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“My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

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Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#131

Post by kragen »

pvg wrote: post #126
kragen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solovki in 1929 — or even 1939, after Stalin's first big purges — was a few thousand people. That does not amount to a "massive prison camp system full of political dissidents." You can easily find that many in the US today who are in jail for "resisting arrest" and "disorderly conduct" and such crimes against police-officer pride, and of course there are well-known controversial US concentration camps for political…

As I said, Solovki was a 'germinal'- not only - camp. Your description is at odds with fairly mainstream views, just scroll through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag And more importantly, it was a system that was both theoretically and practically founded on political violence. It didn't take it a couple of decades to get there and its the expressions of violence weren't limited to prison camps. Politically motivat…

I agree with everything you said here, PB, except for the first line. But even the end of the NEP and the ensuing Ukrainian famine took a decade after the Revolution to arrive.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#132

Post by droithomme »

dogma1138 wrote: post #35
avocado4 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?

Because Crimea is a defacto Russian state now and for the most part a large portion of the population and the current government is participating in it. The sanctions are for the most part per the request of the Ukrainian government. If Catalonia becomes a separatist state tomorrow and Spain and its allies sanction it everyone in it will be under sanctions regardless of who or what they support. This is what happens…

Astonishing how anti-democratic HN and the media are. Despicable too.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#133

Post by droithomme »

ShinTakuya wrote: post #44
dogma1138 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Crimea is a defacto Russian state now and for the most part a large portion of the population and the current government is participating in it. The sanctions are for the most part per the request of the Ukrainian government. If Catalonia becomes a separatist state tomorrow and Spain and its allies sanction it everyone in it will be under sanctions regardless of who or what they support. This is what happens…

I don't like what's going in Crimea either, and I support most sanctions against it, but I also don't understand why they should be excluded from open source software participation. On an idealogical basis I reject the idea of OSS being politicised. Otherwise, where do we stop?

> I reject the idea of OSS being politicised.

Then don't use github. I don't. It's completely toxic.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#134

Post by coliveira »

riku_iki wrote: post #124
coliveira wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If, as you say, people want to be part of Russia, what is the difference? Do they need to be punished for wanting to be part of another country?

Russia would severely punish people who wants to be part of other country (not Russia). It is in both countries (Ukraine and Russia) constitution, that it is against the law to separate territory without country-wide voting.

But the discussion is not about what Russia or Ukraine would do, instead, it is about American companies punishing people living in a territory that is now separate from Ukraine.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#135

Post by droithomme »

mr_toad wrote: post #98
avocado4 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?

> Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia? Because Ukraine is pro-west and Crimea is pro-Russia. West good, Russia bad. Sanctions are black and white. The political situation is less-so: The Crimea voted in a (illegal) referendum to rejoin Russia after a coup in Ukraine (also illegal, obviously) had replaced the elected but somewhat pro-Russian president with an unelected pro-European government. While…

Democracy is never illegal. Only fascists make that claim.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#136

Post by droithomme »

chr1 wrote: post #41
avocado4 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?

Maybe because people setting sanctions know that Crimea is not a victim, and most of its population supported joining Russia, and hope that making their life harder may reduce the support.

Yes, most people despise democracy and self-determination.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#137

Post by jessaustin »

ralph84 wrote: post #117
jessaustin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started the sanctions on Venezuela in 2014. Why bother posting such obvious nonsense?

Venezuela is not fully-embargoed. The fully-embargoed countries are Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

This is quibbling over terminology. Venezuela is in a deep depression caused by USA sanctions. Moving them from one list to another would make no difference to the daily experience of the average Venezuelan.

This lawyering also completely undercuts your original "nothing to see here; move along people!" argument.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#138

Post by jMyles »

fkdo wrote: post #127
jMyles wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their Github Pages page was censored. They are unable to participate in the maintenance of an open source repository. This was done, according to Github, as a requirement to comply with the laws of its state. If that's not a free speech issue, there are no free speech issues.

Does the first amendment apply to none us citizens/residents?

At a high level, the answer is something like "yes" - people who are not US Nationals who engage in protected speech in a region subject to police power of the United States have essentially the same protections as citizens or permanent residents.

At a lower level, the answer gets close to "no" - I suspect that, in cases like this, something in the ballpark of Kleindienst v. Mandel will be controlling in the eyes of SCOTUS, so no.

But even if this particular matter is not specifically regarded as protected speech under the 1st amendment by US Courts, it is still a free speech issue in general terms. This person's basic human right of expression has been abridged by the act of a foreign state and a spineless and compliant corporation.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#139

Post by jMyles »

elliekelly wrote: post #73
jMyles wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their Github Pages page was censored. They are unable to participate in the maintenance of an open source repository. This was done, according to Github, as a requirement to comply with the laws of its state. If that's not a free speech issue, there are no free speech issues.

It was done as a requirement to comply with the laws of the United States[1] and insisting it's a free speech issue does not make it so. The United States government has no obligation to care about the collateral silencing of non-citizen speech in a foreign country subject to economic sanctions. The government also has a mechanism where someone inadvertently impacted by sanctions can appeal to the Treasury Department…

> The United States government has no obligation to care about the collateral silencing of non-citizen speech in a foreign country subject to economic sanctions.

Although it may not have a legal obligation under the current menu of precedents, I disagree that it has no obligation tout court.

The real facts on the ground here are that a person's website was censored at the behest of the US Government. This is chilled speech. That the target happens not to be a US National, and also a national of a nation under sanction by the US government does not put it outside the realm of speech.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#140

Post by colechristensen »

shmerl wrote: post #75

So it affects even those who aren't Russian citizens (let's say Ukranian citizens) who live in Crimea?

According to Crimea and Russia and the basic facts on the ground, people living in Crimea are Russian citizens and have been for 5 years, Russia has poured billions into the region's infrastructure.

While it was definitely engineered by Russia doing things to violate the sovereignty of Ukraine

1) The US and all the powerful nations around the world do this kind of crap all the time and have a long history of it

2) It appears as though the people living in Crimea generally prefer being Russian to being Ukrainian, at least there doesn't seem to be any major opposition to the change.

3) Crimea was only part of Ukraine from 1992 to 2014, before that it was it's own entity under the umbrella of Russian empire or the USSR for hundreds of years

I'm not pro-Russia but I am pro-reality, and this sanctions game seems to be about highschool-level-bullshit between world leaders and nothing else. It certainly has made politicians on both sides much more popular with their bases as a result. Having "enemies" does that rallying well.

If you want to sanction Russia, do it over corruption, election meddling, or human rights abuses (although maybe put a higher priority on your own country's faults along those lines first so you have a platform to stand on)

I'm here feeling like Fangorn "I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side"

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