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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”

#401

Post by kragen »

alacombe wrote: post #381
kragen wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid%3AUSC-prel... Illegal entry is a misdemeanor, thus criminal. QED.

You're right, and I appreciate the correction. "Improper entry" is, as you say, a misdemeanor under US law, similar to public intoxication, trespassing, or reckless driving. I was thinking of overstaying visas, which is not any kind of crime under US law.

Still, it seems like a rather desperate rhetorical move to describe even a reckless driver as "a criminal, by definition", much less a person fleeing political persecution and seeking refuge in another country — a right guaranteed to them by international law, even if the US is abrogating its obligations under that law. Technically, it's true that under US law they are guilty of a misdemeanor, just like a wino getting drunk in the park, but clearly neither of these is a central example of the class of people to which we normally refer when we say "a criminal"; it seems more like an argument for disregarding US law.

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

#402

Post by kragen »

xxxstnhtsnh wrote: post #371
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 The USSR was the thing that executed my great grand parents for being liberals (he was a doctor) when they invaded Budapest.

The US and USSR both invaded many countries and executed many hundreds of thousands of people during the Cold War, although in general the USSR had a somewhat poorer human rights record, even in countries they invaded.

But I wasn't talking about what the US was during the Cold War. I was talking about new US policies. The invasion of Hungary was in 1956, 39 years after the Russian Revolution. What do you think the US will be doing 39 years after, to take a convenient date, November 2016? That would be 2055. Do you really doubt that they will hesitate to commit genocide after two generations of propaganda, censorship, and repression designed to Make America Great Again?

If someone expressed a concern in 1917 or 1920 that the Communists had become what the czarist autocracy was, would you think it reasonable to respond with a catalogue of czarist crimes that the Communists had not yet had time to match?

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

#403

Post by kragen »

tasubotadas wrote: post #280
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...

Have you? [1] "The emergent consensus among scholars who utilize official archival data is that of the 18 million who were sent to the Gulag from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million perished there or as a result of their detention." yeah... prisons in the US are definitely worse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

You seem to be saying that some 91% of GULAG prisoners survived their imprisonment, with some 67000 deaths per year on average; while GULAG population varied greatly during this time, if we assume an average of 1 million prisoners, we will not be far wrong. (The peak was officially 2.7 million, near the end of that period, slightly more than the current US incarcerated population.) This works out to a death rate of some 6700 deaths per 100'000 people per year, very roughly; this is clearly worse than the US prison system's mortality rate of 264 deaths per 100'000 people per year, by a factor of 20 or 30. (This figure does not include people who died as a result of their detention, but it seems safe to say that the number would be lower even if they were included.)

But many, perhaps most, of those deaths were during the German invasion, which killed about 25 million of the 169 million subjects of the USSR (most of them not in GULAG). It remains to be seen how well the US cares for the populations of its prisons and concentration camps if it suffers an invasion that kills an eighth of its population. Hopefully such an event will remain safely in the realm of speculation.

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

#404

Post by pyrale »

smsm42 wrote: post #360
pyrale wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Censorship is based on content: if you can say "long live Communist Party" but can't say "long live Republican Party", that's censorship. Using that definition, censoring all publications of a given group (say, black people) would not be censorship. That's a big hole in the definition.

> Using that definition, censoring all publications of a given group (say, black people) would not be censorship It's not censorship, it's discrimination. Bad thing, but different. If it was censored because these people write about specific racial issues, it'd be censorship. If it's blanket denial regardless of the content, it's racial discrimination, not censorship. It doesn't mean it's not bad - one could argue it…

Imagine now that you ban all writings from communists, including their love stories. It is not racist, and according to the definition it is not censorship. This form of behaviour was used a lot in ancient regimes, and known as censorship.

The definition you use seems to be a legal one rather than the usual one.

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

#405

Post by egorfine »

amaccuish wrote: post #368
egorfine wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukrainian society is ill and this is one of the recent inflammations that hurts. Being unable to fix roads or economy, they have directed their frustration towards symbolic things, fighting everyone who calls Kiev "Kiev" instead of "Kyiv", renaming streets, etc. Now they have decided that "the Ukraine" is somehow referencing Ukraine as a territory and not a state. God knows where any of this comes from, but any "patr…

As someone who learned Russian and am interested, do you personally say "в" или "на" Украине?

Depends on the melody of the phrase. Sometimes it sounds good to say "на", sometimes "в". Traditionally, it's mostly "на", but this is slowly changing due to the fact that Ukrainians decided that this is now offensive.

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

#406

Post by egorfine »

shitgoose wrote: post #378
shitgoose wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

на

what is the difference, really? is it all about prepositions now?

"на" refers to territory, "в" refers to state. The distinction is clear. One exception: "Ukraine". Traditionally, Ukraine was referred with "на" in Russian language and it never meant disrespect. But since a few years ago my fellow Ukrainians decided that this is now offensive and so here we are, fighting words.
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