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

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

#391

Post by shitgoose » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

zzzcpan wrote: post #388

shitgoose wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It doesn't work like that. They are their own people, not puppets as you try to imply. And it's not like oligarchs even have that much power to make someone into a puppet, they are not FSB.

i think that political regime in Ukraine is purely oligarch-based. Ukraine does not have strong traditional government institutions, instead the government is driven by current oligarch configuration. it used to be Yanukovich, then Poroh, now it is Benya (via his proxy Ze). just look at Groysman, the prime minister, as they say in Russian, he "changed his shoes while walking" and switched his allegiance from Poroh to Ze/Benya in no time. government in Ukraine is weak and servile. they have stronger civil society, but it shows in short outbursts, then oligarchs take over again.

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

#392

Post by shmerl » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #390

compuguy wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't have a recent history of annexing countries. The US did do this in the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. The current Russian government does have a recent history of invading/annexing countries though (Crimea and portions of Georgia, the country not the US state).

Annexation? No. Overthrowing governments with subterfuge or force? Absolutely The only target for annexation would be Quebec (there's a small minority party there that has talked about this for a long time) but that's extremely unlikely. Anything else would be colonization which isn't fashionable. Russian annexation is targeting places with large ethnically Russian people who speak Russian and identify more with Mosc…

Russian annexations and conflict fueling have nothing to do with ethnical Russians or identification with Moscow (whatever that means). It's related to regions of former USSR which oppose Putin's imperialist craze (may be you call that "Moscow"), and want to actually have real democratic government and independence. As soon as that happens, Putin's mafia tries to create or fuel existing local conflicts, by sending mercenaries that back local separatists or by outright openly occupying some regions.

Putin doesn't care in the least about Russian people in those territories. He only cares about destabilizing countries that don't want to be his vassals. This happened in Moldavia (where Russian army is present in Pridnestrovian region), Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and Ukraine (Donbass, Crimea). Armenia came close to it when they removed previous government controlled by Putin, but since they didn't demand that Russian army should leave (they have military bases there), so far it didn't erupt in armed conflict. See also how Armenia still backs Putin's policies in UN and the like. If they won't, Putin will come knocking.

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

#393

Post by xxxstnhtsnh » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

c1b wrote: post #191

kragen wrote: 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 Yep... thats my cue to get off hackernews

Logical on computer science, but when it comes to political science they defend ideologies. I have 15 years of ideological propaganda behind me so I can't blame them, but I feel guilty about my hacktivist past now that I got at least solid bases about political science.

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

#394

Post by xxxstnhtsnh » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 7:04 AM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #299

gruez wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let's fork the client and make it decentralized[1], and write an open source version of the server[2] so people can host their own instances! [1] https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed-Git-Distributed-W... [2] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org

So, what you're saying is that everyone should just switch to GitLab?

gitea is community driven

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

#395

Post by ilyich » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 8:17 AM UTC

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…

>"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 wouldn't disappear in a gulag for 10 years

I totally agree. The US is much more better. There's no doubt that an Ecuadorian embassy or a Guantanamo are much better places than a gulag.

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

#396

Post by ilyich » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 8:45 AM UTC

cronix wrote: post #186

A2017U1 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you? Find it very hard to believe that there's such a disproportionate number of criminals in the US. China is locking up huge numbers of Muslims simply for having a religion and it still comes no where near the number of Americans incarcerated today without even having faced trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

Which would you rather be in? A US prison with basic rights, healthcare, etc, or a Chinese labor/reeducation camp, or Soviet era Gulag? The systems are incomparable, whether or not the numbers are the comparable, which is what I was talking about. Yes, I've read the Gulag Archipeligo and watched several Solzhenitsyn interviews, and had relatives suffer through that era. Not close to the same thing. At all.

Did you know that Solzhenitsyn was successfully treated from cancer by evil communist doctors while being in Gulag that did not have any healthcare? Did you also know that while being in Gulag Solzhenitsyn was a "stukach" who reported of his fellow prisoners to the camp's authorities (he writes about it himself in one of his novels)?

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

#397

Post by sega_sai » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

jwieczorek wrote: post #354

Sommer_Son wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's look at the facts. Russia invaded Ukraine, broke into Crimean parliament and held illegal referendum _after_ that. So, sanctions were not because of the referendum, but because of invasion.

Sure, and falsified all the votes? The Crimean parliament proclaimed sovereignty against their will and so was the Ukrainian navy chief forced to switch allegiance? When it comes to the reasons behind sanctions, there's no need to correct me, because I wrote just that: that the international reactions were a response to, in the words of the sanctioning countries, international law being violated (as if that had not h…

Even forgetting the illegality of the referendum and that it was done under occupation -- the results of the so-called referendum were completely falsified. See e.g. here https://kireev.livejournal.com/1095568.html (in russian, from a person who professionally analyzes elections) And personally I do think that it is possible that the majority of people in Crimea did want to join Russia, however we'll never know, because nobody cared to find out.

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

#398

Post by Viliam1234 » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

ilyich wrote: post #395

tasubotadas wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>"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 wouldn't disappear in a gulag for 10 years I totally agree. The US is much more better. There's no doubt that an Ecuadorian embassy or a Guantanamo are much better places than a gulag.

By your estimate, how many millions of Americans have disappeared in Guantanamo?

Difference of several orders of magnitude, right?

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

#399

Post by n4r9 » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #364

n4r9 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have hate crime laws in the UK under which you can get arrested for making statements which are grossly offensive towards someone's ethnicity, creed etc... . That's vastly different from arresting people for criticising the government.

No it's actually not different. It's trivial to prove with a bit of motivated reasoning, here watch this: (for people not watching it closely, the following is not my opinion but a demonstration how one could prove censorship of political opinions is necessary if one is allowed to censor "offensive speech"). UK is a democratic country. In a democratic country, the government is elected by people, and can exist only w…

This is something that has been discussed in the UK [0-2], with particular reference to the ambiguity around the definition of "grossly offensive" and the balance between freedom of expression and an individual's reasonable expectation of living without harassment or abuse. Weight is also given to the context, circumstances and intentions on a case-by-case basis.

As with all law, a certain amount of interpretation is unavoidable. Your example doesn't prove anything because it relies on a particular meaning of "grossly offensive" which you have contrived to make it work. It is not generally a gross offense to merely object to or question someone's beliefs. "Gross" in this sense means that the communication must be a flagrant and obvious violation of acceptable language in a tolerant society.

[0] http://merlin.obs.coe.int/iris/2006/8/article101.en.html

[1] https://research.edgehill.ac.uk/files/20207198/Bliss%20-%20C...

[2] https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/social-media-guideline...

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

#400

Post by komali2 » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 11:46 AM UTC

A2017U1 wrote: post #226

waste_monk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hilariously think China is actually more free for the average human Until you're critical of the party leadership, or have forbidden religious beliefs, and then you get whisked away to a concentration camp (if you're lucky!) or get surgically parted out for organ transplants, often without anaesthetic. The US has plenty of problems, but to say China is more free is a very distasteful and not particularly funny joke.

Is that not right there in my comment? Y'all need to take a serious fucking step back and evaluate the words said here. I love America and everyone in it. People stateside are incredibly nice people on the whole and sometimes you need a rude foreigner to say some blunt stuff for the sake of honesty. Get a grip on these criticisms mate. I stand by everything said above. It's fucking true and challenge you to prove oth…

The Americans sucking the straw of Fox news propaganda and genuinely believing that the USA is the freest bestest country in the world aren't on this forum man. We get it.

I gotta push back on this "China is more free" thing. China is definitely a very free place when you roll in as a white foreigner flush with a high value currency. I've been there, I remember thinking it's crazy what you can get away with there.

But this is like arguing you're more free there because you don't have to wear a seatbelt. Sure. Not having the government force you to wear a seatbelt means you are more free, by some definitions of free.

But it also means that when I'm driving around I'm not free to relax as much as I am on an American freeway because I have to watch out for shit falling off uninspected, falling to pieces construction vehicles. It means crossing the road is a game of frogger. It means I have to worry about whether my food will put me out for a week.

And if I'm native Chinese, I don't get nearly the freedoms in China that white dudes teaching English do. Putting aside the cultural restrictions (your family not letting you study art and shit like that) you actually DO have to worry about what you put on social media, because unlike a visiting white tourist, the PRC will have no problems with whisking you off to a reeducation camp.