351–360 of 891 posts
It really sucks, the US should focus on liberating these people - in both Iran and Cuba the majority of people want to be free, and it would be easy to liberate them.
>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians. The "your decision" in that response is really off-putting. I know the law is what it is with sanctions like this. However, it is a failing of basic human empathy to blame other common citizens of a country for the actions of their government while we almost certainly do not endorse all…
There are valid ways to punish a country for aggressive or oppressive actions - like sanctions - and there are non-valid ways - inherently blaming and then ostracizing every member of the country, for example. And when you take the position that, "If you don't agree with my actions, you're also part of the problem" you are not doing anything but causing people to get annoyed with you and your position, and reducing credibility for the groups you're trying to advocate for. In other words, you're doing more harm than good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also interesting if the comment comes from a US person, given that the US are primarily responsible for the political situation in Iran.
Why is it interesting? I thought the common people aren't responsible for the actions of their government?
>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians. The "your decision" in that response is really off-putting. I know the law is what it is with sanctions like this. However, it is a failing of basic human empathy to blame other common citizens of a country for the actions of their government while we almost certainly do not endorse all…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The leadership of countries under sanctions rarely change their behavior due to sanctions. However the effect on the population of the countries is that they turn against the countries applying the sanctions. It becomes easier for the leaders to sell the sanctions to their populace as the enemy action. If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it. However, sanctions do have a symbolic…
You think sanctions on Russia are not working?
Trying to use sanctions against another major power isn't guaranteed to work as they can take the hit and pivot to internal industry(which happened), or trading with other major powers that do not sanction them(China).
Or some countries get around sanctions - like buying Russian gas/petroleum products through India - in a way this bypasses sanctions making them worthless.
Is it better than doing nothing? yes, of course. But Russia unfortunately is a major power - just due to sheer access to natural resources - and you can't just bully it into submission with weak sanctions that some EU countries ignore(petroleum case).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You misunderstand the goal of the sanctions. Sanctions are there to cut off 1-2% of GDP each year from the dictatorships' economies. Over 30 years that turns countries into harmless (to the West) backwater shitholes. The consequences towards the local populations are just a side-effect (sometimes wanted, sometimes not). You cannot expect people outside of your dicatorship to prioritize your well being over their own…
No, they're there to kill people. It's war by non-military means, and the US is waging such a war on a very large portion of the world. There is a recent study concluding that sanctions kill half a million people per annum: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1... > I don't know what you mean by dictatorship but I'm not exactly adverse to applying the same term to the US, it being a one-party s…
Or the fault of the husband for beating his wife and the fault of the wife for staying in that relationship?
I get it - it's hard. But you cannot expect the whole world to enable your alcoholic husband/militaristic dictator.
This works as designed. Sanctions like these are meant to piss off the people living in terrorist states so that you either rise up and rid yourself of all terrorist roots or you accept that the rest of the world doesn’t want to play ball with terrorists or terrorist enablers.
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unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian. For years London was welcoming russian oligarhs with their stolen money. Putin was invited to Finland even after 2014 invasion of Crimea. But you fuckers decided to ipmlement sanctions only after the 2022. So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine. Absolutely disgusting. Supposedly Finland continues to buy russian minerals still, but as a russian I cannot cross the border with Finland, even if I have a visa.
OP, some context from the other side might be helpful. Yes, there are fines for American companies if they do business with Iranians. That's how sanctions work as I'm sure you're aware. But the story doesn't stop there. If an American finds out they are transacting with a sanctioned individual, or citizens of a sanctioned country like Iran or North Korea, the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal p…
> Nobody should be expected to take that risk I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government. Their authoritarian militaristic government that doesn't care for human rights…
"You all" is a weird way of putting it. I don't support my government levying sanctions on these countries, but I have zero power to change it.
It's funny, as the gist author points out that he doesn't support the actions of the Islamic Republic, and has no power to change it because it's minority rule by a theocratic dictatorship.
But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.
I think sanctions are largely pointless if their stated goal is to get citizens to rise up and change their governments. Asking people to risk their lives (when you're not risking anything at all) is an awful thing to do, and this sort of thing isn't likely to work.
But it's probably not really that; the idea is to choke the economies of these countries so they can't do whatever Bad Thing the sanction-leviers are worried about (like developing nuclear weapons). How effective sanctions are at achieving that goal is an exercise left to the reader. And even if they are effective, there's a lot of collateral damage that hurts people who have no say in the matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good. From that perspective, sanctions aren’t meant as “torture for fun,” (as you put it) but as a way of creating pressure so governments change their behavior without having to resort to war. They’re basically a tool to raise the cost of bad actions and make it more…
The poster above was pointing out that this is a double standard. You don't expect a US citizen to risk their livelihood to help an Iranian, but you then expect an Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood AND life to topple a regime that is doing things that the USA doesn't like. So, you either take personal responsibility for enforcing sanctions yourself, or you admit that sanctions are a form of collective punishme…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You misunderstand the goal of the sanctions. Sanctions are there to cut off 1-2% of GDP each year from the dictatorships' economies. Over 30 years that turns countries into harmless (to the West) backwater shitholes. The consequences towards the local populations are just a side-effect (sometimes wanted, sometimes not). You cannot expect people outside of your dicatorship to prioritize your well being over their own…
No, they're there to kill people. It's war by non-military means, and the US is waging such a war on a very large portion of the world. There is a recent study concluding that sanctions kill half a million people per annum: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1... > I don't know what you mean by dictatorship but I'm not exactly adverse to applying the same term to the US, it being a one-party s…
There's absolutely no moral obligation on an individual in any country to defy these laws and risk prison time - if they want change they can petition, vote and protest.
Beyond that the West is not responsible for any deaths caused by governments that refuse to cooperate with us (and therefore had sanctions placed on them) - that responsibility lies solely with the people and governments of sanctioned nations. We shouldn't be forced into supporting those who seek to destroy us based on HuMAnITaRiaN grounds.