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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”

#341

Post by jchook »

pizza wrote: post #109
jchook wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a long but clear image of the Russian geopolitical chess game, read "The Fourth Political Theory". Putin loves this book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Political_Theory

Just out of curiosity (not judging), what concrete observation makes you say Putin supports Duginism, as opposed to, say, Dugin said some things years ago that just now coincide with some recent news?

I learned about it via a political science professor at the University of Virginia.

Even the Wikipedia on Dugin's older book says, "The book has had a large influence within the Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites[1] and it has been used as a textbook in the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military.[1][2]"

The correlation between suggestions in the Fourth Political Theory book align a little too perfectly with recent events:

- Break GB from the EU [2]

- Heightened racial tension in the US [3]

- Annexation of Crimea and Ukraine

- etc.

Hard to ignore how much Russia operates "by the book".

Also in the Wikipedia for FPT I linked earlier, "The book has been cited as an inspiration for Russian policy in events such as the War in Donbass..."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

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

#342

Post by jMyles »

wil421 wrote: post #273
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.

Free speech applies to the US. Last time I checked Crimea was in Russia. US companies have to follow US law. I worked for a company that was fined because they still had employees working in Syria when the war started.

> Free speech applies to the US. Last time I checked Crimea was in Russia.

Are you saying that you don't think that humans in other regions qualify for this basic human right, which happens to be codified in (among many other places around the world, including the UDHR) the 1st amendment to the US Constitution?

> US companies have to follow US law.

If US law is wrong, companies, like all other people, have an obligation to break it. Whether that's the case here, I'm not sure, but I think that Microsoft can certainly have made a lot more of a stink before just yanking this guy's page.

> I worked for a company that was fined because they still had employees working in Syria when the war started.

What war? The civil war? Are there US sanctions specific to the Syrian civil war?

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

#343

Post by cpursley »

rdl wrote: post #114

A (very bad) US bank of mine froze my account in a way which was exceptionally difficult to fix because I tried to use the mobile app to check my balance while physically in Ukraine (not anywhere near Crimea; they chose to fucking sanction the entire country because Ukraine got invaded, which was the opposite of the intent of the law).

Venmo stoped one of my transactions for reimbursing my wife for expenses incurred in Crimea (because my US credit card would not work there but her Russian card did). She made the mistake of listing "Crimea" in the subject line. Despite my arguments to Venmo, they would not allow the transaction to go through (despite the transaction being 100% legal).

It was pretty frustrating because US citizens are allowed to visit Ukraine and the Venmo request was made from outside of that territory. From the US perspective, Crimea is "Ukraine" and US citizens are allowed to visit Ukraine visa-free. These types of sanctions, in my opinion, go too far, as they affect regular people.

On another note and politics, despite all their issues, Russia really has improved the infrastructure issue in Crimea significantly. New roads and bridges everywhere, new power plants, hospitals, etc. Ukraine completely neglected the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Additionally, Crimea is pretty spectacular and has huge potential for foreign tourism. Beautiful coastline, granite mountains that shoot up from the water, interesting geography. And the prices are quite cheap from a western perspective.

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

#345

Post by gdy »

ohithereyou wrote: post #317
gdy wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Russia's ambitions are less legitimate than American ones?

The US is not morally or legally obligated to support or enable Russian ambitions and has the right, as a sovereign nation, to react to actions against their interest.

What exactly is their interest in Crimea on the other side of the globe?

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

#346

Post by kragen »

jhbadger wrote: post #251
paulintrognon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Noam Chomsky has ever been sympathetic to the USSR, he just said that the US was not much better than USSR. For example in that speach he clearly states that USSR was a a flawed totalitarian system from the start https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06-XcAiswY4 (he has in fact also stated many times that his political views were indeed censored in the US)

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.

Chomsky has also been arrested several times, but imprisonment (or arrest) is not the same thing as censorship.

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

#347

Post by bin0 »

dvt wrote: post #54
bin0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they don't want to allow Russia to use it as a port or for commerce; Russia has been trying to take the Crimea for commercial purposes for the last millenium or so. And because they don't have the guts to sanction all of Russia.

Further, sanctioning all of Russia would probably break the Principle of Proportionality[1]. [1] https://opil.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/...

I'd disagree with that. Russia seizing foreign territory is an extremely concerning act. The goal could well be to cripple Russia and ideally promote regime change such that she becomes an ally of America; this works towards that.

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

#348

Post by kragen »

alacombe wrote: post #223
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…

"Political refugee attempting to exercise their right to seek asylum from persecution" can do so LEGALLY at any official border crossing. Crossing the border ILLEGALLY makes you a criminal, by definition.

Your first statement is true in theory but is false in fact; that is to say, it is a lie the government tells. Your second statement is not true even in theory.

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

#349

Post by gdy »

compuguy wrote: post #332
mrrrgn wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't remember any sanctions on Chechen republic after it separated from Russia, for example. The double standards are all explained by geopolitical maneuvering. Western powers pulled Kiev into their orbit and threatened to use that influence to harm Russia's economic and military capabilities. The tl;dr is that Russia needs access to warm water ports. They were happy to lease a port from the Ukraine until rumors…

In that case Russia should of renegotiated the deal, instead of invading a portion of a sovereign country (the Ukraine)..

How do you renegotiate a deal if the other party isn't interested in returning stolen property?

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

#350

Post by kragen »

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…

For the record, I very much disagree with Chomsky, but he was writing when the events you are writing about were contemporary, and he knew about them. I do think you may have an overly rosy view of Cold War USA. Lots of people didn't have a choice of where to work, there was and still is some hunger and malnutrition, there was a lot of jingoistic ideological propaganda, involuntary commitment and even lobotomy was used against dissidents (especially feminists and gay men), and for example the Comics Code explicitly required the jingoistic propaganda, as did the DoD for films made with their cooperation (which included almost anything touching on military topics).

There was a lot more freedom than in the USSR, but the same shitty phenomena occurred, just less so.

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