Gitlab needs to maintain its dominant position in U.S Public Sector.
Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
191–200 of 353 posts
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#192People should resist the temptation to defend this. 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not do this. 2. It does not speak well of the United States justice system if someone could be prosecuted for failure to block Iranian IPs. If this were required, the law should be clear. Other…
It’s fear all the time. Fear is the biggest weapon for all kind of states. That’s why some of us might have self-censorship because we fear that we will get penalised hard if we do not play by the rule.
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only thing Iran is guilty of is insufficient deference to US hegemony. Any other charge you levy can have its equal found in our so-called allies in the region, or even the US itself.
As an Iranian, I have to say that while your last sentence might be true (Saudi Arabia sucks after all), I'd still rather live in a world where the opposing superpower would pressure my country to respect human rights and stop funding terrorism, fundamentalism, and misinformation. (See what North Korea's effective foreign immunity has brought its people.) This, of course, is hypocritical on the US part, but hypocrisy…
Come on, didn't you understand yet that the US doesn't give a damn about Iran's respect for human rights? Do you think Israel is respecting Palestinians' human rights? Or is Saudi Arabia respecting human rights? Of course not, and yet they are the US's best buddies. The US even had an agreement that put a stop to Iran's nuclear program and soothed the tensions with the West, allowing Iranians to improve their living conditions and hopefully at some point ditch radicalism. They threw it in the bin, because what the US fears is ultimately a non-aligned country with the strenghts to stand against external aggression.
What the US really wants is not respect of human rights or better living conditions for the people (see Libya, see Iraq, see Palestine, see the bloody civil war in Syria). What they want is to reduce every non-aligned country to either vassal or rubble.
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are tens of thousands of companies in the US which actively provide web-services, and which do not actively go fishing for accounts that may possibly be Iranian. Are they all possibly facing jail time? Is there a requirement to actively monitor the service for possible Iranians? What kind of actions are required specifically to be safe from jail? Is it a requirement to actively block IPs? Spoiler: These things…
Omission ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_(law) ) creates the exact same liabilities. It's not about fishing for accounts. Just because you're not being prosecuted, doesn't meant that you don't need to comply with law. For a large company like GitLab is a fiduciary responsibility to do this whether or not they have the federal government telling them to do it at the current time.
But on that note, the US government is almost certainly sending all these company a one time warning letter to immediately comply or face jail.
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree it's not racism on GitLab's part, but the U.S. officials behind these sanctions themselves do use phrases like that they want to 'choke Iran's economy', that is in the middle of a pandemic where people's respiratory systems are at risk, it certainly doesn't look good on their part. Also worth noting that GitLab has previously banned hiring from China/Russia, so it's no stranger to blanket bans of questionable…
There is nothing racist about economic sanctions against a country which is in active conflict with our armed forces outside of their borders, which is actively engaged in psy-ops to destabilize American society. Economic sanctions against America would not be racism against scots/germans/west africans or whatever. You can argue against sanctions on all sorts of grounds, but the flimsiest is claiming that they're rac…
> There is nothing racist about economic sanctions against a country which is in active conflict with our armed forces outside of their borders
I think that singing about how you want to destroy the country, how you want to choke it etc. do prove racist tendencies.
As for armed forces acting outside of borders, you cannot claim that U.S. armed forces are any more 'authorized' to be in these places than Iranian ones, can you?
So in the end, it comes down to nothing more than the U.S. having the ability to implement these sanctions and Iran not, there's no 'principles' in it, just geo-politics.
What is remarkable however is that this pandemic is a uniquely challenging situation even for countries not under sanctions, so placing new sanctions on the country, as was recently done, is plain inhumane.
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#196I am Persian. From what I gather, the middle-plus class here still mostly believes that changing the regime is costly and risky (especially since it might very well lead to a civil war, as the regime has no humanity and has shown that it will kill every single one of the people to survive). These sanctions certainly help align our incentives more with the US agenda, but they do not seem to be enough after all. Obama'…
Do you actually live there?
From what I have heard the "high pressure" has only affected ordinary people who can't get things like meds and equipment. Just look how they were affected by corona, so much worse than their neighbors.
I would highly, _highly_, doubt a person actually living there would consider the "high pressure" strategy a good thing.
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#197Talking about over-compliance, you should check out Transferwise blocking access to every venezuelan in their system + IP block the access of every venezuelan IP [1], just cause sanctions against few individuals [2].
And then you have to read their BS ads that state: "We’re building money without borders"
As reminder, Venezuela is under a heavy economical crisis, where more than 6 millions citizens (9 millions as per unofficial data) out of the 30 million total had to run away, this is more people than syrian refugees numbers (5,6m).
What role transferwise had on venezuela? well, some of those that left, were using transferwise to send money to their families and friends still in venezuela, helping them feed themselves and buy medicines and cover their needs. Note that most of the money sent, wasnt even touching venezuelan banking system, as most venezuelans already have US bank accounts, money was just moving from lets say argentina (common country for a venezuelan to immigrate) to US, not to venezuela
But transferwise decided that is better to block 20millions possible users in need of humanitarian help [4], because they didnt want to check if those users were in the OFAC list that is not even 100 people long.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/26h0u2W.png
[2] https://www.state.gov/venezuela-related-sanctions/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis
[4] https://disasterphilanthropy.org/disaster/venezuelan-refugee...
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#198I am Persian. From what I gather, the middle-plus class here still mostly believes that changing the regime is costly and risky (especially since it might very well lead to a civil war, as the regime has no humanity and has shown that it will kill every single one of the people to survive). These sanctions certainly help align our incentives more with the US agenda, but they do not seem to be enough after all. Obama'…
Whenever anyone uses the term “virtue signalling” I automatically discard their opinion in the same way this phrase does with the people it’s referring to: that a bloc of people (the entire EU and democrat party of the US no less) are simply “pretending to care to look good”.
The use of this phrase belies a cynical, reductionist attitude that I have no respect for whatsoever
Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#199Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very hard to have compassion to a theocratic authoritarian dictatorship regime (Ali Khamenei is in power since 1981). It's also very hard to see them as victims or as the good guys. Sorry.
No one is saying you should have compassion towards the Iranian regime. No one is saying you should see them as victims. No one is saying you should see them as the good guys. The only thing you should be sorry about is not trying to accurately understand the replies you are getting here or look objectively at the situation. BTW since you like whatabouism with your argument regarding Russia: Please do compare the Ira…
I am quite familiar with the situation between Iran and US, and most of my life I've been on your side of this argument.
World politics is very complex with lots of nuance, historical context and long-running grudges. It is also highly subjective, in a sense that every country / group of allied countries have their own view of the historical events and try to disseminate those views as wide as possible.
As a result, I've decided to judge countries by the authoritarianism of their regimes and cruelty of their laws. If country's government is treating their own citizens like shit without rights, I do not expect them to treat people on the outside any better, regardless of how they present themselves. Thus, I do not, as an individual human being, want to see these countries / regimes to gain any more power externally.
So far, this approach for me had made most sense.
As a side note, look at the current list of best friends of a corrupt regime in Russia: Iran, North Korea, China, Philippines, Venezuela, up until recently - Turkey. Every dictatorship in the world is on their list of friends. Same with Iran. "When the character of a man is not clear, look at their friends."
Regarding whataboutism and Russia, I want to remind you that my reply to the OP was not about Iranian sanctions, but was about sanctions as a political instrument overall. For me the most prominent case lately were sanctions against Russia, so that's what I used as an example. I'm very familiar with the situation in Russia and even though sanctions indeed antagonized the regime there, it did make them stop and think whether they want to keep escalating. It's hard to imagine what over appropriate response should've been to annexation of the Crimea, downing of the Malaysian Boeing and sending troops and equipment to create essential a civil war in a big region of Ukraine.