dryers). This is all replaced by manufacturing of some weapons (which proven themselves so shitty in the war that no outside buyers want to buy them).
Russia went from selling their oil on the world market at competitive prices to selling to mostly 2 customers at heavily discounted prices. And Russia is going to use barter now because of financial sanctions on Russian oil buyers.
All Russian currency reserves are frozen, and the interest these reserves generate are given to Ukraine to buy weapons.
How is Russia economically better now than before Feb 2022?
It depends entirely on what you mean by ‘strength’, and ‘better’. Russia is ramping up its military industrial complex like no one’s business, for instance.
Manufacturing in general, actually.
Something which had essentially collapsed previously. Also, mining and other resource extraction - they’re necessarily rebuilding domestic production and becoming more independent.
Well, yeah, sure, they are building lots of shitty weapons. Meanwhile they cannot take over an adversary a third of its size.
About resource extraction - the West stopped giving Russia extraction technology. Which means Russia is coasting on what they had up to 2022. Meaning in a few years Russia will do what it did in the 70s: over-extract its most productive fields. To see how that movie ended read Gaidar's Collapse of an Empire.
Russia has had to sell oil at a steep discount, which has cut into their revenue significantly. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been frozen/seized that can't be used to fund the war effort. Modern war is not just "beans and bullets”, and Russia pays upwards of 10 times the price for key components it needs for missiles, aviation, UAVs, tanks, artillery, air defense, etc. as well as quality manufacturing equipment needed.
Russian industry is operating at only 81% capacity, largely due to labor shortages, which make sense considering that about 1% of its labor force join the military every other month. Russia is losing tank barrels, artillery barrels, and infantry fighting vehicles more than 10 times faster than it can manufacture new ones. It will likely never be able to obtain a third rotary forge, required for barrel manufacture, to expand its capacity. It has almost entirely cannibalized its old, defunct Soviet era stock. They are being kept afloat by China, NK, and Iran, but with a much-reduced capacity, and often much lower quality. For example, Russia relies on China for 70-80% of its microchips, but China is dumping defective microchips on them with a 40% failure rate.
Sanctions have absolutely had significant, direct, measurable impacts on Russia’s ability to wage war and sustain war.
I’m not saying the sanctions haven’t hurt, rather that when the war was at its decisive point (the first few days) they did not exist/were immaterial. Now they’re just doing more damage in an already damaging (and unwinnable) situation.
The biggest sanctions were adopted after the war started (and then the West kept piling up new sanctions every few months).
Are you suggesting the West should have put these harsh sanctions before the war? My recollection of Dec 2021 and Jan/Feb 2022 were that the West was trying to avoid inciting the crazy Russian dictator: Biden had two tele conferences with Putin in December, there were three meetings in Jan (OSCE - Russia, NATO - Russia, Lavrov - Blinken)
And I do not think the situation is unwinnable for the West (it is probably unwinnable for Ukraine as it will not be able to get its territory back). Russia is getting weaker with every man it loses, every tank is destroyed, every young man/woman who decides to leave. I would be surprised if Western Europe will want to do business with Russia for a generation - which basically makes Russia China's vassal for the same period of time.
Russia will be in bad shape for decades. The West will be just fine.
The West should have put boots on the ground in Ukraine before Russia invaded. That was the one thing that would have prevented the war. Hell, they should have had EU peacekeepers along the line of contact back in 2015.
The kind of sanctions that we've seen since then seem to be mostly about appearances, with EU trying to pretend that it "really cares" despite this epic failure of foreign policy.
I have seen no serious analysis saying that Russia losing the war has been basically inevitable since the first few weeks of the war. Russia is fighting a war of attrition now and has been for most of the war. Most analysis still assess Russia can attrite it's way to victory. Sanctions are important because even if Putin is willing to throw wave after wave of his own men to the slaughter (a million Russian casualties and counting), if they run out of vehicles or artillery barrels, they are kind of screwed.
Russia is hollowing out its male population which was already under severe strain.
Even if Russia ‘wins’ the Ukraine war (takes all Ukrainian territory), it’s even more fucked than when it started demographically.
It’s also spent pretty much all of it’s currency reserves and destroyed it’s normal economy destroying all that ‘new’ land in a way it will be incredibly hostile to productive use for a generation+. Not counting insurgencies and rebellions.
The well is solidly poisoned, regardless of who ends up owning it.
The USSR fell because its economic model didn't work and was a society steered by corrupt principles. Jeans and rock and roll "envy" was just a symptom. After having seen the effect of communism/russianism on post-soviet countries I'd rather take a nuclear bomb, it's better in the long term.
Sanctions work but it depends what you are min-maxing because obviously some sanctions may hurt your own country/block.
> The leadership of countries under sanctions rarely change their behavior due to sanctions. However the effect on the population of the countries is that they turn against the countries applying the sanctions. It becomes easier for the leaders to sell the sanctions to their populace as the enemy action.
Counterpoint: South Africa.
> If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it.
Isn't South Africa the exception? There have been sanctions on many more countries who have not changed at all, or even doubled down on bad behavior as a result.
I can certainly understand, as a matter of foreign policy, not wanting our companies to be propping up or supplying such regimes, but I don't really get how anyone can think that sanctions are effective at promoting change.
Sanctions from individuals. The US did the opposite, and supported South Africa no matter what. Just like Israel - In both ways. Israel supported South Africa, and the US supported Israel. The dramatic sanctions against US citizens for refusing to buy from Israel and endorsing that people not buy from Israel are meant to prevent such a horrible thing as the fall of Apartheid from ever happening again.
This comment is mistaken. Many countries, including Japan from 1964, and eventually the US and UK, sanctioned SA officially. I doubt whether any boycott from individual US citizens had a serious economic effect compared to this.
As an russians who moved abroad I think sanctions positively affect Puttin so far. Because, he got a lot what he wanted but couldn't get without sanctions:
- russian companies replaced majority of international companies. Many of IT companies growed 20-40% year by year
- sanctions locked money inside of the country which help to build new everything
- sanctions made boost of internal culture and patriotism. Which also increased popularity of government and reduced any alternative options.
And many more similar examples. Sanctions will hurt Russia in long term but not now. Because good sanctions requires to understand the country culture + execute only that hurt countries, which didn't do western countries.
Honestly, their effect is diminished. After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much, after initial shock.
Trying to use sanctions against another major power isn't guaranteed to work as they can take the hit and pivot to internal industry(which happened), or trading with other major powers that do not sanction them(China).
Or some countries get around sanctions - like buying Russian gas/petroleum products through India - in a way this bypasses sanctions making them worthless.
Is it better than doing nothing? yes, of course. But Russia unfortunately is a major power - just due to sheer access to natural resources - and you can't just bully it into submission with weak sanctions that some EU countries ignore(petroleum case).
> After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much, after initial shock.
That sounds like a positive, though: if Russia's advance into Ukraine has been slowed by sanctions, but everyday Russians aren't affected too much, I'd consider that a huge win. We shouldn't be punishing regular people for the actions of a their dictatorship government that they can't control.
Problem is that ever since the sanctions from EU, our prices of EVERYTHING has increased by 3-6x. We are in an economic crisis, thanks to EU's sanctions.
Russia has had to sell oil at a steep discount, which has cut into their revenue significantly. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been frozen/seized that can't be used to fund the war effort. Modern war is not just "beans and bullets”, and Russia pays upwards of 10 times the price for key components it needs for missiles, aviation, UAVs, tanks, artillery, air defense, etc. as well as quality manufacturing equipment needed.
Russian industry is operating at only 81% capacity, largely due to labor shortages, which make sense considering that about 1% of its labor force join the military every other month. Russia is losing tank barrels, artillery barrels, and infantry fighting vehicles more than 10 times faster than it can manufacture new ones. It will likely never be able to obtain a third rotary forge, required for barrel manufacture, to expand its capacity. It has almost entirely cannibalized its old, defunct Soviet era stock. They are being kept afloat by China, NK, and Iran, but with a much-reduced capacity, and often much lower quality. For example, Russia relies on China for 70-80% of its microchips, but China is dumping defective microchips on them with a 40% failure rate.
Sanctions have absolutely had significant, direct, measurable impacts on Russia’s ability to wage war and sustain war. As for regular people, it is hard to think it hasn't affected then, given that last year inflation was 9%, interest rates are 21%, and disposable income is down 20-30%. That feels like a lot of belt tightening.
Russia has had billions in oil money banked. It's mostly gone now.
It's working all right. These things take decades. Look at North Korea (first few years they grew faster than South Korea, and they had the more wealthy parts). Now their GDP per capita is around 600-1700 USD vs 33 000 USD in South Korea.
> After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much
Did you speak with folks from Moscow or St Petersburg or from different regions? Life in the top 2 cities is kept as normal as possible at all costs; that is part of the Putin's approach to handling the elites (you can keep living your comfortable lives as long as you stay out of politics).
But elsewhere the quality of life took a big hit. Even in second tier cities. At least that is what I am hearing. My 2c.
I have friends and relatives living in various regions in central and south Russia, and most of them don't feel like their quality of life took a big hit. The main frustrations that I hear are from drone attacks and associated inconveniences, not so much anything economic.
Anecdotally I have also heard that many factory towns are booming because the factories are re-opened or expanded to fulfill all those military orders.
>Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good.
I would say it is a bit more realpolitik than that. An "Evil" leader doesn't care about the common good, but all leaders need subordinates to carry out their orders, security forces to carry out their rules, etc. Sanctions are meant to put pressure on all those people. So either A; the leader changes their actions so as not to risk losing the people that turn their will into action, or B; those subordinates put someone else in charge that will play ball.
It's the occasionally given justification for embargos on Cuba, Sanctions on North Korea, etc. Whether you believe it's the real reason is a different question.
This the exact same as the email from the post, but the other way around. Either both normal Iranians are responsible for arming Russians and normal Americans are responsible for sanctions, or neither are. In general I don’t like blaming people for the actions of their government.
The US is a democracy, so Americans are, at least on a collective level, responsible for the actions of their government, though not on an individual level of course.
Iran is a theocratic autocracy. Only the autocrat and his supporters bear any significant responsibility for the actions of the government there.
In theory sure but in practice not really and to say regular citizens have a direct say in specific geopolitical decisions is absurd, given how unpopular many recent decisions have been.
A democratic constitutional republic. Often simply referred to as "a democracy" as a shorthand.
The key distinguishing factor being that in a democracy powers are derived from the consent of the governed, as opposed to other forms of government (including some "constitutional republics") which do not allow open democratic elections.
Citation needed. Where did you get that additional term in front of it? Which United States founding document suggests that?
Democratic Republic, just like People's Republic, is actually a euphemism for communism.
What you are describing is "representative government" and "self government" not necessarily democracy. The will of the people is an abstract concept that is, depending on the issue, not always accurately measurable by equally weighted vote of a subset of the people that are enfranchised.
One would think the finger pointing should go towards the shitty governments causing trouble and pain for their own citizens, but somehow you've managed to find an angle to blame the West.
It is truly an unthankful job being the saviour of the entire world.
I just want to add one angle I don't think the other comments covered well - it is obvious that nobody pushing the propaganda angle ("encouraging them to rise up") is serious because the track record is far too clear. I can't think of an instance where sanctions have ever triggered a political change and if they do then it is rarer than a country's elites changing direction due to internal political concerns. Nobody believes sanctions will cause political change in their targets. It is almost unthinkable that they would. What could that even look like? If someone has the power to threaten a country then they don't need to actually levy the sanctions to get compliance. Countries only get sanctioned if the sanctions aren't enough pressure to cause change.
The point of sanctions is to cripple the middle and lower classes, destroying a country's ability to fund a military. That actually makes it less likely for a dictatorship to get overthrown - the middle class is too poor to organise which is desirable from the West's perspective. Dictatorships are really bad at waging war effectively, they struggle to handle the complex logistics and are easier to distract and threaten.
And frankly; we're talking about something kicked off by 60s US and UK, that map in that wiki article could be mistaken for one of the British Empire. Nothing's impossible but it'll take more than a wiki article to give me confidence that sanctions were the primary political force operative here or that the apartheid system was actually the thing at issue. I would chalk it up as unusual circumstances.
Sanctions are there to cut off 1-2% of GDP each year from the dictatorships' economies.
Over 30 years that turns countries into harmless (to the West) backwater shitholes.
The consequences towards the local populations are just a side-effect (sometimes wanted, sometimes not).
You cannot expect people outside of your dicatorship to prioritize your well being over their own safety. It's on you to fix your country. If you won't - people will isolate you to keep their countries safe.
This. The point is, and always was, to exert economic pressure.
Some sanctions aim at military capabilities directly - but most just aim to throw a wrench into a country's economy overall. Which does hurt the population - but it also hurts a country's capabilities, which is the goal.
If North Korea wasn't sanctioned to shit, it would have had the resources to build not dozens but hundreds of ICBMs. This is undesirable, so North Korea remains sanctioned to shit.
This is the right answer, and it's sad to see it so far down the list.
This is the precise realpolitik of international sanctions, it's just not spoken out loud that often.
Don't believe me, some random commenter. Listen to the Professor of History and Grand Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College explain it: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B0k5ToABH7o
I don't know what you mean by dictatorship but I'm not exactly adverse to applying the same term to the US, it being a one-party state with the audacity of having two parties, and either way, it's by far the most hostile and violent of contemporary state powers.
Dress it up however you like, the fact remains that countries can choose to not provide goods and services to whomever they want for whatever reason they want.
There's absolutely no moral obligation on an individual in any country to defy these laws and risk prison time - if they want change they can petition, vote and protest.
Beyond that the West is not responsible for any deaths caused by governments that refuse to cooperate with us (and therefore had sanctions placed on them) - that responsibility lies solely with the people and governments of sanctioned nations. We shouldn't be forced into supporting those who seek to destroy us based on HuMAnITaRiaN grounds.
The word "cooperate" carries a lot of weight in your reasoning. Could you give some examples?
One could also flip your argument and consider the many decades of US narcoterrorism, regime change operations and so on and the rather long line of failed states in its wake, and draw the conclusion that we ought to actually not submit to this 'world power' regardless of whether it 'dresses itself up' to be 'cooperative' while it engages in these activities or not.
For example, not respecting copyright laws (China), not participating in other sanctions (India), or intentionally destroying diplomatic relations (South Africa). It could also be more serious things like declarations of war, or long standing bad relations.
> One could also flip your argument and consider the many decades of US narcoterrorism
I'd agree with you here, I'm speaking purely of diplomatic / trade related activities (i.e. tariffs, sanctions, etc.) - imo putting boots on the ground or funding insurrections are an escalation that
1. no longer respects the autonomy of a country/people
2. are equivalent to military action
There's of course still a lot of grey-zones but hopefully it clarifies my position.
> we ought to actually not submit to this 'world power'
Again I agree, WE (as private citizens) ought not to, however diplomacy and trade are careful games played between larger entities (corporations, governments, etc.). But on the flip side it also doesn't mean we have to go against everything the government does (i.e. it isn't inherently evil).
The tricky line (as in this case) is when the actions of those entities can have an effect on you (the private citizen) like jail time.
China is a member of WIPO, so that's mostly something the US does to trample on the UN. Why should India change its policies around sanctions and start implementing them because the US thinks they should, instead of leveraging the UN sanctions system, which India adheres to? Same thing there. The US dislikes diplomacy and international institutions that treat states as equals, and prefers overtly or covertly hostile unilateral actions.
I'm not sure what you mean by the South Africa example.
I'm also not so sure it's a tricky line. Civil disobedience is something everyone should consider as a means of political action.
China's issue isn't so much the laws / treaties they've agreed to on paper. The issue more the actual implementation and enforcement of said rules.
> Why should India change its policies around sanctions and start implementing them
I'm not saying India has to, they're perfectly within their rights to ignore requests from the US, but neither does the US have to tolerate that (as they have been) - everyone is free to tariff / sanction as much as anyone else (not withstanding other agreements, but the same argument applies to those). In this way, everyone is free to pursue their own actions and ends. And as such, the US and India aren't forced to trade / cooperate outside of their own mutual benefit (i.e. if trade stops being beneficial to the US/India, they should stop).
This is how I mean each country is responsible for it's own outcomes, don't want to deal with the US? Fine. Just don't expect handouts and cooperation from US entities.
What I'm trying to express is that it's a 2 way street and both parties can walk along it as much as they want - and not a moral issue. I'm not saying there's no consequences, merely that it is OK for a country to pursue actions that (it believes) are in it's own favour.
> I'm not sure what you mean by the South Africa example
Completely fair, I've been diving into SA politics at the moment so it's just at the top of my mind. But there's been a long standing degradation in relations, to the point where recently the SA ambassador to the US was rejected by the US because of some very undiplomatic comments he refused to retract - followed by SA not replacing the ambassador for something like 6 months. Meaning there was no formal point of contact between the 2 countries, independent groups and non-ruling political parties tried to bridge the gap but there's only so much they could do. Another similar example is how while every other country tried to negotiate with Trump about his tariffs, SA refused (or forgot) to.
WIPO and it's relevant treaties provide a range of mechanisms for dispute resolution through diplomacy. The issue is that the US does not engage in diplomacy.
I think most scholars of international law would disagree on the legality of unilateral economic sanctions, since they are likely to amount to interventions and as such violate sovereignty, and, of course, human rights of the people affected. You also seem to think of US sanctions as if they were in a vacuum and not a preamble to aircraft carriers, narcoterrorism and other JSOC responsibilities, and possibly nuclear warheads, or less commonly, explicitly genocidal actions.
Right, so you meant that South Africa disagreeing with the ongoing genocide in Palestine in which the US is a main offender amounts to sabotage of diplomatic relations. As for refusing to "negotiate [...] about tariffs", why would anyone? If I punch you in the face, shoot a kid in the face, and then tell you to sit down by a table and negotiate how much you should pay me for that service, would you sit down and act as if I'm a reasonable, rational actor?
> The west is not responsible for any deaths caused by governments that refuse to cooperate with us
This US-centric mindset is so disgusting and emblematic of the narcissism of the west. The country has established itself as the most potent force for violence and economic abuse in the world.
You can easily take "the west" out of that sentence and replace it with any other country and it's still fair.
E.g. China sanctions a country then "China is not responsible for any deaths caused by governments that refuse to cooperate with them"
It's entirely the responsibility of each government to ensure the welfare of its own citizens. Anything more is purely goodwill. Anything less is treason.
You're just coping because the US/west is the predominant power.
My country should prioritize its own people first, second, third, fourth, fifth....and all other people a distant last, if at all. It sucks that the people in the US don't benefit as much as they could from being world hegemon, but that doesn't mean they would be better off if the US was in a lesser position in international relations.
That presumes some kind of just system imprisoning the husband. In fact the US pursues its power and wealth, supporting dictatorships and undermining democracies to the degree it believes doings so benefits its special interests and geopolitical calculus. Even to the point instituting famine against children in horrific genocide which is happening today.
Yet US hegemony is collapsing. It is simply running out of the money and power necessary to be a racketeer that cynically calls itself world police.
It's not for fun. It's that politicians are largely impotent in many situations, but refuse to accept this. I mean they're the leader of entire countries after all, and in the case of the US you're the leader of ostensibly the strongest military in the world, with enough nukes to end the world at your finger tips 24/7. How can you not be omnipotent, the most powerful person alive!?
But then it turns out that war is too dirty, cyber stuff isn't dirty enough. So what's left? Economics - sanctions. We've carried out 374 ultra important meetings, and traveled to 73 different countries, to prepare this critical 974th package of sanctions. This time it'll actually do something and be totally more effective than other 973, in spite of the fact that obviously the most impactful things are the first to be sanctioned.
It's obviously little more than theatrics, but it lets politicians feel powerful and like they're exerting influence on their enemies. And indeed, they may be responsible, at least in poorer countries for some people starving, which is then mental gymnasticed into 'Ah hah! They'll blame their government, overthrow them and become our ally, the people making them starve.'
It's really a shock that seems to basically never come to fruition. Well except when you're sanctioning a third of the planet [1], including many of the most unstable places in the world, and any time there's a regime change in these places - 'Ah hah! See? Sanctions work!' The fact that said change would often have happened in any case is kindly swept aside. It's akin to the joke that Zerohedge has successfully predicted 53 of the last 3 economic recessions.
> and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
What other options are there, except idly sitting by or invading?
Not trading with a despot can just be not trading with a despot. It doesn't have to have an agenda.
If I personally choose to boycott a sneaker brand because I have a firm belief that they run sweatshops in a foreign country, is that collective punishment? No, I'm just not supporting someone who doesn't align with my values. Even if, as a side effect, the workers won't be getting the pittance that they would have gotten from my purchase.
So your proposal is that we do business with all these countries so they have thriving economies with more money they can invest into their government and military?
Well, that's too bad. Lifting sanctions opens up opportunities for non-alligned government spies and saboteurs. I recall there is a problem with remote workers from the DPRK employed by Western companies. These citizens are already collectively punished by their governments. I used to live in such a country until the US managed to lead on the USSR into bankrupting themselves. Thank you, America! Thank you Ronald Reagan for all the USSR jokes! Thank you Michael Gorbachev for letting it slide!
'You' elect the government. Even if you didn't vote for ruling parties, majority did.
Also it seems to be a common thing in Europe to refer to other's country populace OR government as plural 'You'. From my small sample size of 3, Americans were always confused by this and thought they were personally attacked.
> 'You' elect the government. Even if you didn't vote for ruling parties, majority did.
So what? Even if 99% of the population agrees with doing something, that has no bearing on whether I agree with it or am responsible for it.
And, anyway, no major candidate would have lifted sanctions on those countries, so nobody could have voted against them even if they wanted to.
> Also it seems to be a common thing in Europe to refer to other's country populace OR government as plural 'You'. From my small sample size of 3, Americans were always confused by this and thought they were personally attacked.
Perhaps Europeans, with their higher-quality parliamentary systems, are more likely to uncritically accept the idea that governments actually represent their people, whereas Americans are more likely to realize it's a sham.
>So what? Even if 99% of the population agrees with doing something, that has no bearing on whether I agree with it or am responsible for it.
You are a cog, participating in system, voting in it and acting in it. You could wash away your responsibility only if you go back to serfdom.
>Perhaps Europeans, with their higher-quality parliamentary systems, are more likely to uncritically accept the idea that governments actually represent their people, whereas Americans are more likely to realize it's a sham.
well.. not really, i would say Europe is worse off as EU is basically one-party system with flavor distinctions. It is different on country-level but that varies on case by case basis.
Nevertheless the idea of democracy stays the same - you vote, directly or indirectly, on issues - every citizen is a participant in decision-making process.
No matter the political system, or ruling entity you have it will always have those 3 goals(in order), cynically speaking:
- self-preservation
- changing resource distribution in it's favor
- expanding it's influence outside the borders
The only thing keeping our rights(and that includes human rights) is the fact that governments can be replaced by different one(in healthy systems) with populace support, or that populace will revolt and reenact french revolution again(in unhealthy systems), or outside forces will take over.
Systems can be changed - either by evolution or revolution. Take your pick.
>'You' elect the government. Even if you didn't vote for ruling parties, majority did.
It's funny that people still believe governments let people elect anything. You can vote, you can ignore elections - result will be the same, your opinion doesn't matter
Then maybe some forces - economic, or realpolitik ones, or whatever etc - make the current situation a reality, no matter your political allegiance. Maybe it is infact an optimal resource distribution for current situation.
Or system is fundamentally broken, and You, as in populace, need to change it. you can talk to people, political party allegiance does not need to be a tribal relationship.
To be clear, less than 1/3 of the voting age population of the US voted for Trump and less than 1/2 of actual voters voted for Trump. That is not a majority in either metric.
Lumping the entire population of a country under the term "you" when discussing contentious actions of the government of a country is inflammatory. You (yes, YOU) are directly accusing an individual by using the personal pronoun 'you'. The general populous of a country has close to zero say in what their government does on a daily (even yearly or longer) basis. Do I have anything against your average Iranian, Israeli, or North Korean? No, not unless they are directly in support of the objectionable policies of their respective governments. Barring evidence of this, I presume they are like most other citizens of a country, mostly along for the ride.
So, perhaps instead of attacking individuals who quite probably had nothing to do with their current government making the decision they made you should attack the governments in question and the leaders of those governments.
Not a dig at you, but it's a bit funny/worrisome to see how "we" are not in charge of what our governments do and "Nobody should be expected to take that risk" here, while comments from for instance sfn42 and mvdtnz says the Iranian people are supporting their government because they live and work in the country and should either take the risk by revolting or be classified as supporters of the government.
In the real world, sanctions happen for a variety of reasons. They have wide-reaching consequences, and you can't expect everyone to always fight every single goverment policy they don't personally approve of; an Iranian citizen is no more obliged to revolt against the Iranian government, than a citizen of sanctioning countries are to revolt against their governments for imposing those sanctions.
Those countries wouldn’t benefit even if the embargos were lifted. Cuba and North Korea would still be shitty places even if the US had no sanctions on them. There is nothing the US could provide these countries through trade that would suddenly make life better.
The US government doesn't reflect the majority of Americans, at all. It reflects capital interests - which the majority of Americans are not. Majority of Americans are laborers.
Out of available US presidential, House, and Senate candidates, there is essentially no realistic electoral outcome where the people put into power will lift Iranian sanctions.
Representative democracy doesn't mean that every possible policy could be enacted by some realistic configuration of elected representatives, even if any particular policy is supported by a majority of the electorate.
>Representative democracy doesn't mean that every possible policy could be enacted by some realistic configuration of elected representatives, even if any particular policy is supported by a majority of the electorate.
that is only true if you flatten your system to two parties.
People are pointing out the hypocrisy of demonising Iranians for the actions of their government while insisting that Americans are unwilling victims of theirs.
blame English language on lack of distinction between plural(referring to 'your society' in this case) and singular you. I don't think that's a hard concept to grasp.
No, this has nothing to do with English grammar. I understand that you are using "you" in the plural, here. What I reject is the premise that "Americans" is an identifiable group that is collectively responsible for any particular thing, extending to people who never supported or voted for that thing.
This is a philosophical disagreement, not an issue of language.
In democratic system(please spare me "we're republic not a democracy" adage that every American spewes) every citizen votes, and shares responsibility in decision making process.
You can become politically active and try to convince others if you don't like current status quo, inaction is also a choice.
Unless you think US isn't a democratic country but authoritarian one(either oligarchy, technocracy or whatever - does not matter) then it is definitely not a philosophical disagreement, but lack of responsibility and wishful thinking.
> every citizen votes, and shares responsibility in decision making process
Why? I never consented to be a part of the system, don't agree with it, and in practice can do nothing to change it. Saying I'm responsible for it because I happened to be arbitrarily born with a particular citizenship is meaningless.
> In democratic system...
There is no reason why I, an unrelated individual, should have to ascribe to the ideals espoused by proponents of the system imposed on me without my consent.
But you know that in this case it’s true since the discussion is about the US in particular. So this “enlightened” take is really just snide time wasting.
Who voted on this issue and how many options did they have (on this issue)? The answers are "approximately zero" and "just one". There was no choice when it came to this issue.
Our western "democracies" aren't nearly as democratic as people like to believe.
> You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
That's (usually) a secondary goal of sanctions, if even that. The primary is to restrict the regime's ability to fund its growth, stability and military operations.
Russia can no longer (that easily) sell its oil and gas? Great, that's less money to invest into rockets and drones and tanks against Ukraine. It's also less money in the pockets of the oligarchs.
Realistically, you can't really push the civilians of a country to revolt with sanctions, or bombing. As Carl Spaatz said:
> Morale in a totalitarian society is irrelevant so long as the control patterns function effectively.
I for one want the USA to apply more sanctions, not less. It's debatable whether country-wide sanctions are just or even effective but I still think they should be applying sanctions much more freely than they are now.
The USA applied sanctions to the family members and law practice of a supreme court judge from my country literally yesterday. It's said this cut them off from hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
It really kills their champagne socialism nonsense. They destroy my country and then enjoy foreign developed nations on taxpayer dime. You have no idea how good it feels to see these "gods" get what they deserve. I'll be forever thankful to Trump for it.
Do we have to still use the phrase "pounding-in-the-ass" when the general sense of it has been proven untrue and not particularly as common as people would think. I guess rape jokes are just funny when they're about certain people.
Same thing with "sod" still being in common usage. Pretty bizarre to be allowed to get married in some countries now but there's still all these historical bits and pieces.
I worked at a place where we tried hiring an Iranian. Ignorant of the law, some of us were surprised when the legal department pulled the plug on the whole process.
I was kind of surprised by the whole thing because he was currently employed at another company. We went so far in the process that he quit his other job and we had him in the office for his first day of work, had a big lunch with him and everything. We fucked him on that.
You had him in the office? So he was in the US on a legal permit? Then IANAL but I think your legal dept fucked up. I know many Iranians working here in Silicon Valley. They have refugee permits and are 100% legal workers. Unless you are in defense tech or something which has stricter employment laws, your company did overreact.
your comment is helpful context, especially as a foreigner. but would you be able to edit the "pounding in the ass" phrase out in future when referring to prison? thank you <3
They are literal slaves. The 13th amendment of the constitution:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, *except as a punishment for crime* whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Slavery is still legal in the United States of America.
I'm contradicting the claim. Prisoners aren't slaves. They could be enslaved, but they aren't. They are never sold into slavery and almost never compelled to do any work.
This is the opposite of being "literal slaves". They are literally not slaves.
...unless you believe that before the 17th century, everyone in the world was literally a slave? It was legal to enslave them too.
That link doesn't say 3/4 of prisoners. It says 3/4 of incarcerated workers. Incarcerated nonworkers aren't counted at all.
It also doesn't say that they report being compelled to work. It says they receive benefits from working that they don't receive without working. The fact that voluntary workers get their sentences reduced doesn't convert them into involuntary workers.
You're both wrong about the number of prisoners. The link clearly states 2/3 of prisoners are workers and 3/4 of them report being compelled to work. That works out at 1/2 of all prisoners.
Trying to spin this as benefits is...odd:
"they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation."
> "they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation."
"Denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence" means that prisoners with jobs are considered to be better candidates for sentence reduction by various means. That's true, but it doesn't come anywhere near "being compelled to work".
The ACLU doesn't provide any numbers on who reports being compelled to work. They provide a large number that includes some things that qualify as coercion and some that are entirely innocuous. This is the "prison forced labor" analogue of reporting that large majorities of female undergraduates suffer sexual assault on campus, where the definition of sexual assault includes "unwelcome sexual remarks".
It's incredible that anyone can read this and argue against it, how did we loose our humanity? There is no empathy, it's frightening. The capacity to do horrific things in the near future is here.
Federal prisons are generally quite desirable when compared to state prisons or local jails, especially if you're convicted of a white collar financial crime. They don't call if Club Fed for nothing.
I think the point here is that the Office Space reference is a joke about rape, which maybe was somewhat acceptable in 1999, but is not cool today.
And even then, it was only acceptable in 1999 because it was a joke about male-male homosexual rape (I doubt it would have been considered funny even back then if it was a joke about a man raping a woman), so on top of being a rape joke, it has some homophobic qualities to it.
(I do remember watching Office Space back in 1999 and finding that line hilarious, but that teenage version of me also thought saying "that's so gay" was a perfectly fine way to be negative about something. Times change, and people grow up and realize that some of the things they thought were funny were actually singling out marginalized groups in shitty ways.)
I think also your use of the phrase didn't really add anything to what you said. Certainly people in the in-group who both know that Office Space reference, and still think it's funny will get it and chuckle, but everyone else will just think it's a weird and/or offensive way to describe it. And leaving it out entirely doesn't water down what you said. If you still feel like you need to emphasize that it's gonna be a maximum-security prison rather than Club Fed, you can just say "maximum-security federal prison", and everyone will understand.
No you do not. Provide sources for your information. Making these jokes about prison rape, not as common an occurrence as you'd think, is offensive.
The only reason it's funny is because the subject of these jokes are men (so nobody cares), are engaging in something considered "gay" (which is gross and funny ha ha ewwww).
I don't expect things to change but I'd fight in that war if there was one.
It's the phrasing. You're using a fun and casual term for something awful. You are correct about the amount of sexual assault in American prison of course.
Your reply to that comment is understandable as an American… in that you got your understanding of your own prison system from your own popular media.
Also in the assumption that a foreigner would or could get an Office Space reference, unless they live in a country America has already successfully culturally colonized.
The point is that the homophobic trope doesn’t add anything to the information given, while it does make it more likely to run afoul of homophobic censors in homophobic countries led by homophobes.
First, in this context the popular image, not reality, is what actually matters. Why do people not risk breaking sanctions? Because they don't want to risk prison. Why do Americans fear prison so much? Because of how it is represented in popular media, true or not.
Homophobic trope because it's acceptable to joke about prison rape specifically, when the victim involved is a man.
Why don't you see people openly joke about regular rape on HN? Why is a joke about regular rape not a phrase acceptable on here? In the same vein as the 2000s gaming "oh man I'm getting raped over here". Oh yes, because it's considered disgusting and offensive.
> Why do Americans fear prison so much? Because of how it is represented in popular media, true or not.
Yes, it’s an ouroboros of confirmation bias: the popular media ad nauseum repeats the trope that what they need to fear in prison is ”gay” sexual violence, when what they really need to fear is the violence of the state and its economic interests that threatens to put them there in the first place.
> Second, sexual violence in American prisons is a very real concern
Even if we assume the worst case scenario and double it, sexual violence in prisons is an experience of the minority of prisoners… does that make it less of a concern for those who experience it? Of course not… does it mean that it’s a reason to fear prison, especially when incarcerated for actions that go against entrenched governmental interests? Not really. Again the state violence is the real fear… especially when you note that any percentage of those sexual assaults are perpetrated by “guards”. Isolation, economic exploitation, and the mental health concerns implicit in being deprived of your agency are all much more important fears than the (again trope) that something ”gay” might happen to you.
> Finally, I fail to see how it is a homophobic trope? Nobody wants to be sexually assaulted. It's about the violation, not the act itself.
Not seeing a trope as a trope is kind of the point of a trope. “Ass-pounding” implies a specific kind of sexual activity, associating it with prison implies that all such sexual activity in prison is non-consensual violence — that’s the trope part identified — and also that the act itself is violence and/or something to be feared… something to be -phobic, about, in other words. Given that prisons are still customarily same-sex segregated, then, there’s also the implication that same-sex sexual violence in the form
of ass-pounding is a reasonable thing to fear when in prison. Or, in other words, the trope is communicating a homo-phobia on behalf of a culture that presumes one should be afraid of prison
because one is afraid of getting one’s ass pounded.
The violation isn’t implicit in the act being mentioned. The fact that you’ve got to explain to a “foreigner” that the violation is implicit because they didn’t know the trope doesn’t make it less of a trope.
Or you are choosing to ignore something that is very much and always has been there.
Make the edit requested and nothing of semantic value to the message changes. In fact the actual message gets clearer, while also not servicing as propaganda for a bias you’ve internalized so deeply it’s invisible to you.
It's the description of a dynamic sexual act between two participants, using an orifice situated at the end of the digestive tract that has as primary function the excretion of solid waste from the body.
You'll be surprised to learn, that many people of all sexes partake in that activity fully willingly.
Nobody who hasn't very a) clearly done wrong or b) actually chooses to fight the feds in court actually going to prison though.
It's just a threat the fedcops get to use to force you to take a plea deal. It's basically a big boy version of how your local prosecutor behaves. Instead of filing BS charges that will never stick in an attempt to "mark it up to mark it down", the fedcops are more equal so they have
Every time you see someone on HN screeching about how we ought to have federal regulation and stiff penalties for whatever their pet issue is remember that this is what that looks like.
> the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison
If only this notion of personal criminal responsibility was applied to other types of private company criminality (2008 gfc, cartelization in many industries, the many private data "leaks", ...)
This was my thought too. When the government really wants corporations to toe the line, suddenly there's no problem with "piercing the corporate veil" and other such equivocations. They know what works - threaten executives with prison. The solution exists and is applied already. For other things such as polluting the environment or misusing citizens private data... the truth is government doesn't really care.
> They know what works - threaten executives with prison.
The problem is that it works too well. As you can clearly see, the solution basically everyone individually applies is to stay clear of anything that might be an issue by several miles.
If you apply the same reasoning to things like private data handling, little things like just shipping stuff will be prohibitively expensive, as no one will want to handle private data like addresses and instead go to a provider, which will need excessive amounts of cash and red tape to do anything for taking on that liability. Building stuff will become impossible, as all of the current red tape will be exponentially expanded with liability checks against any possible pollution. Founding a company will basically never happen, because no one wants to risk 20+ years in jail - and if they do, they'll simply turn to crime, because if your risk profile is that off anyway, not paying taxes will just be a minuscule risk increase.
I'm not saying that there's no political incentive to ignore those issues and keep fines low, but piercing the corporate veil is the nuclear option and there is a reason it's used so little.
There's no proof that your catastrophic imaginary scenario would actually happen. Just "if you do what I don't want to it will be the end of the world". Convenient unprovable claim. Financial transactions happen all the time and are plenty cheap, they just don't do any with sanctioned entities.
You're claiming if data protection laws had actual teeth, google would close up shop and everyone would just go home and not do business anymore. That's laughable. Nobody would claim such BS in good faith.
Its kind of weird how every time some executive or company gets exposed as having done some horrible or massively illegal thing, they can never be punished cuz its a business but right here there are direct penalties that apply regardless.
If only they applied something like this to the rest of the corporate world, companies would be far better behaved and polite
Let's be realistic here. There are no executives or board members who faced charges for prohibited transactions with Iran or NK. It's not like we don't have a steady stream of companies reporting that they inadvertently hired NK citizens remotely.
"Residency" is a very slippery concept. "Currently located in" would be clearer, though you probably wouldn't want to include diplomatic staff ... or would you?
No, there is no commercial transaction here. You might say “neither is GitHub benefiting from a non-paying Iranian customer” but it is at least not 100% clear on the latter case. GitHub, as a business, benefits from non-paying users & their data.
I think sanctions are pointless. Just do business with Iran as usual, but use the money earned to take out the ayatollah and his revolutionary guard. Or give that money to Israel to do the job.
I read it rather as a description of how very serious the threat of prison is, and why the risk is not worth it. Didn't seem funny to me at all, though I may well be reading it wrong.
It certainly didn't seem like the commenter was agreeing with the way the government runs prisons or what happens in them. Again, maybe they do, and I just failed to see it.
I do get your point, but in this particular case, it's a quote from Office Space (1999) and while the movie is a comedy, I don't think it's fair to say that it was specifically a joke about or making light of sexual violence in prisons. The characters in the movie are also obviously scared about the possibility[1], so I'm not even sure I would characterise it as a simple joke (it is used as a callback in the form of a joke later but it is again something the character is having a nightmare about[2] and the joke is based on the absurdity of the phrase and the naivete of the main character, not what the phrase is referencing).
This is also not a uniquely US-specific thing, lots of UK dramas have made similar jokes (for just one example, see [3]). Obviously I expect you would find those objectionable too, my point was just that it's not a US-specific thing -- humans have a tendency to make light of things like that as humour and some people understandably don't see the humour in it. Such is the human condition...
What's worse - never knowing it exists and isn't talked about, or it being at least vocalized and known in pop culture, even if it's used as the butt of a joke? Yes it's not funny but some people use humor to convey terrible things to make it socially acceptable or palatable.
Funny how it's only directed at certain people or certain topics though. Applied completely inequally.
Your point only makes sense if the humour is general. But nobody's hoping on national TV when a female athlete trips going "ha ha she got Ted bundy'd, omg absolutely raped ha!" see how disgusting and vile that sounds?
But you know "pound me in the ass prison" is a cult classic (I still like the overall movie) and nobody would have any problem with airing it on TV.
No point arguing with humans tho, our species is lame.
Prefacing this by saying I'm fairly left leaning and the right would call me woke. But this type of discussion is why "comedy is legal again" takes hold with a large portion of the population. The comment is crass perhaps, but now we have a bunch of comments like this that is relating the original comment to some sort of deficiency in the person (our species is lame).
It's simply bizarre that dreams of US "justice" involve interracial homosexual rape fantasies. Of course the interracial part that creeps in is a reminder that the US is not free. It still hasn't paid for hundreds of years of hard forced labor from many individuals. The guilt from this causes it to act strangely.
The US obsession with "security" is striking (not least in IT). I recently realized it has its roots in the fact that Americans are invaders and slave owners. They have this constant fear of being killed in their sleep by the people they stole the land from, and the slaves who live with them.
There's an Irish comedian who has a bit that goes like this "As an Irishman I don't have white guilt. At all. In Ireland we had potatoes on the ground. We picked them up ourselves. We didn't steal people from another continent to come do it for us. That would be insane."
You seem to love your television. I'm a middle-aged black American, I don't think Jimmy Kimmel and tariffs are worse than the what slavery and the US justice system has done to black people. I can understand if you're worried about your favorite programs being disrupted, though.
If you’re a black American and you think tariffs and Jimmy Kimmel (as in the individual, not what the ‘system’ being aimed at him is) is what I’m talking about, I’m really shocked.
Do you remember what happened the last time the FBI, CIA, etc. got used the way it is now? Hint: several high profile black Americans got assassinated. Among other crazy others.
You just open company in Brazil or Argentina and you can purchase whatever you want. Before 1989 communistic countries were overcoming CoCom restrictions in this way. Russia is doing this successfully since 2014. Surely Iran, North Korea are doing the same, this is really a no brainer and today and it is not even hard or costly, as nobody needs to physically travel, money transfers go through Kaiman, Netherlands Antilles, City of London Corp., etc. Nobody is able to track them.
More. Nobody even tries to hide anymore. Germany is openly purchasing Russian oil, branded as "Kazakhstani", through Druzba pipe. The Netherlands is buying Russian gasoline branded as "Indian". France is buying Russian LNG and it is not event trying to pretend that it is not Russian.
We will wait very long for those who will pay this $1M fine or go to prison.
Your parent comment is correct. Germany buys millions of tons of "Kazakh" oil via the Druzhba pipeline, arriving at the PCK refinery in Schwedt. This oil is "blended" with Russian oil, and in any case is transported by Russia.
Most of the oil from Kazakhstan is transported via the Caspian pipeline. Druzhba had been defunct for couple of months too. I think some figures of Kazakh oil imports from Russia would be in order.
> ASTANA. Sept 4 (Interfax-Kazakhstan) - The volume of Kazakh oil transportation to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline system in August of this year amounted to 190,000 tonnes, which is 18.7% higher than the level of July 2025, Interfax-Kazakhstan was informed by the national company KazTransOil (KTO).
That would amount to some 2+ million tonnes per year. And I mean sure but Kazakhstan extracted 87 million tonnes of oil last year. Germany had imported some 78 million tonnes crude same year, and much of it was from other sources too.
It's pretty hilarious how the americans have corporate personhood so businesses can pretend to be people when it suits them, to shield their workers from the law.
But of course this veil can be pierced when it suits the administration, but not when it'd positively benefit the life of american citizens.
>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
The "your decision" in that response is really off-putting. I know the law is what it is with sanctions like this. However, it is a failing of basic human empathy to blame other common citizens of a country for the actions of their government while we almost certainly do not endorse all the actions of our own government and would probably be a little upset if a foreigner assumed we did.
From our perspective common people aren't responsible. But from the perspective of the person who wrote the "your decision to arm Russia" on their website it is.
So what is interesting is that this person is fully able to assign blame to individual Iranians for their government's actions but, one would imagine, is able to separate themselves from the actions of the US government.
I wrote "one would imagine" because there was no reply so we cannot say for sure. But my experience with Americans who do this "all Iranians/North Koreans/Syrians/Iraqis etc are bad!" thing is that they carve out little exceptions for themselves and the USA so that their reasons to hate others never seem to apply to themselves.
There's a certain irony in holding North Koreans or Chinese responsible for their governments' actions, but denying any responsibility for your own democratically-elected government's.
I think you'd do well to re-read my comments because that's not what I'm saying at all. I suspect you're more upset because I've touched a nerve. Because this is something that many Americans (and fellow Brits, I might add) are guilty of, and cannot really provide a proper justification for other than "but we're the good guys". They will often try to derail the discussion or argue to avoid confronting the uncomfortable truth
The common people are responsible for the actions of their government in a democracy, are they not? The issue is that Iran isn't a democracy, it's a theocratic dictatorship — the people are explicitly not able to be responsible for the actions of their government.
To be honest the argument works even if Iran was a democracy. Both governments doing evil stuff but only the citizens of one of those countries is absolved of blame. That alone should cause someone reasonable to pause and ask themselves if they're not being a bit ridiculous.
The fact that Iran is pretty authoritarian and undemocratic just makes the position even more absurd and drives the point home further.
i dont think thats really accurate. its theocratic and authoritarian, but its not a dictatorship and they have democratic elements
the candidates are approved by a religious board, but its got a full set of checks and balances and allows for liberalization. The reality is that given a panel of candidates Iranians have often voted for the conservative candidate
i get there is a large amount of liberally minded people in big cities that feel disenfranchised.. but i wouldnt be surprised if the government is still highly popular with the majority of people
Comparing it to North Korea or China is way to simplistic
This is why the democracy-vs-dictatorship point is not one I think is worth arguing. Because while you can technically vote for president, senate, congress who have some say over that on your behalf, you still don't really decide anything.
I think however you'd both be in agreement about the broad thrust of the argument - that this is a slightly daft thing to lay at the feet of your average Iranian, who will already be perfectly aware of what its government gets up to.
>Because while you can technically vote for president, senate, congress who have some say over that on your behalf, you still don't really decide anything.
Even if there was a referendum in the US on whether to drone strike alleged drug traffickers or whatever, it's still a stretch to blame all Americans (with "your" language), because it's there's still a good chance that a given American visitor didn't actually vote for it.
The US is closer to a dictatorship than a democracy. Certainly now.
In properly democratic countries you would have more than 2 parties, with more than 2 viewpoints. You pick one that aligns with you, and they actually have a chance at winning.
This is not true and is nonsensical. The Iranian regime is explicitly anti-American, and it was American inaction that allowed them to rise to power. If America had intervened during the revolution, they could have eliminated the regime in its infancy and saved half a century of headaches and many lives lost due to Iranian wars and terror proxies.
The US also did not create political Islam, which predates the US by over 1000 years. Blaming the US for the problems of this region which has always had these problems is counter-factual. The problems of this part of the world - poverty, violence, religious oppression and dictatorships - predate western civilization as a whole, and in fact the oppressive empires from the Middle East / North Africa spread earlier and wider than western empires.
Well they did intervene during the 1952 revolution. The secular democratic government wasn't very convenient so they basically undid the revolution and reinstalled the Shah in power. Then the second time the Shah was overthrown, it was done by Islamists, not by the secular elected parliament.
This, 1000%. I think there's a certain kind of thinking that low-IQ people fall into, which is blaming civilians for the actions of their government, often with the coping "they should just overthrow their government" (because it's that easy!)
Sadly, in our world where everyone has a voice, you're going to get a lot of this. There's no avoiding the stupids.
Do you get the irony of commenting this on a post about a single person complaining about how they are unfairly affected by sanctions put up against their country?
It's especially objectionable and condescending since the author of the blog comes from a democratic country selling weapons to a genocidal state, as are most of us here.
Yes, that's the point they're making. Arguably US citizens are more complicit in the crimes of Israel than Iranians are in the crimes of Russia since Americans have more capacity to choice their leadership.
Iran has a longer history, obviously, but it’s worth mentioning the US is no longer a democratic country. The congress has effectively delegated its powers to the president. You can’t really come back from that any time soon.
A couple years ago I was hanging out in a Discord server for a jigsaw puzzling site. They made a policy change to remove all pictures from Russia and ban further submissions of Russian photos. I tried to convince them that this was probably counter-productive, but apparently that means I support Russia's actions.
There are valid ways to punish a country for aggressive or oppressive actions - like sanctions - and there are non-valid ways - inherently blaming and then ostracizing every member of the country, for example. And when you take the position that, "If you don't agree with my actions, you're also part of the problem" you are not doing anything but causing people to get annoyed with you and your position, and reducing credibility for the groups you're trying to advocate for. In other words, you're doing more harm than good.
I'm a Russian citizen. I'm not okay with what my government is going. What do you suggest I do about it?
As it is, I can't even get rid of my Russian citizenship. The only option to renounce it requires doing so in person, and it can't be in a consulate - I'd have to travel to Russia for that to submit the request in person. But I doubt I'd get a chance to do so if I ever set foot there again - they arrested Ksenia Karelina in the airport and imprisoned her for 12 years for the crime of giving $50 to some generic Ukrainian charity; I give hundreds of dollars every month specifically to crowdfund drones and thermals for Ukrainian units.
And why do you feel capable to judge if somebody is OK with what their government is doing or not? It’s really that simple: you cannot, unless they explicitly state it.
> I think there is a fundamental misconception that people think because "Islamic Republic" has the word "Republic" in it, it must be a government of people in charge. That's not the case. I have yet to see anyone who actually supports Russian aggression in my real life in Iran.
Not just voters. You don't need to have voted to be doing something about what's happening in your country. You should blame Americans - all Americans - for what is happening over there.
This is the exact same argument Bin Laden used for 9/11; that the US civilians were culpable due to their votes and taxes supporting what the US government was doing.
Correct! And he hit a nerve laying this logic bare, which is exactly why The Guardian took the unprecedented and absurd measure of removing his manifesto from a decades-old article when it went viral a year or 2 ago. Lest the populace get to see things for what they are. At the same time unmasking their veil that despite their pretenses, they're just as much of a capital interests-captured rag as their "competitors".
It is absolutely possible, reasonable, and normal to be unhappy with US foreign policy in the Middle East dating from before I was born, but also believe I have no power to change course there.
I'm not the "both sides are the same" kinda guy, but we realistically only have choices between Democrats and Republicans here, and I'm not convinced things would be meaningfully different in the ME if some US elections over the past 50+ years had gone the other way.
As a personal example: I was eligible to vote in my first US presidential election at age 19, in 2000. I did not vote for Bush. He still won, and still started a war with Iraq under false pretenses. I was utterly powerless to change those events.
So I'm not sure what nerve was hit here, because, "I'm going to attack regular folks in another country because I don't like what their government is doing" is still just as cruel, cold, and ineffective, regardless of the targeted country. Ultimately bin Laden failed: US foreign policy in the Middle East has not changed in ways that I expect he'd be happy with. Perhaps his consolation prize is that, due to the reaction to his attacks, the US is a lot less freer than it was before; not only did the government use it as an excuse to curtail freedoms, but the actual citizenry started prioritizing some higher measure of safety and security over freedom. But I don't think that makes the world a better place, even if bin Laden might have considered that particular aspect of things a success.
Why are you assuming that any particular person is ok with what their government is doing? Feeling powerless to change what their government is doing is not the same is endorsement.
This is a superficial take. Common citizens of a country are responsible. The government didn't accidentally become the government by doing a dice throw. People voted for it. In countries where people didn't vote, you can always go back in history to find a moment where people either did agree to let a certain faction run their country (religious revolution), or allowed an authoritarian regime to take all power slowly by neglect and doing nothing.
You can't just sit on the sidelines and say "well I am not responsible for what my government does", while holding your passport and paying your taxes. You are responsible.
Assuming you're a US citizen, to what degree are you personally culpable for the illegal behaviour of the current government? How responsible are you for the recent extrajudicial murders committed by the USA?
The last time (and current time) a president was in power that I didn't agree with (and didn't vote for), I left. As a citizen, I can't fully escape taxes, but I will be my darnedest to reduce my taxable burden when I don't approve of the government.
Some of the nations that are sanctioned by the US etc. literally do not let most their citizens leave. Citizens of all of them will have difficulty getting visas due to the poor relations that resulted in sanctions in the first place. On top of that, even if there are no political barriers not everyone will have the means to do so.
I’m also curious at what point you assign culpability for remaining in a country. Obviously, a baby born in the country can’t be culpable or the concept becomes meaningless. At what age or level of maturity can we start to condemn someone for not noticing that their government is evil and then leaving their family to escape?
So being an elite who escapes the consequences of what elites have done is a virtue that should be rewarded? Why would people look up to a runner? Most people don't have anywhere else to go, and love where they're from.
The USA is full of people that left their home country with nothing because they disagreed with how their home country is managed. For example, the Vietnamese boat people. I hardly consider that cohort of immigrants 'elite'.
Taiwan is another example. Taiwan wouldn't exist if it wasn't for mainlanders voting with their feet.
> Taiwan wouldn't exist if it wasn't for mainlanders voting with their feet.
Woah, woah, the ROC invaded Taiwan with a huge group of armed settler-colonialists, and then initiated a violent martial law on everyone here. The KMT settlers didn't vote with their feet, they imperialised Taiwan and the people here. Taiwan would absolutely exist either way, there would probably have been democracy here a lot sooner if not for the KMT's martial law, since the common thread throughout all 6 decades of their rule, it was non-KMT people (earlier immigrants, indigenous people, and even a few Japanese descendants) that led opposition efforts. Not to mention much of the reason the PRC makes imperialist claims against Taiwan is because of their humiliation that they failed to defeat the KMT utterly, and this country retained the name ROC when it transitioned to democracy in the 90's - the best the opposition could achieve in the face of KMT power.
Really Taiwan makes the opposite case because after the cultural revolution, which is before the beginning of Taiwanese democracy, Taiwanese people could have gone to the PRC and had life there, fleeing martial law, but instead people stayed and worked to overthrow the KMT.
I personally believe packing your shit and heading out is a totally valid action in the face of oppression and fascism, that's why I left the USA after all. I don't think I agree that everyone has a responsibility to risk their lives to overthrow oppressive leaders, the reason I wouldn't stick around though is I won't accept the moral risk of accidentally supporting the regime, which is why for example I don't pay USA taxes anymore.
Why stop at citizens? Why aren’t all humans responsible? You can’t just sit on the sidelines and say “well I am not responsible for what my fellow humans do”.
Except the concept of Collective responsibility had been considered inhumane and Collective punishment is forbidden since the Hague convention, the Nuremberg trial considered this as a part of fascist ideology.
If your government started doing something you don't agree with, would you renounce your citizenship and move to another country? What would be the threshold of bad things that would be required for you to do that? I think I do have such a threshold, but even as bad as things are in the US right now, I'm still here. Maybe that makes me a bad person. Maybe not; I'd like to think not.
Also just consider that we can't all be responsible for everyone else in the whole world. That's just not possible, and not reasonable to ask of anybody. Someone living paycheck-to-paycheck, in a tiny apartment, trying to feed their kids, afraid of getting evicted or being unable to put food on the table... that person does not have the mental or emotional bandwidth to be concerned about people in Iran suffering under US sanctions.
Even someone of higher financial means... what should they care about? Should they care about Iran? Ukraine? Palestine? Those are the ones in the news right now at least. But dig a bit deeper and you'll find a bunch of other places where their government meddles in politics and war. Do we need to care deeply about those, too?
Human psychology is not built for global scale. Honestly, if we could get all humans to care deeply about their local and regional communities, I would think that would be a huge win. Getting everyone to care deeply about people halfway across the world, and constantly consider them in their life decisions? That's a pipe dream.
> In countries where people didn't vote, you can always go back in history to find a moment where people either did agree to let a certain faction run their country (religious revolution), or allowed an authoritarian regime to take all power slowly by neglect and doing nothing.
I think at this point you've really jumped the shark. Using Iran as the salient example here, do you truly believe that some 30 year old living in Iran is responsible for a regime that was installed before they were born?
This frustrates me as well. It is so incredibly common, yet it never passes even basic scrutiny. For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it. It's easy to ignore this when things are going okay, but becomes very uncomfortable all of a sudden when that changes.
And this is to say nothing about how it is people that are chosen, not their individual choices. This is why it irks me when people are interviewed about their knowhow with respect to their political stance. It's basically irrelevant. They need a good read on the person of their choice, not a good read on the choices. If it was about a choice instead of a person, it would be a referendum, not an election.
> For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it
"typical modern democracies" don't use the extremely terrible first past the post. It's mostly used in the UK and a few former colonies, but most of the world's democracies (even the flawed ones) have realised its shortcomings and have evolved past it.
This list includes Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, etc...
Not that only FPTP is terrible either - it is just what people evoke when they say "well xy people voted for this, right?". In more fair systems, the voted person or party may not even have been their first or second choice, so that on its own violates this notion again too, just differently.
> the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population
Not really. The number of people who might change their minds and thus swing the result either way is indeed small. But it isn't accurate to say they are the ones that choose.
The people in guaranteed states/counties still choose; it's just that almost always choose the same answer.
But even that doesn't mean they can be ignored. They can be ignored at voting time, but before that political parties have to take them into account. They basically determine where the centre is. For example they are the reason the American centre is so much further right than the UK centre.
If you took American parties and held an election of them in the UK you would find that all those reliably conservative counties who you would say don't have any effect on the result are suddenly not so supportive of the right-wing option.
>> the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population
> Not really.
Yes, REALLY. In fact it can be even worse.
See the latest (June 2023) elections in Greece [1] (supposedly the cradle of democracy): First party got a 40.56% on a 53.74% turnout. I.e. around 22% of the electorate. Yet, this was adequate to yield a solid parliamental majority for 4 years.
Also mind that the election system had been changed to allow this travesty by the very same party and PM that won the June 2023 elections.
Low turnout means non-voters just don't care, or that they find no palpable option on the ballot sheet.
In any case, the non-voters are OK with whatever party might win, because otherwise they should have made their vote or created a political party that might be agreeable to them.
You are just rationalizing a deeply undemocratic process. These are the exact self-serving arguments that the winners make to legitimize a fundamendally unpopular government.
Also, in practice, no, you cannot make a political party in Greece. There's a country-wide threshold of 3% that you need to exceed to get into the parliament. A lot of well-organized parties struggle (and often fail) to exceed it. So even if you get 100% in an electoral district, you won't get its respective parliament seats. In fact (IIRC the tidbits of the election law), you will be making the first party stronger (and I don't mean by depriving votes from the second party).
This is not unlike other Western democracies. But this is essentially a design to cull any grassroot movements. Not very democratic.
>Also, in practice, no, you cannot make a political party in Greece. There's a country-wide threshold of 3% that you need to exceed to get into the parliament.
You can quibble about whether a 3% threshold is "democratic" or not, but for all practical purposes if your movement can't get 3% you stand no chance of getting your policies enacted.
Which is still distinct from actively choosing something. Indifference is not the same active approval, precisely because it goes both ways. So it is still incorrect to state that "they chose that". They chose indifference.
One can still fault them of course, but it is a distinct category, and it is not at all a clear sign of consent, if even the active choice ever was.
> Low turnout means non-voters [...] find no palpable option on the ballot sheet.
That alone is pretty un-democratic, no? Certainly politics is a world where it's hard to find an ideal situation pretty much ever, but I think a democracy where a third or more of eligible voters don't want to support any available candidate... that doesn't sound particularly democratic.
The US with its two-party system suffers from this problem, and it's a very bad one. There were more eligible voters in our 2024 presidential election that didn't vote at all (89M) than there were people who voted for Trump (77M) or Harris (73M). It's pretty messed up that more than a third of the electorate was so dissatisfied with their options that they didn't cast a ballot at all.
I think the GP actually meant a third of eligible voters, not of those who actually vote. Turnout is often not that great in countries that don't legally require voting, especially when voters are dissatisfied with the choices they have. In the 2024 US presidential election, for example, ~89 million eligible voters did not vote, which puts Trump's win at 32% of eligible voters, just under a third.
Whether or not this is a useful/interesting metric is debatable, I suppose.
Swing voters / swing states / whatever the particular country-specific analog is -- this is a symptom of poor voting systems; unfortunately the people in power like how this works, and so it won't change.
It's also, at least in the US, a collective action problem: a state that tries to be more "fair" (doesn't gerrymander, perhaps awards presidential electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote percentages, etc.) will end up giving seats/votes to the "other side" more often than polarized states that stick with FPTP.
I meant that if one checks "who voted for this", one will find that it's at best the half of a poor voter turnout, so around 30-40% of the overall voting population. Often even that is generous.
Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
I always find amusing how the west always blames the people of the rivals "iranians", the "chinese", etc but when something is wrong with their side they blame an entity to detach themselves "the american government", "this administration", "nazi germany", etc
In everyday speech, people don’t carefully separate “the people” from “the state.” A French person talking about the U.S. usually says les Américains. A German talking about the French will just say die Franzosen — or, if they’re in the mood to tease, die Froschfresser. It’s only in news or diplomatic language that you see “the American government,” “the French government,” or “London” when referring to Britain.
The phrase “this administration” is mostly used domestically, by citizens talking about their own rulers. In Portugal you’d hear "este governo é uma merda", and in Spain the exact same sentiment — give or take a letter or two.
And “Nazi Germany” is only used when distinguishing regimes — Weimar vs. Federal Republic, Estado Novo vs. the Portuguese Republics, the French Fourth vs. the Fifth Republic, and so on.
>In everyday speech, people don’t carefully separate “the people” from “the state.” ...
That might make sense if the email stopped at "Iranian IPs", but it continued with "... due to your decision ..." (emphasis mine). That makes it sound like the author is personally responsible.
The occupying powers very much did not assign collective responsibility to Germans after WW2. Material reparations were massively reduced in scope compared to WW1 (and the norms of the previous century), and the Allies actually poured substantial resources into Germany’s reconstruction (far in excess of the reparations).
Also, collective punishment is literally as old as written history. I’m not sure if there are writings that provide a coherent moral theory of why it’s acceptable that you could call “collective responsibility” from those times, but it was the norm for thousands of years of warfare.
> The occupying powers very much did not assign collective responsibility to Germans after WW2. Material reparations were massively reduced in scope compared to WW1 (and the norms of the previous century), and the Allies actually poured substantial resources into Germany’s reconstruction (far in excess of the reparations).
Mostly because the USSR was the new enemy and Germany had to be an ally after WW2.
While the war was still ongoing there was carpet-bombing of German civilians, and some of the plans for after the war originally included complete destruction of industrial capacities, forced displacement of the population of formerly industrialized areas and forced labour for the whole population (google Morgenthau plans).
There was also a more general worry that depriving Germany would push the country towards communism. General Clay is reported as having said that "there is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand."
The Morgenthau plan was also unpopular in Britain. Churchill only really considered it because he knew he had to keep the Americans happy to win, and Eden hated it. Remember that humiliating the defeated enemy had been tried before in 1918, and it didn't end well.
Also, collective punishment is literally as old as written history. I’m not sure if there are writings that provide a coherent moral theory of why it’s acceptable that you could call “collective responsibility” from those times, but it was the norm for thousands of years of warfare.
Notice how I didn't say "collective punishment" yet you put those words into my mouth and argue with that. Collective responsibility was was most definitely enforced on German* culture where it still echoes throughout the norms of education and political systems.
* West German really, as the East remained unreformed: which you can clearly see in the voting patterns today.
I didn’t put those words in your mouth - I drew the contrast with “collective responsibility” in the sentence right after I mentioned collective punishment. I even put it in quotes and didn’t for collective punishment.
Also, while we’re laser-focused on 20th century Germany, we might as well look at it just before WWII. The Treaty of Versailles (in addition to being practically punitive) had a clause that is commonly referred to as the “War Guilt Clause” that justified their onerous treatment after the war, and the Weimar Republic had public debate of what they called the Kriegsschuldfrage (literally War Guilt Question) before the Nazis even came on the scene.
I don’t know if the literal term “collective responsibility” was first used later, but I don’t see how the concept is so different. Sure, the Allies did a better job of driving the concept into public consciousness the second time around via prolonged occupation - but they clearly felt justified in holding the German people responsible the first time.
The sad part about living in Iran from a technology perspective is you are often blocked from both sides. Often you have to circumvent the government's aggressive internal firewall and other times you will have to hide your IP from the service providers.
On the bright side, your average Iranian grandma can immediately work as a network engineer given the amount of experience she has with VPN protocols.
Using a VPN doesn't prevent the Iranian authorities from detecting that you are using a VPN. It isn't a secure or safe alternative in Iran, particularly with the noisy way it is usually thrown together.
Oh boy, I remember the days you had to be a proper engineer to understand and set up VPNs. Like adblocking making this stuff popular just makes it less effective for people in-the-know.
As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries... The message always goes along the lines of "you're murderer and rapist, we hate you". I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar. I don't have a shortage of people who got convinced that enemies are all around.
So, just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP.
A good service with a strong message that Russian/Iranian is seeing on a regular basis does a lot more good than a service that throws a perfect insult just once. At least if your goal is to actually change something rather than throwing insults.
> As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries...
As a service owner currently looking at adding widescale blocks based on location... it's not a global business, so the downside of blocking an entire country is functionally zero and the upside of easily removing a tonne of compromised machines from the 'can try to DDoS us' pool is noticeable.
If someone from Iran wants to do DDoS attacks they probably know enough to change their own IP to somewhere else so your blocking Iranian IPs is basically futile.
The blanket actions you can take to reduce your attack surface will often work to stamp out low/mid effort attacks, but the more sophisticated attackers who really want to specifically target you will take the time to get around these simpler countermeasures. That doesn't make those countermeasures useless, though.
> just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP
I can guarantee that your views would change very quickly if bombs started falling closer to where you sit and killing your friends and people you know.
Believe it or not, the 12 day war between Iran and Israel was exactly that, and the reaction of the Iranian people was not as uniform (in either way) as one might guess. You could walk on the streets and see some "Hit them Israel" and other similar writings on the walls (the Iranian people were not exactly pro Israel before the war). And yet people could not sleep due to constant bombardment, they had to follow the evacuation orders by the IDF etc.
Except sometimes it works in the other direction. Quite a few of my friends while sheltering from russian bombs in Kharkov still cheered russian efforts to annex Ukraine.
I don't think you can guarantee that. Yes, you might have a strong prior in favour of that - most people don't have a propensity to prefer logical and systematic reasoning over strong emotions such as anger or hate - but it's still rather unfair to a person you're talking to to assume that must be the case.
Yes, when people are badly hurt, they will often lash out in hopes of hurting someone else, using the flimsiest excuses to justify it. It doesn't make it right or a good idea, though.
> I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar.
The intent was never to change your political stance. It's just plain old hate. Armchair political activists are always looking for "morally correct" excuses to be racist and xenophobic, and "your government did a mean thing so you as a citizen are responsible" is one of their favorites.
> I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily [...] block their users by IPs coming from bad countries
The problem is not with "bad" countries.
The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs, than to filter and allow the small amount of well-behaved clients while blocking the rest. This is especially the case when the company has no commercial presence in these countries.
To be fair, the scenario you describe where countries are blocked purely out of political or personal reasons does exist, and I agree that it's morally wrong, even if it's the prerogative of any individual or company who they want to provide service to. But in my experience the blocking is usually motivated by abuse.
> The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs
Abuse is becoming a much bigger problem lately, to the point that even large western providers are getting the same treatment nowadays. More and more I see people talking about banning Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, and at any given time I can see several of their IP addresses in abuse reporting websites (spamhaus, abuseipdb).
What is the future here? I see no reason for those providers to tighten on abusers, given how long they’ve already ignored it. Pretty sure at some point you’ll have to have your own ASN and IP ranges to be able to do anything on the internet.
> the scenario you describe where countries are blocked purely out of political or personal reasons does exist
In my experience the reason is one of the following:
1. Following the local jurisdiction. By far the most common one, and one I have least questions for. At least not to the companies who implement this policy - someone over here already posted the consequences of not complying. Big companies often care to say "nothing personal, buddy, strictly business", but nothing more as in the OP's case with Microsoft.
2. Avoiding the attacks, as you said. I definitely agree they exist. And I can imagine every Cloudflare block page I've seen is because of that, but in my experience it's maybe 5-10% of all blockings I experienced.
3. Political activism. What my comment was about. It's always either individuals or small companies. It's always outrageously dumb and pathetic (obviously, except when it comes from an actual victim) and just does the job opposite to the proclaimed intention.
Most educated Iranians hate their government. The problem is that a revolution isn't easy when the government has all the guns, and the military & revolutionary guard remain loyal, and have no problem with shooting masses of innocent civilians to retain their power.
Sanctions that worsen things for ordinary people really isn't going to change much in countries like this. It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.
A revolution also isn't easy when you know that the revolutions you could have, would be the ones supported by foreign groups that absolutely don't want your country well. USA on no account will tolerate an Iran which is both free and democratic and at all economically developed, because they don't trust a democratic public to support pro-American policies in the middle east - especially related to Israel and oil. Just like they don't trust that in any of the Arab states.
If you want a democratic Iran, both the current government of Iran and its most powerful enemies will do everything they can to stop you.
I would argue that not every society will thrive under a democracy. The people must be somewhat educated, politically savy, considerate, and accommodating. At least this has to be true in the beginning of a democracy where the people are laying the foundations.
Now I agree that the policies of the United States may not always be in the interest of the people from that part of the world, but a "mild" dictator like the one that the Saudi Arabia has or the one that Turkey has right now, these are better models sometimes. The SA of 50 years ago had no notion of human rights and severely under developed and could in no way support a democracy. Of course a dictatorship is not ideal, and the people of SA will have to pay a terrible price for it some day, but for now a dictatorship that "bows" to the west is not the worst thing either.
Yeah, I consider that attitude paternalistic authoritarianism, and pretty contemptible. Of the people who "lack the proper virtues" for a democracy, I would rank people like you highest.
The primary intent of sanctions isn't to foment revolution -- policymakers are well aware of the reality you outline.
The actual intent of sanctions is to cause economic damage. In that respect this is an account of the sanctions working exactly as intended: they are making it harder for OP to work as a software developer, which makes it harder for the Iranian regime to benefit (directly or indirectly) from the efforts of software developers in Iran.
That's the theory yes, in practice we can clearly see that some uneducated people gladly blame all Iranians for the actions of their leaders.
It's probably some kind of coping mechanism for not knowing anything about the people they're talking about, or they want to keep their world view nice and clean: we, the good guys, VS them, the uncivilized bad guys. It's as accurate as saying "all Americans are pro Maga white Christians because obviously if they weren't their government would be different"
> they are making it harder for OP to work as a software developer, which makes it harder for the Iranian regime to benefit (directly or indirectly) from the efforts of software developers in Iran.
A shower thought:
Wouldn't it make more sense if country A that considers sanctions against country B provided very "cushy" immigration laws for highly educated people from country B so that country A profits from these people's efforts while country B will suffer from a brain drain?
I always thought the main goal of sanctions was to deprive the sanctioned governments of income which in turns makes it harder for them to cause problems externally and hold power internally.
And by "hold power internally" I don't mean population uprising, I mean to keep the factions within the government (especially the military) united under the leadership by buying them out.
I believe increased population unhappiness is more of a side-effect that can be both beneficial (if it incites anti-government sentiment) or detrimental (if it incites nationalism) to the country imposing sanctions.
People always say stuff like this, but from my pov it doesn't matter what the populace thinks. They are directly supporting their government with everything they do. They are producing goods and services, they are the army, they are the government, the people are the country.
They have the power to choose who rules them if they want to. Nobody else does. Iranians are responsible for Iran's actions just like Russians are responsible for Russia's actions and Americans are responsible for America's actions.
This is a historically ignorant take, especially when you consider the country being talked about is Iran. As an American it's very easy to assume that a "government revolution" is something that can executed by the will of the people.
Iran had a democratic government. That democratic government voted to do something against Britian's economic interests. In response America dissolved it's government.
If I lived in a nation where any government instability would be used by wealth foreign powers who didn't care if I lived or died, I would also be hesitant in brewing any anti-government fervor.
You can't hold them wholly responsible when they don't even have the power of true self determination.
We all have history. It's not long ago that a lot of us Europeans did some pretty messed up stuff. We got over it and now we're all holding hands and such. Except for the damn Russians of course, because we can't just be friends and have nice things, someone has to ruin it for everyone.
I don't care what your history is. I care what you're doing now, and if what you're doing now is killing people over 80 year old beef (or anything else really) then I have absolutely no respect for you nor your history. Get over it, move forward. War should be a thing of the past at this point, we all share one planet.
I'm not sure how Iranian's are supposed to "get over" the fact that America wants middle-east hegemony. My point is exactly that:
You wish the blame the Iranians for the problems with their government, but the underlying problems with their government is because _Americans_ can't stop electing war hawks. The only sin Iranians have comitted in the eyes of the west is being born on top of an oil field. The "beef" might be 80 years old, but the oil is there today and America wants it's cut. Iran didn't want sell their oil to the British while their own people starved and for that they've been a quagmire for 80 years. You are asking them to live as slaves in the name of peace.
Would you tell Ukrainians that they are at fault for the war?
Could you try to substantiate these claims about the US extorting Iran for oil?
The only part of your claims that I've found information about is the CIA/MI6 orchestrating a coup in 1953, over 70 years ago. Iran was an ally for a long time after that, the Iranian revolution happened two decades later.
So unless you can point to something more recent I really don't think your blaming the US makes a lot of sense. Iran was an ally of the west and Israel for a long time, then religious extremists took over and pissed all over those alliances. Here's an AI-generated summary:
> Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran experienced significant economic growth and secular, Western-oriented modernization under the Shah, with expanded education and some cultural freedoms. After the revolution, however, the economy stagnated, inflation and unemployment rose, and per capita income declined significantly
The revolution was not the fault of the west. Iran was doing well, then the revolution happened and it went to shit. I'm sure the west would be happy to support Iran again if it got its shit together. I honestly don't believe these claims that the US is pressuring Iran for oil. Maybe they were 70 years ago, but that's really not very relevant any more.
What should they do ? Stop working, or protest and risk getting killed ?
It's easy to call for action from your comfortable life.
No, the populace does not bear the same responsibility for the country's actions in all countries. Swiss with direct democracy bear much higher responsibility than systematically oppressed populace in other countries.
Well ideally they should peacefully replace the government with one that aligns with the people's alleged views.
Failing that, I don't know. I guess they'll have to figure it out as they go. All I'm saying is it's their country, their responsibility. And for example in the case of Russia there's clearly widespread support for Putin and his war so I'm not really expecting nor calling for them to do anything about it. I'm just saying I hold them responsible and I think the rest of the world should too. A leader is nothing without followers.
> And for example in the case of Russia there's clearly widespread support for Putin and his war so I'm not really expecting nor calling for them to do anything about it. I'm just saying I hold them responsible
Yes, there is widespread support for Putin and his war - but by this very reason, how can Russians who do not support Putin and his war can be held responsible for it? What do you expect this minority to do, exactly? You can't hold people responsible for not doing something if you can't even articulate what that something is is.
Your entire argument is premised on the notion that there's a coherent "them". But that is virtually never the case, even in popular dictatorships.
The coherent them is the entire population. Sure some of them are for and some are against, that's how it works. Just because you didn't vote for Trump doesn't make you immune to the negative effects of electing Trump.
These things affect everyone, that's why we all have a responsibility.
You're clearly not being very charitable in your interpretation of things I say so I'm just going to end the conversation here because I'm not interested in endlessly clarifying basic things like what I mean when I say "Ideally".
Obviously I'm not suggesting that it's easy or even possible. Though I also don't think we can completely rule out the possibility of a peaceful revolution. Stranger things have happened. And it certainly would be better than a violent one.
> You're clearly not being very charitable in your interpretation of things I say so I'm just going to end the conversation here because I'm not interested in endlessly clarifying basic things like what I mean when I say "Ideally".
I agree that the person you're replying to is getting a bit testy, but I think it's a bit justified, as you're being a bit obtuse here.
"Ideally" is irrelevant. We're not talking about ideal cases in these threads, so to bring up that word feels disingenuous. Yes, ideally people in a country where their government is doing bad things can peacefully replace their government with another one that won't do bad things.
But in practice, where in the world does that actually exist? Basically nowhere? So what's the point in bringing it up?
> Though I also don't think we can completely rule out the possibility of a peaceful revolution.
That's a bunch of weasel-word language. Sure, you can't "completely" rule out anything. But for most (all?) of the places under discussion, there's something like a 0.001% chance of that happening, which is far below the threshold of not even bothering to bring up the possibility.
I'm just answering a question. At the end of the day none of this is my problem. I'm not here to suggest a solution I'm just saying these people are responsible for their own actions.
Actually, the US is responsible for Iran's actions. We're the ones who meddled in their government and pushed them to the point they're at today.
Regardless, it's laughable to think that regular Iranian citizens are just as responsible for their theocratic dictatorship as Americans are for the US's (crumbling) representative democracy. Those two things are not the same at all. Your average Iranian has zero influence over what the Iranian government does. The average American... put Trump in office, either by voting for him or by abstaining.
So if your grandfather killed my great great aunt and I used that as justification for killing your niece, it would be your fault your niece is dead. Got it.
This is an extremely important, often overlooked, point. I also know of many "educated Iranians" living in the US who voice their opinion as GP suggests, and are self-proclaimed to be anti-regime. However, they travel to Iran to visit family and friends twice a year and take an iPhone or two on their way to gift them, directly benefiting the Mullah's system. I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family, so I would take "hate the government" with a grain of salt when everything you do benefits the same establishment.
Some even line up to vote for sham Presidential elections of the Mullah regime, whose turnout legitimizes the regime, while inside the United States! Being Stanford educated does not prevent this seemingly cognitive dissonance or perhaps deception; it actually makes that more likely.
"I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family"
Then I recommend some history books. Family ties can be strong and the persecution of the jews was not always as violent and open as it was during the war. It was more systematic discrimination in the beginning, so of course people still travelled back and forth. Uprooting a whole family is not a simple thing.
"Some even line up to vote for sham Presidential elections of the Mullah regime"
What else they are supposed to do?
That is a small option of influence and they use it. You think the Mullahs would loose their power if people just would not vote for them? If that would be true, they would be a democracy.
> If that would be true, they would be a democracy.
I am positing perhaps they are a democracy. Many of the "educated people" in question that the GP suggests "hate" the government, may say so but their actions nevertheless are directly and indirectly benefiting the Mullahs. Democracy does not mean good, or effective, or not evil. It might be a collective compromise towards mediocrity and stagnation.
Then maybe take a closer look into how their system works.
Every candidate has to be approved by the Mullah's. So the Mullah's are effectivly in control. Still, there are differences with the candidates. Would I vote under such conditions?
No idea, I am struggle to find a party representing my views and I am in a western democracy.
The Democrats in the US have Superdelegates effectively vetoing candidates. So is the media and funding apparatus and the deep state by holding potential blackmail material.
To be clear, I am not defending their system. I am suggesting democracy is not a panacea that automatically guarantees prosperity. Far from it.
You're muddling the line between democracy and dictatorship.
In a democracy if you control all the votes of people you should be able to make changes in the government that the incumbent may not want. You can't do this in Iran.
"I am suggesting democracy is not a panacea that automatically guarantees prosperity. Far from it."
No, but I would say it is a precondition for broad prosperity. When the wealth and power lies concentrated with small minority, they tend to use their power to keep it that way. If power is distributed, so will be the wealth usually. And yes, I do see some problems with western democracies as well.
I don't think that is necessarily true. First, I don't agree with the implicit premise of your statement, i.e. that democracy does not lead to concentration of power. Second, I don’t think it has been a requirement throughout history.
Rule of law is much more important to success and prosperity than fetishizing a mechanism to vote in the head of state. There has been many successful instances of prosperous monarchy in Iran and elsewhere throughout history. The rich Persian Gulf states are prosperous monarchies. Iran was too, a constitutional monarchy, uprooted by Islamic-Marxist ideology partially in the name of “social democracy,” as if that’s a virtuous goal. What they ended up is Mullah. Chaos and tyranny, as Hamilton and Adams would predict.
Monarchies can be rich, but no one can be richer than the emperors family.
If you are into that, good luck with that and hope that there will never be a retarted king. Because it all depends on whether the king is nice and capable, or not.
Is that the stability and rule of law I should look forward?
And they are all not so long lived either btw.
Plots, intrigues and coup d'etat of people who think they would make a better king is still a thing.
And .. I do make the claim that a real direct democracy does not tend to centralisation of power, as there are check and balances, but politicians left alone surely will aim for that as it make governing easier.
What a weird take. Family is important; I think it's a great thing that these people can maintain their family ties and even visit them. Hell, this is a great avenue to bring outside perspectives into the country.
Not sure how bringing a family member an iPhone is "benefiting the Mullah's system". It's a rounding error. And those family members are well aware that they can't get an iPhone in the usual way.
> I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family
They might, though, despite the risk! And this isn't really a great comparison, since a Jewish person visiting Nazi Germany to visit family would run a high risk of being found out and sent to a camp (along with the family they're visiting) and killed. I don't think that sort of thing would likely be the case for an Iranian expat visiting family in Iran.
Where did you get that data from and what do you mean by "hate" in quantifiable terms? (just being "unhappy" with outcomes of certain policies does not mean they would necessarily want to uproot everything for the better)
If you meet educated Iranians, and read news on what's happening in the country, it's pretty obvious. Whether it's "hate" or "deeply dislike" may vary by person.
You are meeting Iranians who are outside of Iran (sample bias), and reading news in English. If you think that qualifies you to make sweeping assertions about Iranian views, I don't know what to say.
People here make it easy on themselves by blaming everything on "the government," but you should never underestimate the level of brainwashing. According to independent polls, it's more like 50% of Iranians still support their government. And it used to be closer to 80% a few years ago. I was lucky enough to be born into one of the wealthier nations, and our trust levels are much lower, despite our government doing not nearly as much crazy obviously evil stuff. I'd say the problem is not support of the government, it is education. The better educated people are, the less likely they are to blindly trust authority. And Iran lost most of its educated people already in the islamic revolution.
Yup, same with "independent" polls in russia about war support. Some anonymous person claiming to be not government calls people and asks for their war support?
It is generally impossible in non-free societies to get accurate information about public opinion. It is already hard in free ones. Polls are notoriously unreliable when a topic is considered sensitive even in a free society. People will self-censor and misreport even if they are assured anonymity and wouldn't have to fear consequences beyond social stigma. When a new right-wing fringe party ("AfD") showed up in Germany, they were from day one publically decried as fishy neo-nazis, revisionists, etc., so supporting AfD carries a stigma. (I'm not stating that those accusations are true or untrue, just that they are frequently made in public). This lead to severe underestimations in the first few polls, because people voting for AfD didn't want to tell about it when asked. Nowadays, polls are more accurate because some amount of misreporting is taken into account.
Tales from an insider don't help very much, because people will only report about their own bubble, the city/province/town they live in, their family and friends of similar interest and social status, their workplace, etc. Also, there can be a severe selection bias, people wanting to talk to outsiders on the internet or even leave a country are probably more often critical of a regime and its decisions.
So from the outside, the only sensible thing we can do is see the country as a whole, lump in the government with the people. Because we cannot really know if people think differently and who they are. We cannot isolate or punish "just the government". And if there were a majority against the current government, there would be a revolution at some point. If there isn't one, opposition against the regime just isn't strong enough.
> Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
USA is lucky to be in position where others are too afraid to apply this reasoning to them, knowing they do literally the same with their closest ally.
Turns out that they aren't all that hard to develop once the original is unavailable, since lock-in is the main barrier to entry. In this sense, sanctions can sometimes have the opposite effect - by removing the established players from the market, they create opportunities for locals to fill the niches, making the country more self-sufficient in the long run, and thus harder to influence.
It must be really frustrating be on the receiving end of sanctions. The ugly truth about sanctions is that they punish the people more than the aristocracy. But they're still better than wars.
>I read hackernews on a daily basis and I visit lots of different websites regularly. I am almost always on my VPN as I am internally firewalled by the government and externally shooed because of the sanctions, so I am probably missing some of these heart-warming messages:
>>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
> I actually do not blame the people who do this. I think there is a fundamental misconception that people think because "Islamic Republic" has the word "Republic" in it, it must be a government of people in charge.
Total war and total information war are the side effects of the Democracy meme. Everyone from a taxi driver to a professor is assumed to be a political actor. The rationale runs something like this, "because you have a vote, you are defacto responsible for the actions of your state and political classes. Vote harder next time."
Meanwhile the individuals involved never explicitly consented to be governed. Even if there were a meaningful democratic process, it doesn't follow that the individual could withdraw consent. Ironically one of the suggested avenues for withdrawing consent in a democracy is to refuse to vote.
Or rather if you start aiming for democracy (the actual definition, not the 200 co-opted bastardized definitions,) that's where you always end up, as people from Plato to American founding fathers clearly understood.
Which is very difficult to do. Even if you ignore that doing so often means leaving behind your home, friends, family, culture, job, etc. to go to somewhere unfamiliar. Most countries, especially the countries that you would want to move to, don't just let you in because you want to. You probably need to have a job lined up, there may be a lottery, it will almost certainly be expensive, etc. And if you are in certain authoritative regimes, you don't just have to worry about another country letting you in, your home country might not let you out.
The only real way to withdraw consent would be political violence.
The key upside of democracy imo is then that most people do not see a reason to use violence; They can vote and never need to withdraw consent that extremely.
And we rarely see meaningful change anywhere because electing politicians is barely connected to the actual outcomes people want.
Now we have a pacified populace that allows corruption to run freely and keeps repeating "violence is never the answer" while forgetting meaningful change almost always requires it.
Never forget we wouldn't even have weekends if people hadn't died for it.
I wish we never needed violence but it seems to be wishful thinking rather than reality. Will people oppose the next Hitler by ranting on Twitter and peaceful protests? Something tells me that won't work.
This. The fact that people in Europe and the US had to fight tooth and nail for workers rights and were opposed by a conglomerate of government force, corporate powers and organized crime gets all to easily forgotten.
The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
And if your're someone sliding into nasty leadership / government situation you have to realize there will be a consequence to that and that the perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.
"The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership."
No, that's for consumption by population of the sanctioning country.
The people in the know know very well that that never works.
The point is for every other country in the world to see how much it hurts if you don't follow the wishes of USA. Classic mafia strategy.
The exception were the sanctions on Russia at the start of the Ukraine war. Those were unprecedented (including the freezing of the national bank assets and blocking of Swift) and it looks like the western powers really believed that those sanctions will cause economic collapse and regime change in Russia.
> point is for every other country in the world to see how much it hurts if you don't follow the wishes of USA
This is the symbolic value of sanctions. It’s a part of coalition building and domestic messaging. (Though if you constantly do it this becomes less effective.)
It’s a classic team-building strategy: costly signalling [1]. You see it in mafias, but like, also when a softball team buys matching jerseys.
Jain, as Germans say. It is not impossible to transfer the money (e.g. if you by a chance have accounts in certain banks on either side). Russian foreign trade still exists, Russian tourists still buy tours and spend money abroad etc. It’s even more complicated picture, of course.
Ironically the amount of sanctions the US put in place around the world is a large driving force for the decline of LIO and emergence of things like BRICS and SCO. I'm sure sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela are going to lead to regime change any moment now. The more you know, the more grotesque it all becomes, fortunately most know nothing.
> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
That's the theory, but has it ever worked?
That something that never works (not even in cases where it has been going on for multiple generations, as in the case of Cuba or Iran) keeps being tried makes it impossible to believe that the intention is making it "work" in the sense you mean. The sanctions are just to sink those countries for political interest. Which in some cases makes sense (e.g. Russia, as it's invading Ukraine and sinking its economy can be a deterrent in that respect), but in others is definitely evil.
That's interesting, but (at least from a quick look and a few text searches) they don't seem to explain what their "sanction contribution score" is. How are they sure that the cases where they "worked" are not regression to the mean (some authoritarian regimes just fall from time to time)? And how are they sure that there is not an equal number of cases where they do the opposite of what they intend? (maybe the Castrist regime would have fallen already if the country had been allowed to develop without sanctions).
> they don't seem to explain what their "sanction contribution score" is
“The success score is an index on a scale of 1 to 16, found by multiplying the policy result index by the sanctions contribution index” (page 77).
Simpler: Table 4A.1 shows their scoring for individual cases. They break at 9 for success versus failure, so maybe eyeball those to see if they gel with your intuition. If not, adjust and re-run the numbers.
My eyeballing suggests it would be quite difficult to zero out the list.
I am citing here from the conclusions of that book (better, have a look yourself):
Overall, we found sanctions to be at least partially successful in 34 percent
of the cases that we documented.
By our standards, successful cases are those with an overall success score of 9 or higher. We emphasize that a score of 9 does not mean that economic sanctions achieved a foreign policy triumph. It means only that sanctions made a modest contribution to a goal that was partly realized, often at some political cost to
the sender country.
Yet in many cases, it is fair to say that sanctions were a necessary
component of the overall campaign that focused primarily on the projection of military force.
Second, we classify some sanctions as failing to produce a real change in
the target’s behavior when their primary if unstated purpose—namely,
demonstrating resolve at home, signaling disapproval abroad, or simple
punishment—may have been fully realized.
>> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
>That's the theory, but has it ever worked?
The point is not to (directly) instigate regime change, but to influence the actions of the existing regime, as well as other state actors not under sanctions, by demonstrating to them how bad it can get. Make an example and so on.
The suffering of the civilians is not the goal of sanctions but a consequence of the choices their - legitimate or not - leaders make, and which ultimately impacts their ability to engage in foreign trade. No country has an obligation to trade with any other, so if civilians suffer after foreign trade is limited, the agency and moral responsibility is with the regime that failed to secure friendly trade relations. Often, humanitarian exceptions are carved out to limit this.
It definitely "works", in the sense that it's often the only tool available, along with positive reinforcements such as aid and support and the threat of stopping them, which is just another flavor of the same. It's hard to have a benchmark for something that "works" better, since countries are sovereign and by definition have disputes and don't blindly follow any established rules or rulers.
It kinda worked in Syria. The combination of sanctions, plus squatting on sovereign Syrian territory and preventing the government from generating income eventually left Assad's military so hollowed out that that the Turkish-backed rebel faction led by former Al Qaeda members was able to essentially drive to Damascus with minimal resistance.
If anything I'd say it has the opposite of the intended effect sometimes.
Like, during WW2 the UK was being bombed and ration books and supply shortages were the order of the day. They look back on their endurance of the conditions inflicted upon them as a source of national pride, have to imagine that is the case for many in the sanctioned countries too.
The bombing of Nazi Germany in return had the same effect. Due you think people will flock to an enemy, that bombs them every night? No, they will put all their strength into trying to prevent the bombs from falling down in the first place.
I mean the US was seen as a favorable enemy, but that was more to the USSR being way worse and due to the post-war behaviour. I still see the effects of e.g. WW2 allied bombing, when walking through my city. And the railway system in (East) Germany has never recovered and this is still causing problems.
No country should generally decide something for people of another country, but let's say it's a exceptional case and it's a war tactic, as a response to an external threat.
Then half a decade shows that point is not relevant or, the overthrowing is not the point at all.
I too wished the wolrd was that simple. But there are dictatorships, who kill, slaughter, coerce, ... and also all the international affairs from which those people are kept an outsider with zero say by the said government. I don't think we can reduce it to "it's people's fault".
I suspect a reason for sanctions is that it allows the government applying them to look like they're doing something to their voters.
It's an effective way of scoring points without spending any resources. They know they're ineffective, but they also know the general public doesn't know that.
For instance the EU very publicly applying sanctions against Russia while with less fanfare continuing to give them billions for gas.
Is the concept here that a government, which may not be oppressive enough to spark a domestic uprising (and might even be broadly accepted by the majority of its own citizens due to common moral values or other merits), should be destabilized by external forces to provoke discontent and shift blame onto the government?
> point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership
This works about a third of the time [1].
What does is incentivising domestic policy changes. We saw that with the nuclear deal. But then Trump blew it up because Obama did it.
(On another level, sanctions degrade capability. If there is no room for peace, at least you can limit your adversary’s economy and thus martial production. If regime change randomly happens, you can use lifting sanctions to blow oxygen on the new government’s flame [2].)
Sanctions don't work. Syria didn't collapse because of sanctions, but because of a very long civil war and, more importantly, a sudden imbalance in external forces (Russia was preoccupied with Ukraine). I don't think there has ever been a case where a country, or its people, changed the regime because of sanctions. Never. North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Palestine, and much of Africa are examples. Wars and revolutions change regimes. I would even argue that sanctions help regimes stay in power. When an external force imposes a threat (sanctions) on people, those people don't see the outside as "saviours" but as an enemy. They often resent the country that imposed the sanctions more than their own government, and they have no desire to fight an external enemy on behalf of a domestic dictator.
Sanctions punish ordinary people, many of whom are already suffering under the regime. So they end up opposing both an internal and an external enemy. In the long run, sanctions probably destroy and cost far more lives than wars. It's a sadistic way to try to crush an enemy.
> don't think there has ever been a case where a country, or its people, changed the regime because of sanctions. Never
Literally a source with a page number, and, in a neighbouring comment, a table with the specifics.
Like, if you had a button that could convert the world’s hot wars into mutual embargoes, would you not push it? Up the stakes: mutual embargo plus embargoed by their leading trade partner.
No. I wouldn't. Because it makes it easier for the stronger power to dominate without hot wars. Sanctions cost the U.S. very little when used against Iran, but for Iranians they are extremely hard and disproportionately expensive. A hot war would be far more costly for the U.S., and the higher the expected cost, the less likely policymakers are to choose it.
…we just had a hot war with Iran. It probably cost us less than our sanctions.
I’ll say this: you’re consistent in your position and I respect that. I just don’t think many people share the view that people getting physically torn apart by munitions is better than have a less-comfortable, possibly borderline, life.
My point exactly. It lasted 12 days. How much did it cost? How much you think would cost 5 years of war with Iran? And how much did sanctions cost Iranians (economy + lives) past 40 years. Afghanistan war costed 2t for 20 years of war. That number would be reached withing months in a war with Iran.
It also makes it harder to build weapons for example. Ruzzians for example rely on western chips and other parts for their weapon systems and due to the sanctions they need to smuggle those parts, which makes it more expansive for them.
Telling people to throw their lives away to provoke a civil war is one of the nastiest rhetorical tricks you hear when people talk about oppressive regimes.
In basically every case a bad government is preferable to the destruction, chaos and death a civil war brings. "Just overthrow your government" is ridiculous plea.
It worked pretty well for most east bloc countries. Granted, they had to wait until the Soviet Union was weak to break away, but couldn't sanctions be one of the tools to get there faster?
I did say "most", and I stand by that. Look at most of Central Europe, the Baltics, Ukraine...
Even the Asian parts of the USSR mostly had peaceful transitions into independence (and often into the hands of new semi-dictators, but that's beside the point).
>It worked pretty well for most east bloc countries.
And for some it worked out pretty badly. Hungarians rebeled against communism, but that rebellion was put down brutally.
You are correct that towards the end of the Soviet Union many of the client states and Russia itself had popular uprisings which succeeded, but that that point the Communist Government was already failing.
My point is not that no popular uprising has ever worked or that outside pressure can not force the end of some regime, but that telling people that they need to take up arms against their government is an insane proposition.
> And if your're someone sliding into nasty leadership / government situation you have to realize there will be a consequence to that and that the perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.
Especially if you’ve just been dumb enough to re-elect that nasty leadership / government on behalf of (and at the behest of) the people who benefit off having that ruling party in office.
No it's also just to deny those countries resources to come after the rest of us.
We don't sell them weapons, and we try to limit dual-use technology from being freely available.
Defense tech uses a lot of open source software and commercially available software - letting a regime simply buy technological advantage it can't cultivate is a good way to lose that advantage and then also lose the culture which can create it.
> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
Iranians had several mass uprisings that were suppressed by the military. And the top military and religious authorities in Iran have no problems whatsoever living well, even with all the sanctions.
Just like the Russian elites, btw. They can't visit France as easily anymore, but there's always Dubai available. That can't care less where your money comes from.
I feel for you OP. Everyone on here clearly aware that they have no influence over their own government seem to instantly lack empathy for your situation because they saw the word Iran.
It’s all pretty moronic if I’m honest. I really hope things get better for you.
Living in Europe, I don't give a damn about US sanctions. However, I block traffic from Iran on all my servers for the simple reason that almost all attacks on my website (and if you run a semi-popular website, you get attacked on a daily basis) come from Iran, Russia or China.
I am very sorry that this kind of action affects you personally, as I am sure you have nothing to do with these attacks. However, filtering out Iranian, Russian and Chinese traffic in its entirety is the only way to protect my server from the majority of DoS and hacking attempts.
One of my coworkers, a network specialist, compares IP restrictions to a garden fence. They’re enough to stop casual passersby, but anyone determined will find a way over or around it.
The reality, though, is that the majority of attack attempts are by casual passersby.
No, this method isn't going to stop a determined attacker that is specifically targeting you, but that doesn't mean blocking the lower-effort stuff has no value.
I personally know a woman from Iran. She has a PhD in Data Science. She works and lives in the EU. Her mindset is that of an educated European person.
She does not support the current Iranian government, and neither do most of the people in Iran, according to her. But publicly expressing disagreement in Iran could have you disappear. That's why people are afraid to protest and speak out.
Regarding sanctions, it's not that hard to find and buy products from Iran. At least in the EU. What happens is neighboring countries import raw material from Iran, then put a label "Made in Pakistan", for example, and sell it. But those who know, can easily find and buy things like Iranian rice and spices.
The website of an American company returned a blank page to me. I thought that they must have made a mistake and that it would be fixed soon. Several days later it was still returning a blank page, so I sent them an email in case they didn't know. It turns out that they don't want to deal with the laws of other countries (EU's GDPR, etc.) and so simply return a blank page for anyone visiting from outside America. A "451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons" or some other type of explanation would have been less confusing than the blank page.
Iran has been under sanctions for a long time. I remember working for unnamed US server manufacturer back in 09 and we had a list of countries by our desks to remember if anyone ever called in from there, or even mentioned working there during the call.
Clear example that hosting (github, websites, etc) as well as social media being US based is a form of soft power that the US has which largely goes unchallenged.
While I do agree with the sanctions against Iran for their aid to Russia in their aggression towards Ukraine, It's not like the US is completely innocent from funding or arming aggressors across the globe. How can the software world be mobilized to sanction the US for this? It can't and it won't because lots of the people in tech within the anglosphere have a vested interest in the US maintaining its power
Can someone give me an explanation for why Mike Cardwell, who lives in the UK, blocks Iranian IPs for “your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.” but does not block US or UK IPs for their decision to arm Israel?
The answer would seem to me to be racism – he values Ukrainian lives more than Palestinians and considers non-white citizens in non-democratic countries responsible for their country’s actions, but white citizens of democracies innocent.
I’m not sure if you’re actually asking or not, but in case you want to hear an answer, it’s because Israel is considered to be defending itself after a horrible attack, not that dissimilar to Ukraine really in some people’s view (me included). This goes back to a worldview where residents of a country share a portion of the blame for their country’s actions. This view is not universal, but has a certain mindshare (again, myself included), and if you imagine it fair for residents of a place to share the fate caused by the cumulative actions of that place, it’s not a big stretch to see how Israel’s actions can be considered natural and just by some, and so can the sanctions against residents of Iran and Russia.
The vast majority of the world including the ICC and the UN does not consider Israel to be defending itself. By your own logic, Israelis are culpable for the genocide and land theft committed by their government.
I believe “vast manority” may be a stretch; do you happen to know if there’s a way to quantify that? In my bubble, almost everyone that I personally know and who generally has reasonable beliefs, is on the Israel’s side of this conflict.
It's a sad story all round. I hope the world gets more decentralised, so that people get less caught up in the politics of others.
I can't remember the exact quote, about world war 1 or 2, but it was along the lines of "war is when people who don't know each other fight, for people who do know each other". Hits hard.
It's not looking too likely. You have Google's planned app developer verification, the UK's Online Safety Act, the EU's plans to interfere with E2EE, EU privacy rules causing sites to be riddled with popups, money laundering rules making banking increasingly more tedious, power concentrated in the hands of a few nation-state sized tech companies, countries becoming more authoritarian even in the West.
As an anecdotal example, I'm currently living/travelling between various EU countries, where a few years ago I would have expected a great deal of online freedom. Instead I now have to constantly change my VPN exit point to get around various restrictions depending on what site I'm using and what they have decided to block based on location.
If we can't even get these things right in the so-called free democracies of the West, what hope is there for the world in general? I'd like to be optimistic about this, but it's hard to find reasons to be.
These sanctions are not really effective. I think Cuba is the country that has had them for the most amount of time and... Nothing changed. Instead they force them to develop in house tech which may be better for them in the long term
The sanctions on the Mullah regime have prevented financing of more proxies. There is a direct correlation between loosening enforcement and lifting such sanctions and increased support for Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. It's preposterous to claim that they do not work.
You might say that, but the proxies weren't so keen on saving their citizens' lives either. Bashar Assad killed 600'000 of his own citizens. Hamas uses hospitals and UN schools as their command centers. Hezbollah has underground tunnels under civilian infrastructure where their leaders hide. The Iranian government assists with and finances the bombing on Jewish people all over the world. I wouldn't start pointing fingers so soon.
1. Hamas, an Iranian proxy, attacked Israel on October 7th 2023. Until that time, the death toll in the 100 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict was about 10k Israels to 40k Palestinians. It since became 12k Israelis to 110k Palestinians.
I don't think that proxy fulfilled its intention.
2. Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, attacked Israel on October 8th in support of Hamas. The ensuing war killed about 4k Lebanese. That proxy, too, seems to have failed in its mission to reduce the death tol..
3. The Houthis, yet another Iranian proxy, attacked Israel in support of Gaza. Since then, Israeli counter attacks killed several hundreds in Yemen. Not good.
Now these proxies are heavily damaged, deprived of most strategic capabilities and the death toll in the ensuing battles dwarfed all of the past deaths in the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Sorry, it is not possible for Cuba to develop any sort of functioning in-house tech with a complete economic embargo. US also "pays" Cuba less than the cost of a NY apartment for its "leased" huge naval base - Guantanamo - the price of which has never changed since the original agreement taken at gun-point.
Answering that specific question, 98 jumped up 16% this spring and... that's it. Except for that, it's an ordinary curve compared to, say, 5 years ago. And that's mostly the result of actually bombing the refineries.
And yes, if US and EU were serious about helping Ukraine win, this would have already happened back in 2022. Or better yet, back in 2014.
As it is, US & EU sanctions seem to be more of a theater mostly for the benefit of the population of those countries, so that their politicians can sincerely say that they "support Ukraine".
Depends on the claim - some are, some aren't. The problem obviously exists, but the coverup is good enough to make lots of people think that the war happens on another planet and doesn't affect them (e.g. gasoline export ban).
Let's not kid ourselves. Russia is still killing Ukrainians right now. They're still occupying Ukraine's land right now. Is this what "work" looks like in your dictionary?
> Ask a russian about the price of fuel.
Oh I see. In your dictionary a working solution is not to stop the war or get lands back, but to ensure average Russian people suffer. Never mind then.
Oil is how Russia funds their war-machine. Bombing refineries makes it harder and less sustainable to keep the war going. It's not about making civilians suffer when you literally need to pressure the enemy into stopping the war by blowing up their infrastructure.
The only reasonable definition of "work" is "stop the thing that motivated the sanction from happening". With that definition, sanctions rarely work (or if they do, not in a very effective way). Russia is still at war with Ukraine. Iran is still developing nuclear weapons. North Korea did develop nuclear weapons.
This is not true. The sanctions definitely hurt countries like Cuba or Russia. They have a far harder time growing their economy. Cuba is stuck in the last century and often has total blackouts that last for days. Russia needs to beg countries like Iran or North Korea now for imports.
Russian economy is booming actually, thanks to continued purchasing of oil and gas by Europe and other parts of the world, and the sanctions that block capital outflow out of the country.
Mostly the military, from what I hear. The rest of the economy is in shambles [1].
No matter what: once the war in Ukraine is over by whatever solution, it's going to get nasty. Either Putin (or, more likely, his successor - the dude is old and it's by far not sure if he will be able to stay in power should the war end up bad for Russia) manages to turn around the economy once again from producing tanks and other instruments of war to a regular economy, or they'll keep it that way... and attack another country with all that firepower.
There's a trickle down effect from it, same as with all massive government spending. Those factory workers who now have cushy jobs with large paychecks assembling tanks and cruise missiles then go and spend that money on other things.
Yet the ruling elites and military still enjoy decent quality of life, it´s mostly the ordinary people who suffer. In case of Russia that´s okay since large parts of the population genuinely support the war, but I´m not so sure about Iran and Cuba, where most are not supportive of their governments anyway.
The point isn't necessarily to make leadership suffer, but rather to prevent suffering of everyone who might be threatened by a strong Cuba/Iran/North Korea
In case of Cuba I think the sanctions regime is in part motivated by vindictiveness and in part to make an example for other nations in the americas of what happens when you evade US hegemony..
If the sanctions weren't effective Russia wouldn't be insisting on the lifting of the sanctions as a part of any Ukrainian deal.
The sanctions significantly slow down Russian development and are more and more making it into just a mineral mining satellite of China. With time the weakened Russia would just split, and the large eastern part will go to China. Some midparts, with Turkic speaking population may even fall into Turkey orbit. Without the oil and gas rich East, the European part of Russia will be just a destitute village on the far margins of civilized Europe as it had been for centuries in the past.
> If the sanctions weren't effective Russia wouldn't be insisting on the lifting of the sanctions as a part of any Ukrainian deal.
If the sanctions were effective Russia wouldn't be offering entirely one-sided deals that it knows nobody is going to accept, because it would be desperate enough to get those sanctions lifted that it would actually have to concede something in a deal.
Sanctions don't prevent the short-term behavior. Russia thinks that it is winning in Ukraine - thus the one-sided deals, it isn't about the other side accepting it, for Russia it is about Russia forcing such a deal, and it always includes lifting of the sanctions as a key element of a deal that Russia is trying to force because even with traditional lack of long-term vision they understand that the sanctions are crippling the country. They think that winning the war, forcing such a one-sided deal, is the only way to get the sanctions lifted "cleanly", and any deal with concessions, etc. would look less than victorious and would probably have the sanctions lift incomplete/incremental and boggled down with conditions, etc.
This works as designed. Sanctions like these are meant to piss off the people living in terrorist states so that you either rise up and rid yourself of all terrorist roots or you accept that the rest of the world doesn’t want to play ball with terrorists or terrorist enablers.
Have you ever risen up against an authoritarian government yourself?
I find that a lot of Westerners seem to have what I can only charitably describe as "romantic notions" of an uprising. Americans perhaps the most because of their national mythology around the Independence War.
I don't know. If I would run "docker run hello-world" and got and error "403" because I'm from Iran, I would be more pissed at US for making my life harder.
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unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian. For years London was welcoming russian oligarhs with their stolen money. Putin was invited to Finland even after 2014 invasion of Crimea. But you fuckers decided to ipmlement sanctions only after the 2022. So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine. Absolutely disgusting. Supposedly Finland continues to buy russian minerals still, but as a russian I cannot cross the border with Finland, even if I have a visa.
> unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian
> So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine.
Just stay at home then, whats the problem? If you are so pissed with the West then why is it a problem that you cannot come here? Just stay in Russia then.
The reality is simply a mirror of the same arguments on OPs side.
Just like it's not the people it's the government and their policies, there, it's not the people, but the government and the policies here.
I remember having compliance trainings that explicitly spelled out sanctioned countries. They are being enforced by compliance and legal departments in every company. There's nothing personal on either side here.
A friend of mine, originally from Iran but now a Canadian citizen, was stopped at the border during a recent visit by CBP. They interrogated him, scanned his phone, found some EE paper, insinuated that he makes bombs and is a terrorist, and sent him back to Canada. The US' treatment of Iranians is quite appalling.
This discussion leans against sanctions, and I feel a bit uneasy about this. There are some good arguments, but still... can I try to offer a different point of view?
I grew up in a country occupied by Russians. I really feel for the Ukrainians. Currently, there seems to be a social contract between Putin and middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg - they will let him bomb Ukrainian civilians, as long as he shields them from getting really hurt by that war. They can continue living pretty comfortably, as long as they go along with it. To me, this just feels wrong. Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience. But I believe that ultimately, citizens have the responsibility for what their country is doing. And if what their country is doing is destroying another country, I am OK with making them feel a bit of heat.
I don't know that much about Iran, but the part I know is that they indeed make drones that pound Ukrainians, including their schools and hospitals. Do I feel certain sympathy for Iranian commoners, who might not make those drones voluntarily? Sure. If I were in their place, I would probably not dare to resist, and I would make those drones. But I feel more sympathy with Ukrainians. And if anything could be done to make it harder for Iranians to make those drones, we should try it. Even if it's unlikely to succeed. Even if it makes the lives of innocent ordinary citizens harder. I hope that if I were an Iranian, I would at least understand that.
Let's say some random Russian in Moscow decides that they are not okay with it. What would you have them do, exactly? It's not even that the government is oppressive and will crack down, but an even bigger problem is that this oppressive government genuinely does have majority support of the population (as you note yourself!) - so what can they do even? And if the answer really is nothing, then how can they be responsible?
Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".
> so what can they do even? And if the answer really is nothing, then how can they be responsible?
I think I need to clarify what I mean by "responsibility". Many people confuse "you are responsible" with "you did this" or "it is your fault", but this is not exactly true. Let's say I am an alcoholic. I believe alcoholism is an affliction (some people might not agree with that, but that's another discussion - let's ignore that for now and assume it is an affliction). Therefore, I believe it is not my fault that I am an alcoholic - It was just bad luck that I was born that way. Yet, it is my responsibility to control my alcoholism. If I hurt someone while under the influence, I have to bear the consequences. Some might argue it is not entirely fair, and I would agree. But in my view, it is the closest we can get to fair. I have a better chance of controlling my alcoholism than some random person whose kids I might have killed while driving under the influence.
Alcoholism is an extreme example, but if you think about it for a while, being responsible for something that is not your fault is common. I see Russians responsible in the same way. Citizens of a state share collective responsibility for what their state is doing. And the fact that an individual might not be able to do anything about it does not change that.
> Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".
Why? This is not a court of law, where you have to prove guilt to inflict punishment. Sanctions are not a punishment (which is also why I do not like arguments about collective punishment used in this discussion and elsewhere). They are an attempt to pressure a state to stop causing harm. And if that attempt is based on somewhat reasonable assumptions (which, in the case of Russia and Iran, I think it is), I am fine with it.
And let's not forget it is a relatively peaceful attempt. Nazi Germany was "persuaded" by literally destroying them to the point of unconditional capitulation. And many people who had nothing to do with Hitler died. In an ideal world, they would not have, because it was not their fault and they could not do anything, but the problem is that we only have very crude ways of dissuading states from causing harm.
Your whole post is war propaganda to justify how "the enemy" needs to be blocked and attacked.
Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.
Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.
> Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.
I have. It was Russia. They are indeed blocked and I am not surprised.
> Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.
No, I won't block myself because my little country has not invaded anyone. If you are assuming I am an American, I am not.
> Even after leaving Iran, you still face many similar problems. [...] like having a bank account or simply opening a personal account on different services—you’ll encounter problems.
When you grant access/resources to expats of a hostile country, you have to limit them as if they were agents of the foreign country. Even if they like your country, you make them vulnerable to threats of torture/imprisonment of their loved ones back home.
> I am NOT asking for the removal of the sanctions targeted at the Islamic Republic of Iran.
All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government. Just a bullying tactic by the US with zero moral justifications, despite how it's framed by the media.
> All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government.
That requires some blind faith to believe. In that I don't think those applying them really expect overthrowing the government to result.
I would guess sanctions are designed to hurt and weaken, to make them less of an adversary. Although that's a harder sell, so doesn't get presented that way.
They may not be normal civilians, but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians. In other cases sanctions are targeted at government officials personally rather than the parts of government they influence, like targeting their side business, their stock, or their personal property.
There are sanctions targeting governments specifically, but usually government sanctions also target civilians. You can't exactly expect a sanctioned government to be transparent, it'll hide its government business under company names if you let it.
> many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians
By that definition Putin is a civilian.
More broadly: plenty of sanctions explicitly target military-only kit. Those are not “designed to hurt civilians,” though I guess a civilian working in a munitions factory might lose their job.
> but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials
That's the thing in a crony dictatorship: these people might not hold public office in name, but in practice they act under direct license, authority and orders of the dictator. We're already seeing this in Hungary, where close friends of the local de-facto-dictator Viktor Orban control almost all media and absolutely use that ownership to further entrench Orban's rule - it's hard to achieve political change when the media simply doesn't care about you.
And now, we're seeing the beginnings in the US, just from another angle - public kowtowing and open extortion, such as with Jimmy Kimmel who got cancelled after a threat to block a corporate merger, and it's not the first time either. And no, the fact that Disney walked back after their stock price took a decent dip doesn't mean that this is the last time such an event will take place.
Citation needed. As far is I know this is simply false. Different sanctions have different goals. Regime change is very rarely a goal. Often it is to reduce economic growth to keep/make the country weak, or to achieve some other goal. See for example sactions on India, which are definitely not meant to overthrow the indian government.
So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?
I’m aware there are consequences to sanctions, and the way they are implemented is often half-assed or hypocritical (e.g. the way that russian oil still flows) but to drop all sanctions…
Is that not like saying boycotts hurt employees who had nothing to do with the decisions so we should never boycott?
What does that mean? Like in a practical sense - russia declares war on ukraine… next step is? Move towards a multipolar equilibrium? How? How long does that take.
Yes ideally we’d live in a world where this bullshit doesn’t happen. But it does happen, so our choices are to respond with the tools we have NOW or not respond at all.
> So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?
That's what the US has been doing since forever, even actively participating in the war crimes.
If you think any of the stated reasons for the sanctions are real, I have a bridge to sell you.
So... it would be the best for you (and the rest of the world) to actually decouple from the USA and it's BigTech (and thus from their "pliceman of the world" mentality…)
It is time that democracies stop doing business with autocratic regimes. Not just some of them, because if everything is manufactured in china, which keeps doing business with iran and russia, it seems pointless.
At this point it should be obvious to everyone, that western money is (transitively) keeping all the worst regimes alive.
People stopped buying south African stuff, as an apartheid boycott, can we get some china boycott going?
To the comments that talk about Iranian politics: Iran under a monarchy will do well, perhaps even limited democracy. The monarchies of the Arab world seem to be doing well, and not by chance. Democracy alone is not good for any country in the long run imo.
What astonishes me is the ease of judgement - who is good and who is not.
Everyone is absolutely sure that country A is a doing a RIGHT (tm) thing,
while the country B is absolute evil. You have no idea about real reasons,
real facts and real feelings except those you've seen on tv or heard from
your own bubble. You are so smart, honest and independent that it smells.
"Of course YOU have to ... and ... and ... I know better than you guys.
Why you are so stupid and don't end this?" It is so easy to rule other
countries and tell them what they have to do, totally ignoring real problems
that lead to situation. It is so easy to be right, to judge and to discuss
things you have no fucking clue. And every person that is saying something
contradictory to your opinion is a stupid guy that is brainwashed. They
are all brainwashed! Their brain is destroyed by propaganda! Poor, stupid
people! We need to bring some democracy to them. Probably. If they do not
have some nukes or it would be too expensive. Anyway, thank you for reading.
It really sucks, the US should focus on liberating these people - in both Iran and Cuba the majority of people want to be free, and it would be easy to liberate them.
I talk to a few Iranians online. All very nice people. You'd think they had horns on their heads and cloven hooves the way certain people in the US talks about them.
Even the regime itself.. look I wouldn't to live there. But comparing it to somewhere like North Korea is ridiculous. Even by Middle Eastern standards it's not at the bottom.
The stupid thing about those indiscriminate sanctions is that it goes against the very values the West is pretending to defend. EU charter of Human Rights is explicit about condemning collective responsibility, universal declaration of human rights demands justice to be applied reasonably and individually, yet here we are: punishing people without trial.
Do those sanctions even work? North Korea still builds nuclear weapons, Cuba still has a communist government, Iran is still a theocratic regime. You don’t start revolution by trade embargo. You start it by sending more jeans and heavy metal records.
Well, you mentioned "North Korea still builds nuclear weapons," but didn't mention Iran having them. So, something worked. It wasn't 100% just sanctions... But the sanctions certainly hampered their ability to acquire effective air defense.
(The NK sanctions were too late — NK had already started nuclear weapons testing before the sanctions were levied.)
Off the top of my head: I don't think the USSR is still around, and it largely collapsed due to economic pressure; Libya abandoned its nuclear program due to sanctions; and apartheid in South Africa ended largely due to sanctions.
They don't always work, but I've never heard of jeans and heavy metal working either, as nice as that would be. Belarus has plenty of both, but Lukashenko's been in power since the 90s.
> But the sanctions certainly hampered their ability to acquire effective air defense.
Effective air defense against military superpower (and they were effectively fighting against American technology) is something very hard to build, with or without sanctions. Ukraine is a good proof: Russia was denied air superiority using manned aircrafts but they still manage to inflict significant damage with missiles and drones.
> I don't think the USSR is still around, and it largely collapsed due to economic pressure
It wasn’t external pressure at all. Soviet Union had everything to be self-sustainable (e.g. Russia and Ukraine have proven later that in agriculture it’s absolutely possible). They failed to execute transition to regulated market economy the way China did. Gorbachev thought democracy goes first (the entire Warsaw bloc collapsed thanks to “blue jeans” - KGB and Stasi feared Western culture the most, and the West was ready to send more of it).
Denying external economic pressure affecting the USSR seems... Wishful, in a certain direction. As does denying that sanctions have helped prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, which it has clearly been working on for a very long time, and repeatedly failing to acquire.
Regardless, you don't have an answer to Libya's nuclear program being shut down due to sanctions, and South African apartheid ending due to sanctions. Do sanctions have a 100% success rate? No. But they have a much higher success rate than jeans and heavy metal.
Sanctions work, but not in the way that is the common public perception. The expectation isn’t that Russia or whoever falls apart a few weeks after we lock them out of Visa payment rails or whatever. The reality is that the sanctions stifle economic growth and that effect is compounding. Even if sanctions only reduce growth by 1 percentage point, after ~19 years your economy is already 20% smaller than it would be without sanctions and that is measurable. From a national security perspective, it makes Russia a lot less concerning if their industrial output is 20% less. Now imagine trying to start a software business in Iran, the stifling effect is way higher than a measly percentage point. Note that I’m not making a moral judgement, I’m simply sharing my understanding of sanctions.
> From a national security perspective, it makes Russia a lot less concerning if their industrial output is 20% less
Russian military industrial output has significantly increased and more importantly they demonstrated the ability to scale it up very quickly. The economy has grown during the war - the effects of the sanctions may become painful in the long term only if they will stay for decades, which is unlikely.
I think the theory is that the powers that be will feel bad for their citizens or that the citizens will revolt. Neither of those happen in practice though.
Very sad to see this. Most educated Iranians I've met hate Islam and their government that supports its extreme ideologies. I hope the people in this world develop the sense of morality without associating it with any religion or culture, for that's the true purpose of being compassionate humans.
The last time I came across the name Beej, there used to be a book/article called Beej's guide for network socket programming. If that's you, thanks for everything!
Yes, you should own your data and do not trust companies. There are a lot o cases when SaS companies used their position to squeeze money from customers. If they are allow do do so, they also be used by their governments to push on other governments.
This crap is why everyone should fear the Apple-like centralisation for software distribution options that other companies like Google and Microsoft are inching towards.
Now it's just Iran/Cuba/North Korea, but you're essentially letting the increasingly aggressive American government decide who can or cannot publish software. The Americans are not afraid of adding their political enemies from allied countries to the sanction list, as can be seen when they decided to go after the judge in the Israel genocide case. Who knows who will be next now that they're blatantly cracking down on free speech.
The Apple app store/Google Play/Microsoft Store are great conveniences, but they must never be the only way to access software on your device. Apple's EU exception falls short for still requiring an Apple account to pay fees that no judge will accept when the first lawsuit hits. Sure, Epic Games has offered to pay those fees just to spite Apple, but Epic can only pay those fees to people they're allowed to pay.
Well, the EU has about half a billion people, India and China about 1.5 billion people - all larger markets (by headcount) than the US domestic market, so nothing that any American company can just choose to ignore.
Either of these three markets can set rules on what device manufacturers have to do in order to be allowed to access the market, and they all use that power - China is particularly infamous (with Apple having had to set up a dedicated iCloud instance to which the Chinese government may or may not have a backdoor), India more focuses on the share of production that happens in China, and the EU is seriously tightening the screws on American companies when it comes to arbitrarily denying store access.
> I came to the realization that Microsoft deleted my app, my developer account, and all those comments on my app supporting me and suggesting ideas on how to improve the program. I tried to contact the support and email whoever I could, but I was ghosted.
I think this is the most insidious part. These companies (on which you often depend for very important things, whether you want or not) will just ban you and delete your stuff, or even shadowban you, without (1) so much as an explanation beyond the Orwellian "you have violated our terms and conditions", and without (2) any possibility of appeal or customer support whatsoever.
This goes for google, discord, reddit, YouTube, github, notion, etc etc etc.
Work as design. Ali Khamenei is YOUR, not USA leader. His confrontation politic is done in behalf of YOU and he mange YOUR efforts and resources (ex. taxes). If you want to work with democratic country your country have to change Iran political system.
If anyone is curious what happens if you open that website from a Russian IP:
> Russian IPs are blocked here, due to your unjust and unprovoked War against Ukraine. You are responsible for the rape, kidnap and massacre of innocent civilians.
Which is to me an absolutely bonkers statement, clearly made by someone who has never even tried to research anything about my country. Someone who was clearly born into a democratic society and has lived their whole life in it. And has probably never traveled to countries with oppressive regimes and never made any friends there.
the comments on the gist are rough. Must we saturate every aspect of our lives with Politics?
Yes it's annoying that people disabled your access because of your location, but at the end of the day it is what it is. US companies get hefty fines if they do business with Iran.
Thanks for sharing OP. The “just leave Iran” replies reflect a lack of openness to other cultures. Leaving your country isn’t just logistics, it’s being rooted where you were born. And there’s nothing wrong with that, who are we to judge someone for where they come from?
This is a complicated subject. I am a SaaS founder/owner and I run into these issues regularly. Everything below is not specifically about Iran (in fact, most of my thinking is inspired by events from recent years caused by another country), but still applies.
First, there is the law, and many jurisdictions forbid me from providing any services to individuals and/or businesses in certain countries. See other comments here for details, but these are serious matters.
Second, there is my moral beliefs. I go through life trying to draw a moral line and if something is beyond that line, I take action. Your line might be different. You might be a forever-whataboutist, avoiding taking any action and always saying "but what about X or Y?", trying to point out that I am inconsistent in my actions or beliefs. Well I don't subscribe to whataboutism and I believe it is the cause of much of today's world problems. So I refuse to provide service to some countries, because I cannot stand idly while genocide happens. If your country is involved in genocide, target killing of civilians, or actively helps another country to do so, I do not want to deal with you.
Some will say that individuals are not responsible for actions of their countries. I disagree. For better or worse, the passport you hold brings with it certain benefits and obligations, and ties you to a country. That's how we agreed to run this world. If your country commits horrific crimes, it's time to take action: oppose the authorities, escape the country, apply for asylum, renounce your citizenship. Yes, I know all these are unpleasant and dangerous. So are the bombs your country is dropping onto my friends right now. Taking the "but individuals are not responsible" stance means that I have to watch as some people from countries that are killing my friends live well in safe places, standing on the sidelines and waiting things out, while keeping the option to return to their country once things blow over. Writing blog posts about the finer points of modern Apple design while people get raped and murdered by the army of their country. I don't feel that is right. There must be consequences if your country commits atrocities. Don't like the consequences? Don't let your country get to the point that it commits atrocities.
Dude there are crimes everywhere. Here we're fighting chat control and other surveillance mechanisms being implemented. I don't think there's a "neutral ground" to be found - just allies and enemies.
"I am not responsible for the actions of my government, but you, the people who ban me, are responsible for the actions of your government, who made it illegal to transact with me."
Your country is sanctioned. You are asking people to put their own freedom at stake so that you can have a Notion account.
Iran is supplying Russia with drones to attack Ukraine. The sanctions against Iran might be hurting people who do not deserve it, but they aren't some unreasonable act of aggression and you are complaining about your Notion account?
Hit me in the feels. There used to be an amateur Russian beatmaker who I used to follow, it was so sad to see him drop off similarly. His paypal was cut off. I used to watch his IG lives a lot, loved the way he used to develop his beats. Very novel.
Do I understand right that if I use a cafe's free wifi, and the cafe's suspiciously cheap service provider routes the connection through Iran so it appears as if my connection is coming from that country, then GitLab and perhaps other companies will ban my account?
The only thing they can do is to make dictators more popular and provide them with an excuse for their economic and political failures.
When someone in Cuba is denied something because of Sanctions, they are not going to blame the Castro family, they are going to think, "Hey, Fidel was always right! those Americans are just a bunch of sadist psychopaths that are trying to destroy my country.
In general, a good rule of thumb in life, is that whatever policy people like John McCain or Lindsey Graham defend, the right position is the exact opposite of theirs.
Ironically McCain was the last republican who actually worked with the other side. The current US regime is hard-line party people with zero ability to compromise.
But what you're saying is that sanctions are more of a marketing issue when it comes to who is blamed?
This is an absolutely mental take assigning blame on every civilian of a country. Sadly in probably his worst take, Linus Torvalds also said something in these lines while banning all Russian developers. While the action could be justified, this attitude is never reasonable, and I say that as a Finn with the same opinion about Putin's war of aggression as Linus has.
When a service drops a customer for _any_ reason, even if it was the customers own fault, it should become the absolute norm and a the minimum thing that the service would trigger the same thing they'd do when if the user triggered a manual data export off the service. Even for something relatively simple, like for example I didn't log in to my Spotify account for x amount of years and they disabled my account. The only way I could get my collected albums back was through support, and if I had been unlucky, they'd just deleted all my data.
This is NOT something that should be the user's responsibility. There is no norm for automating data exports off services, hell even Google makes you go through menus every time. Maybe time for EU to be useful again?
That was a difficult and frustrating reading! I never imagined that sanctions could hit individuals this hard, especially on the digital side. You get banned from outside and blocked from inside. You can read about The Internet situation inside Iran here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025954
There was a lot of interesting stuff went into the article:
1. Microsoft:
> Back when I was a student, I got access to the Microsoft Imagine, and as a result, I got access to the Microsoft Store as a developer.
Then:
> Microsoft deleted my app, my developer account, and all those comments on my app supporting me and suggesting ideas on how to improve the program.. but I assume it's because of the sanctions.
Here, I got a novice question: Knowing this individual is from a sanctioned country, Why you are allowing him in the first place to put a lot of work to build an app but, after having some success, you destroyed him entirely?!
Also, suggesting ideas on how to improve the program after deleting my account is one of the most hilarious things I have ever read. It is a strong indicator that these emails are just templates built automatically with no soul or human touch. Yes, you heard it right: you are just a row in a table!.. but you still manage to have a PRIMARY_KEY!
2. Notion:
> Since It has been suspended permanently, there's still no option to get it back even by going outside those countries. Sorry for the Inconvenience. Take care.
Same as above! Why letting me build a base of data then one day, you delete it permanently without prior notice or the ability to export it then you apologize for the Inconvenience and tell me to take care of myself!
3. Mike Cardwell:
> I read hackernews on a daily basis
Oh, this made me relief a little bit! I hope Hacker News is neither being banned in any country nor blocking traffic from any country.
> Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
Blaming then punishing an ordinary citizen for arming a foreign country to kill civilians without clear evidence is so dumb.
Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia.
4. GitHub:
> However, later, GitHub announced that github is now available in Iran
TIL about this 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons status code. I won't ever return this code for my websites, everybody, from everywhere, is welcome :)
Finally, I have a dream.. the dream to live to the day where a true open internet sees the light where the entire world have unrestricted access to the same online resources.
the people are not fundamentally far from their government. this is true for U.S where they elected Donald Trump or Israel that elected Netanyahu.
for Iranians it's the same. and it's ground truth.
the sanctions actually are designed to push the people of Iran to change their mind and overthrow their gov. it's easier than starting a full-blown war against Iranian that will cause damage or kill U.S soldiers' lives. the sanctions are deliberately implemented to target the people and force them to follow the will of the whom established them.
How ironic is it that by pretending to promote freedom, some people actually do more harm than anything else, by having what is to me a racist view of people in other countries (ie all Iranian are the same and have the same political view as the head).
Do they not understand that, instead of helping these people connect to the outside world and improve their life and their country, they are actually increasing the poor conditions and helping the regimes they are fighting against?
Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US, and not everyone in Iran is Iranian (or even Arab); so sanctions are not “racist”, they’re levied against political leadership.
The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders.
Not sure if it has worked, but I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.
Sanctions absolutely do apply to Iranians (even dual citizens) anywhere in the world, albeit less intensively.
> not everyone in Iran is Iranian
Swing and a miss. Sanctions are primarily against Iranian nationals, and extend to any non-Iranian who violated the sanctions. If you visit Iran as an American/Chinese/Antractican you don't automatically end up sanctioned.
> The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders
And that makes it okay? Nuking civilians can also be a tactic to pressure the leaders into surrender. And nukes may take fewer lives than decades of intense sanctions.
There is some nuance here. While some "sanctions" may not be applicable, the United States has a concept called deemed export, where exposing a non-US Person (~non-citizen with no green card) to technologies in the US, for example during the course of regular employment, can be problematic. Depending on the foreign citizen's nationality, the level of exposure that is deemed problematic can vary. For Iranian citizens, it is basically almost everything unless open-source. This is why all FANGs regularly apply for a deemed export license before commencing employment of foreign individuals with problematic nationalities.
No, absolutely not. The significant part of the proceeds from that flow aren’t going into economy (specifics of selling oil to India).
The political situation is stable for following reasons:
1. Primary beneficiaries of military spending are small industrial towns and working class. They earn a lot of money now and significant part of it is invested in property or spent on domestic products. The inequality has reduced since the start of war, not something you would expect from oligarchic capitalism.
2. It became much easier to eliminate political opposition. Thousands have left the country, some were killed, many jailed under new wartime legislation.
3. There’s general perception that Russia is winning and it’s already in the endgame (which is true - the West lost the war in the first year).
I think that idea sucks ass because it promotes violence at the very least. What would happen in the US were it to happen to them? I want to see the American population putting pressure on these so-called leaders. Same goes to EU. Same goes to UK.
As for sanctions:
> Iran is not the only example in which sanctions have resulted in unintended consequences. Since 1970, unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. have achieved foreign policy goals in just about 13% of cases, according to one study. A recent Congressional Research report evaluating U.S. sanctions in Venezuela found that sanctions “exacerbated an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis caused by government mismanagement and corruption that has promoted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” U.S. sanctions also exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Korea, reported UNICEF, putting 60,000 vulnerable children at risk of starvation due to limited humanitarian aid.
Please evaluate the historical failure of sanctions. As someone else have mentioned, Putin is happy despite the sanctions, but everyone else is not. These sanctions (from US, EU, etc.) hurt the people, not the people in the Governments. Come on, for the current price of <include basic food that used to be cheap> I used to be able to buy at least 3-5x more BEFORE the sanctions. Talk about sanctions exacerbating economic crisis. They will never learn, I guess, unless intended, but if it is intended, then surely it goes against everything they claim to stand for, as someone else has already elaborated.
Values of Western countries: Bombing Children, Ra** women, bombing boats, bombing other countries, letting other countries bomb your "allies" (qatar). The US is the most warmongering state there is right now. Billions poured on Pissrael just for them to kill children and women.
That is perfectly fine. You are the customer and you can choose whom you will give your business to. My point is that companies should not be doing it because they instantly cut their potential customer base by half with every single act of activism they do. They should be focusing on business and nothing else. Politics, activism, whatever you want to call it, should be solely in the hands of the individual, not the corporations, whose sole purpose to exist is to do business with every possible customer they can in order to turn a profit.
Additionally, companies might be political in ways I might not care. It might be simply a non-factor when deciding whether I give them business or not. But the sheer fact they are politically active, so to speak, and don' focus solely on providing the best services for the best prices with the highest quality, is the red flag that instantly makes me wary of doing business with them in the first place.
> they instantly cut their potential customer base by half with every single act of activism
Not really? The implication is that every choice has a 50/50 split of support. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
> should be solely in the hands of the individual, not the corporations
The businesses in the article are doing what they did because of legal sanctions on iran. Not because they are making political choices about who to do business with.
But your description of what companies should be doing is describing unfettered psychopathic capitalism. Companies that will break every code of morality or decency as long as it’s technically legal. Chromium in the water? Go for it. Even legality is just a speed bumb. If you can get away with it? If you can bribe your way out of it? Why not do it!
I don’t want to live in that world. Unfortunately that’s pretty much the world we live in already and it shows.
OP, some context from the other side might be helpful.
Yes, there are fines for American companies if they do business with Iranians. That's how sanctions work as I'm sure you're aware. But the story doesn't stop there.
If an American finds out they are transacting with a sanctioned individual, or citizens of a sanctioned country like Iran or North Korea, the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison if they don't immediately cease all communication and break off contact. Hence why they ghost you and remove your data from prod. It sucks, but I would do the same thing in that situation. Nobody should be expected to take that risk.
That's why you have these experiences :(
This is partially true, but not the entirety of the story.
There are blanket sanction waivers (General License) by OFAC to allow certain things. There's also the possibility to get an OFAC license (as GitHub did.)
The real issue is there is little to no advantage (realistically no money to be gained from Iran) or even awareness (sometimes the cloud infrastructure bans Iran by default and you don't have enough users to even know that's the case to care.) The legal counsels would generally be conservative and advise against it; there needs to be someone from the business side, e.g. a product manager that cares enough to try to push back on the legal. There often is not or it is hard to justify the tiniest risk, hence you block.
From Wikipedia:
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
This kind of assumes Microsoft has not already tried to get an exception, or that its legal team considers it likely that an exception will be granted.
Various tools hosted on Github can be considered dual-use (i.e. AES/TLS libraries). Furthermore, Microsoft was made to apply sanctions against Karim Khan of the ICC for his involvement in investigating the genocide of Palestinians; I doubt Microsoft would be granted an exception so they can serve Hamas' greatest supporter after that.
I don't know if Microsoft has applied for any exceptions, but even if they did, I doubt they'd be able to get them. That's on top of the probability of bad publicity ("Microsoft wants to cut deal with Iran") and the lack of incentive you mentioned.
I explicitly mentioned GitHub, a Microsoft subsidiary, did in fact get an OFAC license. I was suggesting them as an example of how it can be done, not the other way around.
> I doubt Microsoft would be granted an exception so they can serve Hamas' greatest supporter after that.
"greatest"? Hardly. A charge was brought before the ICC from South Africa which required the ICC to investigate.
There are much bigger supporters of Hamas, the sanctions against employees of the ICC is just the current US government flexing its retribution muscles.
This is a bit of a tangent, but its a pet peve of mine
You are mixing up ICC and ICJ. South Africa brought a case to the ICJ. This is the country equivalent of suing another country so its not really forcing ICJ to investigate so much as south africa is presenting a case which icj will decide on (eventually anyways, icj is famous for being slow).
The ICC on the other hand makes its own decisions on who to investigate/charge. Countries can file referrals to it, but the ICC prosecutor has discretion on what they want to investigate and pursue.
[Anyone who thinks the ICC likes hamas should remember that the icc also filed charges against a hamas leader too. Its difficult for them to investigate hamas because they are only allowed to charge people who are currently alive]
I used to agree with this line of reasoning, but then I saw that the same process was used to block war crimes investigators from using Microsoft's software.
Does that affect the reasoning? Even though I think it is profoundly wrong, I am not going to risk 20 years in prison for something realistically nobody is going to care about.
> nobody is going to care about
Obviously untrue. Iran has 90 million citizens, and multitudes of that number do care out of principle. I am not trying to change your mind, but hope you would be more precise in your language next time to describe why you don’t care.
Sounds more like "nobody I care about is going to care about", which seems rather reasonable and eminently human. But maybe a useful increase in precision.
Rather "nobody with power is going to care".
Who said I don't care? I care a lot, I just don't care more than I care about staying out of federal prison. It would be one thing if you'd be carrying the torch and the public would be behind you if only you'd be so courageous. But that is a naive fantasy: I know, and you know, that you'd be hounded as a "terrorist", they would throw the book at you and throw away the key. Approximately 0.01% of your fellow citizens would even understand the issue, let alone be on your side.
Petition for change, sure. Complain in public. Protest. But don't martyr yourself for nothing.
First they came for the Communists, [..]
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...
Are you for real? Being unable to access github is not exactly comparable to rounding people up to be murdered.
Historically, the rounding-up were not meant to straight-up murder people, but to get rid of undesirables..
Now, if we read the original parent post wrote:
> [..] the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. [..] you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison if they don't immediately cease all communication and break off contact
That sounds a lot closer to "rounding-up" than "a strong attempt to prevent technology transfers supporting unwanted regimes."
Now for the kicker. Taking into context the US developments of the past 9 months, the people affected by such legal threats are a lot closer to the indiscriminate "rounding people up" part than to the "balanced and reasonable legal consequences" part.
Just a small thing to ponder about before blurting out things such as
> I am not going to risk 20 years in prison for something realistically nobody is going to care about
Yesterday, one might not have cared about communists being rounded up, today it might be "illegal" migrants being ICEed up, who knows what it will be tomorrow.
If you hear about someone getting actually punished for this then I would probably agree with you. But I (and I think everyone else in the thread) was talking about whether people in the US should risk that punishment in order to support our Iranian friends. OP would not do so and neither would I, because the risk is too great. But I've said repeatedly, I oppose the law, you can't then spin around and act like I'm advocating for rounding people up just because I don't think it's worth my while to break it.
If you want to break that law, go ahead, I will support you all the way, and you will end up in jail anyway.
Oh that's an easy one - at least in the US...
Democrats and anyone who has ever expressed an "anti-fascist/anti-fascism" opinion online - or attended a recent protest...
Their "regime" leadership has stated as much.
> Their "regime" leadership has stated as much.
That's the scary part. They are not even trying to hide anymore.
Except that didn't happen
https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...
I’m unclear as to why you think that article disproves the GP.
In your linked article Microsoft say they didn’t block “the ICC”, but also mention the “disconnection of an official”.
They were accused of blocking a single individual (the chief prosecutor), and the response is basically “we didnt block the whole organisation”?
Of course it did, it's been extensively covered in European newspapers and the article you linked doesn't even refute it happening. Microsoft is just twisting the truth to make themselves look less bad. Don't be so gullible.
Just a casual “pound-me-in-the-ass prison” top comment on HN (no this type of prison isn’t civilized or the mark of a mature criminal justice system or society).
Totally agree. But tbf you look at modern media and these things are still perpetuated. Just look at violence done on camera and off camera in TV shows and to whom. Which jokes are made and about whom - many don't even notice because it's so acceptable to treat a class, gender, etc a certain way that it doesn't even cross anybody's mind.
To be actually fair, the notion that OP's comment was referring to only men is entirely left to the reader to decide.
Women can be SA'd in prison by other prisoners, and additionally have to contend with the petty humiliations from guards taking unnecessary sexual turns that they wouldn't with men.
Yes, fair, but also keep in mind that 93% of American prisoners are men and 99% of rapists are men.
The problem is decidedly a male one just because of the demographics.
Obviously a terrible thing either way.
The specific turn of phrase used is an idiom stemming from a pop culture reference. I doubt it's meant in a gendered way.
Nor should a description of prison SA be considered an endorsement.
There are sexual predators that do pray on men and the sadistic types probably find their way to prison guards.
You have to figure out how to make Americans stop feeling schadenfreude. They love the idea that these thugs/criminals in prison are being subjected to such conditions. The cruelty is the point.
We simply love to inflict pain and suffering. This is why we circumcise, why we ear crop, tail dock, create animals, put people in solitary, etc.
In all of these situations if you want to do the right thing you need plausible deniability. Network block IPs from Iran, don't block VPNs, done, users from sanctioned countries can use your software but you're also going by the rule.
And that's generally what people do. Make a best effort, and then it is "don't ask, don't tell." Unless you have specific KYC rules in your industry.
This also has plausible deniability on the other side. If Iranian government thugs question a citizens VPN use to access subversive content (women's rights, LGBT content?), they can say it was to evade US sanctions, wether true or not.
Very relevant info I was not aware of
So should we (people outside US) sanction these companies, so that they put the same pressure on US government to stop forcing them from applying sanctions?
If you want to, sure. Kind of a side point, but that's not really what sanctions are for. It's more of an economic blockade, which stymies the growth of the country. Even if there is no regime change, it makes the country less of a threat over time.
I'd choose more carefully which fight you want to pick at the moment, tbh. There's a very long list of unreasonable behaviors to complain about.
Like these EU fines?
> Nobody should be expected to take that risk
I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
Their authoritarian militaristic government that doesn't care for human rights.
If you apply the same standard to the North Korean citizens, that they should not be expected to "take that risk", they your country's sanctions are pure collective punishment with no strategic value. You just tortured people for fun.
> I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries...
"You all" is a weird way of putting it. I don't support my government levying sanctions on these countries, but I have zero power to change it.
It's funny, as the gist author points out that he doesn't support the actions of the Islamic Republic, and has no power to change it because it's minority rule by a theocratic dictatorship.
But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.
I think sanctions are largely pointless if their stated goal is to get citizens to rise up and change their governments. Asking people to risk their lives (when you're not risking anything at all) is an awful thing to do, and this sort of thing isn't likely to work.
But it's probably not really that; the idea is to choke the economies of these countries so they can't do whatever Bad Thing the sanction-leviers are worried about (like developing nuclear weapons). How effective sanctions are at achieving that goal is an exercise left to the reader. And even if they are effective, there's a lot of collateral damage that hurts people who have no say in the matter.
> But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.
Not saying Obama’s foreign policy was perfect, but he did do the Iran nuclear deal which lifted some sanctions, and started the process of normalizing relations with Cuba. Like so many other things, these were immediately undone by his successor…
Obama acknowledging that the US overthrew an Iranian democracy for the benefit of oil companies definitely helped and could have ushered in a new era of understanding. Sadly, America then decided to elect someone with a toddler’s understanding of history and geopolitics which destroyed all that opportunity for a generation.
If you are referring to the Mosadegh story, that “apology” started with Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright trying to appease the current regime in Iran. Sadly, the “apology” itself is meddling with the historical facts. The Mosadegh government was no more or no less democratic than any other Prime Minister in that era. He had prorogued the parliament and waged a war against the Constitution and tried to elevate himself over the law and depose the ruling monarch. The Soviets and their affiliates and comrades on the ground supported the move (hoping to remove him next and extend the Bolshevik revolution to the Persian Gulf,) and the US and many Iranians did not want him to succeed.
In any case facts of the story are so brazenly changed in the apology’s telling of the story that regardless of which side you are on, in and of itself is a political interference against the will of the Iranian people. Please also note that the golden era of Iranian prosperity was the decade and a half when he was removed from power by the monarch.
Proroguing in parliaments is nothing new or anti-democratic. Canada had its parliament prorogued for the first 4 months of this year yet I didn't see calls for violent US-backed regime change and political suppression like there was under the American puppet Shah. Same with deposing a monarch (getting rid of monarchy is "anti-democratic" now?).
More information on the "Iranian golden age of prosperity" you mentioned:
>During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship",[1] or "one-man rule".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Imperial_S...
> Proroguing in parliaments is nothing new or anti-democratic.
He prorogued the parliament and was calling for a referendum to overthrow the monarchy against the Constitution. He was terminated by the monarch per Constitution, but he would not leave the post which resulted in uprising from both sides.
> During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship",[1] or "one-man rule".
Yeah if you read biased and debunked media and the Mullah supporters and comrades[1] (which is the source of Wokipedia) during the Cold War era, and by the way both sides conspired to get rid of the monarch for different reasons, you might believe such propaganda. If you'd talk to the actual industrious people who experienced it, you might get a very different perspective. Double digit annual GDP growth, #1 is number of international students in the US (not per capita, absolute.) So yes, golden era, indisputably.
[1] Interestingly, we see the same Marxist-Islamist alliance has now hit the West.
Strange that a massive revolution would break out in a country in the midst of such a golden era.
Strange that the mighty USSR broke down 10 years after that.
In retrospect, the astute mind would recognize the two may have just been interrelated. In fact, one may have been part of the plan to accomplish the other.
Are you seriously claiming that SAVAK wasn't a thing, or that it didn't employ torture? Or are you saying that the "golden era" justified such measures?
If you want to really argue this, you need to bring out specific claims one by one, as many have been either fake or overblown, or misattributed to SAVAK (acknowledged by the terrorists who taken over and are in charge now.) But in general, I do not believe it was anything out of the ordinary of the statecraft employed by the US or Britain in the Cold War era or arguably even the Bush era. In fact, post hoc, it is obvious they were too soft, as they released all these terrorists in the wild and let the country taken over. It is a failure of SAVAK and the security apparatus.
So yes, I would unequivocally argue to any extent the intelligence apparatus was actually operating, not only golden era objectively justifies those measures, but even for lots of the troublemakers themselves, turns out letting criminals loose to take over the country actually makes things worse; many of such Marxist-terrorists who claimed they were mistreated under the old regime were treated much much worse, or lost their lives, during the first years of the Mullah regime.
Trudeau was allowed by parliamentary rules to end parliament sessions for the year.
Mossadegh was not allowed to do it.
Long term foreign relationships cannot be built on top of four year presidential terms. Besides Israel, I'm not sure any country has continuity between recent administrations.
> Long term foreign relationships cannot be built on top of four year presidential terms.
Yes indeed, I agree.
Although: long term foreign relationships certainly can be un-built on top of four year presidential terms. See: current US president and rest-of-the-world.
Not just un-built, but poisoned for generations.
It's very rare that international relations get poisoned for generations without some ongoing work from both involved parties. Populations tend to forget things on the timeline of a decade or so.
The US can rebuild most of what they destroyed. It's gone now, and some of it they were already on the process of losing and can't get back. But no country is beyond reconstruction.
The Cold War would like to have a word with you. Yes, we gave them a McDonald's in the 90's, but things have only gotten worse over time.
And yet look at Vietnam-US relations.
As someone who grew up in Russia in the 90s, that McDonald's actually did wonders! The problem is that y'all figured that if you help people who say that they are "democrats" maintain control over the country, it'll all work out, somehow. What actually happened is that many of those people were grifters, some others idealistic incompetents who thought they had all the answers after reading Ayn Rand. On the whole, the people - who were very enthusiastic about the changes in late 80s - by mid-90s felt like they've been robbed, quite rightly so (read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia for some examples), by people now firmly associated with the West and with words such as "liberal". This is the big reason why Western-style liberal democracy very quickly became a marginalized minority political opinion in Russia, and why the likes of Putin could easily take power by promising people that they'll fix the mess.
You’re taking public comments ways too seriously.
Relations clearly aren’t poisoned since the EU and US are still closely collaborating on several fronts such as policy towards China and Ukraine.
Don’t mistake harsh words intended for domestic voters with reality.
It takes a week to remodel a kitchen and an hour to demolish it.
> but I have zero power to change it.
I was under the assumption that in Western democracies, citizens have a say their government and its enacted laws.
We can't unfortunately assert the same for people of Iran since they don't live in a democracy.
> but I have zero power to change it.
Well, it sounds like you should rise up against your government in violent revolution, then! After all, that's what's expected of Iranian, Cuban and Venezuelan people when the West destroys their countries with sanctions. Get to it!
Sanctions are not designed to coerce a populace into rebellion, in order to facilitate regime change.
Sanctions are designed to prevent an enemy government from profiting from our western economy. Sanctions are designed to bring hostile entities to the negotiation table. Sanctions curtail the worst behaviors of enemy nations because the sanctions deny those enemies money. Money is power. Little money = little power.
For the most part, sanctions are designed to be "something" in the infamous "SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!!!1!" mantra. They rarely achieve any of the goals that you enumerate, disproportionately inconveniencing regular citizens - government actors have the means and the know-how to work around them. But mob justice demands an eye for an eye, which is to say, someone must be made to suffer - and sanctions provide a way to do that, even if the people actually suffering are rarely morally responsible.
> I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government
That's a total non-sequitor.
GP stated that he will personally face prison time for going against the laws of his country.
Why would anyone risk jail time for you? For your countrymen? Why don't you risk jail time for some other country?
> You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
I think the argument is that you deprive belligerent companies from the resources they need to attack and harm others. The suffering their citizens endure is unfortunate, but why should Americans take the blame when Kim Jong Un is so obviously culpable?
>with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
That's the PR justification. The real one is "to hurt the countries and make them do as we say" and "because we can".
>with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government
The justification is reduced financial capacity for war and similar atrocities.
It doesn't reduce financial capacity for war. It moves the war dollars to different countries.
So without sanctions or a military strike, how will a nuclear program will evaporate? spontaneously? Or do you think that nuclear blackmail like the NK case is something that should be accepted
"We" don't do anything. We have a very out-of-touch government at the moment. A lot of us would like things to be very, very different.
Iran or United States?
Well I'm speaking as an American, but knowing quite a few Iranians and at the risk of speaking a bit too broadly for them, I'd say definitely both.
They are somewhat similar at the moment in some very unfortunate ways.
Yes.
Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good. From that perspective, sanctions aren’t meant as “torture for fun,” (as you put it) but as a way of creating pressure so governments change their behavior without having to resort to war. They’re basically a tool to raise the cost of bad actions and make it more attractive to adjust course.
At the same time, sanctions also work in other ways: they punish governments that break international norms, they send a signal to the world about what’s considered unacceptable, and they reaffirm shared values. That’s why they’re still used despite the harsh effects on ordinary people. They aren’t a perfect solution, but in Western thinking their role is to combine pressure, deterrence and symbolism, rather than just collective punishment for its own sake.
The poster above was pointing out that this is a double standard. You don't expect a US citizen to risk their livelihood to help an Iranian, but you then expect an Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood AND life to topple a regime that is doing things that the USA doesn't like.
So, you either take personal responsibility for enforcing sanctions yourself, or you admit that sanctions are a form of collective punishment for no reason. You can't have it both ways.
I don't think that's the premise, though. The idea is that the sanctioned government will, under pressure from the sanctions, change without the need for regular citizens to start some sort of armed uprising. (Though certainly an armed uprising is a possible outcome.)
Maybe the government will do this because the sanctions hurt their people enough to the point where things are too unstable for their liking. Maybe their economy becomes so trashed that the quality of the leaders' lives is impacted too much. Etc.
I don't think anyone in the West genuinely believes that sanctions will lead to citizen uprisings and overthrown governments. At least not after decades where no such successful uprisings have taken place in long-sanctioned countries like Iran.
But it should also be pretty clear that sanctions on countries like Iran aren't causing their governments to choose to change their behavior either. But I think arguably sanctions on Russia since they invaded Ukraine have had a useful effect. While the war hasn't stopped, it's possible that sanctions have slowed down Russia's progress quite a bit.
Not sure what the alternative is, though, aside from just giving up, lifting sanctions, and letting things develop where they may.
>It's possible that sanctions have slowed down Russia's progress quite a bit.
They did slow down all kinds of progress in Russia except the progress towards the full blown fascism and the progress of the military complex at the expence of its citizens
I think Western leaders are clear headed enough to understand that sanctions do not cause people to raise against their leaders. This has been known since bombing Germany and Japan in WWII (a different, more violent kind of sanctions). However sanctions weaken the adversary technologically, economically, and ultimately militarily. This is a pragmatic reason to enforce sanctions on the adversary.
That's reasonable for a "short term" military conflict, but if you keep a country under sanctions for decade and deliberately reduce the quality of life in that country, that's essentially a message to the population that they don't count.
It is far less of double standard than what you think. The key question is the legitimacy and mandate of the government. Western governments can claim legitimacy and mandate through democratic process (even if it is not perfect), which forms a social contract for their citizens to follow their laws. But if government is tyrannical and does not enjoy legitimacy then it's very different situation
I've never understood how that legitimacy extends to foreign policy though, especially the "coercive" kind.
Like, democratic elections obviously give the elected legitimacy to govern the populace that just elected them. But sanctions (or military interventions or wars) by their very definition are enacted on a different population, that had no democratic means to influence that decision.
UN sanctions are at least somewhat different because they are supposed to be decided by vote of the constituent countries.
But US sanctions are essentially "some people elected the President because they liked his views on domestic tax policy or trans people, therefore he gains the right to call airstrikes on some place halfway across the world or forbid the entire world from doing business with that place".
It makes no sense.
This goes into what is meant by "expected". There isn't a strong expectation on any one Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood and life. There is small encouragement, that they may choose to act on or ignore.
The leadership of countries under sanctions rarely change their behavior due to sanctions. However the effect on the population of the countries is that they turn against the countries applying the sanctions. It becomes easier for the leaders to sell the sanctions to their populace as the enemy action. If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it.
However, sanctions do have a symbolic value. And I also can't think of anything else short of military action to express displeasure.
Sanctions diminish a counties capacity to wage war.
No. Countries just will take money from their people. It diminishes people capacity to survive.
Both are true. Less access to materials, components, IP, and skilled labor all diminish a country's war fighting ability. There aren't unlimited funds you can take from citizens, and money you do take has effects on your labor force and talent pool.
Can't wage war effectively if you're starving.
Cite? Russia and Iran seem to not be giving too much of a shit. NK became a nuclear power under sanctions.
Would Russia perhaps have already conquered Ukraine without sanctions? Would Iran have destroyed Israel by now without sanctions? Would NK have become a nuclear power much earlier, and have a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons today, were it not for sanctions?
I don't know the answers to those questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was "yes".
> Iran is not the only example in which sanctions have resulted in unintended consequences. Since 1970, unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. have achieved foreign policy goals in just about 13% of cases, according to one study. A recent Congressional Research report evaluating U.S. sanctions in Venezuela found that sanctions “exacerbated an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis caused by government mismanagement and corruption that has promoted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” U.S. sanctions also exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Korea, reported UNICEF, putting 60,000 vulnerable children at risk of starvation due to limited humanitarian aid.
https://washingtondc.jhu.edu/news/do-sanctions-actually-work...
Russia lost (in a real sense), when their blitzkrieg of Kiev failed. From that point on, it’s just how much they turn the crank on the meat grinder that is trench warfare. It’s the nature of the bet that is inherent in Blitzkrieg. Ukraine/Russia is about who is going to lose more after that, not who can win. No one can win anymore.
Sanctions or lack thereof definitely impacts quality of life, but Putin put everything on a war economy footing pretty quickly anyway, and in that environment (especially in Russia), it’s suffering all the way down. And Russia excels at Suffering. Russia has oil too, and plenty of minerals, so if anything I expect by now they’re just getting stronger (economically), barring Ukraine wrecking their shit from time to time with a well placed drone strike.
Iran/Israel is an interesting question, but near as I can tell, Iran doesn’t really want to destroy Israel. They just want to make them as miserable as possible, and show they can ‘do harm’ to them when they need to prop up domestic support among the hardliners.
Israel provides a good scapegoat for the Iranian leadership.
With Israel gone, who is the Ayatollah going to use as the big bad? The Great Satan (USA) isn’t as tractable a target when they don’t have a designated ‘local’ they can go after, and if Iran actually meaningfully hurt the US (nuked the White House?), Iran is glass regardless of how otherwise strong they are.
NK got sanctions because they love playing the crazy-dude-with-a-gun-that-just-wants-a-handout, which is also why they eventually got nukes. They might have gotten nukes a little faster without sanctions, but sanctions definitely gave the hardliners huge leverage in the country. Hard to be friendly with the west (as a civilian!) when the west is literally openly starving the country, even if the leadership of your country is egging them on eh?
Near as I can tell, the USSR fell because of jeans and rock and roll. So yes, I think the ‘good guy’ sanctions BS is ultimately self defeating.
It can work if someone is either a) in a tenuous economic position, and b) the ‘sanctioningish’ behavior is not existential.
But any good authoritarian would rather throw their entire population under the bus ‘for the greater good’ than give in on something important for them…
And countries know how to deal with being at war (generally), even if it’s a weird only-semi-economic one.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think one aspect of sanctions that you are missing a bit is that they stifle growth (especially long-term) by forcing the victim to waste ressources on unwanted/inefficient industries or convoluted procurement.
Basically, you are hurting your own economy (non negligibly in the EU-Russia case for example!) to make sure that you outgrow the sanctioned opponent, making any future conflict more favorable for yourself.
There is a lot of evidence that this aspect works pretty well; even if you can sidestep the sanctions with middle-men or substitute local industry, this always comes with additional friction/costs (just consider German synth fuel industry during WW2-- that was an insane amount of ressources that could've gone into planes or tanks or somesuch instead).
For an example of sanctions directly effecting diplomatic outcomes, just consider Jordan over the Gulf wars: They stayed neutral during the first one (which Bush did NOT like), got sanctioned (without western citizens even noticing too much), suffered a lot from that, then during the second Iraq war they basically cooperated with the US (grudgingly!).
I think it is difficult to find many clear examples for this because sanctions typically mostly work as a threat, and being put in place is a kind of failure mode for them already.
How can Russia be economically stronger under sanctions? Before the war they were able to manufacture some goods (Volkswagen had a couple of factories. I think Unilever was making some washers/ dryers). This is all replaced by manufacturing of some weapons (which proven themselves so shitty in the war that no outside buyers want to buy them).
Russia went from selling their oil on the world market at competitive prices to selling to mostly 2 customers at heavily discounted prices. And Russia is going to use barter now because of financial sanctions on Russian oil buyers.
All Russian currency reserves are frozen, and the interest these reserves generate are given to Ukraine to buy weapons.
How is Russia economically better now than before Feb 2022?
It depends entirely on what you mean by ‘strength’, and ‘better’. Russia is ramping up its military industrial complex like no one’s business, for instance.
Manufacturing in general, actually.
Something which had essentially collapsed previously. Also, mining and other resource extraction - they’re necessarily rebuilding domestic production and becoming more independent.
Well, yeah, sure, they are building lots of shitty weapons. Meanwhile they cannot take over an adversary a third of its size. About resource extraction - the West stopped giving Russia extraction technology. Which means Russia is coasting on what they had up to 2022. Meaning in a few years Russia will do what it did in the 70s: over-extract its most productive fields. To see how that movie ended read Gaidar's Collapse of an Empire.
Russia has had to sell oil at a steep discount, which has cut into their revenue significantly. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been frozen/seized that can't be used to fund the war effort. Modern war is not just "beans and bullets”, and Russia pays upwards of 10 times the price for key components it needs for missiles, aviation, UAVs, tanks, artillery, air defense, etc. as well as quality manufacturing equipment needed.
Russian industry is operating at only 81% capacity, largely due to labor shortages, which make sense considering that about 1% of its labor force join the military every other month. Russia is losing tank barrels, artillery barrels, and infantry fighting vehicles more than 10 times faster than it can manufacture new ones. It will likely never be able to obtain a third rotary forge, required for barrel manufacture, to expand its capacity. It has almost entirely cannibalized its old, defunct Soviet era stock. They are being kept afloat by China, NK, and Iran, but with a much-reduced capacity, and often much lower quality. For example, Russia relies on China for 70-80% of its microchips, but China is dumping defective microchips on them with a 40% failure rate.
Sanctions have absolutely had significant, direct, measurable impacts on Russia’s ability to wage war and sustain war.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/21/half-of-russias-ai... https://jamestown.org/program/russia-exhausts-soviet-era-arm... https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-where-are-russias-... https://archive.ph/c17pk https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/is-202... https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-sanctions-have-reshaped-ru... https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme... https://osintforukraine.com/publications/microchips https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/18/russia_china_semicond...
I’m not saying the sanctions haven’t hurt, rather that when the war was at its decisive point (the first few days) they did not exist/were immaterial. Now they’re just doing more damage in an already damaging (and unwinnable) situation.
The biggest sanctions were adopted after the war started (and then the West kept piling up new sanctions every few months).
Are you suggesting the West should have put these harsh sanctions before the war? My recollection of Dec 2021 and Jan/Feb 2022 were that the West was trying to avoid inciting the crazy Russian dictator: Biden had two tele conferences with Putin in December, there were three meetings in Jan (OSCE - Russia, NATO - Russia, Lavrov - Blinken)
And I do not think the situation is unwinnable for the West (it is probably unwinnable for Ukraine as it will not be able to get its territory back). Russia is getting weaker with every man it loses, every tank is destroyed, every young man/woman who decides to leave. I would be surprised if Western Europe will want to do business with Russia for a generation - which basically makes Russia China's vassal for the same period of time.
Russia will be in bad shape for decades. The West will be just fine.
The West should have put boots on the ground in Ukraine before Russia invaded. That was the one thing that would have prevented the war. Hell, they should have had EU peacekeepers along the line of contact back in 2015.
The kind of sanctions that we've seen since then seem to be mostly about appearances, with EU trying to pretend that it "really cares" despite this epic failure of foreign policy.
The west is screwed too, because Russia is (and has been) doing everything it can to poison that well too - and widely succeeding.
Or do you think all this authoritarianism sprouting everything is just random coincidence?
It’s classic crabs in a bucket, which Russia has always been good at.
I have seen no serious analysis saying that Russia losing the war has been basically inevitable since the first few weeks of the war. Russia is fighting a war of attrition now and has been for most of the war. Most analysis still assess Russia can attrite it's way to victory. Sanctions are important because even if Putin is willing to throw wave after wave of his own men to the slaughter (a million Russian casualties and counting), if they run out of vehicles or artillery barrels, they are kind of screwed.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-battlefield-woes-ukrai...
Russia is hollowing out its male population which was already under severe strain.
Even if Russia ‘wins’ the Ukraine war (takes all Ukrainian territory), it’s even more fucked than when it started demographically.
It’s also spent pretty much all of it’s currency reserves and destroyed it’s normal economy destroying all that ‘new’ land in a way it will be incredibly hostile to productive use for a generation+. Not counting insurgencies and rebellions.
The well is solidly poisoned, regardless of who ends up owning it.
Also known as a pyrrhic victory. Russia winning the war and Russia coming out on top, or coming out better than it started, are not the same thing.
The USSR fell because its economic model didn't work and was a society steered by corrupt principles. Jeans and rock and roll "envy" was just a symptom. After having seen the effect of communism/russianism on post-soviet countries I'd rather take a nuclear bomb, it's better in the long term. Sanctions work but it depends what you are min-maxing because obviously some sanctions may hurt your own country/block.
Russia have gas shortages right now because their plants keep getting blown up and the needed spare parts are often western.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
Main reason being that there are large and powerful countries that do not give a damn about sanctions.
Name one
China?
Russia?
> The leadership of countries under sanctions rarely change their behavior due to sanctions. However the effect on the population of the countries is that they turn against the countries applying the sanctions. It becomes easier for the leaders to sell the sanctions to their populace as the enemy action.
Counterpoint: South Africa.
> If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it.
You have now.
Isn't South Africa the exception? There have been sanctions on many more countries who have not changed at all, or even doubled down on bad behavior as a result.
I can certainly understand, as a matter of foreign policy, not wanting our companies to be propping up or supplying such regimes, but I don't really get how anyone can think that sanctions are effective at promoting change.
On the whole, I’m inclined to agree, but didn’t South Africa eventually end apartheid because of sanctions?
Sanctions from individuals. The US did the opposite, and supported South Africa no matter what. Just like Israel - In both ways. Israel supported South Africa, and the US supported Israel. The dramatic sanctions against US citizens for refusing to buy from Israel and endorsing that people not buy from Israel are meant to prevent such a horrible thing as the fall of Apartheid from ever happening again.
This comment is mistaken. Many countries, including Japan from 1964, and eventually the US and UK, sanctioned SA officially. I doubt whether any boycott from individual US citizens had a serious economic effect compared to this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...
You think sanctions on Russia are not working?
As an russians who moved abroad I think sanctions positively affect Puttin so far. Because, he got a lot what he wanted but couldn't get without sanctions: - russian companies replaced majority of international companies. Many of IT companies growed 20-40% year by year - sanctions locked money inside of the country which help to build new everything - sanctions made boost of internal culture and patriotism. Which also increased popularity of government and reduced any alternative options.
And many more similar examples. Sanctions will hurt Russia in long term but not now. Because good sanctions requires to understand the country culture + execute only that hurt countries, which didn't do western countries.
Sanctions also helped them sell the "all the bad guys are ganging up on us, so we need tough measures" schtick.
Honestly, their effect is diminished. After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much, after initial shock.
Trying to use sanctions against another major power isn't guaranteed to work as they can take the hit and pivot to internal industry(which happened), or trading with other major powers that do not sanction them(China).
Or some countries get around sanctions - like buying Russian gas/petroleum products through India - in a way this bypasses sanctions making them worthless.
Is it better than doing nothing? yes, of course. But Russia unfortunately is a major power - just due to sheer access to natural resources - and you can't just bully it into submission with weak sanctions that some EU countries ignore(petroleum case).
> After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much, after initial shock.
That sounds like a positive, though: if Russia's advance into Ukraine has been slowed by sanctions, but everyday Russians aren't affected too much, I'd consider that a huge win. We shouldn't be punishing regular people for the actions of a their dictatorship government that they can't control.
Problem is that ever since the sanctions from EU, our prices of EVERYTHING has increased by 3-6x. We are in an economic crisis, thanks to EU's sanctions.
Russia has had to sell oil at a steep discount, which has cut into their revenue significantly. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been frozen/seized that can't be used to fund the war effort. Modern war is not just "beans and bullets”, and Russia pays upwards of 10 times the price for key components it needs for missiles, aviation, UAVs, tanks, artillery, air defense, etc. as well as quality manufacturing equipment needed.
Russian industry is operating at only 81% capacity, largely due to labor shortages, which make sense considering that about 1% of its labor force join the military every other month. Russia is losing tank barrels, artillery barrels, and infantry fighting vehicles more than 10 times faster than it can manufacture new ones. It will likely never be able to obtain a third rotary forge, required for barrel manufacture, to expand its capacity. It has almost entirely cannibalized its old, defunct Soviet era stock. They are being kept afloat by China, NK, and Iran, but with a much-reduced capacity, and often much lower quality. For example, Russia relies on China for 70-80% of its microchips, but China is dumping defective microchips on them with a 40% failure rate.
Sanctions have absolutely had significant, direct, measurable impacts on Russia’s ability to wage war and sustain war. As for regular people, it is hard to think it hasn't affected then, given that last year inflation was 9%, interest rates are 21%, and disposable income is down 20-30%. That feels like a lot of belt tightening.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/21/half-of-russias-ai... https://jamestown.org/program/russia-exhausts-soviet-era-arm... https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-where-are-russias-... https://archive.ph/c17pk https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/is-202... https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-sanctions-have-reshaped-ru... https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme... https://osintforukraine.com/publications/microchips https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/18/russia_china_semicond... https://www.economicsobservatory.com/what-is-the-current-sta...
Russia has had billions in oil money banked. It's mostly gone now.
It's working all right. These things take decades. Look at North Korea (first few years they grew faster than South Korea, and they had the more wealthy parts). Now their GDP per capita is around 600-1700 USD vs 33 000 USD in South Korea.
> After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much
Did you speak with folks from Moscow or St Petersburg or from different regions? Life in the top 2 cities is kept as normal as possible at all costs; that is part of the Putin's approach to handling the elites (you can keep living your comfortable lives as long as you stay out of politics).
But elsewhere the quality of life took a big hit. Even in second tier cities. At least that is what I am hearing. My 2c.
I have friends and relatives living in various regions in central and south Russia, and most of them don't feel like their quality of life took a big hit. The main frustrations that I hear are from drone attacks and associated inconveniences, not so much anything economic.
Anecdotally I have also heard that many factory towns are booming because the factories are re-opened or expanded to fulfill all those military orders.
different regions, outside of Moscow. basically a second tier city.
>Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good.
I would say it is a bit more realpolitik than that. An "Evil" leader doesn't care about the common good, but all leaders need subordinates to carry out their orders, security forces to carry out their rules, etc. Sanctions are meant to put pressure on all those people. So either A; the leader changes their actions so as not to risk losing the people that turn their will into action, or B; those subordinates put someone else in charge that will play ball.
> with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
I dont't know what is this based on, but no, sanctions are needed to stop the other party from benefitting from economic activity, not to punish.
Sounds like punishment to me.
> with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
Is this really a US endeavor by policy?
It's the occasionally given justification for embargos on Cuba, Sanctions on North Korea, etc. Whether you believe it's the real reason is a different question.
Unbelievable that causing unrest in other countries is an official declared policy.
This the exact same as the email from the post, but the other way around. Either both normal Iranians are responsible for arming Russians and normal Americans are responsible for sanctions, or neither are. In general I don’t like blaming people for the actions of their government.
The US is a democracy, so Americans are, at least on a collective level, responsible for the actions of their government, though not on an individual level of course.
Iran is a theocratic autocracy. Only the autocrat and his supporters bear any significant responsibility for the actions of the government there.
In theory sure but in practice not really and to say regular citizens have a direct say in specific geopolitical decisions is absurd, given how unpopular many recent decisions have been.
The US is not a democracy, by design. It’s a Constitutional Republic.
A democratic constitutional republic. Often simply referred to as "a democracy" as a shorthand.
The key distinguishing factor being that in a democracy powers are derived from the consent of the governed, as opposed to other forms of government (including some "constitutional republics") which do not allow open democratic elections.
Citation needed. Where did you get that additional term in front of it? Which United States founding document suggests that?
Democratic Republic, just like People's Republic, is actually a euphemism for communism.
What you are describing is "representative government" and "self government" not necessarily democracy. The will of the people is an abstract concept that is, depending on the issue, not always accurately measurable by equally weighted vote of a subset of the people that are enfranchised.
One would think the finger pointing should go towards the shitty governments causing trouble and pain for their own citizens, but somehow you've managed to find an angle to blame the West.
It is truly an unthankful job being the saviour of the entire world.
I just want to add one angle I don't think the other comments covered well - it is obvious that nobody pushing the propaganda angle ("encouraging them to rise up") is serious because the track record is far too clear. I can't think of an instance where sanctions have ever triggered a political change and if they do then it is rarer than a country's elites changing direction due to internal political concerns. Nobody believes sanctions will cause political change in their targets. It is almost unthinkable that they would. What could that even look like? If someone has the power to threaten a country then they don't need to actually levy the sanctions to get compliance. Countries only get sanctioned if the sanctions aren't enough pressure to cause change.
The point of sanctions is to cripple the middle and lower classes, destroying a country's ability to fund a military. That actually makes it less likely for a dictatorship to get overthrown - the middle class is too poor to organise which is desirable from the West's perspective. Dictatorships are really bad at waging war effectively, they struggle to handle the complex logistics and are easier to distract and threaten.
The example usually given by pro-sanctions campaigners is South Africa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...)
Do we have anything this century?
And frankly; we're talking about something kicked off by 60s US and UK, that map in that wiki article could be mistaken for one of the British Empire. Nothing's impossible but it'll take more than a wiki article to give me confidence that sanctions were the primary political force operative here or that the apartheid system was actually the thing at issue. I would chalk it up as unusual circumstances.
> that map in that wiki article could be mistaken for one of the British Empire.
Including most of western Europe, Japan, the whole of the US (including Alaska) etc?
You misunderstand the goal of the sanctions.
Sanctions are there to cut off 1-2% of GDP each year from the dictatorships' economies.
Over 30 years that turns countries into harmless (to the West) backwater shitholes.
The consequences towards the local populations are just a side-effect (sometimes wanted, sometimes not).
You cannot expect people outside of your dicatorship to prioritize your well being over their own safety. It's on you to fix your country. If you won't - people will isolate you to keep their countries safe.
Can't really blame them.
This. The point is, and always was, to exert economic pressure.
Some sanctions aim at military capabilities directly - but most just aim to throw a wrench into a country's economy overall. Which does hurt the population - but it also hurts a country's capabilities, which is the goal.
If North Korea wasn't sanctioned to shit, it would have had the resources to build not dozens but hundreds of ICBMs. This is undesirable, so North Korea remains sanctioned to shit.
This is the right answer, and it's sad to see it so far down the list.
This is the precise realpolitik of international sanctions, it's just not spoken out loud that often.
Don't believe me, some random commenter. Listen to the Professor of History and Grand Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College explain it: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B0k5ToABH7o
No, they're there to kill people. It's war by non-military means, and the US is waging such a war on a very large portion of the world.
There is a recent study concluding that sanctions kill half a million people per annum: <https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...>
I don't know what you mean by dictatorship but I'm not exactly adverse to applying the same term to the US, it being a one-party state with the audacity of having two parties, and either way, it's by far the most hostile and violent of contemporary state powers.
Dress it up however you like, the fact remains that countries can choose to not provide goods and services to whomever they want for whatever reason they want.
There's absolutely no moral obligation on an individual in any country to defy these laws and risk prison time - if they want change they can petition, vote and protest.
Beyond that the West is not responsible for any deaths caused by governments that refuse to cooperate with us (and therefore had sanctions placed on them) - that responsibility lies solely with the people and governments of sanctioned nations. We shouldn't be forced into supporting those who seek to destroy us based on HuMAnITaRiaN grounds.
The word "cooperate" carries a lot of weight in your reasoning. Could you give some examples?
One could also flip your argument and consider the many decades of US narcoterrorism, regime change operations and so on and the rather long line of failed states in its wake, and draw the conclusion that we ought to actually not submit to this 'world power' regardless of whether it 'dresses itself up' to be 'cooperative' while it engages in these activities or not.
For example, not respecting copyright laws (China), not participating in other sanctions (India), or intentionally destroying diplomatic relations (South Africa). It could also be more serious things like declarations of war, or long standing bad relations.
> One could also flip your argument and consider the many decades of US narcoterrorism
I'd agree with you here, I'm speaking purely of diplomatic / trade related activities (i.e. tariffs, sanctions, etc.) - imo putting boots on the ground or funding insurrections are an escalation that 1. no longer respects the autonomy of a country/people 2. are equivalent to military action
There's of course still a lot of grey-zones but hopefully it clarifies my position.
> we ought to actually not submit to this 'world power'
Again I agree, WE (as private citizens) ought not to, however diplomacy and trade are careful games played between larger entities (corporations, governments, etc.). But on the flip side it also doesn't mean we have to go against everything the government does (i.e. it isn't inherently evil).
The tricky line (as in this case) is when the actions of those entities can have an effect on you (the private citizen) like jail time.
China is a member of WIPO, so that's mostly something the US does to trample on the UN. Why should India change its policies around sanctions and start implementing them because the US thinks they should, instead of leveraging the UN sanctions system, which India adheres to? Same thing there. The US dislikes diplomacy and international institutions that treat states as equals, and prefers overtly or covertly hostile unilateral actions.
I'm not sure what you mean by the South Africa example.
I'm also not so sure it's a tricky line. Civil disobedience is something everyone should consider as a means of political action.
> China is a member of WIPO
China's issue isn't so much the laws / treaties they've agreed to on paper. The issue more the actual implementation and enforcement of said rules.
> Why should India change its policies around sanctions and start implementing them
I'm not saying India has to, they're perfectly within their rights to ignore requests from the US, but neither does the US have to tolerate that (as they have been) - everyone is free to tariff / sanction as much as anyone else (not withstanding other agreements, but the same argument applies to those). In this way, everyone is free to pursue their own actions and ends. And as such, the US and India aren't forced to trade / cooperate outside of their own mutual benefit (i.e. if trade stops being beneficial to the US/India, they should stop).
This is how I mean each country is responsible for it's own outcomes, don't want to deal with the US? Fine. Just don't expect handouts and cooperation from US entities.
What I'm trying to express is that it's a 2 way street and both parties can walk along it as much as they want - and not a moral issue. I'm not saying there's no consequences, merely that it is OK for a country to pursue actions that (it believes) are in it's own favour.
> I'm not sure what you mean by the South Africa example
Completely fair, I've been diving into SA politics at the moment so it's just at the top of my mind. But there's been a long standing degradation in relations, to the point where recently the SA ambassador to the US was rejected by the US because of some very undiplomatic comments he refused to retract - followed by SA not replacing the ambassador for something like 6 months. Meaning there was no formal point of contact between the 2 countries, independent groups and non-ruling political parties tried to bridge the gap but there's only so much they could do. Another similar example is how while every other country tried to negotiate with Trump about his tariffs, SA refused (or forgot) to.
WIPO and it's relevant treaties provide a range of mechanisms for dispute resolution through diplomacy. The issue is that the US does not engage in diplomacy.
I think most scholars of international law would disagree on the legality of unilateral economic sanctions, since they are likely to amount to interventions and as such violate sovereignty, and, of course, human rights of the people affected. You also seem to think of US sanctions as if they were in a vacuum and not a preamble to aircraft carriers, narcoterrorism and other JSOC responsibilities, and possibly nuclear warheads, or less commonly, explicitly genocidal actions.
Right, so you meant that South Africa disagreeing with the ongoing genocide in Palestine in which the US is a main offender amounts to sabotage of diplomatic relations. As for refusing to "negotiate [...] about tariffs", why would anyone? If I punch you in the face, shoot a kid in the face, and then tell you to sit down by a table and negotiate how much you should pay me for that service, would you sit down and act as if I'm a reasonable, rational actor?
> The west is not responsible for any deaths caused by governments that refuse to cooperate with us
This US-centric mindset is so disgusting and emblematic of the narcissism of the west. The country has established itself as the most potent force for violence and economic abuse in the world.
You can easily take "the west" out of that sentence and replace it with any other country and it's still fair.
E.g. China sanctions a country then "China is not responsible for any deaths caused by governments that refuse to cooperate with them"
It's entirely the responsibility of each government to ensure the welfare of its own citizens. Anything more is purely goodwill. Anything less is treason.
You're just coping because the US/west is the predominant power.
My country should prioritize its own people first, second, third, fourth, fifth....and all other people a distant last, if at all. It sucks that the people in the US don't benefit as much as they could from being world hegemon, but that doesn't mean they would be better off if the US was in a lesser position in international relations.
When alcoholic husband beats his wife so they put him in prison and the wife starves - is it the fault of the people who put the husband in prison?
Or the fault of the husband for beating his wife and the fault of the wife for staying in that relationship?
I get it - it's hard. But you cannot expect the whole world to enable your alcoholic husband/militaristic dictator.
That presumes some kind of just system imprisoning the husband. In fact the US pursues its power and wealth, supporting dictatorships and undermining democracies to the degree it believes doings so benefits its special interests and geopolitical calculus. Even to the point instituting famine against children in horrific genocide which is happening today.
Yet US hegemony is collapsing. It is simply running out of the money and power necessary to be a racketeer that cynically calls itself world police.
Russia invades Ukraine.
The West puts Russia in economic prison.
Russians suffer.
US is only a part of the system. Even if you remove US from the picture - EU alone would continue to sanction Russia.
Sanctions against Russia only are somewhat effective with BRICS. Without the US, sanctions lose even more of their power.
Not sure what your supposed analogy is referring to but I'm all for boycott and sanctions towards the US if that's what you mean.
in the analogy you would be the husband
This is also applied to italian citizens individually if they say documented facts about what is happening in Palestine.
It's not for fun. It's that politicians are largely impotent in many situations, but refuse to accept this. I mean they're the leader of entire countries after all, and in the case of the US you're the leader of ostensibly the strongest military in the world, with enough nukes to end the world at your finger tips 24/7. How can you not be omnipotent, the most powerful person alive!?
But then it turns out that war is too dirty, cyber stuff isn't dirty enough. So what's left? Economics - sanctions. We've carried out 374 ultra important meetings, and traveled to 73 different countries, to prepare this critical 974th package of sanctions. This time it'll actually do something and be totally more effective than other 973, in spite of the fact that obviously the most impactful things are the first to be sanctioned.
It's obviously little more than theatrics, but it lets politicians feel powerful and like they're exerting influence on their enemies. And indeed, they may be responsible, at least in poorer countries for some people starving, which is then mental gymnasticed into 'Ah hah! They'll blame their government, overthrow them and become our ally, the people making them starve.'
It's really a shock that seems to basically never come to fruition. Well except when you're sanctioning a third of the planet [1], including many of the most unstable places in the world, and any time there's a regime change in these places - 'Ah hah! See? Sanctions work!' The fact that said change would often have happened in any case is kindly swept aside. It's akin to the joke that Zerohedge has successfully predicted 53 of the last 3 economic recessions.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_sanct...
> and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
What other options are there, except idly sitting by or invading?
Not trading with a despot can just be not trading with a despot. It doesn't have to have an agenda.
If I personally choose to boycott a sneaker brand because I have a firm belief that they run sweatshops in a foreign country, is that collective punishment? No, I'm just not supporting someone who doesn't align with my values. Even if, as a side effect, the workers won't be getting the pittance that they would have gotten from my purchase.
It's like saying "all you" Iranians are choosing to publicly hang political prisoners using (Western) construction equipment.
> you
> you
> you
You don’t understand what the word “you” means.
So your proposal is that we do business with all these countries so they have thriving economies with more money they can invest into their government and military?
Well, we let China grow but there is no democracy or human right in China.
For fun?
Well, that's too bad. Lifting sanctions opens up opportunities for non-alligned government spies and saboteurs. I recall there is a problem with remote workers from the DPRK employed by Western companies. These citizens are already collectively punished by their governments. I used to live in such a country until the US managed to lead on the USSR into bankrupting themselves. Thank you, America! Thank you Ronald Reagan for all the USSR jokes! Thank you Michael Gorbachev for letting it slide!
> and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea
No, I don't do this. I'm not in charge of the government. Who is "we" ?
'You' elect the government. Even if you didn't vote for ruling parties, majority did.
Also it seems to be a common thing in Europe to refer to other's country populace OR government as plural 'You'. From my small sample size of 3, Americans were always confused by this and thought they were personally attacked.
> 'You' elect the government. Even if you didn't vote for ruling parties, majority did.
So what? Even if 99% of the population agrees with doing something, that has no bearing on whether I agree with it or am responsible for it.
And, anyway, no major candidate would have lifted sanctions on those countries, so nobody could have voted against them even if they wanted to.
> Also it seems to be a common thing in Europe to refer to other's country populace OR government as plural 'You'. From my small sample size of 3, Americans were always confused by this and thought they were personally attacked.
Perhaps Europeans, with their higher-quality parliamentary systems, are more likely to uncritically accept the idea that governments actually represent their people, whereas Americans are more likely to realize it's a sham.
>So what? Even if 99% of the population agrees with doing something, that has no bearing on whether I agree with it or am responsible for it.
You are a cog, participating in system, voting in it and acting in it. You could wash away your responsibility only if you go back to serfdom.
>Perhaps Europeans, with their higher-quality parliamentary systems, are more likely to uncritically accept the idea that governments actually represent their people, whereas Americans are more likely to realize it's a sham.
well.. not really, i would say Europe is worse off as EU is basically one-party system with flavor distinctions. It is different on country-level but that varies on case by case basis.
Nevertheless the idea of democracy stays the same - you vote, directly or indirectly, on issues - every citizen is a participant in decision-making process.
No matter the political system, or ruling entity you have it will always have those 3 goals(in order), cynically speaking:
- self-preservation
- changing resource distribution in it's favor
- expanding it's influence outside the borders
The only thing keeping our rights(and that includes human rights) is the fact that governments can be replaced by different one(in healthy systems) with populace support, or that populace will revolt and reenact french revolution again(in unhealthy systems), or outside forces will take over.
Systems can be changed - either by evolution or revolution. Take your pick.
>'You' elect the government. Even if you didn't vote for ruling parties, majority did.
It's funny that people still believe governments let people elect anything. You can vote, you can ignore elections - result will be the same, your opinion doesn't matter
Then maybe some forces - economic, or realpolitik ones, or whatever etc - make the current situation a reality, no matter your political allegiance. Maybe it is infact an optimal resource distribution for current situation.
Or system is fundamentally broken, and You, as in populace, need to change it. you can talk to people, political party allegiance does not need to be a tribal relationship.
take your pick.
To be clear, less than 1/3 of the voting age population of the US voted for Trump and less than 1/2 of actual voters voted for Trump. That is not a majority in either metric.
Lumping the entire population of a country under the term "you" when discussing contentious actions of the government of a country is inflammatory. You (yes, YOU) are directly accusing an individual by using the personal pronoun 'you'. The general populous of a country has close to zero say in what their government does on a daily (even yearly or longer) basis. Do I have anything against your average Iranian, Israeli, or North Korean? No, not unless they are directly in support of the objectionable policies of their respective governments. Barring evidence of this, I presume they are like most other citizens of a country, mostly along for the ride.
So, perhaps instead of attacking individuals who quite probably had nothing to do with their current government making the decision they made you should attack the governments in question and the leaders of those governments.
Not a dig at you, but it's a bit funny/worrisome to see how "we" are not in charge of what our governments do and "Nobody should be expected to take that risk" here, while comments from for instance sfn42 and mvdtnz says the Iranian people are supporting their government because they live and work in the country and should either take the risk by revolting or be classified as supporters of the government.
Such hypocrisy.
In the real world, sanctions happen for a variety of reasons. They have wide-reaching consequences, and you can't expect everyone to always fight every single goverment policy they don't personally approve of; an Iranian citizen is no more obliged to revolt against the Iranian government, than a citizen of sanctioning countries are to revolt against their governments for imposing those sanctions.
Those countries wouldn’t benefit even if the embargos were lifted. Cuba and North Korea would still be shitty places even if the US had no sanctions on them. There is nothing the US could provide these countries through trade that would suddenly make life better.
Who is "you"?
The US government doesn't reflect the majority of Americans, at all. It reflects capital interests - which the majority of Americans are not. Majority of Americans are laborers.
Maybe I'm wrong but it sounds like a generic "you", not talking about you specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you
it was voted in by majority, no matter what mental gymnastics you do.
People either voted, or decided that their vote was worthless enough.
Out of available US presidential, House, and Senate candidates, there is essentially no realistic electoral outcome where the people put into power will lift Iranian sanctions.
Representative democracy doesn't mean that every possible policy could be enacted by some realistic configuration of elected representatives, even if any particular policy is supported by a majority of the electorate.
>Representative democracy doesn't mean that every possible policy could be enacted by some realistic configuration of elected representatives, even if any particular policy is supported by a majority of the electorate.
that is only true if you flatten your system to two parties.
> that is only true if you flatten your system to two parties.
Again with the "you". "We" did not flatten anything into anything; we were born into an unfair and broken system that we have no power to change.
This is also true of Iranians.
People are pointing out the hypocrisy of demonising Iranians for the actions of their government while insisting that Americans are unwilling victims of theirs.
I'm not demonizing Iranians. I have no beef with them whatsoever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you
Huh? This is a completely different thing.
blame English language on lack of distinction between plural(referring to 'your society' in this case) and singular you. I don't think that's a hard concept to grasp.
No, this has nothing to do with English grammar. I understand that you are using "you" in the plural, here. What I reject is the premise that "Americans" is an identifiable group that is collectively responsible for any particular thing, extending to people who never supported or voted for that thing.
This is a philosophical disagreement, not an issue of language.
In democratic system(please spare me "we're republic not a democracy" adage that every American spewes) every citizen votes, and shares responsibility in decision making process.
You can become politically active and try to convince others if you don't like current status quo, inaction is also a choice.
Unless you think US isn't a democratic country but authoritarian one(either oligarchy, technocracy or whatever - does not matter) then it is definitely not a philosophical disagreement, but lack of responsibility and wishful thinking.
> every citizen votes, and shares responsibility in decision making process
Why? I never consented to be a part of the system, don't agree with it, and in practice can do nothing to change it. Saying I'm responsible for it because I happened to be arbitrarily born with a particular citizenship is meaningless.
> In democratic system...
There is no reason why I, an unrelated individual, should have to ascribe to the ideals espoused by proponents of the system imposed on me without my consent.
You might not believe in system and ignore it - your choice. but it exists.
You live in it, and it is part of your reality so your only choices are to emigrate somewhere undemocratic, or be part of it.
It is pure denial of reality otherwise.
But you know that in this case it’s true since the discussion is about the US in particular. So this “enlightened” take is really just snide time wasting.
Who voted on this issue and how many options did they have (on this issue)? The answers are "approximately zero" and "just one". There was no choice when it came to this issue.
Our western "democracies" aren't nearly as democratic as people like to believe.
Whether to have sanctions against Iran has never been on the ballot in the US.
Listen I ain't got shit to do with it, pal. Where you from?
you can't just use harsh language to remove dictators or fascist leaders.
> You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
That's (usually) a secondary goal of sanctions, if even that. The primary is to restrict the regime's ability to fund its growth, stability and military operations.
Russia can no longer (that easily) sell its oil and gas? Great, that's less money to invest into rockets and drones and tanks against Ukraine. It's also less money in the pockets of the oligarchs.
Realistically, you can't really push the civilians of a country to revolt with sanctions, or bombing. As Carl Spaatz said:
> Morale in a totalitarian society is irrelevant so long as the control patterns function effectively.
I for one want the USA to apply more sanctions, not less. It's debatable whether country-wide sanctions are just or even effective but I still think they should be applying sanctions much more freely than they are now.
The USA applied sanctions to the family members and law practice of a supreme court judge from my country literally yesterday. It's said this cut them off from hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
It really kills their champagne socialism nonsense. They destroy my country and then enjoy foreign developed nations on taxpayer dime. You have no idea how good it feels to see these "gods" get what they deserve. I'll be forever thankful to Trump for it.
don't get me wrong, US gov has many flaw and cons but are you seriously comparing it to like north korea??? this is fucking crazy
also what company even can do???? its law from gov
Do you think North Korean leaders would be nicer to their people if there were no sanctions?
Do we have to still use the phrase "pounding-in-the-ass" when the general sense of it has been proven untrue and not particularly as common as people would think. I guess rape jokes are just funny when they're about certain people.
Same thing with "sod" still being in common usage. Pretty bizarre to be allowed to get married in some countries now but there's still all these historical bits and pieces.
Interesting. So if you want to delete FB account and all your data, all you have to do is VPN from Iran?
I worked at a place where we tried hiring an Iranian. Ignorant of the law, some of us were surprised when the legal department pulled the plug on the whole process.
I was kind of surprised by the whole thing because he was currently employed at another company. We went so far in the process that he quit his other job and we had him in the office for his first day of work, had a big lunch with him and everything. We fucked him on that.
You had him in the office? So he was in the US on a legal permit? Then IANAL but I think your legal dept fucked up. I know many Iranians working here in Silicon Valley. They have refugee permits and are 100% legal workers. Unless you are in defense tech or something which has stricter employment laws, your company did overreact.
your comment is helpful context, especially as a foreigner. but would you be able to edit the "pounding in the ass" phrase out in future when referring to prison? thank you <3
Your comment is understandable as a foreigner! Look up our federal prison system sometime. The description is apt.
You either kill someone, or become someone's bitch on the first day, then you'll be alright.
(It's an Office Space reference, btw, but our prisons are genuinely inhumane and not rehabilitative.)
American prisoners are, if you look at it objectively, slaves.
They are forced to work for for-profit companies for minimal pay, which is deducted by their living expenses and basic amenities.
They are literal slaves. The 13th amendment of the constitution:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, *except as a punishment for crime* whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Slavery is still legal in the United States of America.
> They are literal slaves.
It's legal to enslave them, but in general it isn't true that they actually are enslaved.
I downvoted you. Reason - I don't see/understand what argument are you making. It seems you're just stating the claim.
I'm contradicting the claim. Prisoners aren't slaves. They could be enslaved, but they aren't. They are never sold into slavery and almost never compelled to do any work.
This is the opposite of being "literal slaves". They are literally not slaves.
...unless you believe that before the 17th century, everyone in the world was literally a slave? It was legal to enslave them too.
3/4 of prisoners in the US endure forced labor according to the ACLU:
https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit...
That link doesn't say 3/4 of prisoners. It says 3/4 of incarcerated workers. Incarcerated nonworkers aren't counted at all.
It also doesn't say that they report being compelled to work. It says they receive benefits from working that they don't receive without working. The fact that voluntary workers get their sentences reduced doesn't convert them into involuntary workers.
You're both wrong about the number of prisoners. The link clearly states 2/3 of prisoners are workers and 3/4 of them report being compelled to work. That works out at 1/2 of all prisoners.
Trying to spin this as benefits is...odd:
"they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation."
> "they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation."
"Denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence" means that prisoners with jobs are considered to be better candidates for sentence reduction by various means. That's true, but it doesn't come anywhere near "being compelled to work".
The ACLU doesn't provide any numbers on who reports being compelled to work. They provide a large number that includes some things that qualify as coercion and some that are entirely innocuous. This is the "prison forced labor" analogue of reporting that large majorities of female undergraduates suffer sexual assault on campus, where the definition of sexual assault includes "unwelcome sexual remarks".
It's incredible that anyone can read this and argue against it, how did we loose our humanity? There is no empathy, it's frightening. The capacity to do horrific things in the near future is here.
Federal prisons are generally quite desirable when compared to state prisons or local jails, especially if you're convicted of a white collar financial crime. They don't call if Club Fed for nothing.
That's only true of minimum security prisons.
I think the point here is that the Office Space reference is a joke about rape, which maybe was somewhat acceptable in 1999, but is not cool today.
And even then, it was only acceptable in 1999 because it was a joke about male-male homosexual rape (I doubt it would have been considered funny even back then if it was a joke about a man raping a woman), so on top of being a rape joke, it has some homophobic qualities to it.
(I do remember watching Office Space back in 1999 and finding that line hilarious, but that teenage version of me also thought saying "that's so gay" was a perfectly fine way to be negative about something. Times change, and people grow up and realize that some of the things they thought were funny were actually singling out marginalized groups in shitty ways.)
I think also your use of the phrase didn't really add anything to what you said. Certainly people in the in-group who both know that Office Space reference, and still think it's funny will get it and chuckle, but everyone else will just think it's a weird and/or offensive way to describe it. And leaving it out entirely doesn't water down what you said. If you still feel like you need to emphasize that it's gonna be a maximum-security prison rather than Club Fed, you can just say "maximum-security federal prison", and everyone will understand.
No you do not. Provide sources for your information. Making these jokes about prison rape, not as common an occurrence as you'd think, is offensive.
The only reason it's funny is because the subject of these jokes are men (so nobody cares), are engaging in something considered "gay" (which is gross and funny ha ha ewwww).
I don't expect things to change but I'd fight in that war if there was one.
It's the phrasing. You're using a fun and casual term for something awful. You are correct about the amount of sexual assault in American prison of course.
Hmm, I didn't get either a fun or a casual vibe from "pounding in the ass", I'm surprised you did.
You do seem pretty nonchalant about rape, though. Maybe think on that for a bit.
Yeah I'm not sure where you're getting all that stuff from, but I'm sure it's 100% you.
Your reply to that comment is understandable as an American… in that you got your understanding of your own prison system from your own popular media.
Also in the assumption that a foreigner would or could get an Office Space reference, unless they live in a country America has already successfully culturally colonized.
The point is that the homophobic trope doesn’t add anything to the information given, while it does make it more likely to run afoul of homophobic censors in homophobic countries led by homophobes.
Three points on that.
First, in this context the popular image, not reality, is what actually matters. Why do people not risk breaking sanctions? Because they don't want to risk prison. Why do Americans fear prison so much? Because of how it is represented in popular media, true or not.
Second, sexual violence in American prisons is a very real concern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape_in_the_United_Stat...
Finally, I fail to see how it is a homophobic trope? Nobody wants to be sexually assaulted. It's about the violation, not the act itself.
Homophobic trope because it's acceptable to joke about prison rape specifically, when the victim involved is a man.
Why don't you see people openly joke about regular rape on HN? Why is a joke about regular rape not a phrase acceptable on here? In the same vein as the 2000s gaming "oh man I'm getting raped over here". Oh yes, because it's considered disgusting and offensive.
> Why do Americans fear prison so much? Because of how it is represented in popular media, true or not.
Yes, it’s an ouroboros of confirmation bias: the popular media ad nauseum repeats the trope that what they need to fear in prison is ”gay” sexual violence, when what they really need to fear is the violence of the state and its economic interests that threatens to put them there in the first place.
> Second, sexual violence in American prisons is a very real concern
Even if we assume the worst case scenario and double it, sexual violence in prisons is an experience of the minority of prisoners… does that make it less of a concern for those who experience it? Of course not… does it mean that it’s a reason to fear prison, especially when incarcerated for actions that go against entrenched governmental interests? Not really. Again the state violence is the real fear… especially when you note that any percentage of those sexual assaults are perpetrated by “guards”. Isolation, economic exploitation, and the mental health concerns implicit in being deprived of your agency are all much more important fears than the (again trope) that something ”gay” might happen to you.
> Finally, I fail to see how it is a homophobic trope? Nobody wants to be sexually assaulted. It's about the violation, not the act itself.
Not seeing a trope as a trope is kind of the point of a trope. “Ass-pounding” implies a specific kind of sexual activity, associating it with prison implies that all such sexual activity in prison is non-consensual violence — that’s the trope part identified — and also that the act itself is violence and/or something to be feared… something to be -phobic, about, in other words. Given that prisons are still customarily same-sex segregated, then, there’s also the implication that same-sex sexual violence in the form of ass-pounding is a reasonable thing to fear when in prison. Or, in other words, the trope is communicating a homo-phobia on behalf of a culture that presumes one should be afraid of prison because one is afraid of getting one’s ass pounded.
The violation isn’t implicit in the act being mentioned. The fact that you’ve got to explain to a “foreigner” that the violation is implicit because they didn’t know the trope doesn’t make it less of a trope.
You are reading into it something that isn't there.
Or you are choosing to ignore something that is very much and always has been there.
Make the edit requested and nothing of semantic value to the message changes. In fact the actual message gets clearer, while also not servicing as propaganda for a bias you’ve internalized so deeply it’s invisible to you.
You miss the point. Rape jokes aren’t funny.
"pounding in the ass" is a cultural reference to the 1999 movie Office Space.
Its a description of rape, often of legally enslaved people.
Not really.
It's the description of a dynamic sexual act between two participants, using an orifice situated at the end of the digestive tract that has as primary function the excretion of solid waste from the body.
You'll be surprised to learn, that many people of all sexes partake in that activity fully willingly.
The context of the joke is as rape, your comment is utterly pointless and you know this.
And not even correct.
It's a reference to Office Space, one of the all time best movies ever made.
Don't police other people's language.
*until someone says something about something I identify with personally
Is always the subtext to statements like yours.
Wasn't that what OP was doing?
Nobody who hasn't very a) clearly done wrong or b) actually chooses to fight the feds in court actually going to prison though.
It's just a threat the fedcops get to use to force you to take a plea deal. It's basically a big boy version of how your local prosecutor behaves. Instead of filing BS charges that will never stick in an attempt to "mark it up to mark it down", the fedcops are more equal so they have
Every time you see someone on HN screeching about how we ought to have federal regulation and stiff penalties for whatever their pet issue is remember that this is what that looks like.
> the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison
If only this notion of personal criminal responsibility was applied to other types of private company criminality (2008 gfc, cartelization in many industries, the many private data "leaks", ...)
This was my thought too. When the government really wants corporations to toe the line, suddenly there's no problem with "piercing the corporate veil" and other such equivocations. They know what works - threaten executives with prison. The solution exists and is applied already. For other things such as polluting the environment or misusing citizens private data... the truth is government doesn't really care.
> They know what works - threaten executives with prison.
The problem is that it works too well. As you can clearly see, the solution basically everyone individually applies is to stay clear of anything that might be an issue by several miles.
If you apply the same reasoning to things like private data handling, little things like just shipping stuff will be prohibitively expensive, as no one will want to handle private data like addresses and instead go to a provider, which will need excessive amounts of cash and red tape to do anything for taking on that liability. Building stuff will become impossible, as all of the current red tape will be exponentially expanded with liability checks against any possible pollution. Founding a company will basically never happen, because no one wants to risk 20+ years in jail - and if they do, they'll simply turn to crime, because if your risk profile is that off anyway, not paying taxes will just be a minuscule risk increase.
I'm not saying that there's no political incentive to ignore those issues and keep fines low, but piercing the corporate veil is the nuclear option and there is a reason it's used so little.
There's no proof that your catastrophic imaginary scenario would actually happen. Just "if you do what I don't want to it will be the end of the world". Convenient unprovable claim. Financial transactions happen all the time and are plenty cheap, they just don't do any with sanctioned entities.
You're claiming if data protection laws had actual teeth, google would close up shop and everyone would just go home and not do business anymore. That's laughable. Nobody would claim such BS in good faith.
That’s because in one case you’re doing something the gov’t doesn’t like, in the other…
Its kind of weird how every time some executive or company gets exposed as having done some horrible or massively illegal thing, they can never be punished cuz its a business but right here there are direct penalties that apply regardless.
If only they applied something like this to the rest of the corporate world, companies would be far better behaved and polite
"you, the manager or executive in charge"
Let's be realistic here. There are no executives or board members who faced charges for prohibited transactions with Iran or NK. It's not like we don't have a steady stream of companies reporting that they inadvertently hired NK citizens remotely.
Yeah, that's what sanctions do — making pressure on everyone in the country (from the authorities to the usual people).
I love how your smarmy tone matches the responses he got down to the letter
Edited for clarity (thanks bloak)
"Residency" is a very slippery concept. "Currently located in" would be clearer, though you probably wouldn't want to include diplomatic staff ... or would you?
Could your comment to the op be classed as "transacting with a sanctioned individual?"
No, there is no commercial transaction here. You might say “neither is GitHub benefiting from a non-paying Iranian customer” but it is at least not 100% clear on the latter case. GitHub, as a business, benefits from non-paying users & their data.
I think sanctions are pointless. Just do business with Iran as usual, but use the money earned to take out the ayatollah and his revolutionary guard. Or give that money to Israel to do the job.
Taking out a regime is easy. Every occupation of Afghanistan in history has been prematurely terminated mere moments before achieving its goal :(
Afghanistan is a special story. The previous Iran regime was taken out easily.
We should be sanctioning Israel, not giving them even more money.
> in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison
Ha ha ha, it's so funny and harmless to make fun of people in prison, because they all deserve it, right? And the US is a free country?
Sorry but this just makes me incredibly angry.
I read it rather as a description of how very serious the threat of prison is, and why the risk is not worth it. Didn't seem funny to me at all, though I may well be reading it wrong.
It certainly didn't seem like the commenter was agreeing with the way the government runs prisons or what happens in them. Again, maybe they do, and I just failed to see it.
I do get your point, but in this particular case, it's a quote from Office Space (1999) and while the movie is a comedy, I don't think it's fair to say that it was specifically a joke about or making light of sexual violence in prisons. The characters in the movie are also obviously scared about the possibility[1], so I'm not even sure I would characterise it as a simple joke (it is used as a callback in the form of a joke later but it is again something the character is having a nightmare about[2] and the joke is based on the absurdity of the phrase and the naivete of the main character, not what the phrase is referencing).
This is also not a uniquely US-specific thing, lots of UK dramas have made similar jokes (for just one example, see [3]). Obviously I expect you would find those objectionable too, my point was just that it's not a US-specific thing -- humans have a tendency to make light of things like that as humour and some people understandably don't see the humour in it. Such is the human condition...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBzvMLW0ii4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htCJTPu8GPE [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8DfCgVWx8&t=19
Ah so I can be racist and homophobic and do blackface as I please.
I can just point to a movie from the 50s-60s and then shout "but it's just a reference, it's just a reference so it's fine!"
Yup, sound logic.
What's worse - never knowing it exists and isn't talked about, or it being at least vocalized and known in pop culture, even if it's used as the butt of a joke? Yes it's not funny but some people use humor to convey terrible things to make it socially acceptable or palatable.
Funny how it's only directed at certain people or certain topics though. Applied completely inequally.
Your point only makes sense if the humour is general. But nobody's hoping on national TV when a female athlete trips going "ha ha she got Ted bundy'd, omg absolutely raped ha!" see how disgusting and vile that sounds?
But you know "pound me in the ass prison" is a cult classic (I still like the overall movie) and nobody would have any problem with airing it on TV.
No point arguing with humans tho, our species is lame.
Prefacing this by saying I'm fairly left leaning and the right would call me woke. But this type of discussion is why "comedy is legal again" takes hold with a large portion of the population. The comment is crass perhaps, but now we have a bunch of comments like this that is relating the original comment to some sort of deficiency in the person (our species is lame).
It's simply bizarre that dreams of US "justice" involve interracial homosexual rape fantasies. Of course the interracial part that creeps in is a reminder that the US is not free. It still hasn't paid for hundreds of years of hard forced labor from many individuals. The guilt from this causes it to act strangely.
The US obsession with "security" is striking (not least in IT). I recently realized it has its roots in the fact that Americans are invaders and slave owners. They have this constant fear of being killed in their sleep by the people they stole the land from, and the slaves who live with them.
There's an Irish comedian who has a bit that goes like this "As an Irishman I don't have white guilt. At all. In Ireland we had potatoes on the ground. We picked them up ourselves. We didn't steal people from another continent to come do it for us. That would be insane."
If this is the weirdest thing involving the US you’re aware of right now, I’d highly recommend continuing to ignore the news.
You seem to love your television. I'm a middle-aged black American, I don't think Jimmy Kimmel and tariffs are worse than the what slavery and the US justice system has done to black people. I can understand if you're worried about your favorite programs being disrupted, though.
The difference is, slavery is supposed to be over? And freedom of speech is supposed to be the law of the land?
If you’re a black American and you think tariffs and Jimmy Kimmel (as in the individual, not what the ‘system’ being aimed at him is) is what I’m talking about, I’m really shocked.
Do you remember what happened the last time the FBI, CIA, etc. got used the way it is now? Hint: several high profile black Americans got assassinated. Among other crazy others.
Interesting to get to know this, even as a non-Iranian.
Even more with Trump's current push to sanction the ICC.
It's year 2025.
You just open company in Brazil or Argentina and you can purchase whatever you want. Before 1989 communistic countries were overcoming CoCom restrictions in this way. Russia is doing this successfully since 2014. Surely Iran, North Korea are doing the same, this is really a no brainer and today and it is not even hard or costly, as nobody needs to physically travel, money transfers go through Kaiman, Netherlands Antilles, City of London Corp., etc. Nobody is able to track them.
More. Nobody even tries to hide anymore. Germany is openly purchasing Russian oil, branded as "Kazakhstani", through Druzba pipe. The Netherlands is buying Russian gasoline branded as "Indian". France is buying Russian LNG and it is not event trying to pretend that it is not Russian.
We will wait very long for those who will pay this $1M fine or go to prison.
Germany is not purchasing Russian oil. The only two EU states doing so are Hungary and Slovakia and both have vocally pro-Russian governments.
Just like how Germany is not purchasing Russian oil indirectly via India?
Your parent comment is correct. Germany buys millions of tons of "Kazakh" oil via the Druzhba pipeline, arriving at the PCK refinery in Schwedt. This oil is "blended" with Russian oil, and in any case is transported by Russia.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kazakhstans-january-...
Most of the oil from Kazakhstan is transported via the Caspian pipeline. Druzhba had been defunct for couple of months too. I think some figures of Kazakh oil imports from Russia would be in order.
Here's a news story about how Druzhba supplies to Germany weren't particularly interrupted by recent attacks you may be alluding to: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-kazakh-oil-...
And here's KazTransoil themselves reporting how much they supplied through Druzhba recently: https://www.interfax.kz/?int_id=21&lang=eng&news_id=75303
> ASTANA. Sept 4 (Interfax-Kazakhstan) - The volume of Kazakh oil transportation to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline system in August of this year amounted to 190,000 tonnes, which is 18.7% higher than the level of July 2025, Interfax-Kazakhstan was informed by the national company KazTransOil (KTO).
That would amount to some 2+ million tonnes per year. And I mean sure but Kazakhstan extracted 87 million tonnes of oil last year. Germany had imported some 78 million tonnes crude same year, and much of it was from other sources too.
The Caspian pipeline you mention (CPC) goes through ... Russia. And CPC Blend again blends in Russian oil.
So we find that, once again, Germany is buying "Kazakh" oil that is transported by Russia and mixed with Russian oil.
Sweet summer child
It's pretty hilarious how the americans have corporate personhood so businesses can pretend to be people when it suits them, to shield their workers from the law.
But of course this veil can be pierced when it suits the administration, but not when it'd positively benefit the life of american citizens.
>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
The "your decision" in that response is really off-putting. I know the law is what it is with sanctions like this. However, it is a failing of basic human empathy to blame other common citizens of a country for the actions of their government while we almost certainly do not endorse all the actions of our own government and would probably be a little upset if a foreigner assumed we did.
It's also interesting if the comment comes from a US person, given that the US are primarily responsible for the political situation in Iran.
Why is it interesting? I thought the common people aren't responsible for the actions of their government?
From our perspective common people aren't responsible. But from the perspective of the person who wrote the "your decision to arm Russia" on their website it is.
So what is interesting is that this person is fully able to assign blame to individual Iranians for their government's actions but, one would imagine, is able to separate themselves from the actions of the US government.
I wrote "one would imagine" because there was no reply so we cannot say for sure. But my experience with Americans who do this "all Iranians/North Koreans/Syrians/Iraqis etc are bad!" thing is that they carve out little exceptions for themselves and the USA so that their reasons to hate others never seem to apply to themselves.
There's a certain irony in holding North Koreans or Chinese responsible for their governments' actions, but denying any responsibility for your own democratically-elected government's.
Ironic that you're blaming all Americans but then claim no other country has any agency
I think you'd do well to re-read my comments because that's not what I'm saying at all. I suspect you're more upset because I've touched a nerve. Because this is something that many Americans (and fellow Brits, I might add) are guilty of, and cannot really provide a proper justification for other than "but we're the good guys". They will often try to derail the discussion or argue to avoid confronting the uncomfortable truth
The common people are responsible for the actions of their government in a democracy, are they not? The issue is that Iran isn't a democracy, it's a theocratic dictatorship — the people are explicitly not able to be responsible for the actions of their government.
To be honest the argument works even if Iran was a democracy. Both governments doing evil stuff but only the citizens of one of those countries is absolved of blame. That alone should cause someone reasonable to pause and ask themselves if they're not being a bit ridiculous.
The fact that Iran is pretty authoritarian and undemocratic just makes the position even more absurd and drives the point home further.
i dont think thats really accurate. its theocratic and authoritarian, but its not a dictatorship and they have democratic elements
the candidates are approved by a religious board, but its got a full set of checks and balances and allows for liberalization. The reality is that given a panel of candidates Iranians have often voted for the conservative candidate
i get there is a large amount of liberally minded people in big cities that feel disenfranchised.. but i wouldnt be surprised if the government is still highly popular with the majority of people
Comparing it to North Korea or China is way to simplistic
The US is a democracy.
The common people are responsible for the actions of their government in a democracy.
The US killed 400+ Million people in the past two centuries.
Therefore I hate all Americans.
> The US killed 400+ Million people in the past two centuries.
I have trouble believing this is true by any definition that leaves any large group of people unhated.
Where you get confused is with the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship.
Pray tell how people in the US can control specifics of its foreign policy.
This is why the democracy-vs-dictatorship point is not one I think is worth arguing. Because while you can technically vote for president, senate, congress who have some say over that on your behalf, you still don't really decide anything.
I think however you'd both be in agreement about the broad thrust of the argument - that this is a slightly daft thing to lay at the feet of your average Iranian, who will already be perfectly aware of what its government gets up to.
>Because while you can technically vote for president, senate, congress who have some say over that on your behalf, you still don't really decide anything.
Even if there was a referendum in the US on whether to drone strike alleged drug traffickers or whatever, it's still a stretch to blame all Americans (with "your" language), because it's there's still a good chance that a given American visitor didn't actually vote for it.
The US is closer to a dictatorship than a democracy. Certainly now.
In properly democratic countries you would have more than 2 parties, with more than 2 viewpoints. You pick one that aligns with you, and they actually have a chance at winning.
This is not true and is nonsensical. The Iranian regime is explicitly anti-American, and it was American inaction that allowed them to rise to power. If America had intervened during the revolution, they could have eliminated the regime in its infancy and saved half a century of headaches and many lives lost due to Iranian wars and terror proxies.
The US also did not create political Islam, which predates the US by over 1000 years. Blaming the US for the problems of this region which has always had these problems is counter-factual. The problems of this part of the world - poverty, violence, religious oppression and dictatorships - predate western civilization as a whole, and in fact the oppressive empires from the Middle East / North Africa spread earlier and wider than western empires.
> If America had intervened during the revolution
Well they did intervene during the 1952 revolution. The secular democratic government wasn't very convenient so they basically undid the revolution and reinstalled the Shah in power. Then the second time the Shah was overthrown, it was done by Islamists, not by the secular elected parliament.
Third time's the charm, just one more revolution and we'll have it all sorted out, juuuuuust one more /s
Looking forward to a service that says something like:
"American IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Israel so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians."
This, 1000%. I think there's a certain kind of thinking that low-IQ people fall into, which is blaming civilians for the actions of their government, often with the coping "they should just overthrow their government" (because it's that easy!)
Sadly, in our world where everyone has a voice, you're going to get a lot of this. There's no avoiding the stupids.
> (because it's that easy!)
I don't think anyone believes it is easy, but are sanctions not at least an incentive to try?
Do you realize there are much bigger inconveniences then GitHub suspension in such places?
Do you get the irony of commenting this on a post about a single person complaining about how they are unfairly affected by sanctions put up against their country?
The post doesn't blame individual Americans. There is no irony.
It's especially objectionable and condescending since the author of the blog comes from a democratic country selling weapons to a genocidal state, as are most of us here.
Iran is much less democratic than the US and the rest of the Western world. 158th from 179 entries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Dem_Democracy_Indices
Yes, that's the point they're making. Arguably US citizens are more complicit in the crimes of Israel than Iranians are in the crimes of Russia since Americans have more capacity to choice their leadership.
I understood that, only posted what I did because let's just not say "Iran is a democratic country, like the US". It is not.
Iran has a longer history, obviously, but it’s worth mentioning the US is no longer a democratic country. The congress has effectively delegated its powers to the president. You can’t really come back from that any time soon.
You (or rather the US) can come back from that in the next elections, let's hope it works.
Good, looking at data.
Now search what happened to the Iran's democracy in the 70s and why their redemocratization stopped in the 90s.
Why stop there, let us go another millenium or two into the complete offtopic territory.
A couple years ago I was hanging out in a Discord server for a jigsaw puzzling site. They made a policy change to remove all pictures from Russia and ban further submissions of Russian photos. I tried to convince them that this was probably counter-productive, but apparently that means I support Russia's actions.
There are valid ways to punish a country for aggressive or oppressive actions - like sanctions - and there are non-valid ways - inherently blaming and then ostracizing every member of the country, for example. And when you take the position that, "If you don't agree with my actions, you're also part of the problem" you are not doing anything but causing people to get annoyed with you and your position, and reducing credibility for the groups you're trying to advocate for. In other words, you're doing more harm than good.
Wow you posted this without being drowned in the irony?
if you are OK with what your government is doing, you are part of the problem. it is really that simple.
I'm a Russian citizen. I'm not okay with what my government is going. What do you suggest I do about it?
As it is, I can't even get rid of my Russian citizenship. The only option to renounce it requires doing so in person, and it can't be in a consulate - I'd have to travel to Russia for that to submit the request in person. But I doubt I'd get a chance to do so if I ever set foot there again - they arrested Ksenia Karelina in the airport and imprisoned her for 12 years for the crime of giving $50 to some generic Ukrainian charity; I give hundreds of dollars every month specifically to crowdfund drones and thermals for Ukrainian units.
And why do you feel capable to judge if somebody is OK with what their government is doing or not? It’s really that simple: you cannot, unless they explicitly state it.
> I think there is a fundamental misconception that people think because "Islamic Republic" has the word "Republic" in it, it must be a government of people in charge. That's not the case. I have yet to see anyone who actually supports Russian aggression in my real life in Iran.
Well, this gives me license to be angry at all US voters then.
Not just voters. You don't need to have voted to be doing something about what's happening in your country. You should blame Americans - all Americans - for what is happening over there.
That's a pretty naive take that ignores the reality of... well, everything about life.
This is the exact same argument Bin Laden used for 9/11; that the US civilians were culpable due to their votes and taxes supporting what the US government was doing.
Correct! And he hit a nerve laying this logic bare, which is exactly why The Guardian took the unprecedented and absurd measure of removing his manifesto from a decades-old article when it went viral a year or 2 ago. Lest the populace get to see things for what they are. At the same time unmasking their veil that despite their pretenses, they're just as much of a capital interests-captured rag as their "competitors".
It is absolutely possible, reasonable, and normal to be unhappy with US foreign policy in the Middle East dating from before I was born, but also believe I have no power to change course there.
I'm not the "both sides are the same" kinda guy, but we realistically only have choices between Democrats and Republicans here, and I'm not convinced things would be meaningfully different in the ME if some US elections over the past 50+ years had gone the other way.
As a personal example: I was eligible to vote in my first US presidential election at age 19, in 2000. I did not vote for Bush. He still won, and still started a war with Iraq under false pretenses. I was utterly powerless to change those events.
So I'm not sure what nerve was hit here, because, "I'm going to attack regular folks in another country because I don't like what their government is doing" is still just as cruel, cold, and ineffective, regardless of the targeted country. Ultimately bin Laden failed: US foreign policy in the Middle East has not changed in ways that I expect he'd be happy with. Perhaps his consolation prize is that, due to the reaction to his attacks, the US is a lot less freer than it was before; not only did the government use it as an excuse to curtail freedoms, but the actual citizenry started prioritizing some higher measure of safety and security over freedom. But I don't think that makes the world a better place, even if bin Laden might have considered that particular aspect of things a success.
Why are you assuming that any particular person is ok with what their government is doing? Feeling powerless to change what their government is doing is not the same is endorsement.
This is a superficial take. Common citizens of a country are responsible. The government didn't accidentally become the government by doing a dice throw. People voted for it. In countries where people didn't vote, you can always go back in history to find a moment where people either did agree to let a certain faction run their country (religious revolution), or allowed an authoritarian regime to take all power slowly by neglect and doing nothing.
You can't just sit on the sidelines and say "well I am not responsible for what my government does", while holding your passport and paying your taxes. You are responsible.
(note that this is not about Iran specifically)
Assuming you're a US citizen, to what degree are you personally culpable for the illegal behaviour of the current government? How responsible are you for the recent extrajudicial murders committed by the USA?
So you vote AGAINST the guy at power, and you're responsible?
Broken logic.
how did their feet vote?
The last time (and current time) a president was in power that I didn't agree with (and didn't vote for), I left. As a citizen, I can't fully escape taxes, but I will be my darnedest to reduce my taxable burden when I don't approve of the government.
Some of the nations that are sanctioned by the US etc. literally do not let most their citizens leave. Citizens of all of them will have difficulty getting visas due to the poor relations that resulted in sanctions in the first place. On top of that, even if there are no political barriers not everyone will have the means to do so.
I’m also curious at what point you assign culpability for remaining in a country. Obviously, a baby born in the country can’t be culpable or the concept becomes meaningless. At what age or level of maturity can we start to condemn someone for not noticing that their government is evil and then leaving their family to escape?
What an incredibly out of touch and privileged thing to say...
Being able to move to a different country when you don't like your government is a very privileged thing that most people can't reasonably do.
And even for people with the means to do so, I personally think that's too much to ask.
Internet tough guys are out in full force today.
So being an elite who escapes the consequences of what elites have done is a virtue that should be rewarded? Why would people look up to a runner? Most people don't have anywhere else to go, and love where they're from.
The USA is full of people that left their home country with nothing because they disagreed with how their home country is managed. For example, the Vietnamese boat people. I hardly consider that cohort of immigrants 'elite'.
Taiwan is another example. Taiwan wouldn't exist if it wasn't for mainlanders voting with their feet.
> love where they're from
yes. that is the problem...
> Taiwan wouldn't exist if it wasn't for mainlanders voting with their feet.
Woah, woah, the ROC invaded Taiwan with a huge group of armed settler-colonialists, and then initiated a violent martial law on everyone here. The KMT settlers didn't vote with their feet, they imperialised Taiwan and the people here. Taiwan would absolutely exist either way, there would probably have been democracy here a lot sooner if not for the KMT's martial law, since the common thread throughout all 6 decades of their rule, it was non-KMT people (earlier immigrants, indigenous people, and even a few Japanese descendants) that led opposition efforts. Not to mention much of the reason the PRC makes imperialist claims against Taiwan is because of their humiliation that they failed to defeat the KMT utterly, and this country retained the name ROC when it transitioned to democracy in the 90's - the best the opposition could achieve in the face of KMT power.
Really Taiwan makes the opposite case because after the cultural revolution, which is before the beginning of Taiwanese democracy, Taiwanese people could have gone to the PRC and had life there, fleeing martial law, but instead people stayed and worked to overthrow the KMT.
I personally believe packing your shit and heading out is a totally valid action in the face of oppression and fascism, that's why I left the USA after all. I don't think I agree that everyone has a responsibility to risk their lives to overthrow oppressive leaders, the reason I wouldn't stick around though is I won't accept the moral risk of accidentally supporting the regime, which is why for example I don't pay USA taxes anymore.
> elite who escapes the consequences of what elites have done
Goomba fallacy.
Why stop at citizens? Why aren’t all humans responsible? You can’t just sit on the sidelines and say “well I am not responsible for what my fellow humans do”.
My tax money doesn't support the iranian government
It does support the genocide in Palestine, though.
Then I guess I am responsible for that. The point is I am not responsible for supporting Iran in the way that iranian citizens are
Except the concept of Collective responsibility had been considered inhumane and Collective punishment is forbidden since the Hague convention, the Nuremberg trial considered this as a part of fascist ideology.
That's a naive take that lacks nuance.
If your government started doing something you don't agree with, would you renounce your citizenship and move to another country? What would be the threshold of bad things that would be required for you to do that? I think I do have such a threshold, but even as bad as things are in the US right now, I'm still here. Maybe that makes me a bad person. Maybe not; I'd like to think not.
Also just consider that we can't all be responsible for everyone else in the whole world. That's just not possible, and not reasonable to ask of anybody. Someone living paycheck-to-paycheck, in a tiny apartment, trying to feed their kids, afraid of getting evicted or being unable to put food on the table... that person does not have the mental or emotional bandwidth to be concerned about people in Iran suffering under US sanctions.
Even someone of higher financial means... what should they care about? Should they care about Iran? Ukraine? Palestine? Those are the ones in the news right now at least. But dig a bit deeper and you'll find a bunch of other places where their government meddles in politics and war. Do we need to care deeply about those, too?
Human psychology is not built for global scale. Honestly, if we could get all humans to care deeply about their local and regional communities, I would think that would be a huge win. Getting everyone to care deeply about people halfway across the world, and constantly consider them in their life decisions? That's a pipe dream.
> In countries where people didn't vote, you can always go back in history to find a moment where people either did agree to let a certain faction run their country (religious revolution), or allowed an authoritarian regime to take all power slowly by neglect and doing nothing.
I think at this point you've really jumped the shark. Using Iran as the salient example here, do you truly believe that some 30 year old living in Iran is responsible for a regime that was installed before they were born?
This frustrates me as well. It is so incredibly common, yet it never passes even basic scrutiny. For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it. It's easy to ignore this when things are going okay, but becomes very uncomfortable all of a sudden when that changes.
And this is to say nothing about how it is people that are chosen, not their individual choices. This is why it irks me when people are interviewed about their knowhow with respect to their political stance. It's basically irrelevant. They need a good read on the person of their choice, not a good read on the choices. If it was about a choice instead of a person, it would be a referendum, not an election.
Some democracies are "democracies". The dictator will get 80% of votes no matter what.
> For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it
"typical modern democracies" don't use the extremely terrible first past the post. It's mostly used in the UK and a few former colonies, but most of the world's democracies (even the flawed ones) have realised its shortcomings and have evolved past it.
In its current incarnations, it is not just pure FPTP, but "mixed" with other systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Cou...
This list includes Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, etc...
Not that only FPTP is terrible either - it is just what people evoke when they say "well xy people voted for this, right?". In more fair systems, the voted person or party may not even have been their first or second choice, so that on its own violates this notion again too, just differently.
> the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population
Not really. The number of people who might change their minds and thus swing the result either way is indeed small. But it isn't accurate to say they are the ones that choose.
The people in guaranteed states/counties still choose; it's just that almost always choose the same answer.
But even that doesn't mean they can be ignored. They can be ignored at voting time, but before that political parties have to take them into account. They basically determine where the centre is. For example they are the reason the American centre is so much further right than the UK centre.
If you took American parties and held an election of them in the UK you would find that all those reliably conservative counties who you would say don't have any effect on the result are suddenly not so supportive of the right-wing option.
FPTP is still dumb and frustrating though.
>> the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population
> Not really.
Yes, REALLY. In fact it can be even worse.
See the latest (June 2023) elections in Greece [1] (supposedly the cradle of democracy): First party got a 40.56% on a 53.74% turnout. I.e. around 22% of the electorate. Yet, this was adequate to yield a solid parliamental majority for 4 years.
Also mind that the election system had been changed to allow this travesty by the very same party and PM that won the June 2023 elections.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2023_Greek_parliamentary_...
Low turnout means non-voters just don't care, or that they find no palpable option on the ballot sheet.
In any case, the non-voters are OK with whatever party might win, because otherwise they should have made their vote or created a political party that might be agreeable to them.
You are just rationalizing a deeply undemocratic process. These are the exact self-serving arguments that the winners make to legitimize a fundamendally unpopular government.
Also, in practice, no, you cannot make a political party in Greece. There's a country-wide threshold of 3% that you need to exceed to get into the parliament. A lot of well-organized parties struggle (and often fail) to exceed it. So even if you get 100% in an electoral district, you won't get its respective parliament seats. In fact (IIRC the tidbits of the election law), you will be making the first party stronger (and I don't mean by depriving votes from the second party).
This is not unlike other Western democracies. But this is essentially a design to cull any grassroot movements. Not very democratic.
>Also, in practice, no, you cannot make a political party in Greece. There's a country-wide threshold of 3% that you need to exceed to get into the parliament.
You can quibble about whether a 3% threshold is "democratic" or not, but for all practical purposes if your movement can't get 3% you stand no chance of getting your policies enacted.
Which is still distinct from actively choosing something. Indifference is not the same active approval, precisely because it goes both ways. So it is still incorrect to state that "they chose that". They chose indifference.
One can still fault them of course, but it is a distinct category, and it is not at all a clear sign of consent, if even the active choice ever was.
> Low turnout means non-voters [...] find no palpable option on the ballot sheet.
That alone is pretty un-democratic, no? Certainly politics is a world where it's hard to find an ideal situation pretty much ever, but I think a democracy where a third or more of eligible voters don't want to support any available candidate... that doesn't sound particularly democratic.
The US with its two-party system suffers from this problem, and it's a very bad one. There were more eligible voters in our 2024 presidential election that didn't vote at all (89M) than there were people who voted for Trump (77M) or Harris (73M). It's pretty messed up that more than a third of the electorate was so dissatisfied with their options that they didn't cast a ballot at all.
I think the GP actually meant a third of eligible voters, not of those who actually vote. Turnout is often not that great in countries that don't legally require voting, especially when voters are dissatisfied with the choices they have. In the 2024 US presidential election, for example, ~89 million eligible voters did not vote, which puts Trump's win at 32% of eligible voters, just under a third.
Whether or not this is a useful/interesting metric is debatable, I suppose.
Swing voters / swing states / whatever the particular country-specific analog is -- this is a symptom of poor voting systems; unfortunately the people in power like how this works, and so it won't change.
It's also, at least in the US, a collective action problem: a state that tries to be more "fair" (doesn't gerrymander, perhaps awards presidential electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote percentages, etc.) will end up giving seats/votes to the "other side" more often than polarized states that stick with FPTP.
I meant that if one checks "who voted for this", one will find that it's at best the half of a poor voter turnout, so around 30-40% of the overall voting population. Often even that is generous.
Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
I always find amusing how the west always blames the people of the rivals "iranians", the "chinese", etc but when something is wrong with their side they blame an entity to detach themselves "the american government", "this administration", "nazi germany", etc
Apparently https://www.grepular.com/ is from UK. Wonder how feels if people start blaming him for colonialism.
Govt proscribing access by law is something, but I cannot imagine a guy going out of the way to put ipblocks.
This comment is disingenuous.
In everyday speech, people don’t carefully separate “the people” from “the state.” A French person talking about the U.S. usually says les Américains. A German talking about the French will just say die Franzosen — or, if they’re in the mood to tease, die Froschfresser. It’s only in news or diplomatic language that you see “the American government,” “the French government,” or “London” when referring to Britain.
The phrase “this administration” is mostly used domestically, by citizens talking about their own rulers. In Portugal you’d hear "este governo é uma merda", and in Spain the exact same sentiment — give or take a letter or two.
And “Nazi Germany” is only used when distinguishing regimes — Weimar vs. Federal Republic, Estado Novo vs. the Portuguese Republics, the French Fourth vs. the Fifth Republic, and so on.
>In everyday speech, people don’t carefully separate “the people” from “the state.” ...
That might make sense if the email stopped at "Iranian IPs", but it continued with "... due to your decision ..." (emphasis mine). That makes it sound like the author is personally responsible.
Uh the whole concept of collective responsibility was first applied to Germans in the aftermath of WW2.
The occupying powers very much did not assign collective responsibility to Germans after WW2. Material reparations were massively reduced in scope compared to WW1 (and the norms of the previous century), and the Allies actually poured substantial resources into Germany’s reconstruction (far in excess of the reparations).
Also, collective punishment is literally as old as written history. I’m not sure if there are writings that provide a coherent moral theory of why it’s acceptable that you could call “collective responsibility” from those times, but it was the norm for thousands of years of warfare.
> The occupying powers very much did not assign collective responsibility to Germans after WW2. Material reparations were massively reduced in scope compared to WW1 (and the norms of the previous century), and the Allies actually poured substantial resources into Germany’s reconstruction (far in excess of the reparations).
Mostly because the USSR was the new enemy and Germany had to be an ally after WW2.
While the war was still ongoing there was carpet-bombing of German civilians, and some of the plans for after the war originally included complete destruction of industrial capacities, forced displacement of the population of formerly industrialized areas and forced labour for the whole population (google Morgenthau plans).
There was also a more general worry that depriving Germany would push the country towards communism. General Clay is reported as having said that "there is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand."
The Morgenthau plan was also unpopular in Britain. Churchill only really considered it because he knew he had to keep the Americans happy to win, and Eden hated it. Remember that humiliating the defeated enemy had been tried before in 1918, and it didn't end well.
Also, collective punishment is literally as old as written history. I’m not sure if there are writings that provide a coherent moral theory of why it’s acceptable that you could call “collective responsibility” from those times, but it was the norm for thousands of years of warfare.
Notice how I didn't say "collective punishment" yet you put those words into my mouth and argue with that. Collective responsibility was was most definitely enforced on German* culture where it still echoes throughout the norms of education and political systems.
* West German really, as the East remained unreformed: which you can clearly see in the voting patterns today.
I didn’t put those words in your mouth - I drew the contrast with “collective responsibility” in the sentence right after I mentioned collective punishment. I even put it in quotes and didn’t for collective punishment.
Also, while we’re laser-focused on 20th century Germany, we might as well look at it just before WWII. The Treaty of Versailles (in addition to being practically punitive) had a clause that is commonly referred to as the “War Guilt Clause” that justified their onerous treatment after the war, and the Weimar Republic had public debate of what they called the Kriegsschuldfrage (literally War Guilt Question) before the Nazis even came on the scene.
I don’t know if the literal term “collective responsibility” was first used later, but I don’t see how the concept is so different. Sure, the Allies did a better job of driving the concept into public consciousness the second time around via prolonged occupation - but they clearly felt justified in holding the German people responsible the first time.
The sad part about living in Iran from a technology perspective is you are often blocked from both sides. Often you have to circumvent the government's aggressive internal firewall and other times you will have to hide your IP from the service providers.
On the bright side, your average Iranian grandma can immediately work as a network engineer given the amount of experience she has with VPN protocols.
Using a VPN doesn't prevent the Iranian authorities from detecting that you are using a VPN. It isn't a secure or safe alternative in Iran, particularly with the noisy way it is usually thrown together.
Indeed, which is why things like V2LESS and Trojan exist (and people learn how to set them up and use them).
Oh boy, I remember the days you had to be a proper engineer to understand and set up VPNs. Like adblocking making this stuff popular just makes it less effective for people in-the-know.
As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries... The message always goes along the lines of "you're murderer and rapist, we hate you". I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar. I don't have a shortage of people who got convinced that enemies are all around.
So, just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP.
A good service with a strong message that Russian/Iranian is seeing on a regular basis does a lot more good than a service that throws a perfect insult just once. At least if your goal is to actually change something rather than throwing insults.
> As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries...
As a service owner currently looking at adding widescale blocks based on location... it's not a global business, so the downside of blocking an entire country is functionally zero and the upside of easily removing a tonne of compromised machines from the 'can try to DDoS us' pool is noticeable.
If someone from Iran wants to do DDoS attacks they probably know enough to change their own IP to somewhere else so your blocking Iranian IPs is basically futile.
The blanket actions you can take to reduce your attack surface will often work to stamp out low/mid effort attacks, but the more sophisticated attackers who really want to specifically target you will take the time to get around these simpler countermeasures. That doesn't make those countermeasures useless, though.
> just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP
I can guarantee that your views would change very quickly if bombs started falling closer to where you sit and killing your friends and people you know.
Believe it or not, the 12 day war between Iran and Israel was exactly that, and the reaction of the Iranian people was not as uniform (in either way) as one might guess. You could walk on the streets and see some "Hit them Israel" and other similar writings on the walls (the Iranian people were not exactly pro Israel before the war). And yet people could not sleep due to constant bombardment, they had to follow the evacuation orders by the IDF etc.
You mean I would hate people more and call them fanatics, terrorists and rapists without knowing anything about them? Do you think that would help?
Except sometimes it works in the other direction. Quite a few of my friends while sheltering from russian bombs in Kharkov still cheered russian efforts to annex Ukraine.
I don't think you can guarantee that. Yes, you might have a strong prior in favour of that - most people don't have a propensity to prefer logical and systematic reasoning over strong emotions such as anger or hate - but it's still rather unfair to a person you're talking to to assume that must be the case.
Yes, when people are badly hurt, they will often lash out in hopes of hurting someone else, using the flimsiest excuses to justify it. It doesn't make it right or a good idea, though.
> I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar.
The intent was never to change your political stance. It's just plain old hate. Armchair political activists are always looking for "morally correct" excuses to be racist and xenophobic, and "your government did a mean thing so you as a citizen are responsible" is one of their favorites.
> I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily [...] block their users by IPs coming from bad countries
The problem is not with "bad" countries.
The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs, than to filter and allow the small amount of well-behaved clients while blocking the rest. This is especially the case when the company has no commercial presence in these countries.
To be fair, the scenario you describe where countries are blocked purely out of political or personal reasons does exist, and I agree that it's morally wrong, even if it's the prerogative of any individual or company who they want to provide service to. But in my experience the blocking is usually motivated by abuse.
> The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs
Abuse is becoming a much bigger problem lately, to the point that even large western providers are getting the same treatment nowadays. More and more I see people talking about banning Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, and at any given time I can see several of their IP addresses in abuse reporting websites (spamhaus, abuseipdb).
What is the future here? I see no reason for those providers to tighten on abusers, given how long they’ve already ignored it. Pretty sure at some point you’ll have to have your own ASN and IP ranges to be able to do anything on the internet.
> the scenario you describe where countries are blocked purely out of political or personal reasons does exist
In my experience the reason is one of the following:
1. Following the local jurisdiction. By far the most common one, and one I have least questions for. At least not to the companies who implement this policy - someone over here already posted the consequences of not complying. Big companies often care to say "nothing personal, buddy, strictly business", but nothing more as in the OP's case with Microsoft.
2. Avoiding the attacks, as you said. I definitely agree they exist. And I can imagine every Cloudflare block page I've seen is because of that, but in my experience it's maybe 5-10% of all blockings I experienced.
3. Political activism. What my comment was about. It's always either individuals or small companies. It's always outrageously dumb and pathetic (obviously, except when it comes from an actual victim) and just does the job opposite to the proclaimed intention.
Most educated Iranians hate their government. The problem is that a revolution isn't easy when the government has all the guns, and the military & revolutionary guard remain loyal, and have no problem with shooting masses of innocent civilians to retain their power.
Sanctions that worsen things for ordinary people really isn't going to change much in countries like this. It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.
A revolution also isn't easy when you know that the revolutions you could have, would be the ones supported by foreign groups that absolutely don't want your country well. USA on no account will tolerate an Iran which is both free and democratic and at all economically developed, because they don't trust a democratic public to support pro-American policies in the middle east - especially related to Israel and oil. Just like they don't trust that in any of the Arab states.
If you want a democratic Iran, both the current government of Iran and its most powerful enemies will do everything they can to stop you.
I would argue that not every society will thrive under a democracy. The people must be somewhat educated, politically savy, considerate, and accommodating. At least this has to be true in the beginning of a democracy where the people are laying the foundations.
Now I agree that the policies of the United States may not always be in the interest of the people from that part of the world, but a "mild" dictator like the one that the Saudi Arabia has or the one that Turkey has right now, these are better models sometimes. The SA of 50 years ago had no notion of human rights and severely under developed and could in no way support a democracy. Of course a dictatorship is not ideal, and the people of SA will have to pay a terrible price for it some day, but for now a dictatorship that "bows" to the west is not the worst thing either.
Spoken like someone who’s never lived under a dictatorship :)
Yeah, I consider that attitude paternalistic authoritarianism, and pretty contemptible. Of the people who "lack the proper virtues" for a democracy, I would rank people like you highest.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others"
The primary intent of sanctions isn't to foment revolution -- policymakers are well aware of the reality you outline.
The actual intent of sanctions is to cause economic damage. In that respect this is an account of the sanctions working exactly as intended: they are making it harder for OP to work as a software developer, which makes it harder for the Iranian regime to benefit (directly or indirectly) from the efforts of software developers in Iran.
That's the theory yes, in practice we can clearly see that some uneducated people gladly blame all Iranians for the actions of their leaders.
It's probably some kind of coping mechanism for not knowing anything about the people they're talking about, or they want to keep their world view nice and clean: we, the good guys, VS them, the uncivilized bad guys. It's as accurate as saying "all Americans are pro Maga white Christians because obviously if they weren't their government would be different"
> they are making it harder for OP to work as a software developer, which makes it harder for the Iranian regime to benefit (directly or indirectly) from the efforts of software developers in Iran.
A shower thought:
Wouldn't it make more sense if country A that considers sanctions against country B provided very "cushy" immigration laws for highly educated people from country B so that country A profits from these people's efforts while country B will suffer from a brain drain?
I always thought the main goal of sanctions was to deprive the sanctioned governments of income which in turns makes it harder for them to cause problems externally and hold power internally.
And by "hold power internally" I don't mean population uprising, I mean to keep the factions within the government (especially the military) united under the leadership by buying them out.
I believe increased population unhappiness is more of a side-effect that can be both beneficial (if it incites anti-government sentiment) or detrimental (if it incites nationalism) to the country imposing sanctions.
> It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.
The current government of Iran is a direct result of the US's meddling in this way, so I'm not convinced this is a winning strategy either.
> It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.
Like we did in Afghanistan? Because we lost Afghanistan in the same time we took the country, about two weeks.
People always say stuff like this, but from my pov it doesn't matter what the populace thinks. They are directly supporting their government with everything they do. They are producing goods and services, they are the army, they are the government, the people are the country.
They have the power to choose who rules them if they want to. Nobody else does. Iranians are responsible for Iran's actions just like Russians are responsible for Russia's actions and Americans are responsible for America's actions.
This is a historically ignorant take, especially when you consider the country being talked about is Iran. As an American it's very easy to assume that a "government revolution" is something that can executed by the will of the people.
Iran had a democratic government. That democratic government voted to do something against Britian's economic interests. In response America dissolved it's government.
If I lived in a nation where any government instability would be used by wealth foreign powers who didn't care if I lived or died, I would also be hesitant in brewing any anti-government fervor.
You can't hold them wholly responsible when they don't even have the power of true self determination.
We all have history. It's not long ago that a lot of us Europeans did some pretty messed up stuff. We got over it and now we're all holding hands and such. Except for the damn Russians of course, because we can't just be friends and have nice things, someone has to ruin it for everyone.
I don't care what your history is. I care what you're doing now, and if what you're doing now is killing people over 80 year old beef (or anything else really) then I have absolutely no respect for you nor your history. Get over it, move forward. War should be a thing of the past at this point, we all share one planet.
>Get over it, move forward.
I'm not sure how Iranian's are supposed to "get over" the fact that America wants middle-east hegemony. My point is exactly that:
You wish the blame the Iranians for the problems with their government, but the underlying problems with their government is because _Americans_ can't stop electing war hawks. The only sin Iranians have comitted in the eyes of the west is being born on top of an oil field. The "beef" might be 80 years old, but the oil is there today and America wants it's cut. Iran didn't want sell their oil to the British while their own people starved and for that they've been a quagmire for 80 years. You are asking them to live as slaves in the name of peace.
Would you tell Ukrainians that they are at fault for the war?
Could you try to substantiate these claims about the US extorting Iran for oil?
The only part of your claims that I've found information about is the CIA/MI6 orchestrating a coup in 1953, over 70 years ago. Iran was an ally for a long time after that, the Iranian revolution happened two decades later.
So unless you can point to something more recent I really don't think your blaming the US makes a lot of sense. Iran was an ally of the west and Israel for a long time, then religious extremists took over and pissed all over those alliances. Here's an AI-generated summary:
> Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran experienced significant economic growth and secular, Western-oriented modernization under the Shah, with expanded education and some cultural freedoms. After the revolution, however, the economy stagnated, inflation and unemployment rose, and per capita income declined significantly
The revolution was not the fault of the west. Iran was doing well, then the revolution happened and it went to shit. I'm sure the west would be happy to support Iran again if it got its shit together. I honestly don't believe these claims that the US is pressuring Iran for oil. Maybe they were 70 years ago, but that's really not very relevant any more.
What should they do ? Stop working, or protest and risk getting killed ?
It's easy to call for action from your comfortable life.
No, the populace does not bear the same responsibility for the country's actions in all countries. Swiss with direct democracy bear much higher responsibility than systematically oppressed populace in other countries.
Well ideally they should peacefully replace the government with one that aligns with the people's alleged views.
Failing that, I don't know. I guess they'll have to figure it out as they go. All I'm saying is it's their country, their responsibility. And for example in the case of Russia there's clearly widespread support for Putin and his war so I'm not really expecting nor calling for them to do anything about it. I'm just saying I hold them responsible and I think the rest of the world should too. A leader is nothing without followers.
> And for example in the case of Russia there's clearly widespread support for Putin and his war so I'm not really expecting nor calling for them to do anything about it. I'm just saying I hold them responsible
Yes, there is widespread support for Putin and his war - but by this very reason, how can Russians who do not support Putin and his war can be held responsible for it? What do you expect this minority to do, exactly? You can't hold people responsible for not doing something if you can't even articulate what that something is is.
Your entire argument is premised on the notion that there's a coherent "them". But that is virtually never the case, even in popular dictatorships.
The coherent them is the entire population. Sure some of them are for and some are against, that's how it works. Just because you didn't vote for Trump doesn't make you immune to the negative effects of electing Trump.
These things affect everyone, that's why we all have a responsibility.
> they should peacefully replace the government
This screams privilege. I wish you never experience oppression, but please try to understand you privilege.
You're clearly not being very charitable in your interpretation of things I say so I'm just going to end the conversation here because I'm not interested in endlessly clarifying basic things like what I mean when I say "Ideally".
Obviously I'm not suggesting that it's easy or even possible. Though I also don't think we can completely rule out the possibility of a peaceful revolution. Stranger things have happened. And it certainly would be better than a violent one.
Anyway have a nice day
> You're clearly not being very charitable in your interpretation of things I say so I'm just going to end the conversation here because I'm not interested in endlessly clarifying basic things like what I mean when I say "Ideally".
I agree that the person you're replying to is getting a bit testy, but I think it's a bit justified, as you're being a bit obtuse here.
"Ideally" is irrelevant. We're not talking about ideal cases in these threads, so to bring up that word feels disingenuous. Yes, ideally people in a country where their government is doing bad things can peacefully replace their government with another one that won't do bad things.
But in practice, where in the world does that actually exist? Basically nowhere? So what's the point in bringing it up?
> Though I also don't think we can completely rule out the possibility of a peaceful revolution.
That's a bunch of weasel-word language. Sure, you can't "completely" rule out anything. But for most (all?) of the places under discussion, there's something like a 0.001% chance of that happening, which is far below the threshold of not even bothering to bring up the possibility.
I'm just answering a question. At the end of the day none of this is my problem. I'm not here to suggest a solution I'm just saying these people are responsible for their own actions.
Here's a history on nonviolent revolutions though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_revolution
Actually, the US is responsible for Iran's actions. We're the ones who meddled in their government and pushed them to the point they're at today.
Regardless, it's laughable to think that regular Iranian citizens are just as responsible for their theocratic dictatorship as Americans are for the US's (crumbling) representative democracy. Those two things are not the same at all. Your average Iranian has zero influence over what the Iranian government does. The average American... put Trump in office, either by voting for him or by abstaining.
So if your grandfather killed my great great aunt and I used that as justification for killing your niece, it would be your fault your niece is dead. Got it.
This is an extremely important, often overlooked, point. I also know of many "educated Iranians" living in the US who voice their opinion as GP suggests, and are self-proclaimed to be anti-regime. However, they travel to Iran to visit family and friends twice a year and take an iPhone or two on their way to gift them, directly benefiting the Mullah's system. I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family, so I would take "hate the government" with a grain of salt when everything you do benefits the same establishment.
Some even line up to vote for sham Presidential elections of the Mullah regime, whose turnout legitimizes the regime, while inside the United States! Being Stanford educated does not prevent this seemingly cognitive dissonance or perhaps deception; it actually makes that more likely.
"I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family"
Then I recommend some history books. Family ties can be strong and the persecution of the jews was not always as violent and open as it was during the war. It was more systematic discrimination in the beginning, so of course people still travelled back and forth. Uprooting a whole family is not a simple thing.
"Some even line up to vote for sham Presidential elections of the Mullah regime"
What else they are supposed to do?
That is a small option of influence and they use it. You think the Mullahs would loose their power if people just would not vote for them? If that would be true, they would be a democracy.
> If that would be true, they would be a democracy.
I am positing perhaps they are a democracy. Many of the "educated people" in question that the GP suggests "hate" the government, may say so but their actions nevertheless are directly and indirectly benefiting the Mullahs. Democracy does not mean good, or effective, or not evil. It might be a collective compromise towards mediocrity and stagnation.
"I am positing perhaps they are a democracy."
Then maybe take a closer look into how their system works.
Every candidate has to be approved by the Mullah's. So the Mullah's are effectivly in control. Still, there are differences with the candidates. Would I vote under such conditions? No idea, I am struggle to find a party representing my views and I am in a western democracy.
The Democrats in the US have Superdelegates effectively vetoing candidates. So is the media and funding apparatus and the deep state by holding potential blackmail material.
To be clear, I am not defending their system. I am suggesting democracy is not a panacea that automatically guarantees prosperity. Far from it.
You're muddling the line between democracy and dictatorship.
In a democracy if you control all the votes of people you should be able to make changes in the government that the incumbent may not want. You can't do this in Iran.
"I am suggesting democracy is not a panacea that automatically guarantees prosperity. Far from it."
No, but I would say it is a precondition for broad prosperity. When the wealth and power lies concentrated with small minority, they tend to use their power to keep it that way. If power is distributed, so will be the wealth usually. And yes, I do see some problems with western democracies as well.
I don't think that is necessarily true. First, I don't agree with the implicit premise of your statement, i.e. that democracy does not lead to concentration of power. Second, I don’t think it has been a requirement throughout history.
Rule of law is much more important to success and prosperity than fetishizing a mechanism to vote in the head of state. There has been many successful instances of prosperous monarchy in Iran and elsewhere throughout history. The rich Persian Gulf states are prosperous monarchies. Iran was too, a constitutional monarchy, uprooted by Islamic-Marxist ideology partially in the name of “social democracy,” as if that’s a virtuous goal. What they ended up is Mullah. Chaos and tyranny, as Hamilton and Adams would predict.
Monarchies can be rich, but no one can be richer than the emperors family.
If you are into that, good luck with that and hope that there will never be a retarted king. Because it all depends on whether the king is nice and capable, or not.
Is that the stability and rule of law I should look forward? And they are all not so long lived either btw.
Plots, intrigues and coup d'etat of people who think they would make a better king is still a thing.
And .. I do make the claim that a real direct democracy does not tend to centralisation of power, as there are check and balances, but politicians left alone surely will aim for that as it make governing easier.
What a weird take. Family is important; I think it's a great thing that these people can maintain their family ties and even visit them. Hell, this is a great avenue to bring outside perspectives into the country.
Not sure how bringing a family member an iPhone is "benefiting the Mullah's system". It's a rounding error. And those family members are well aware that they can't get an iPhone in the usual way.
> I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family
They might, though, despite the risk! And this isn't really a great comparison, since a Jewish person visiting Nazi Germany to visit family would run a high risk of being found out and sent to a camp (along with the family they're visiting) and killed. I don't think that sort of thing would likely be the case for an Iranian expat visiting family in Iran.
> I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family
That is because they wouldn't be having a family in Germany since they would be dead
> Most educated Iranians hate their government
Where did you get that data from and what do you mean by "hate" in quantifiable terms? (just being "unhappy" with outcomes of certain policies does not mean they would necessarily want to uproot everything for the better)
If you meet educated Iranians, and read news on what's happening in the country, it's pretty obvious. Whether it's "hate" or "deeply dislike" may vary by person.
You are meeting Iranians who are outside of Iran (sample bias), and reading news in English. If you think that qualifies you to make sweeping assertions about Iranian views, I don't know what to say.
You said "most" meaning more than 50%. I am curious if you have any data on that or it's just guesswork?
If it's "obvious" it should be no problem for you to demonstrate it.
People here make it easy on themselves by blaming everything on "the government," but you should never underestimate the level of brainwashing. According to independent polls, it's more like 50% of Iranians still support their government. And it used to be closer to 80% a few years ago. I was lucky enough to be born into one of the wealthier nations, and our trust levels are much lower, despite our government doing not nearly as much crazy obviously evil stuff. I'd say the problem is not support of the government, it is education. The better educated people are, the less likely they are to blindly trust authority. And Iran lost most of its educated people already in the islamic revolution.
Independent polls? How do you conduct such a poll reliably when there are legitimate consequences in expressing you have a certain opinion?
Yup, same with "independent" polls in russia about war support. Some anonymous person claiming to be not government calls people and asks for their war support?
Who would give an honest answer here?
It is generally impossible in non-free societies to get accurate information about public opinion. It is already hard in free ones. Polls are notoriously unreliable when a topic is considered sensitive even in a free society. People will self-censor and misreport even if they are assured anonymity and wouldn't have to fear consequences beyond social stigma. When a new right-wing fringe party ("AfD") showed up in Germany, they were from day one publically decried as fishy neo-nazis, revisionists, etc., so supporting AfD carries a stigma. (I'm not stating that those accusations are true or untrue, just that they are frequently made in public). This lead to severe underestimations in the first few polls, because people voting for AfD didn't want to tell about it when asked. Nowadays, polls are more accurate because some amount of misreporting is taken into account.
Tales from an insider don't help very much, because people will only report about their own bubble, the city/province/town they live in, their family and friends of similar interest and social status, their workplace, etc. Also, there can be a severe selection bias, people wanting to talk to outsiders on the internet or even leave a country are probably more often critical of a regime and its decisions.
So from the outside, the only sensible thing we can do is see the country as a whole, lump in the government with the people. Because we cannot really know if people think differently and who they are. We cannot isolate or punish "just the government". And if there were a majority against the current government, there would be a revolution at some point. If there isn't one, opposition against the regime just isn't strong enough.
> The better educated people are, the less likely they are to blindly trust authority.
And on the flip side of that, the less educated people are, the more susceptible they are to propaganda.
> Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
USA is lucky to be in position where others are too afraid to apply this reasoning to them, knowing they do literally the same with their closest ally.
It would be interesting to see someone try to use the Internet while blocking all American IPs
You mean like the entire country of China?
China has local bootlegs, err... alternatives. Most countries don't have that.
Russia also has such alternatives.
Turns out that they aren't all that hard to develop once the original is unavailable, since lock-in is the main barrier to entry. In this sense, sanctions can sometimes have the opposite effect - by removing the established players from the market, they create opportunities for locals to fill the niches, making the country more self-sufficient in the long run, and thus harder to influence.
It must be really frustrating be on the receiving end of sanctions. The ugly truth about sanctions is that they punish the people more than the aristocracy. But they're still better than wars.
From the article:
>I read hackernews on a daily basis and I visit lots of different websites regularly. I am almost always on my VPN as I am internally firewalled by the government and externally shooed because of the sanctions, so I am probably missing some of these heart-warming messages:
>>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
> I actually do not blame the people who do this. I think there is a fundamental misconception that people think because "Islamic Republic" has the word "Republic" in it, it must be a government of people in charge.
Total war and total information war are the side effects of the Democracy meme. Everyone from a taxi driver to a professor is assumed to be a political actor. The rationale runs something like this, "because you have a vote, you are defacto responsible for the actions of your state and political classes. Vote harder next time."
Meanwhile the individuals involved never explicitly consented to be governed. Even if there were a meaningful democratic process, it doesn't follow that the individual could withdraw consent. Ironically one of the suggested avenues for withdrawing consent in a democracy is to refuse to vote.
Countries with "Democratic" and "Republic" in their name rarely are.
The majority (like over 100) of world countries have Republic in their name.
Or rather if you start aiming for democracy (the actual definition, not the 200 co-opted bastardized definitions,) that's where you always end up, as people from Plato to American founding fathers clearly understood.
Only way to widthraw consent in a democracy is moving to pay your taxes somewhere else.
Which is very difficult to do. Even if you ignore that doing so often means leaving behind your home, friends, family, culture, job, etc. to go to somewhere unfamiliar. Most countries, especially the countries that you would want to move to, don't just let you in because you want to. You probably need to have a job lined up, there may be a lottery, it will almost certainly be expensive, etc. And if you are in certain authoritative regimes, you don't just have to worry about another country letting you in, your home country might not let you out.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expa...
Your government might just build an antifaschistischen Schutzwall to keep that from happening.
The only real way to withdraw consent would be political violence.
The key upside of democracy imo is then that most people do not see a reason to use violence; They can vote and never need to withdraw consent that extremely.
And we rarely see meaningful change anywhere because electing politicians is barely connected to the actual outcomes people want.
Now we have a pacified populace that allows corruption to run freely and keeps repeating "violence is never the answer" while forgetting meaningful change almost always requires it.
Never forget we wouldn't even have weekends if people hadn't died for it.
I wish we never needed violence but it seems to be wishful thinking rather than reality. Will people oppose the next Hitler by ranting on Twitter and peaceful protests? Something tells me that won't work.
This. The fact that people in Europe and the US had to fight tooth and nail for workers rights and were opposed by a conglomerate of government force, corporate powers and organized crime gets all to easily forgotten.
> keeps repeating "violence is never the answer" while forgetting meaningful change almost always requires it.
It's a bit paradoxical, but almost all real change is done by the threat of violence, and almost none of it is achieved by applying violence.
But you are right that as people more radically reject violence, democracy dies and changes stop. Even though violence almost never achieves anything.
I deliberately said "most of the time" as Europe goes in a dangerous direction imo.
The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
And if your're someone sliding into nasty leadership / government situation you have to realize there will be a consequence to that and that the perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.
"The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership."
No, that's for consumption by population of the sanctioning country. The people in the know know very well that that never works.
The point is for every other country in the world to see how much it hurts if you don't follow the wishes of USA. Classic mafia strategy.
The exception were the sanctions on Russia at the start of the Ukraine war. Those were unprecedented (including the freezing of the national bank assets and blocking of Swift) and it looks like the western powers really believed that those sanctions will cause economic collapse and regime change in Russia.
> point is for every other country in the world to see how much it hurts if you don't follow the wishes of USA
This is the symbolic value of sanctions. It’s a part of coalition building and domestic messaging. (Though if you constantly do it this becomes less effective.)
It’s a classic team-building strategy: costly signalling [1]. You see it in mafias, but like, also when a softball team buys matching jerseys.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costly_signaling_theory_in_e...
Swift wasn’t blocked. There were targeted sanctions against certain banks.
This seems like legalistic perspective.
What percentage of Russia's foreign transactions went through those banks?
Certainly, normal people can't normally transfer money to/from Russia. The same for almost all companies.
Jain, as Germans say. It is not impossible to transfer the money (e.g. if you by a chance have accounts in certain banks on either side). Russian foreign trade still exists, Russian tourists still buy tours and spend money abroad etc. It’s even more complicated picture, of course.
Ironically the amount of sanctions the US put in place around the world is a large driving force for the decline of LIO and emergence of things like BRICS and SCO. I'm sure sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela are going to lead to regime change any moment now. The more you know, the more grotesque it all becomes, fortunately most know nothing.
> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
That's the theory, but has it ever worked?
That something that never works (not even in cases where it has been going on for multiple generations, as in the case of Cuba or Iran) keeps being tried makes it impossible to believe that the intention is making it "work" in the sense you mean. The sanctions are just to sink those countries for political interest. Which in some cases makes sense (e.g. Russia, as it's invading Ukraine and sinking its economy can be a deterrent in that respect), but in others is definitely evil.
> has it ever worked?
Yes. About a third of the time [1].
[1] https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/863435/mod_resource/conte... Table 6.1 page 159
That's interesting, but (at least from a quick look and a few text searches) they don't seem to explain what their "sanction contribution score" is. How are they sure that the cases where they "worked" are not regression to the mean (some authoritarian regimes just fall from time to time)? And how are they sure that there is not an equal number of cases where they do the opposite of what they intend? (maybe the Castrist regime would have fallen already if the country had been allowed to develop without sanctions).
> they don't seem to explain what their "sanction contribution score" is
“The success score is an index on a scale of 1 to 16, found by multiplying the policy result index by the sanctions contribution index” (page 77).
Simpler: Table 4A.1 shows their scoring for individual cases. They break at 9 for success versus failure, so maybe eyeball those to see if they gel with your intuition. If not, adjust and re-run the numbers.
My eyeballing suggests it would be quite difficult to zero out the list.
I am citing here from the conclusions of that book (better, have a look yourself):
Overall, we found sanctions to be at least partially successful in 34 percent of the cases that we documented.
By our standards, successful cases are those with an overall success score of 9 or higher. We emphasize that a score of 9 does not mean that economic sanctions achieved a foreign policy triumph. It means only that sanctions made a modest contribution to a goal that was partly realized, often at some political cost to the sender country.
Yet in many cases, it is fair to say that sanctions were a necessary component of the overall campaign that focused primarily on the projection of military force.
Second, we classify some sanctions as failing to produce a real change in the target’s behavior when their primary if unstated purpose—namely, demonstrating resolve at home, signaling disapproval abroad, or simple punishment—may have been fully realized.
>> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
>That's the theory, but has it ever worked?
The point is not to (directly) instigate regime change, but to influence the actions of the existing regime, as well as other state actors not under sanctions, by demonstrating to them how bad it can get. Make an example and so on.
The suffering of the civilians is not the goal of sanctions but a consequence of the choices their - legitimate or not - leaders make, and which ultimately impacts their ability to engage in foreign trade. No country has an obligation to trade with any other, so if civilians suffer after foreign trade is limited, the agency and moral responsibility is with the regime that failed to secure friendly trade relations. Often, humanitarian exceptions are carved out to limit this.
It definitely "works", in the sense that it's often the only tool available, along with positive reinforcements such as aid and support and the threat of stopping them, which is just another flavor of the same. It's hard to have a benchmark for something that "works" better, since countries are sovereign and by definition have disputes and don't blindly follow any established rules or rulers.
>That's the theory, but has it ever worked?
It kinda worked in Syria. The combination of sanctions, plus squatting on sovereign Syrian territory and preventing the government from generating income eventually left Assad's military so hollowed out that that the Turkish-backed rebel faction led by former Al Qaeda members was able to essentially drive to Damascus with minimal resistance.
If anything I'd say it has the opposite of the intended effect sometimes.
Like, during WW2 the UK was being bombed and ration books and supply shortages were the order of the day. They look back on their endurance of the conditions inflicted upon them as a source of national pride, have to imagine that is the case for many in the sanctioned countries too.
The bombing of Nazi Germany in return had the same effect. Due you think people will flock to an enemy, that bombs them every night? No, they will put all their strength into trying to prevent the bombs from falling down in the first place.
As did the bombings of North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
I mean the US was seen as a favorable enemy, but that was more to the USSR being way worse and due to the post-war behaviour. I still see the effects of e.g. WW2 allied bombing, when walking through my city. And the railway system in (East) Germany has never recovered and this is still causing problems.
And now probably in Gaza.
No country should generally decide something for people of another country, but let's say it's a exceptional case and it's a war tactic, as a response to an external threat.
Then half a decade shows that point is not relevant or, the overthrowing is not the point at all.
I too wished the wolrd was that simple. But there are dictatorships, who kill, slaughter, coerce, ... and also all the international affairs from which those people are kept an outsider with zero say by the said government. I don't think we can reduce it to "it's people's fault".
I suspect a reason for sanctions is that it allows the government applying them to look like they're doing something to their voters. It's an effective way of scoring points without spending any resources. They know they're ineffective, but they also know the general public doesn't know that. For instance the EU very publicly applying sanctions against Russia while with less fanfare continuing to give them billions for gas.
It’s a stupid idea that does not work. People don’t do that because of sanctions.
Is the concept here that a government, which may not be oppressive enough to spark a domestic uprising (and might even be broadly accepted by the majority of its own citizens due to common moral values or other merits), should be destabilized by external forces to provoke discontent and shift blame onto the government?
> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
After the CIA and the US foreign policy had so much trouble overthrowing the old one and putting that one in place?
> point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership
This works about a third of the time [1].
What does is incentivising domestic policy changes. We saw that with the nuclear deal. But then Trump blew it up because Obama did it.
(On another level, sanctions degrade capability. If there is no room for peace, at least you can limit your adversary’s economy and thus martial production. If regime change randomly happens, you can use lifting sanctions to blow oxygen on the new government’s flame [2].)
[1] https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/863435/mod_resource/conte... Table 6.1, page 159
[2] https://the307.substack.com/p/how-sanctions-function-as-a-to...
Sanctions don't work. Syria didn't collapse because of sanctions, but because of a very long civil war and, more importantly, a sudden imbalance in external forces (Russia was preoccupied with Ukraine). I don't think there has ever been a case where a country, or its people, changed the regime because of sanctions. Never. North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Palestine, and much of Africa are examples. Wars and revolutions change regimes. I would even argue that sanctions help regimes stay in power. When an external force imposes a threat (sanctions) on people, those people don't see the outside as "saviours" but as an enemy. They often resent the country that imposed the sanctions more than their own government, and they have no desire to fight an external enemy on behalf of a domestic dictator.
Sanctions punish ordinary people, many of whom are already suffering under the regime. So they end up opposing both an internal and an external enemy. In the long run, sanctions probably destroy and cost far more lives than wars. It's a sadistic way to try to crush an enemy.
You’re refuting a fairly robust study with vibes.
> Syria didn't collapse because of sanctions
Nobody said it did.
> don't think there has ever been a case where a country, or its people, changed the regime because of sanctions. Never
Literally a source with a page number, and, in a neighbouring comment, a table with the specifics.
Like, if you had a button that could convert the world’s hot wars into mutual embargoes, would you not push it? Up the stakes: mutual embargo plus embargoed by their leading trade partner.
No. I wouldn't. Because it makes it easier for the stronger power to dominate without hot wars. Sanctions cost the U.S. very little when used against Iran, but for Iranians they are extremely hard and disproportionately expensive. A hot war would be far more costly for the U.S., and the higher the expected cost, the less likely policymakers are to choose it.
> A hot war would be far more costly for the U.S.
…we just had a hot war with Iran. It probably cost us less than our sanctions.
I’ll say this: you’re consistent in your position and I respect that. I just don’t think many people share the view that people getting physically torn apart by munitions is better than have a less-comfortable, possibly borderline, life.
My point exactly. It lasted 12 days. How much did it cost? How much you think would cost 5 years of war with Iran? And how much did sanctions cost Iranians (economy + lives) past 40 years. Afghanistan war costed 2t for 20 years of war. That number would be reached withing months in a war with Iran.
> How much you think would cost 5 years of war with Iran? And how much did sanctions cost Iranians (economy + lives) past 40 years
Idk, how much?
It also makes it harder to build weapons for example. Ruzzians for example rely on western chips and other parts for their weapon systems and due to the sanctions they need to smuggle those parts, which makes it more expansive for them.
Designed in "the West" produced in the ally China.
”The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.”
Very easy to say. Quite hard to pull off. People in authoritarian countries have very little leverage and would like just to live fullfilling lives.
I’m not saying ”don’t do sanctions” but this mechanistic outcome is highly improbable.
”perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.”
Um - the most polite way of stating this is that this view of how political systems work is highly delusional at best.
Ruling party depends on _elite_ _compliance_.
Telling people to throw their lives away to provoke a civil war is one of the nastiest rhetorical tricks you hear when people talk about oppressive regimes.
In basically every case a bad government is preferable to the destruction, chaos and death a civil war brings. "Just overthrow your government" is ridiculous plea.
It worked pretty well for most east bloc countries. Granted, they had to wait until the Soviet Union was weak to break away, but couldn't sanctions be one of the tools to get there faster?
Ask Balkans about their 90s. "Worked pretty well", yeah.
I did say "most", and I stand by that. Look at most of Central Europe, the Baltics, Ukraine...
Even the Asian parts of the USSR mostly had peaceful transitions into independence (and often into the hands of new semi-dictators, but that's beside the point).
>It worked pretty well for most east bloc countries.
And for some it worked out pretty badly. Hungarians rebeled against communism, but that rebellion was put down brutally.
You are correct that towards the end of the Soviet Union many of the client states and Russia itself had popular uprisings which succeeded, but that that point the Communist Government was already failing.
My point is not that no popular uprising has ever worked or that outside pressure can not force the end of some regime, but that telling people that they need to take up arms against their government is an insane proposition.
Cold hard truth. If Iranians don't support their government like is always said.. then....
>The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
Yeah, it will certainly make life better, works every time (no).
> And if your're someone sliding into nasty leadership / government situation you have to realize there will be a consequence to that and that the perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.
Especially if you’ve just been dumb enough to re-elect that nasty leadership / government on behalf of (and at the behest of) the people who benefit off having that ruling party in office.
No it's also just to deny those countries resources to come after the rest of us.
We don't sell them weapons, and we try to limit dual-use technology from being freely available.
Defense tech uses a lot of open source software and commercially available software - letting a regime simply buy technological advantage it can't cultivate is a good way to lose that advantage and then also lose the culture which can create it.
So like .. ‘I%’
Then?
> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.
Iranians had several mass uprisings that were suppressed by the military. And the top military and religious authorities in Iran have no problems whatsoever living well, even with all the sanctions.
Just like the Russian elites, btw. They can't visit France as easily anymore, but there's always Dubai available. That can't care less where your money comes from.
> Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
Love how people in glass houses launch these stones.
I feel for you OP. Everyone on here clearly aware that they have no influence over their own government seem to instantly lack empathy for your situation because they saw the word Iran.
It’s all pretty moronic if I’m honest. I really hope things get better for you.
Living in Europe, I don't give a damn about US sanctions. However, I block traffic from Iran on all my servers for the simple reason that almost all attacks on my website (and if you run a semi-popular website, you get attacked on a daily basis) come from Iran, Russia or China.
I am very sorry that this kind of action affects you personally, as I am sure you have nothing to do with these attacks. However, filtering out Iranian, Russian and Chinese traffic in its entirety is the only way to protect my server from the majority of DoS and hacking attempts.
One of my coworkers, a network specialist, compares IP restrictions to a garden fence. They’re enough to stop casual passersby, but anyone determined will find a way over or around it.
The reality, though, is that the majority of attack attempts are by casual passersby.
No, this method isn't going to stop a determined attacker that is specifically targeting you, but that doesn't mean blocking the lower-effort stuff has no value.
I personally know a woman from Iran. She has a PhD in Data Science. She works and lives in the EU. Her mindset is that of an educated European person.
She does not support the current Iranian government, and neither do most of the people in Iran, according to her. But publicly expressing disagreement in Iran could have you disappear. That's why people are afraid to protest and speak out.
Regarding sanctions, it's not that hard to find and buy products from Iran. At least in the EU. What happens is neighboring countries import raw material from Iran, then put a label "Made in Pakistan", for example, and sell it. But those who know, can easily find and buy things like Iranian rice and spices.
> By the way, did you know you could return 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons instead of 403 Forbidden when you're going to ban me next time?
Had no idea, interesting!
451 coming from here by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451
The website of an American company returned a blank page to me. I thought that they must have made a mistake and that it would be fixed soon. Several days later it was still returning a blank page, so I sent them an email in case they didn't know. It turns out that they don't want to deal with the laws of other countries (EU's GDPR, etc.) and so simply return a blank page for anyone visiting from outside America. A "451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons" or some other type of explanation would have been less confusing than the blank page.
It is actually illegal for EU companies and organizations to boycott Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_statute
The EU has since the 1990s gone out of its way to support countries like Iran and Cuba against US/Israeli economic sanctions.
This is not just a funny joke, but also timely given the recent sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agains...
Iran has been under sanctions for a long time. I remember working for unnamed US server manufacturer back in 09 and we had a list of countries by our desks to remember if anyone ever called in from there, or even mentioned working there during the call.
Clear example that hosting (github, websites, etc) as well as social media being US based is a form of soft power that the US has which largely goes unchallenged.
While I do agree with the sanctions against Iran for their aid to Russia in their aggression towards Ukraine, It's not like the US is completely innocent from funding or arming aggressors across the globe. How can the software world be mobilized to sanction the US for this? It can't and it won't because lots of the people in tech within the anglosphere have a vested interest in the US maintaining its power
Can someone give me an explanation for why Mike Cardwell, who lives in the UK, blocks Iranian IPs for “your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.” but does not block US or UK IPs for their decision to arm Israel?
The answer would seem to me to be racism – he values Ukrainian lives more than Palestinians and considers non-white citizens in non-democratic countries responsible for their country’s actions, but white citizens of democracies innocent.
I’m not sure if you’re actually asking or not, but in case you want to hear an answer, it’s because Israel is considered to be defending itself after a horrible attack, not that dissimilar to Ukraine really in some people’s view (me included). This goes back to a worldview where residents of a country share a portion of the blame for their country’s actions. This view is not universal, but has a certain mindshare (again, myself included), and if you imagine it fair for residents of a place to share the fate caused by the cumulative actions of that place, it’s not a big stretch to see how Israel’s actions can be considered natural and just by some, and so can the sanctions against residents of Iran and Russia.
The vast majority of the world including the ICC and the UN does not consider Israel to be defending itself. By your own logic, Israelis are culpable for the genocide and land theft committed by their government.
I believe “vast manority” may be a stretch; do you happen to know if there’s a way to quantify that? In my bubble, almost everyone that I personally know and who generally has reasonable beliefs, is on the Israel’s side of this conflict.
I would go with UN country support for Palestine: https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-countries-voted-give-pale...
But with the side note that the countries that support Israel do so against the will of the majority of their population’s wishes.
I’m curious what circles you’re running in where Zionism is the norm? That’s pretty rare, at least in the US.
Looks like you missed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45259553
Yes I do get the feeling that some of these sentiments ultimately goes back to covert racism.
It's a sad story all round. I hope the world gets more decentralised, so that people get less caught up in the politics of others. I can't remember the exact quote, about world war 1 or 2, but it was along the lines of "war is when people who don't know each other fight, for people who do know each other". Hits hard.
> I hope the world gets more decentralised
It's not looking too likely. You have Google's planned app developer verification, the UK's Online Safety Act, the EU's plans to interfere with E2EE, EU privacy rules causing sites to be riddled with popups, money laundering rules making banking increasingly more tedious, power concentrated in the hands of a few nation-state sized tech companies, countries becoming more authoritarian even in the West.
As an anecdotal example, I'm currently living/travelling between various EU countries, where a few years ago I would have expected a great deal of online freedom. Instead I now have to constantly change my VPN exit point to get around various restrictions depending on what site I'm using and what they have decided to block based on location.
If we can't even get these things right in the so-called free democracies of the West, what hope is there for the world in general? I'd like to be optimistic about this, but it's hard to find reasons to be.
These sanctions are not really effective. I think Cuba is the country that has had them for the most amount of time and... Nothing changed. Instead they force them to develop in house tech which may be better for them in the long term
The sanctions on the Mullah regime have prevented financing of more proxies. There is a direct correlation between loosening enforcement and lifting such sanctions and increased support for Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. It's preposterous to claim that they do not work.
The US is the one arming terrorist proxies. See Syria with Jolani/Isis/Alqaeda...
>The sanctions on the Mullah regime have prevented financing of more proxies.
Less funding of proxies just means Israel gets away with killing more civilians without consequence.
You might say that, but the proxies weren't so keen on saving their citizens' lives either. Bashar Assad killed 600'000 of his own citizens. Hamas uses hospitals and UN schools as their command centers. Hezbollah has underground tunnels under civilian infrastructure where their leaders hide. The Iranian government assists with and finances the bombing on Jewish people all over the world. I wouldn't start pointing fingers so soon.
You are therefore agreeing that sanctions works, but you oppose the goals of the US government and wish they did not work.
Well, lets see how that worked out:
1. Hamas, an Iranian proxy, attacked Israel on October 7th 2023. Until that time, the death toll in the 100 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict was about 10k Israels to 40k Palestinians. It since became 12k Israelis to 110k Palestinians. I don't think that proxy fulfilled its intention.
2. Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, attacked Israel on October 8th in support of Hamas. The ensuing war killed about 4k Lebanese. That proxy, too, seems to have failed in its mission to reduce the death tol..
3. The Houthis, yet another Iranian proxy, attacked Israel in support of Gaza. Since then, Israeli counter attacks killed several hundreds in Yemen. Not good.
Now these proxies are heavily damaged, deprived of most strategic capabilities and the death toll in the ensuing battles dwarfed all of the past deaths in the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Sorry, it is not possible for Cuba to develop any sort of functioning in-house tech with a complete economic embargo. US also "pays" Cuba less than the cost of a NY apartment for its "leased" huge naval base - Guantanamo - the price of which has never changed since the original agreement taken at gun-point.
Ukrainian sanctions work.
Ask a russian about the price of fuel.
The European sanctions are more of a joke.
I you want to Ukraine to win donate to them directly instead of waiting for the cowardly politicians to get their act together.
Answering that specific question, 98 jumped up 16% this spring and... that's it. Except for that, it's an ordinary curve compared to, say, 5 years ago. And that's mostly the result of actually bombing the refineries.
I meant sanctions which are bombing russian refineries.
So they stories no fuel in Russia are just propaganda?
That's not sanctions, that's just warfare.
And yes, if US and EU were serious about helping Ukraine win, this would have already happened back in 2022. Or better yet, back in 2014.
As it is, US & EU sanctions seem to be more of a theater mostly for the benefit of the population of those countries, so that their politicians can sincerely say that they "support Ukraine".
Oh, makes sense.
Depends on the claim - some are, some aren't. The problem obviously exists, but the coverup is good enough to make lots of people think that the war happens on another planet and doesn't affect them (e.g. gasoline export ban).
You can check prices for the largest gas station network here (table in the middle): https://lukoilazs.ru/category/stoimost-benzina-na-segodnya/
Prices are in RUB/L, 1 USD ~ 80 RUB, 1 EUR ~ 100 RUB.
Then make your own conclusion.
Work?
Let's not kid ourselves. Russia is still killing Ukrainians right now. They're still occupying Ukraine's land right now. Is this what "work" looks like in your dictionary?
> Ask a russian about the price of fuel.
Oh I see. In your dictionary a working solution is not to stop the war or get lands back, but to ensure average Russian people suffer. Never mind then.
Oil is how Russia funds their war-machine. Bombing refineries makes it harder and less sustainable to keep the war going. It's not about making civilians suffer when you literally need to pressure the enemy into stopping the war by blowing up their infrastructure.
> Ukrainian sanctions work.
The only reasonable definition of "work" is "stop the thing that motivated the sanction from happening". With that definition, sanctions rarely work (or if they do, not in a very effective way). Russia is still at war with Ukraine. Iran is still developing nuclear weapons. North Korea did develop nuclear weapons.
What do you think should be done? War? Nothing? Diplomacy didn't work.
> Nothing changed
This is not true. The sanctions definitely hurt countries like Cuba or Russia. They have a far harder time growing their economy. Cuba is stuck in the last century and often has total blackouts that last for days. Russia needs to beg countries like Iran or North Korea now for imports.
Russian economy is booming actually, thanks to continued purchasing of oil and gas by Europe and other parts of the world, and the sanctions that block capital outflow out of the country.
> Russian economy is booming actually
Mostly the military, from what I hear. The rest of the economy is in shambles [1].
No matter what: once the war in Ukraine is over by whatever solution, it's going to get nasty. Either Putin (or, more likely, his successor - the dude is old and it's by far not sure if he will be able to stay in power should the war end up bad for Russia) manages to turn around the economy once again from producing tanks and other instruments of war to a regular economy, or they'll keep it that way... and attack another country with all that firepower.
[1] https://kyivindependent.com/amid-dwindling-economy-number-of...
There's a trickle down effect from it, same as with all massive government spending. Those factory workers who now have cushy jobs with large paychecks assembling tanks and cruise missiles then go and spend that money on other things.
Yet the ruling elites and military still enjoy decent quality of life, it´s mostly the ordinary people who suffer. In case of Russia that´s okay since large parts of the population genuinely support the war, but I´m not so sure about Iran and Cuba, where most are not supportive of their governments anyway.
The point isn't necessarily to make leadership suffer, but rather to prevent suffering of everyone who might be threatened by a strong Cuba/Iran/North Korea
In case of Cuba I think the sanctions regime is in part motivated by vindictiveness and in part to make an example for other nations in the americas of what happens when you evade US hegemony..
If the sanctions weren't effective Russia wouldn't be insisting on the lifting of the sanctions as a part of any Ukrainian deal.
The sanctions significantly slow down Russian development and are more and more making it into just a mineral mining satellite of China. With time the weakened Russia would just split, and the large eastern part will go to China. Some midparts, with Turkic speaking population may even fall into Turkey orbit. Without the oil and gas rich East, the European part of Russia will be just a destitute village on the far margins of civilized Europe as it had been for centuries in the past.
> If the sanctions weren't effective Russia wouldn't be insisting on the lifting of the sanctions as a part of any Ukrainian deal.
If the sanctions were effective Russia wouldn't be offering entirely one-sided deals that it knows nobody is going to accept, because it would be desperate enough to get those sanctions lifted that it would actually have to concede something in a deal.
Sanctions don't prevent the short-term behavior. Russia thinks that it is winning in Ukraine - thus the one-sided deals, it isn't about the other side accepting it, for Russia it is about Russia forcing such a deal, and it always includes lifting of the sanctions as a key element of a deal that Russia is trying to force because even with traditional lack of long-term vision they understand that the sanctions are crippling the country. They think that winning the war, forcing such a one-sided deal, is the only way to get the sanctions lifted "cleanly", and any deal with concessions, etc. would look less than victorious and would probably have the sanctions lift incomplete/incremental and boggled down with conditions, etc.
If you access grepular outside of Iran, you get something even worse: their website.
This works as designed. Sanctions like these are meant to piss off the people living in terrorist states so that you either rise up and rid yourself of all terrorist roots or you accept that the rest of the world doesn’t want to play ball with terrorists or terrorist enablers.
Have you ever risen up against an authoritarian government yourself?
I find that a lot of Westerners seem to have what I can only charitably describe as "romantic notions" of an uprising. Americans perhaps the most because of their national mythology around the Independence War.
I don't know. If I would run "docker run hello-world" and got and error "403" because I'm from Iran, I would be more pissed at US for making my life harder.
---
unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian. For years London was welcoming russian oligarhs with their stolen money. Putin was invited to Finland even after 2014 invasion of Crimea. But you fuckers decided to ipmlement sanctions only after the 2022. So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine. Absolutely disgusting. Supposedly Finland continues to buy russian minerals still, but as a russian I cannot cross the border with Finland, even if I have a visa.
> unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian > So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine.
Just stay at home then, whats the problem? If you are so pissed with the West then why is it a problem that you cannot come here? Just stay in Russia then.
you chose to ignore the part of my post where I was pissed at the west for happily inviting russians with stolen money
The reality is simply a mirror of the same arguments on OPs side.
Just like it's not the people it's the government and their policies, there, it's not the people, but the government and the policies here.
I remember having compliance trainings that explicitly spelled out sanctioned countries. They are being enforced by compliance and legal departments in every company. There's nothing personal on either side here.
When do sanctions apply to websites? I assume static web pages don’t need to filter IPs. Do all websites with a user need to filter on IP?
A friend of mine, originally from Iran but now a Canadian citizen, was stopped at the border during a recent visit by CBP. They interrogated him, scanned his phone, found some EE paper, insinuated that he makes bombs and is a terrorist, and sent him back to Canada. The US' treatment of Iranians is quite appalling.
This discussion leans against sanctions, and I feel a bit uneasy about this. There are some good arguments, but still... can I try to offer a different point of view?
I grew up in a country occupied by Russians. I really feel for the Ukrainians. Currently, there seems to be a social contract between Putin and middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg - they will let him bomb Ukrainian civilians, as long as he shields them from getting really hurt by that war. They can continue living pretty comfortably, as long as they go along with it. To me, this just feels wrong. Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience. But I believe that ultimately, citizens have the responsibility for what their country is doing. And if what their country is doing is destroying another country, I am OK with making them feel a bit of heat.
I don't know that much about Iran, but the part I know is that they indeed make drones that pound Ukrainians, including their schools and hospitals. Do I feel certain sympathy for Iranian commoners, who might not make those drones voluntarily? Sure. If I were in their place, I would probably not dare to resist, and I would make those drones. But I feel more sympathy with Ukrainians. And if anything could be done to make it harder for Iranians to make those drones, we should try it. Even if it's unlikely to succeed. Even if it makes the lives of innocent ordinary citizens harder. I hope that if I were an Iranian, I would at least understand that.
Let's say some random Russian in Moscow decides that they are not okay with it. What would you have them do, exactly? It's not even that the government is oppressive and will crack down, but an even bigger problem is that this oppressive government genuinely does have majority support of the population (as you note yourself!) - so what can they do even? And if the answer really is nothing, then how can they be responsible?
Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".
> so what can they do even? And if the answer really is nothing, then how can they be responsible?
I think I need to clarify what I mean by "responsibility". Many people confuse "you are responsible" with "you did this" or "it is your fault", but this is not exactly true. Let's say I am an alcoholic. I believe alcoholism is an affliction (some people might not agree with that, but that's another discussion - let's ignore that for now and assume it is an affliction). Therefore, I believe it is not my fault that I am an alcoholic - It was just bad luck that I was born that way. Yet, it is my responsibility to control my alcoholism. If I hurt someone while under the influence, I have to bear the consequences. Some might argue it is not entirely fair, and I would agree. But in my view, it is the closest we can get to fair. I have a better chance of controlling my alcoholism than some random person whose kids I might have killed while driving under the influence.
Alcoholism is an extreme example, but if you think about it for a while, being responsible for something that is not your fault is common. I see Russians responsible in the same way. Citizens of a state share collective responsibility for what their state is doing. And the fact that an individual might not be able to do anything about it does not change that.
> Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".
Why? This is not a court of law, where you have to prove guilt to inflict punishment. Sanctions are not a punishment (which is also why I do not like arguments about collective punishment used in this discussion and elsewhere). They are an attempt to pressure a state to stop causing harm. And if that attempt is based on somewhat reasonable assumptions (which, in the case of Russia and Iran, I think it is), I am fine with it.
And let's not forget it is a relatively peaceful attempt. Nazi Germany was "persuaded" by literally destroying them to the point of unconditional capitulation. And many people who had nothing to do with Hitler died. In an ideal world, they would not have, because it was not their fault and they could not do anything, but the problem is that we only have very crude ways of dissuading states from causing harm.
> middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg
2 prevalent groups of which are retired and people who moved there to make their ends meet, which will be complete around the retirement age.
> Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience.
How many changes you did under dictators with actual armies, spy networks, chemical and nuclear weapons?
Your whole post is war propaganda to justify how "the enemy" needs to be blocked and attacked.
Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.
Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.
> Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.
I have. It was Russia. They are indeed blocked and I am not surprised.
> Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.
No, I won't block myself because my little country has not invaded anyone. If you are assuming I am an American, I am not.
Lol. That's a bold faced lie. Not even a biased llm will support that.
> Even after leaving Iran, you still face many similar problems. [...] like having a bank account or simply opening a personal account on different services—you’ll encounter problems.
When you grant access/resources to expats of a hostile country, you have to limit them as if they were agents of the foreign country. Even if they like your country, you make them vulnerable to threats of torture/imprisonment of their loved ones back home.
> I am NOT asking for the removal of the sanctions targeted at the Islamic Republic of Iran.
All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government. Just a bullying tactic by the US with zero moral justifications, despite how it's framed by the media.
> All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government.
That requires some blind faith to believe. In that I don't think those applying them really expect overthrowing the government to result. I would guess sanctions are designed to hurt and weaken, to make them less of an adversary. Although that's a harder sell, so doesn't get presented that way.
Seems like the moral justification would be to encourage overthrowing the government? The literature on sanction is mixed but zero is overstating it.
Which is also not true, as we're seeing in Syria.
> All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians
Objectively untrue. Many of the Russian sanctions, for example, targeted Putin’s inner circle.
They may not be normal civilians, but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians. In other cases sanctions are targeted at government officials personally rather than the parts of government they influence, like targeting their side business, their stock, or their personal property.
There are sanctions targeting governments specifically, but usually government sanctions also target civilians. You can't exactly expect a sanctioned government to be transparent, it'll hide its government business under company names if you let it.
> many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians
By that definition Putin is a civilian.
More broadly: plenty of sanctions explicitly target military-only kit. Those are not “designed to hurt civilians,” though I guess a civilian working in a munitions factory might lose their job.
> but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials
That's the thing in a crony dictatorship: these people might not hold public office in name, but in practice they act under direct license, authority and orders of the dictator. We're already seeing this in Hungary, where close friends of the local de-facto-dictator Viktor Orban control almost all media and absolutely use that ownership to further entrench Orban's rule - it's hard to achieve political change when the media simply doesn't care about you.
And now, we're seeing the beginnings in the US, just from another angle - public kowtowing and open extortion, such as with Jimmy Kimmel who got cancelled after a threat to block a corporate merger, and it's not the first time either. And no, the fact that Disney walked back after their stock price took a decent dip doesn't mean that this is the last time such an event will take place.
Citation needed. As far is I know this is simply false. Different sanctions have different goals. Regime change is very rarely a goal. Often it is to reduce economic growth to keep/make the country weak, or to achieve some other goal. See for example sactions on India, which are definitely not meant to overthrow the indian government.
Sometimes it's both.
"Your country is sanctioned because your government is being a global ass, wink-wink"
Implying that a change in government will lift the sanctions.
So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?
I’m aware there are consequences to sanctions, and the way they are implemented is often half-assed or hypocritical (e.g. the way that russian oil still flows) but to drop all sanctions…
Is that not like saying boycotts hurt employees who had nothing to do with the decisions so we should never boycott?
Or moving towards a multipolar equilibrium so that a pole can't unilaterally decide about those.
What does that mean? Like in a practical sense - russia declares war on ukraine… next step is? Move towards a multipolar equilibrium? How? How long does that take.
Yes ideally we’d live in a world where this bullshit doesn’t happen. But it does happen, so our choices are to respond with the tools we have NOW or not respond at all.
> So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?
That's what the US has been doing since forever, even actively participating in the war crimes. If you think any of the stated reasons for the sanctions are real, I have a bridge to sell you.
> That's what the US has been doing since forever
And you think this is a good thing? Like we should be consistent and support all war crimes instead of just some of them?
Just because we do bad things, doesn’t make it right to do more bad things.
Other countries are perfectly welcome to sanction the USA, by all means tell me more about this bridge
So... it would be the best for you (and the rest of the world) to actually decouple from the USA and it's BigTech (and thus from their "pliceman of the world" mentality…)
It is time that democracies stop doing business with autocratic regimes. Not just some of them, because if everything is manufactured in china, which keeps doing business with iran and russia, it seems pointless.
At this point it should be obvious to everyone, that western money is (transitively) keeping all the worst regimes alive.
People stopped buying south African stuff, as an apartheid boycott, can we get some china boycott going?
Why only Iran? Also add Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Afghanistan.
https://the-decoder.com/anthropic-bans-companies-majority-co...
The worst thing we could do is punish the Iranian people and remove their access to tools that help their freedom and dignity.
Their government, quite literally, does not represent them, their views, nor their interests.
If you want to fix “the Iran problem”, help their people as much as possible.
To the comments that talk about Iranian politics: Iran under a monarchy will do well, perhaps even limited democracy. The monarchies of the Arab world seem to be doing well, and not by chance. Democracy alone is not good for any country in the long run imo.
Jeah, democracies are for loosers. What did democrats ever do for us, apart from aqueducts?
What astonishes me is the ease of judgement - who is good and who is not. Everyone is absolutely sure that country A is a doing a RIGHT (tm) thing, while the country B is absolute evil. You have no idea about real reasons, real facts and real feelings except those you've seen on tv or heard from your own bubble. You are so smart, honest and independent that it smells. "Of course YOU have to ... and ... and ... I know better than you guys. Why you are so stupid and don't end this?" It is so easy to rule other countries and tell them what they have to do, totally ignoring real problems that lead to situation. It is so easy to be right, to judge and to discuss things you have no fucking clue. And every person that is saying something contradictory to your opinion is a stupid guy that is brainwashed. They are all brainwashed! Their brain is destroyed by propaganda! Poor, stupid people! We need to bring some democracy to them. Probably. If they do not have some nukes or it would be too expensive. Anyway, thank you for reading.
I appreciate this very human submission to HN. There are a lot of good people in this world living under a government they don't agree with.
It really sucks, the US should focus on liberating these people - in both Iran and Cuba the majority of people want to be free, and it would be easy to liberate them.
How? The US has a pretty bad record of "liberating" middle-eastern countries by military force.
UPDATE users SET inactive = true WHERE country = 'Iran'
That way you don't lose their data just in case sanctions are lifted
I talk to a few Iranians online. All very nice people. You'd think they had horns on their heads and cloven hooves the way certain people in the US talks about them.
Even the regime itself.. look I wouldn't to live there. But comparing it to somewhere like North Korea is ridiculous. Even by Middle Eastern standards it's not at the bottom.
Yes its great. If you move there you can give away your daughter to be the 3.rd woman of s.o. at the age of 9.
The stupid thing about those indiscriminate sanctions is that it goes against the very values the West is pretending to defend. EU charter of Human Rights is explicit about condemning collective responsibility, universal declaration of human rights demands justice to be applied reasonably and individually, yet here we are: punishing people without trial.
Do those sanctions even work? North Korea still builds nuclear weapons, Cuba still has a communist government, Iran is still a theocratic regime. You don’t start revolution by trade embargo. You start it by sending more jeans and heavy metal records.
Do those sanctions even work?
Well, you mentioned "North Korea still builds nuclear weapons," but didn't mention Iran having them. So, something worked. It wasn't 100% just sanctions... But the sanctions certainly hampered their ability to acquire effective air defense.
(The NK sanctions were too late — NK had already started nuclear weapons testing before the sanctions were levied.)
Off the top of my head: I don't think the USSR is still around, and it largely collapsed due to economic pressure; Libya abandoned its nuclear program due to sanctions; and apartheid in South Africa ended largely due to sanctions.
They don't always work, but I've never heard of jeans and heavy metal working either, as nice as that would be. Belarus has plenty of both, but Lukashenko's been in power since the 90s.
> But the sanctions certainly hampered their ability to acquire effective air defense.
Effective air defense against military superpower (and they were effectively fighting against American technology) is something very hard to build, with or without sanctions. Ukraine is a good proof: Russia was denied air superiority using manned aircrafts but they still manage to inflict significant damage with missiles and drones.
> I don't think the USSR is still around, and it largely collapsed due to economic pressure
It wasn’t external pressure at all. Soviet Union had everything to be self-sustainable (e.g. Russia and Ukraine have proven later that in agriculture it’s absolutely possible). They failed to execute transition to regulated market economy the way China did. Gorbachev thought democracy goes first (the entire Warsaw bloc collapsed thanks to “blue jeans” - KGB and Stasi feared Western culture the most, and the West was ready to send more of it).
Denying external economic pressure affecting the USSR seems... Wishful, in a certain direction. As does denying that sanctions have helped prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, which it has clearly been working on for a very long time, and repeatedly failing to acquire.
Regardless, you don't have an answer to Libya's nuclear program being shut down due to sanctions, and South African apartheid ending due to sanctions. Do sanctions have a 100% success rate? No. But they have a much higher success rate than jeans and heavy metal.
Sanctions work, but not in the way that is the common public perception. The expectation isn’t that Russia or whoever falls apart a few weeks after we lock them out of Visa payment rails or whatever. The reality is that the sanctions stifle economic growth and that effect is compounding. Even if sanctions only reduce growth by 1 percentage point, after ~19 years your economy is already 20% smaller than it would be without sanctions and that is measurable. From a national security perspective, it makes Russia a lot less concerning if their industrial output is 20% less. Now imagine trying to start a software business in Iran, the stifling effect is way higher than a measly percentage point. Note that I’m not making a moral judgement, I’m simply sharing my understanding of sanctions.
> Now imagine trying to start a software business in Iran, the stifling effect is way higher than a measly percentage point.
Depriving Iranians of legal access to Western tools opens the market to locals. I suspect that the market is big enough to build a business.
It'difficult to assess gdp impact in this particular area. It's not really dependent on blockable imports.
> From a national security perspective, it makes Russia a lot less concerning if their industrial output is 20% less
Russian military industrial output has significantly increased and more importantly they demonstrated the ability to scale it up very quickly. The economy has grown during the war - the effects of the sanctions may become painful in the long term only if they will stay for decades, which is unlikely.
I think the theory is that the powers that be will feel bad for their citizens or that the citizens will revolt. Neither of those happen in practice though.
Very sad to see this. Most educated Iranians I've met hate Islam and their government that supports its extreme ideologies. I hope the people in this world develop the sense of morality without associating it with any religion or culture, for that's the true purpose of being compassionate humans.
Indeed, all of the Muslims I've met hate extremist, violent ideologies.
The last time I came across the name Beej, there used to be a book/article called Beej's guide for network socket programming. If that's you, thanks for everything!
I always wondered why people care so much about data. Now I can understand why. Thanks for sharing.
Imagine if your country was added to this block-list, and all your data is wiped. Is there nothing you can do at this point?
It feels like I have to own all my data and not trust companies before it's decided I can no longer access my own data.
Yes, you should own your data and do not trust companies. There are a lot o cases when SaS companies used their position to squeeze money from customers. If they are allow do do so, they also be used by their governments to push on other governments.
This crap is why everyone should fear the Apple-like centralisation for software distribution options that other companies like Google and Microsoft are inching towards.
Now it's just Iran/Cuba/North Korea, but you're essentially letting the increasingly aggressive American government decide who can or cannot publish software. The Americans are not afraid of adding their political enemies from allied countries to the sanction list, as can be seen when they decided to go after the judge in the Israel genocide case. Who knows who will be next now that they're blatantly cracking down on free speech.
The Apple app store/Google Play/Microsoft Store are great conveniences, but they must never be the only way to access software on your device. Apple's EU exception falls short for still requiring an Apple account to pay fees that no judge will accept when the first lawsuit hits. Sure, Epic Games has offered to pay those fees just to spite Apple, but Epic can only pay those fees to people they're allowed to pay.
I completely agree, but what can actually be done about this? It feels like it's too late.
Well, the EU has about half a billion people, India and China about 1.5 billion people - all larger markets (by headcount) than the US domestic market, so nothing that any American company can just choose to ignore.
Either of these three markets can set rules on what device manufacturers have to do in order to be allowed to access the market, and they all use that power - China is particularly infamous (with Apple having had to set up a dedicated iCloud instance to which the Chinese government may or may not have a backdoor), India more focuses on the share of production that happens in China, and the EU is seriously tightening the screws on American companies when it comes to arbitrarily denying store access.
If it's illegal to to do bussines with Iran. Can you buy a Windows licence in Iran?
> I came to the realization that Microsoft deleted my app, my developer account, and all those comments on my app supporting me and suggesting ideas on how to improve the program. I tried to contact the support and email whoever I could, but I was ghosted.
I think this is the most insidious part. These companies (on which you often depend for very important things, whether you want or not) will just ban you and delete your stuff, or even shadowban you, without (1) so much as an explanation beyond the Orwellian "you have violated our terms and conditions", and without (2) any possibility of appeal or customer support whatsoever.
This goes for google, discord, reddit, YouTube, github, notion, etc etc etc.
The OFAC sanctions list’s applicability should be limited to payment processors and direct payments in my opinion
All those software services rely on the payment processor to do business with the economically sanctioned users so they shouldn’t have done anything
Work as design. Ali Khamenei is YOUR, not USA leader. His confrontation politic is done in behalf of YOU and he mange YOUR efforts and resources (ex. taxes). If you want to work with democratic country your country have to change Iran political system.
while this is true, it's not nice to hear it from a person who would never rise up himself in the same situation
If anyone is curious what happens if you open that website from a Russian IP:
> Russian IPs are blocked here, due to your unjust and unprovoked War against Ukraine. You are responsible for the rape, kidnap and massacre of innocent civilians.
Which is to me an absolutely bonkers statement, clearly made by someone who has never even tried to research anything about my country. Someone who was clearly born into a democratic society and has lived their whole life in it. And has probably never traveled to countries with oppressive regimes and never made any friends there.
It's nothing but performative bullshit.
the comments on the gist are rough. Must we saturate every aspect of our lives with Politics?
Yes it's annoying that people disabled your access because of your location, but at the end of the day it is what it is. US companies get hefty fines if they do business with Iran.
simple reason to not trust foreign companies, especially american ones
Thanks for sharing OP. The “just leave Iran” replies reflect a lack of openness to other cultures. Leaving your country isn’t just logistics, it’s being rooted where you were born. And there’s nothing wrong with that, who are we to judge someone for where they come from?
This is a complicated subject. I am a SaaS founder/owner and I run into these issues regularly. Everything below is not specifically about Iran (in fact, most of my thinking is inspired by events from recent years caused by another country), but still applies.
First, there is the law, and many jurisdictions forbid me from providing any services to individuals and/or businesses in certain countries. See other comments here for details, but these are serious matters.
Second, there is my moral beliefs. I go through life trying to draw a moral line and if something is beyond that line, I take action. Your line might be different. You might be a forever-whataboutist, avoiding taking any action and always saying "but what about X or Y?", trying to point out that I am inconsistent in my actions or beliefs. Well I don't subscribe to whataboutism and I believe it is the cause of much of today's world problems. So I refuse to provide service to some countries, because I cannot stand idly while genocide happens. If your country is involved in genocide, target killing of civilians, or actively helps another country to do so, I do not want to deal with you.
Some will say that individuals are not responsible for actions of their countries. I disagree. For better or worse, the passport you hold brings with it certain benefits and obligations, and ties you to a country. That's how we agreed to run this world. If your country commits horrific crimes, it's time to take action: oppose the authorities, escape the country, apply for asylum, renounce your citizenship. Yes, I know all these are unpleasant and dangerous. So are the bombs your country is dropping onto my friends right now. Taking the "but individuals are not responsible" stance means that I have to watch as some people from countries that are killing my friends live well in safe places, standing on the sidelines and waiting things out, while keeping the option to return to their country once things blow over. Writing blog posts about the finer points of modern Apple design while people get raped and murdered by the army of their country. I don't feel that is right. There must be consequences if your country commits atrocities. Don't like the consequences? Don't let your country get to the point that it commits atrocities.
There's some grade³ irony when people with daily school shootings tell others to sort out their regime.
eyesguard is awesome! OP rocks.
Dude there are crimes everywhere. Here we're fighting chat control and other surveillance mechanisms being implemented. I don't think there's a "neutral ground" to be found - just allies and enemies.
"Sorry for the inconvenience. Take care."
Damn ... :/
"I am not responsible for the actions of my government, but you, the people who ban me, are responsible for the actions of your government, who made it illegal to transact with me."
Your country is sanctioned. You are asking people to put their own freedom at stake so that you can have a Notion account.
Iran is supplying Russia with drones to attack Ukraine. The sanctions against Iran might be hurting people who do not deserve it, but they aren't some unreasonable act of aggression and you are complaining about your Notion account?
Do sometime about the incredibly evil regime in your country before moaning about sanctions. They exist for a very very good reason.
Hit me in the feels. There used to be an amateur Russian beatmaker who I used to follow, it was so sad to see him drop off similarly. His paypal was cut off. I used to watch his IG lives a lot, loved the way he used to develop his beats. Very novel.
> Hit me in the feels.
Like burying a child feels, or your beatmaker got drafted?
Do I understand right that if I use a cafe's free wifi, and the cafe's suspiciously cheap service provider routes the connection through Iran so it appears as if my connection is coming from that country, then GitLab and perhaps other companies will ban my account?
Sanctions don't work. Period.
The only thing they can do is to make dictators more popular and provide them with an excuse for their economic and political failures.
When someone in Cuba is denied something because of Sanctions, they are not going to blame the Castro family, they are going to think, "Hey, Fidel was always right! those Americans are just a bunch of sadist psychopaths that are trying to destroy my country.
In general, a good rule of thumb in life, is that whatever policy people like John McCain or Lindsey Graham defend, the right position is the exact opposite of theirs.
Ironically McCain was the last republican who actually worked with the other side. The current US regime is hard-line party people with zero ability to compromise.
But what you're saying is that sanctions are more of a marketing issue when it comes to who is blamed?
> sanctions don't work
> Economic failures
Hmmm
Funny how there are no such sanctions and ban for the Isreal and its people, whose army is actively committing a genocide in Gaza.
> due to your decision to arm Russia with drones
This is an absolutely mental take assigning blame on every civilian of a country. Sadly in probably his worst take, Linus Torvalds also said something in these lines while banning all Russian developers. While the action could be justified, this attitude is never reasonable, and I say that as a Finn with the same opinion about Putin's war of aggression as Linus has.
When a service drops a customer for _any_ reason, even if it was the customers own fault, it should become the absolute norm and a the minimum thing that the service would trigger the same thing they'd do when if the user triggered a manual data export off the service. Even for something relatively simple, like for example I didn't log in to my Spotify account for x amount of years and they disabled my account. The only way I could get my collected albums back was through support, and if I had been unlucky, they'd just deleted all my data.
This is NOT something that should be the user's responsibility. There is no norm for automating data exports off services, hell even Google makes you go through menus every time. Maybe time for EU to be useful again?
That was a difficult and frustrating reading! I never imagined that sanctions could hit individuals this hard, especially on the digital side. You get banned from outside and blocked from inside. You can read about The Internet situation inside Iran here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025954
There was a lot of interesting stuff went into the article:
1. Microsoft:
> Back when I was a student, I got access to the Microsoft Imagine, and as a result, I got access to the Microsoft Store as a developer.
Then:
> Microsoft deleted my app, my developer account, and all those comments on my app supporting me and suggesting ideas on how to improve the program.. but I assume it's because of the sanctions.
Here, I got a novice question: Knowing this individual is from a sanctioned country, Why you are allowing him in the first place to put a lot of work to build an app but, after having some success, you destroyed him entirely?!
Also, suggesting ideas on how to improve the program after deleting my account is one of the most hilarious things I have ever read. It is a strong indicator that these emails are just templates built automatically with no soul or human touch. Yes, you heard it right: you are just a row in a table!.. but you still manage to have a PRIMARY_KEY!
2. Notion:
> Since It has been suspended permanently, there's still no option to get it back even by going outside those countries. Sorry for the Inconvenience. Take care.
Same as above! Why letting me build a base of data then one day, you delete it permanently without prior notice or the ability to export it then you apologize for the Inconvenience and tell me to take care of myself!
3. Mike Cardwell:
> I read hackernews on a daily basis
Oh, this made me relief a little bit! I hope Hacker News is neither being banned in any country nor blocking traffic from any country.
> Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
Blaming then punishing an ordinary citizen for arming a foreign country to kill civilians without clear evidence is so dumb.
Also, this reminds me of this post entitled Namecheap: Russia Service Termination (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812):
4. GitHub:> However, later, GitHub announced that github is now available in Iran
Good News! read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648585
5. TIL
TIL about this 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons status code. I won't ever return this code for my websites, everybody, from everywhere, is welcome :)
Finally, I have a dream.. the dream to live to the day where a true open internet sees the light where the entire world have unrestricted access to the same online resources.
The current internet relies on censorable technologies (ip, dns, http, etc...).
Let's hope the next gen protocols will make censorship impossible, especially by law.
the people are not fundamentally far from their government. this is true for U.S where they elected Donald Trump or Israel that elected Netanyahu.
for Iranians it's the same. and it's ground truth.
the sanctions actually are designed to push the people of Iran to change their mind and overthrow their gov. it's easier than starting a full-blown war against Iranian that will cause damage or kill U.S soldiers' lives. the sanctions are deliberately implemented to target the people and force them to follow the will of the whom established them.
"the people" are not a singular entity in Iran anymore so than they are in US.
How ironic is it that by pretending to promote freedom, some people actually do more harm than anything else, by having what is to me a racist view of people in other countries (ie all Iranian are the same and have the same political view as the head).
Do they not understand that, instead of helping these people connect to the outside world and improve their life and their country, they are actually increasing the poor conditions and helping the regimes they are fighting against?
Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US, and not everyone in Iran is Iranian (or even Arab); so sanctions are not “racist”, they’re levied against political leadership.
The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders.
Not sure if it has worked, but I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.
> Sanctions don't apply to Iranians in the US
Sanctions absolutely do apply to Iranians (even dual citizens) anywhere in the world, albeit less intensively.
> not everyone in Iran is Iranian
Swing and a miss. Sanctions are primarily against Iranian nationals, and extend to any non-Iranian who violated the sanctions. If you visit Iran as an American/Chinese/Antractican you don't automatically end up sanctioned.
> The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders
And that makes it okay? Nuking civilians can also be a tactic to pressure the leaders into surrender. And nukes may take fewer lives than decades of intense sanctions.
> Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US
There is some nuance here. While some "sanctions" may not be applicable, the United States has a concept called deemed export, where exposing a non-US Person (~non-citizen with no green card) to technologies in the US, for example during the course of regular employment, can be problematic. Depending on the foreign citizen's nationality, the level of exposure that is deemed problematic can vary. For Iranian citizens, it is basically almost everything unless open-source. This is why all FANGs regularly apply for a deemed export license before commencing employment of foreign individuals with problematic nationalities.
> The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders.
is it true? I thought the idea is "harm enonomy of a country by not doing buisness with them".
You're mixing political sanctions and sanctions from private companies and paid-for services.
It's like your local bakery refusing to sell a donut to a random iranian guy.
As a private individual, I am forced to apply the sanctions the country imposes.
A US baker cannot send cakes to Iran.
Then I should sanction you, so that you put pressure on your gov to stop these sanctions XD ;-)
> I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.
The political situation in Russia is more stable now than before the war. Putin is certainly happy.
If true, that is because Russian oil continues to flow
No, absolutely not. The significant part of the proceeds from that flow aren’t going into economy (specifics of selling oil to India).
The political situation is stable for following reasons:
1. Primary beneficiaries of military spending are small industrial towns and working class. They earn a lot of money now and significant part of it is invested in property or spent on domestic products. The inequality has reduced since the start of war, not something you would expect from oligarchic capitalism.
2. It became much easier to eliminate political opposition. Thousands have left the country, some were killed, many jailed under new wartime legislation.
3. There’s general perception that Russia is winning and it’s already in the endgame (which is true - the West lost the war in the first year).
I think that idea sucks ass because it promotes violence at the very least. What would happen in the US were it to happen to them? I want to see the American population putting pressure on these so-called leaders. Same goes to EU. Same goes to UK.
As for sanctions:
> Iran is not the only example in which sanctions have resulted in unintended consequences. Since 1970, unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. have achieved foreign policy goals in just about 13% of cases, according to one study. A recent Congressional Research report evaluating U.S. sanctions in Venezuela found that sanctions “exacerbated an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis caused by government mismanagement and corruption that has promoted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” U.S. sanctions also exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Korea, reported UNICEF, putting 60,000 vulnerable children at risk of starvation due to limited humanitarian aid.
https://washingtondc.jhu.edu/news/do-sanctions-actually-work...
Please evaluate the historical failure of sanctions. As someone else have mentioned, Putin is happy despite the sanctions, but everyone else is not. These sanctions (from US, EU, etc.) hurt the people, not the people in the Governments. Come on, for the current price of <include basic food that used to be cheap> I used to be able to buy at least 3-5x more BEFORE the sanctions. Talk about sanctions exacerbating economic crisis. They will never learn, I guess, unless intended, but if it is intended, then surely it goes against everything they claim to stand for, as someone else has already elaborated.
Values of Western countries: Bombing Children, Ra** women, bombing boats, bombing other countries, letting other countries bomb your "allies" (qatar). The US is the most warmongering state there is right now. Billions poured on Pissrael just for them to kill children and women.
Any business that goes political/activist should be written off by any of their customers - for ever.
Funny because i would write off any company doing business with russia. Every action is “political” because we exist in a context.
That is perfectly fine. You are the customer and you can choose whom you will give your business to. My point is that companies should not be doing it because they instantly cut their potential customer base by half with every single act of activism they do. They should be focusing on business and nothing else. Politics, activism, whatever you want to call it, should be solely in the hands of the individual, not the corporations, whose sole purpose to exist is to do business with every possible customer they can in order to turn a profit.
Additionally, companies might be political in ways I might not care. It might be simply a non-factor when deciding whether I give them business or not. But the sheer fact they are politically active, so to speak, and don' focus solely on providing the best services for the best prices with the highest quality, is the red flag that instantly makes me wary of doing business with them in the first place.
> they instantly cut their potential customer base by half with every single act of activism
Not really? The implication is that every choice has a 50/50 split of support. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
> should be solely in the hands of the individual, not the corporations
The businesses in the article are doing what they did because of legal sanctions on iran. Not because they are making political choices about who to do business with.
But your description of what companies should be doing is describing unfettered psychopathic capitalism. Companies that will break every code of morality or decency as long as it’s technically legal. Chromium in the water? Go for it. Even legality is just a speed bumb. If you can get away with it? If you can bribe your way out of it? Why not do it!
I don’t want to live in that world. Unfortunately that’s pretty much the world we live in already and it shows.