501–510 of 891 posts
As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries... The message always goes along the lines of "you're murderer and rapist, we hate you". I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar. I…
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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…
When alcoholic husband beats his wife so they put him in prison and the wife starves - is it the fault of the people who put the husband in prison? 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.
Yet US hegemony is collapsing. It is simply running out of the money and power necessary to be a racketeer that cynically calls itself world police.
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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…
Dress it up however you like, the fact remains that countries can choose to not provide goods and services to whomever they want for whatever reason they want. 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 t…
One could also flip your argument and consider the many decades of US narcoterrorism, regime change operations and so on and the rather long line of failed states in its wake, and draw the conclusion that we ought to actually not submit to this 'world power' regardless of whether it 'dresses itself up' to be 'cooperative' while it engages in these activities or not.
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> 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…
> with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government. That's the PR justification. The real one is "to hurt the countries and make them do as we say" and "because we can".
As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries... The message always goes along the lines of "you're murderer and rapist, we hate you". I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar. I…
> just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP I can guarantee that your views would change very quickly if bombs started falling closer to where you sit and killing your friends and people you know.
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What should they do ? Stop working, or protest and risk getting killed ? It's easy to call for action from your comfortable life. No, the populace does not bear the same responsibility for the country's actions in all countries. Swiss with direct democracy bear much higher responsibility than systematically oppressed populace in other countries.
Well ideally they should peacefully replace the government with one that aligns with the people's alleged views. Failing that, I don't know. I guess they'll have to figure it out as they go. All I'm saying is it's their country, their responsibility. And for example in the case of Russia there's clearly widespread support for Putin and his war so I'm not really expecting nor calling for them to do anything about it.…
This screams privilege. I wish you never experience oppression, but please try to understand you privilege.
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Honestly, their effect is diminished. After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much, after initial shock. 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 bu…
> After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much Did you speak with folks from Moscow or St Petersburg or from different regions? Life in the top 2 cities is kept as normal as possible at all costs; that is part of the Putin's approach to handling the elites (you can keep living your comfortable lives as long as you stay out of politics). But elsewhere the quality of life…
As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries... The message always goes along the lines of "you're murderer and rapist, we hate you". I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar. I…
> I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily [...] block their users by IPs coming from bad countries The problem is not with "bad" countries. The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs, than to filter and allow the small amount of well-behaved clients while blocking the rest. This is especially…
In my experience the reason is one of the following:
1. Following the local jurisdiction. By far the most common one, and one I have least questions for. At least not to the companies who implement this policy - someone over here already posted the consequences of not complying. Big companies often care to say "nothing personal, buddy, strictly business", but nothing more as in the OP's case with Microsoft.
2. Avoiding the attacks, as you said. I definitely agree they exist. And I can imagine every Cloudflare block page I've seen is because of that, but in my experience it's maybe 5-10% of all blockings I experienced.
3. Political activism. What my comment was about. It's always either individuals or small companies. It's always outrageously dumb and pathetic (obviously, except when it comes from an actual victim) and just does the job opposite to the proclaimed intention.
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>Representative democracy doesn't mean that every possible policy could be enacted by some realistic configuration of elected representatives, even if any particular policy is supported by a majority of the electorate. that is only true if you flatten your system to two parties.
> that is only true if you flatten your system to two parties. Again with the "you". "We" did not flatten anything into anything; we were born into an unfair and broken system that we have no power to change.
Most educated Iranians hate their government. The problem is that a revolution isn't easy when the government has all the guns, and the military & revolutionary guard remain loyal, and have no problem with shooting masses of innocent civilians to retain their power. Sanctions that worsen things for ordinary people really isn't going to change much in countries like this. It would be much more productive to try turn t…
Like we did in Afghanistan? Because we lost Afghanistan in the same time we took the country, about two weeks.