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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”

#281

Post by ivanhoe »

tasubotadas wrote: post #261
jhbadger wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Western intellectuals like Chomsky say they have been "censored", they mean that that their publishing house asked them to leave out or add stuff because they felt that such changes would help the book sell better, as their goal was to make money off authors they published. That's quite a bit different from the threats of jail time that Eastern Bloc intellectuals faced.

A modern westerner doesn't really get how it was in the Soviet block. "Wasn't much better than USSR" is such bullshit on so many levels that it's hard to even to begin. In the US: - you didn't have quotas to write "correct literature" - you wouldn't disappear in a gulag for 10 years - you didn't have to worry about standing in a queue for 1-2h to get fresh bread and sausage (it's easier to contemplate stupid shit whe…

All true, and yet a lot of people in USSR and many other East block countries miss those times nowadays, as there were also good things about it, mainly a sense of financial and social security and also "equality" between people (yes, equality in being poor compared to West, but still very little differences in life styles for 99% of people - all kids in your school would wear the same kind of shoes and same kind of cloths, living in the same kind of apartments - there was no rich kids singling out poor ones and all that shit that you have now)

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

#282

Post by Frondo »

otalp wrote: post #260
jhbadger wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Western intellectuals like Chomsky say they have been "censored", they mean that that their publishing house asked them to leave out or add stuff because they felt that such changes would help the book sell better, as their goal was to make money off authors they published. That's quite a bit different from the threats of jail time that Eastern Bloc intellectuals faced.

Not many people know of the worst cases. Take the case of Chomsky's "Counter-Revolutionary Violence", which caused angry executives to literally shut down the publisher[1]: "Sarnoff(chief of book operation, Warner communications) complained that too many of Warner Modular's(small publishing company under Warner communications) works were written by left-wing writers. McCaleb replied that conservative writers were als…

I wouldn't forget the time the Philadelphia Police dropped a bomb on the Black liberation group MOVE, killing several of the members and destroying three blocks of a dense residential part of the city:

https://mashable.com/2016/01/10/1985-move-bombing/

This happened in probably most of our lifetimes.

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

#283

Post by resters »

c1b wrote: post #191
kragen wrote: post #6

During the Cold War, the primary thing that distinguished the US side from the USSR side was that, while speech by USSR people and people sympathetic to the USSR (like, say, CPUSA) was published in the US, publishing speech sympathetic to the US in the USSR would get you arrested. It seems like the US has become what the USSR was: companies who publish speech from people in Iran or Crimea are now violating the law by…

> It seems like the US has become what the USSR was Yep... thats my cue to get off hackernews

>> It seems like the US has become what the USSR was

> Yep... thats my cue to get off hackernews

Surely Fox News will be happy to have you back.

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

#284

Post by Frondo »

A2017U1 wrote: post #226
waste_monk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hilariously think China is actually more free for the average human Until you're critical of the party leadership, or have forbidden religious beliefs, and then you get whisked away to a concentration camp (if you're lucky!) or get surgically parted out for organ transplants, often without anaesthetic. The US has plenty of problems, but to say China is more free is a very distasteful and not particularly funny joke.

Is that not right there in my comment? Y'all need to take a serious fucking step back and evaluate the words said here. I love America and everyone in it. People stateside are incredibly nice people on the whole and sometimes you need a rude foreigner to say some blunt stuff for the sake of honesty. Get a grip on these criticisms mate. I stand by everything said above. It's fucking true and challenge you to prove oth…

I spent a bit of time living in one of the post-Soviet central asian states, and after a while there this was a conclusion I came to, too.

Living in a dictatorship, but feeling more personal freedom than I ever had in the US.

On a day-to-day basis, there's significantly more curtailment of personal freedom in the US than there was in one of the stans.

The one thing I wouldn't feel safe doing there? Openly speaking against the government. Here, however, if I were part of a movement that was gaining any strength or public good will against the political and capitalist powers that run the US, I'd still be afraid for my life.

Like how nearly every leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, MO, has been killed over the last few years. That's not a coincidence, not a random series of killings.

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

#285

Post by buran »

Noos wrote: post #240
dngray wrote: post #26

I'm from a US-friendly nation but I get terribly sad when I hear things like this. Contribution to the free software world should transcend where someone is from whether it be China, Russia, Iran or whatever new "enemy" our leaders decide. As much as I dislike Facebook for privacy related reasons, maybe it's time that more tech companies setup a Tor Hidden Service and not ask where people are from. Could this be used…

The issue would be what happens if russia declares some manner of war on us. Your contributors and maintainers are now citizens of a hostile country who might actually believe in their aims. I think people have a naive cosmopolitanism that assumes knowledge work transcends state loyalty, but there are reasons that it may not do so nor is it safe to rely on the current model of peace to persist.

USA is major enemy for Russian Federation for decades. Many fighters in Donetsk region came from RF and believed that they are on war with USA. Many examples of their direct speech is available on YouTube.

I personally know some contributors to FOSS, which are helping Russian FSB in their war against USA, by consulting them or by implementing tech to help find dissidents and American spies. For example, Michael Shigorin: https://www.opennet.ru/~Michael%20Shigorin

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

#286

Post by nsajko »

ivanhoe wrote: post #271

This story reminds me of my own growing up in Serbia in 90s under UN sanctions. One of the side-effects of it was that we couldn't access Internet directly for a while, we were almost completely cut off (Belgrade University was half-illegally exchanging emails once a day over a private link to Greece thanks to some professors at University of Athens, but otherwise all connections to the world were cut off). And at th…

More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Serbia#History

Compare with, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Croatia#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_France#History

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

#287

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

It sounds weird.I don't know the specifics of your case so it is difficult to comment, but it seems like an overreaction to the specific location ( for a good reason ). Did you reach out to github? Did they ask any addition questions? Ask for license? Blanket restriction seems excessive.

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/...

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

#288

Post by helge9210 »

ivanhoe wrote: post #281
tasubotadas wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modern westerner doesn't really get how it was in the Soviet block. "Wasn't much better than USSR" is such bullshit on so many levels that it's hard to even to begin. In the US: - you didn't have quotas to write "correct literature" - you wouldn't disappear in a gulag for 10 years - you didn't have to worry about standing in a queue for 1-2h to get fresh bread and sausage (it's easier to contemplate stupid shit whe…

All true, and yet a lot of people in USSR and many other East block countries miss those times nowadays, as there were also good things about it, mainly a sense of financial and social security and also "equality" between people (yes, equality in being poor compared to West, but still very little differences in life styles for 99% of people - all kids in your school would wear the same kind of shoes and same kind of…

The main reasons are:

1. Their wife was younger. 2. They were able to maintain erection back then.

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

#289

Post by PunchTornado »

gdy wrote: post #248
rimliu wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not thanks to Russia for the occupation?

The US punishes with sanctions the population of occupied Crimea. Where is the logic in that?

a large part of the Russian community in Crimea supported the annexation.

I agree with the sanctions.

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

#290

Post by nsajko »

ivanhoe wrote: post #271

This story reminds me of my own growing up in Serbia in 90s under UN sanctions. One of the side-effects of it was that we couldn't access Internet directly for a while, we were almost completely cut off (Belgrade University was half-illegally exchanging emails once a day over a private link to Greece thanks to some professors at University of Athens, but otherwise all connections to the world were cut off). And at th…

I am interested, in case you remember, what do you perceive were the main reasons for the antagonism towards Milošević (where it existed)? I mean, it could be many things, like authoritarianism, censorship, "nationalism", "communism", ethnic policies, ...?
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