So... it would be the best for you (and the rest of the world) to actually decouple from the USA and it's BigTech (and thus from their "pliceman of the world" mentality…)
Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
461–470 of 891 posts
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cite? Russia and Iran seem to not be giving too much of a shit. NK became a nuclear power under sanctions.
Would Russia perhaps have already conquered Ukraine without sanctions? Would Iran have destroyed Israel by now without sanctions? Would NK have become a nuclear power much earlier, and have a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons today, were it not for sanctions? I don't know the answers to those questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was "yes".
Russia lost (in a real sense), when their blitzkrieg of Kiev failed. From that point on, it’s just how much they turn the crank on the meat grinder that is trench warfare. It’s the nature of the bet that is inherent in Blitzkrieg. Ukraine/Russia is about who is going to lose more after that, not who can win. No one can win anymore.
Sanctions or lack thereof definitely impacts quality of life, but Putin put everything on a war economy footing pretty quickly anyway, and in that environment (especially in Russia), it’s suffering all the way down. And Russia excels at Suffering. Russia has oil too, and plenty of minerals, so if anything I expect by now they’re just getting stronger (economically), barring Ukraine wrecking their shit from time to time with a well placed drone strike.
Iran/Israel is an interesting question, but near as I can tell, Iran doesn’t really want to destroy Israel. They just want to make them as miserable as possible, and show they can ‘do harm’ to them when they need to prop up domestic support among the hardliners.
Israel provides a good scapegoat for the Iranian leadership.
With Israel gone, who is the Ayatollah going to use as the big bad? The Great Satan (USA) isn’t as tractable a target when they don’t have a designated ‘local’ they can go after, and if Iran actually meaningfully hurt the US (nuked the White House?), Iran is glass regardless of how otherwise strong they are.
NK got sanctions because they love playing the crazy-dude-with-a-gun-that-just-wants-a-handout, which is also why they eventually got nukes. They might have gotten nukes a little faster without sanctions, but sanctions definitely gave the hardliners huge leverage in the country. Hard to be friendly with the west (as a civilian!) when the west is literally openly starving the country, even if the leadership of your country is egging them on eh?
Near as I can tell, the USSR fell because of jeans and rock and roll. So yes, I think the ‘good guy’ sanctions BS is ultimately self defeating.
It can work if someone is either a) in a tenuous economic position, and b) the ‘sanctioningish’ behavior is not existential.
But any good authoritarian would rather throw their entire population under the bus ‘for the greater good’ than give in on something important for them…
And countries know how to deal with being at war (generally), even if it’s a weird only-semi-economic one.
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#463It 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.
Yeah, it will certainly make life better, works every time (no).
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
From our perspective common people aren't responsible. But from the perspective of the person who wrote the "your decision to arm Russia" on their website it is. So what is interesting is that this person is fully able to assign blame to individual Iranians for their government's actions but, one would imagine, is able to separate themselves from the actions of the US government. I wrote "one would imagine" because t…
Ironic that you're blaming all Americans but then claim no other country has any agency
I think you'd do well to re-read my comments because that's not what I'm saying at all. I suspect you're more upset because I've touched a nerve. Because this is something that many Americans (and fellow Brits, I might add) are guilty of, and cannot really provide a proper justification for other than "but we're the good guys". They will often try to derail the discussion or argue to avoid confronting the uncomfortable truth
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telling people to throw their lives away to provoke a civil war is one of the nastiest rhetorical tricks you hear when people talk about oppressive regimes. In basically every case a bad government is preferable to the destruction, chaos and death a civil war brings. "Just overthrow your government" is ridiculous plea.
It worked pretty well for most east bloc countries. Granted, they had to wait until the Soviet Union was weak to break away, but couldn't sanctions be one of the tools to get there faster?
Ask Balkans about their 90s. "Worked pretty well", yeah.
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison If only this notion of personal criminal responsibility was applied to other types of private company criminality (2008 gfc, cartelization in many industries, t…
This was my thought too. When the government really wants corporations to toe the line, suddenly there's no problem with "piercing the corporate veil" and other such equivocations. They know what works - threaten executives with prison. The solution exists and is applied already. For other things such as polluting the environment or misusing citizens private data... the truth is government doesn't really care.
> They know what works - threaten executives with prison.
The problem is that it works too well. As you can clearly see, the solution basically everyone individually applies is to stay clear of anything that might be an issue by several miles.
If you apply the same reasoning to things like private data handling, little things like just shipping stuff will be prohibitively expensive, as no one will want to handle private data like addresses and instead go to a provider, which will need excessive amounts of cash and red tape to do anything for taking on that liability. Building stuff will become impossible, as all of the current red tape will be exponentially expanded with liability checks against any possible pollution. Founding a company will basically never happen, because no one wants to risk 20+ years in jail - and if they do, they'll simply turn to crime, because if your risk profile is that off anyway, not paying taxes will just be a minuscule risk increase.
I'm not saying that there's no political incentive to ignore those issues and keep fines low, but piercing the corporate veil is the nuclear option and there is a reason it's used so little.
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. If I would run "docker run hello-world" and got and error "403" because I'm from Iran, I would be more pissed at US for making my life harder. --- 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…
[flagged]
what exactly do you mean by that
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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... "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 i…
[flagged]
Uh. The US is currently increasingly subject to an theocratic autocracy, as Trump and his cabal of Christian nationalists terrorize our country. By your logic, we are not a part of the modern world.
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#469This discussion leans against sanctions, and I feel a bit uneasy about this. There are some good arguments, but still... can I try to offer a different point of view? I grew up in a country occupied by Russians. I really feel for the Ukrainians. Currently, there seems to be a social contract between Putin and middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg - they will let him bomb Ukrainian civilians, as long as…
> middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg
2 prevalent groups of which are retired and people who moved there to make their ends meet, which will be complete around the retirement age.
> Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience.
How many changes you did under dictators with actual armies, spy networks, chemical and nuclear weapons?
Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';
#470OP, 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…
Those countries wouldn’t benefit even if the embargos were lifted. Cuba and North Korea would still be shitty places even if the US had no sanctions on them. There is nothing the US could provide these countries through trade that would suddenly make life better.