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Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

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

#751

Post by xg15 »

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…

Interesting to get to know this, even as a non-Iranian.

Even more with Trump's current push to sanction the ICC.

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

#752

Post by danlitt »

lucianbr wrote: post #374
47282847 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody is going to care about Obviously untrue. Iran has 90 million citizens, and multitudes of that number do care out of principle. I am not trying to change your mind, but hope you would be more precise in your language next time to describe why you don’t care.

Sounds more like "nobody I care about is going to care about", which seems rather reasonable and eminently human. But maybe a useful increase in precision.

Rather "nobody with power is going to care".

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

#753

Post by arolihas »

figmert wrote: post #593
1234letshaveatw wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Every international body had checked, and confirmed that Iran had no intention of building nuclear weapons. Even to this day. Even after what Israel and US did. Netanyahu has been saying Iran in minutes away from building nuclear weapons since early 2010s. Never mind those facts. Let's say they are building weapons. What gives the US the right to build enough nuclear weapons that they could destroy the world multiple…

Israel has been peddling that lie for 40 years now

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

#754

Post by xg15 »

dh2022 wrote: post #627
tsimionescu wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster above was pointing out that this is a double standard. You don't expect a US citizen to risk their livelihood to help an Iranian, but you then expect an Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood AND life to topple a regime that is doing things that the USA doesn't like. So, you either take personal responsibility for enforcing sanctions yourself, or you admit that sanctions are a form of collective punishme…

I think Western leaders are clear headed enough to understand that sanctions do not cause people to raise against their leaders. This has been known since bombing Germany and Japan in WWII (a different, more violent kind of sanctions). However sanctions weaken the adversary technologically, economically, and ultimately militarily. This is a pragmatic reason to enforce sanctions on the adversary.

That's reasonable for a "short term" military conflict, but if you keep a country under sanctions for decade and deliberately reduce the quality of life in that country, that's essentially a message to the population that they don't count.

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

#755

Post by tpm »

marcosdumay wrote: post #682
tpm wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran is much less democratic than the US and the rest of the Western world. 158th from 179 entries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Dem_Democracy_Indices

Good, looking at data. Now search what happened to the Iran's democracy in the 70s and why their redemocratization stopped in the 90s.

Why stop there, let us go another millenium or two into the complete offtopic territory.

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

#756

Post by kelnos »

IshKebab wrote: post #168
perching_aix wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This frustrates me as well. It is so incredibly common, yet it never passes even basic scrutiny. For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it. It's easy to ignore this when things are going okay, but becomes very uncomfortable all of a sudden when that changes. And this is to say nothi…

> the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population Not really. The number of people who might change their minds and thus swing the result either way is indeed small. But it isn't accurate to say they are the ones that choose . The people in guaranteed states/counties still choose; it's just that almost always choose the same answer. But even that doesn't mean they can be ignored. They can…

I think the GP actually meant a third of eligible voters, not of those who actually vote. Turnout is often not that great in countries that don't legally require voting, especially when voters are dissatisfied with the choices they have. In the 2024 US presidential election, for example, ~89 million eligible voters did not vote, which puts Trump's win at 32% of eligible voters, just under a third.

Whether or not this is a useful/interesting metric is debatable, I suppose.

Swing voters / swing states / whatever the particular country-specific analog is -- this is a symptom of poor voting systems; unfortunately the people in power like how this works, and so it won't change.

It's also, at least in the US, a collective action problem: a state that tries to be more "fair" (doesn't gerrymander, perhaps awards presidential electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote percentages, etc.) will end up giving seats/votes to the "other side" more often than polarized states that stick with FPTP.

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

#757

Post by xg15 »

zokier wrote: post #528
tsimionescu wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster above was pointing out that this is a double standard. You don't expect a US citizen to risk their livelihood to help an Iranian, but you then expect an Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood AND life to topple a regime that is doing things that the USA doesn't like. So, you either take personal responsibility for enforcing sanctions yourself, or you admit that sanctions are a form of collective punishme…

It is far less of double standard than what you think. The key question is the legitimacy and mandate of the government. Western governments can claim legitimacy and mandate through democratic process (even if it is not perfect), which forms a social contract for their citizens to follow their laws. But if government is tyrannical and does not enjoy legitimacy then it's very different situation

I've never understood how that legitimacy extends to foreign policy though, especially the "coercive" kind.

Like, democratic elections obviously give the elected legitimacy to govern the populace that just elected them. But sanctions (or military interventions or wars) by their very definition are enacted on a different population, that had no democratic means to influence that decision.

UN sanctions are at least somewhat different because they are supposed to be decided by vote of the constituent countries.

But US sanctions are essentially "some people elected the President because they liked his views on domestic tax policy or trans people, therefore he gains the right to call airstrikes on some place halfway across the world or forbid the entire world from doing business with that place".

It makes no sense.

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

#758

Post by kelnos »

holowoodman wrote: post #375
m000 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population > Not really. Yes, REALLY. In fact it can be even worse. See the latest (June 2023) elections in Greece [1] (supposedly the cradle of democracy): First party got a 40.56% on a 53.74% turnout. I.e. around 22% of the electorate. Yet, this was adequate to yield a solid parliamental majority for 4 years. Also mind that the election system had…

Low turnout means non-voters just don't care, or that they find no palpable option on the ballot sheet. In any case, the non-voters are OK with whatever party might win, because otherwise they should have made their vote or created a political party that might be agreeable to them.

> Low turnout means non-voters [...] find no palpable option on the ballot sheet.

That alone is pretty un-democratic, no? Certainly politics is a world where it's hard to find an ideal situation pretty much ever, but I think a democracy where a third or more of eligible voters don't want to support any available candidate... that doesn't sound particularly democratic.

The US with its two-party system suffers from this problem, and it's a very bad one. There were more eligible voters in our 2024 presidential election that didn't vote at all (89M) than there were people who voted for Trump (77M) or Harris (73M). It's pretty messed up that more than a third of the electorate was so dissatisfied with their options that they didn't cast a ballot at all.

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

#759

Post by vorpalhex »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #694
vorpalhex wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Incorrect, Israel killed an entire American family: https://www.msn.com/en-us/war-and-conflicts/military/four-am... DHS nor the IDF are credible sources and neither have backed up their claims. That’s pure propaganda on their end.

Ah yes, The Daily Express, well known and very solid source.

Here's CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/21/middleeast/israeli-strike-leb...

Also from The Daily Express:

Cinnamon cures Alzheimers: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/common-kitchen-spice-...

What time is Rapture today: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-time-is-rapture-...

and no less than eight stories about the Presley family: https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/priscilla-presley-rev...

If you believe the AI slop news shop over government agencies, please make sure your psychiatrist is aware so they can dose your meds as appropriate.

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

#760

Post by kelnos »

behnamoh wrote: post #681
philipwhiuk wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... As a service owner currently looking at adding widescale blocks based on location... it's not a global business, so the downside of blocking an entire country is functionally zero and the upsid…

If someone from Iran wants to do DDoS attacks they probably know enough to change their own IP to somewhere else so your blocking Iranian IPs is basically futile.

The blanket actions you can take to reduce your attack surface will often work to stamp out low/mid effort attacks, but the more sophisticated attackers who really want to specifically target you will take the time to get around these simpler countermeasures. That doesn't make those countermeasures useless, though.
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