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Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

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Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#71

Post by tgma »

dijit wrote: post #12
bibelo wrote: post #4

How ironic is it that by pretending to promote freedom, some people actually do more harm than anything else, by having what is to me a racist view of people in other countries (ie all Iranian are the same and have the same political view as the head). Do they not understand that, instead of helping these people connect to the outside world and improve their life and their country, they are actually increasing the po…

Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US, and not everyone in Iran is Iranian (or even Arab); so sanctions are not “racist”, they’re levied against political leadership. The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders. Not sure if it has worked, but I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.

> Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US

There is some nuance here. While some "sanctions" may not be applicable, the United States has a concept called deemed export, where exposing a non-US Person (~non-citizen with no green card) to technologies in the US, for example during the course of regular employment, can be problematic. Depending on the foreign citizen's nationality, the level of exposure that is deemed problematic can vary. For Iranian citizens, it is basically almost everything unless open-source. This is why all FANGs regularly apply for a deemed export license before commencing employment of foreign individuals with problematic nationalities.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#72

Post by sorushn »

dijit wrote: post #12
bibelo wrote: post #4

How ironic is it that by pretending to promote freedom, some people actually do more harm than anything else, by having what is to me a racist view of people in other countries (ie all Iranian are the same and have the same political view as the head). Do they not understand that, instead of helping these people connect to the outside world and improve their life and their country, they are actually increasing the po…

Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US, and not everyone in Iran is Iranian (or even Arab); so sanctions are not “racist”, they’re levied against political leadership. The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders. Not sure if it has worked, but I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.

> Sanctions don't apply to Iranians in the US

Sanctions absolutely do apply to Iranians (even dual citizens) anywhere in the world, albeit less intensively.

> not everyone in Iran is Iranian

Swing and a miss. Sanctions are primarily against Iranian nationals, and extend to any non-Iranian who violated the sanctions. If you visit Iran as an American/Chinese/Antractican you don't automatically end up sanctioned.

> The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders

And that makes it okay? Nuking civilians can also be a tactic to pressure the leaders into surrender. And nukes may take fewer lives than decades of intense sanctions.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#73

Post by CapricornNoble »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #35
barrenko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That's the theory, but has it ever worked? That something that never works (not even in cases where it has been going on for multiple generations, as in the case of Cuba or Iran) keeps being tried makes it impossible to believe that the intention is making it "work" in the sense you mean. The sanctions are just to sink those countries for p…

>That's the theory, but has it ever worked?

It kinda worked in Syria. The combination of sanctions, plus squatting on sovereign Syrian territory and preventing the government from generating income eventually left Assad's military so hollowed out that that the Turkish-backed rebel faction led by former Al Qaeda members was able to essentially drive to Damascus with minimal resistance.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#74

Post by elzbardico »

Sanctions don't work. Period.

The only thing they can do is to make dictators more popular and provide them with an excuse for their economic and political failures.

When someone in Cuba is denied something because of Sanctions, they are not going to blame the Castro family, they are going to think, "Hey, Fidel was always right! those Americans are just a bunch of sadist psychopaths that are trying to destroy my country.

In general, a good rule of thumb in life, is that whatever policy people like John McCain or Lindsey Graham defend, the right position is the exact opposite of theirs.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#75

Post by kennywinker »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #23
dijit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US, and not everyone in Iran is Iranian (or even Arab); so sanctions are not “racist”, they’re levied against political leadership. The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders. Not sure if it has worked, but I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.

> I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused. The political situation in Russia is more stable now than before the war. Putin is certainly happy.

If true, that is because Russian oil continues to flow

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#76

Post by jbm »

adastra22 wrote: post #20

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…

I used to agree with this line of reasoning, but then I saw that the same process was used to block war crimes investigators from using Microsoft's software.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#77

Post by tgma »

number6 wrote: post #62
tgma wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partially true, but not the entirety of the story. There are blanket sanction waivers ( General License ) by OFAC to allow certain things. There's also the possibility to get an OFAC license (as GitHub did.) The real issue is there is little to no advantage (realistically no money to be gained from Iran) or even awareness (sometimes the cloud infrastructure bans Iran by default and you don't have enough users…

[flagged]

Where did I say or imply I am against sanctions on the Islamic Republic and/or its affiliates? I was simply describing the dynamic of how things like that get decided inside American companies.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#78

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership. That's the theory, but has it ever worked? That something that never works (not even in cases where it has been going on for multiple generations, as in the case of Cuba or Iran) keeps being tried makes it impossible to believe that the intention is making it "work" in the sense you mean. The sanctions are just to sink those countries for p…

> has it ever worked? Yes. About a third of the time [1]. [1] https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/863435/mod_resource/conte... Table 6.1 page 159

That's interesting, but (at least from a quick look and a few text searches) they don't seem to explain what their "sanction contribution score" is. How are they sure that the cases where they "worked" are not regression to the mean (some authoritarian regimes just fall from time to time)? And how are they sure that there is not an equal number of cases where they do the opposite of what they intend? (maybe the Castrist regime would have fallen already if the country had been allowed to develop without sanctions).

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#79

Post by XorNot »

barrenko wrote: post #6
OccamsMirror wrote: post #2

It 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.

No it's also just to deny those countries resources to come after the rest of us.

We don't sell them weapons, and we try to limit dual-use technology from being freely available.

Defense tech uses a lot of open source software and commercially available software - letting a regime simply buy technological advantage it can't cultivate is a good way to lose that advantage and then also lose the culture which can create it.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#80

Post by vasco »

adastra22 wrote: post #29
palmfacehn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: >I read hackernews on a daily basis and I visit lots of different websites regularly. I am almost always on my VPN as I am internally firewalled by the government and externally shooed because of the sanctions, so I am probably missing some of these heart-warming messages: >>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civili…

Countries with "Democratic" and "Republic" in their name rarely are.

The majority (like over 100) of world countries have Republic in their name.
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