Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

371–380 of 406 posts

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

#371
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

The USSR was the thing that executed my great grand parents for being liberals (he was a doctor) when they invaded Budapest.

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

#372
post #282
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The black liberation group MOVE was founded in 1972 [...] members of MOVE all [...] preached [...] revolution and a return to nature.

Preach revolution and pose as a victim of police brutality ...

> when police tried to evict them from their house. A firefight erupted, killing one police officer and injuring several more on both sides.

Oh right, they were just cop killers

> MOVE members boarded up the windows, built a fortified rooftop bunker and broadcasted profanity-laced political lectures with bullhorns at all hours, drawing complaints from neighbors. Members continued to rack up violations from contempt of court to illegal possession of firearms, to the point where they were considered a terrorist organization by the mayor and police commissioner.

> Arriving with arrest warrants for four residents of the house, the police ordered them to come out peacefully. Before long, shooting began.

How exactly was that story supposed to end ?

> The Mayor's failure to call a halt to the operation on May 12, when he knew that children were in the house, was grossly negligent and clearly risked the lives of those children.

What kind of person does this kind of things with their children in the house ?

If I were to transform a house into an armed bunker I would most definitely not take my children there.

Exposing children to such violence ... How is there on earth an excuse for that ?

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the result of a risk calculation with limited information. Hanging out near war zones and sanctioned countries significantly increases the chance that you're committing financial crimes, so when they have some information that you're doing that kind of thing you're much more likely to trip an alarm. VPNs don't help you with bank apps that report your GPS position. Sanctions aren't particularly excellent at stopp…

> Hanging out near war zones and sanctioned countries significantly increases the chance that you're committing financial crimes... Citizens of Ukraine are just "hanging out" in Ukraine? We're still talking about Ukraine being sanctioned because of Crimea, aren't we? Or have you unintentionally broadened the scope of the discussion? Wouldn't it be more truthful to say that citizens of a country sanctioned and/or that…

I guess we're talking about different things.

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

#374
Are you a North Korean of Iranian descent living in Crimea? Are you an American of Italian descent living in Crimea? Are you a Russian who went to new colony to live in? Are you an Ukrainian who hoped that Russians will help make you young again? At expense to people you prefer to ignore. Or are you Ukrainian who wanted but couldn't flee the occupation?

All these are different circumstances.

Only one represents the case where law has undesired side effect.

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

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub is not blocking Venezuela. The list a country is on is more than just a matter of terminology.

It is just a matter of time. We've been ratcheting up the sanctions regularly, which, again, contradicts your "no problems here!" argument.

[deleted]

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukrainian society is ill and this is one of the recent inflammations that hurts. Being unable to fix roads or economy, they have directed their frustration towards symbolic things, fighting everyone who calls Kiev "Kiev" instead of "Kyiv", renaming streets, etc. Now they have decided that "the Ukraine" is somehow referencing Ukraine as a territory and not a state. God knows where any of this comes from, but any "patr…

As someone who learned Russian and am interested, do you personally say "в" или "на" Украине?

на

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

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

changing one oligarh for another is hardly healthy (Poroh for Benya). Ukraine deserves better.

Previous president of Ukraine was a literal power hungry oligarch, who engaged in war, war mongering, censorship, propaganda, fake comments trolling bots, policy washing through his international friends, fake-fighting of corruption to gain power over judges, ordered raids on opposing media and industries, switched politics to right-wing to ride the propaganda machine he tried to create, etc. New one is a freedom of…

i heard the same things 5 years ago when latest revolution in Ukraine took place, when swamp was about to be drained.

who do you think Benya is - not a power hungry oligarch? who is Ze's chief of staff? ahem, Benya's personal lawyer... will you ever see the pattern?

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

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who learned Russian and am interested, do you personally say "в" или "на" Украине?

на

what is the difference, really? is it all about prepositions now?

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

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually. Voluntarily with reparations or after Russian state collapse.

Judging from the state of affairs in the two states in question – the Ukraine and Russia – I highly doubt Russia would be the first one to collapse.

It's Ukraine, not "the Ukraine".

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But your citizenship and temperament are accidents of your birth, and you have the power to rectify the former. This is an incredibly naive/somewhat condescending statement, considering that it is far beyond the reach of the vast majority of people.

I'm pretty sure that's not true. But maybe I'm wrong. To know the answer, we'll have to discover the monetary cost of doing so and calculate how long it might take to save up money, and what must be forgone, to acheive it.

Wait - so it's something you've never actually researched or considered (or thought about in any depth, if you think the only barrier is financial), but you're somehow pretty sure countries hand out citizenships willy-nilly?

The only path to citizenship that's open to anybody is naturalization, and that requires you to already be a legal (often permanent) resident. While there are a few countries where you become eligible after two or three years - notably Canada - many require five, ten or even fifteen years. So before you even start the process, you have to deal with immigrating to your country of choice from your current country of citizenship/residence. And while that's not exactly the cheapest of undertakings[0], the real problem is that your application first of all generally needs to be sponsored by someone (typically strictly a relative or employer, so good luck if you don't have family in the country in question or don't work in a field that tends to hire across borders) and secondly is most often quite literally at the mercy of bored officials behind glass walls who have the power to deny you on a whim and owe you no explanation.

If by some convening of application strength and sheer luck you do get a residence permit, you then get to have your freedom of movement curtailed for however many years[1] during which simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can set you back to square zero[2] and you still get slapped by the effect of sanctions like these, as you're still a citizen of whatever country you came from. Or you could also just make some exorbitant "investment" (often hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth) and effectively straight-up buy citizenship.

So yeah, the vast majority of people are rather powerless to do anything about their citizenship, especially when they don't have passports that let them travel anywhere on a whim (as tends to be the case for people in the sort of countries that one would want to escape citizenship of lol).

0: The cost of a passport, visa, plane ticket and rent deposit is easily $2000 plus depending on the part of the world (a friend of mine recently spent close to $4000 out of pocket relocating to Germany).

1: It's not enough to simply hold residency - there are often requirements for how much time you must have spent in the country in order to be eligible for naturalization, and leaving the country for an extended period of time will often itself jeopardise one's residency status.

2: In the US, for example, various misdemeanours - for instance drug possession - are grounds for deportation, after which you might as well forget about legally entering the country to talk of becoming a permanent resident again.

Post reply on HN