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Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

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Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#21
post #6

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.

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.

So like .. ‘I%’

Then?

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#22
post #6

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.

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.

> 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...

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#23
post #12
post #4

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 po…

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.

> 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.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#24
post #6

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.

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.”

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_.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#26

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…

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.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#27
post #12
post #4

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 po…

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.

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 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.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#28
post #12
post #4

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 po…

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.

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.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#29

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 civili…

Countries with "Democratic" and "Republic" in their name rarely are.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#30
post #6

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.

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.

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?
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