Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli?
github.com
github.com
Meanwhile, no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea... when the consequences are likely just prison time.
Armchair tough guys.
Not armchair tough, just not fully understanding... yet, I think there's a difference.
His comment has right now 109 thumbs down, zero thumbs up.
As for votes I see no reason to interpret them in any particular way.
If there were a vibrant industrial or creative community in North Korea to interact with, I’d see the light in this argument. But there isn’t. The only entity to contract with is the state.
That makes the comparison difficult. Cuba, on the other hand...
This is entirely false. For example, North Korea has, believe it or not, a booming software development outsourcing industry (mostly apps I think). Their labor is dirt cheap and they're apparently not half bad at what they do.
I believe the same goes for any other type of labor: If you're willing to violate trade sanctions, you can get anything from there for a penny.
The "supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate" may not always win, but he has to obey the supreme leader and his gang anyway. It's pretty close to a dictatorship, even if it's usually couched as "theocracy".
In the end, democracy refers to who hold power. In the UK, it's very possible for a minority to have the majority of the power or even worse due to various details, and a lot of power is just not accountable to the people. So depending on where you draw the line it makes sense.
The IRGC could arrest the entire parliament and execute them at the public square and no one can officially stop them, not judges, not ministers no one.
Candidates for president must be "approved" by the Guardian Council. Supreme leader hand picks half of the Guardian Council, the other half is selected by Majlis. But majlis nominees are "approved" by the guardian council. The circular dependency was seeded by supreme leader.
If A = B & B = C Then A = C. He hand picks the nominees for president.
Forgot about outsider, look what they did to Bernie Sanders. Both 2016 and 2020. Should I explain more? Let alone third party candidates like Jill Stein.
You have really bought the brand of bs the media is selling you don’t you?
Noam Chomsky
Almost like someone made a few phone calls.
It's really an amazing system we have. The government and media tell you how free you are and how wicked all these other people are, and everyone just eats it up. Anyone who questions is ostracized and sidelined. Way more effective than a brute dictatorship.
Also, I just find it interesting you feel compelled to defend a dictatorship.
"Bad guys bad!" is much less interesting, especially when it's only the bad guys you've been told to hate.
https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-was...
That being said still not a theocracy.
In the US, the allowed opinions are actually a tiny band, socially enforced. You don't get to be an opinion maker unless you're in band.
Technically we're way freer, but practically? A little bit at best.
The real world difference is huge no matter how you try to portray it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
I don't understand this baseless whataboutism to defend a dictatorship.
It's definitely a problem that you have to be in one of the two parties, but it's not impossible to come from outside and nominally join. Sanders is also a good example, coming close in 16 and 20, despite being, essentially, an independent or Democratic Socialist.
Disclaimer: I’m not an American, so I might be simplifying or not getting something right.
EDIT: looking at your comment again, I could understand cynicism about the Democratic/Republican political machines, but I don’t necessarily equate that to something like Iran’s Supreme Leader.
I'd feel only marginally more safe violating the US's equivalent law. Breaking sanctions means prison and, at least according to Amnesty, US prisons engage in torture pretty routinely.
So, I probably wouldn't merge a North Korean PR.
Would you?
FWIW, I am an American citizen and former military officer with a top secret clearance. I never broke US law, and I never feared any retaliation from the US government.
I was going by this which states that "importing technology" is covered by sanctions.
If encryption can get classified as munitions export (which, pre 1992 it was) I could imagine a PR from NK can fairly easily be classified as "importing technology".
IANAL but if I was taking a risk averse approach like this Iranian dude then I'd err on the side of caution and not merge.
I certainly wouldn't want to try and establish case law that a PR is not importing technology, either, even if, say, the lack of a financial transaction meant it technically didn't count. It's playing with fire.
More importantly, in the US, there is at least some semblance of fairness in the judiciary. To be clear, I'm not saying "fairness always wins". Not even close. A criminal charge would entitle the defendant to a trial by jury, though, and I find it hard to believe that a jury would convict a teacher for merely collaborating with a student in an academic setting, regardless of the letter of the law.
Funny you mention him. He showed up on the linked thread, posting the final comment before it was locked:
> Just merge it.
https://venturebeat.com/2012/01/09/iran-sentences-us-born-de...
And also...
https://m.dw.com/en/iran-defends-execution-of-gay-people/a-4...
“Homosexuality violates Islamic Law in Iran and can be punishable by death. Several thousand people have been executed for homosexuality since the 1979 Islamic revolution, according to some rights activists.”
And while we're talking about him, the "Supreme Leader" serves a lifetime term. They personally appoint the heads of the military, the government, and the judiciary. They directly choose the ministers of Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, and Science. Their successor is selected by a body appointed directly by them. The same person has held the position since 1989.
That's a fairly pure dictatorship, but agreeing with that statement might cause an Iranian to run afoul of Iran's Les Majeste laws, and Iranians are routinely punished for questioning or insulting the Supreme Leader.
This is a very similar arrangement to Iran's "democracy" where the democracy runs but is checked by a figure whose "true" attachment is to God (or for non-believers at least to some kind of objective morality).
If you look from an average Iranian perspective, Ayatollah Khamenei is not just the leader of the country, he is also a venerable religious figure, an ascetic and someone who ostensibly cares little for worldly pleasures. If anyone were to have "guardianship" or veto power over a democracy, wouldn't he be a good guy to have it, from that perspective?
It's a lot of the same arguments you see for Trump. He doesn't need the money. He's not beholden to special interests because he's not a career politician, etc. Etc.
Just a different perspective. Many here allege torture and harsh imprisonment but these aren't inherent features of the system mentioned. They are things which could be fixed within the system as well. The same is true for American police brutality, for example.
It's also impossible to achieve, though, which makes it a bit moot. No single person is guaranteed to stay free of corruption, especially when granted tremendous, unchecked power. Creating a system that relies on this not happening is not a good idea. It's just too huge a gamble.
Also, comparing Ayatollah Khamenei, a formerly elected politician who controls around $100 billion of quasi-private wealth, to a council of ascetic monks, is a bit of a stretch.
Like picking presidential candidates that have all been vetted to have acceptable viewpoints. "You can pick anyone that believes what I believe."
Laws, but if someone in the government suspects you of a crime or just doesn't like you, they through you into an interrogation cell and torture you until they get what they want.
There's no rule of law. And there's no democracy in Iran.
Crimes of treason are handled by the revolutionary court. That court is allowed to hand out death sentences. People are strangled publicly in Iran. It's hardly a stretch to compare them to North Korea.
Iran could abolish all elections, create a Saudi-style dictatorship, become even more of a human rights abuser, but if it privatized its oil industry and let in Exxon/BP all would be forgiven.
The president is nominally democratically elected, but they are subordinate to the Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader is appointed by and subject to the Assembly of Experts... but half of that body is subject to the whim of the Supreme Leader.
At best, it's "a dictatorship with extra steps".
Democracies don't have supreme leaders. Are you insinuating Iran is not an authoritarian regime where torture exists?
As for Iran having a similar structure to the USSR, you couldn't be further from the truth. To begin with, all parties are legal in Iran de jure, and are not obligated to hold internal elections. Whereas the Soviet system is that you have one party, which is legally required to hold multiple primaries, with the concept being that the party should be changed by the people (obviously this doesn't happen). The most powerful person in the USSR, the General Secretary of the CPSU, is not appointed for life, and is elected by successive representative bodies culminating ultimately in the Soviet, which has no equivalent in Iran. The principle of social control in Iran is the IRGC, whereas in the USSR it is admittance to the Communist Party. All in all, nothing in common.
I have a feeling that you have read neither the Iranian Constitution, nor Das Kapital. I'm not making an argument about whether either are moral, but they really have nothing to do with each other.
I was there when the revolution happened, as it happens.
By the way, Plato's Republic is in large part a critique of Democracy, just FYI. Its central thesis is that a just absolute monarch that is well-versed in philosophy and justness is the highest form of governance. If anything, I'd say in philosophy Plato's republic advocates most strongly for something you would call a Leninist/Stalinist state, and there is actually a direct lineage from Plato to Hegel to Lenin/Stalin, in that Plato essentially argued for totalitarianism by the right people. It's basically the only thing a Stalinist state has in common with the Iranian state, and is also directly delineated from Plato's Republic, ironically. It's even more ironic in that Marx's central thesis in this respect was to flip dialectical government on its head into a democratic "perversion" of Hegel and of Plato at the base.
In fact, the technocratic aristocratic meritocracy proposed by Plato in Republic is stunningly similar to what Lenin was advocating for in the Vanguard party, and not only that, but it failed exactly for the reasons for which Marx critiqued Hegel's version of the same concept! The history of philosophy is full of interesting plot twists.
I wonder if repeated beating of a strawman constitutes a form of battery? Go easy on the poor guy!
The "the absolute wilayat al-'amr" [Article 57] [see note] is Plato's philospher king. It has no basis whatsoever in Shia Islam.
Khomeini was an ambitious and worldly mullah, and on entirely different plane than all the other actors in the revolution and IRI. He was definitively -not- a Marxists, and his evaluation of "economics" was "donkey science". He was a Muslim cleric with mystical [Aaref] tendencies/conceits/delusions.
"Be sure that Islam can provide justice, independence, freedom, economic equality without relying on the teachings of other schools of thought.” [Ruhollah Khomeini - Sahifa Nur]
He was (apparently, as I don't personally see it) a charismatic man. Or something. But whatever he was, you would not know the name of Ruhollah Khomeini were it not that that nationalist center and left, including no holds barred extreme left, chose to throw their weight behind him with the intention of riding on the robe of the Ayatollah to affect their intended goals. What a tragic error they made. (Communists were apparently treated far more leniently than groups that were Islamics. Put that your in your analytical pipe..)
Left never managed to gain the same foothold in Iran as it did in say East Asian nations. Marx was never gonna fly in Iran. Ever. They certainly tried. So the crypto-soviet of Islamic Republic of Iran is a means of addressing this substantial stumbling block. A few more generations of IRI and in my opinion Islam is likely finished in Iran.
Besides the actual left, the scions of the "aristocracy" [lol] of Mullah Families in Iran were all having rather substantial crisis of faith. The honest amongst them, examplar here is the heroic Kasravi [1] (RIP), who got his western education beyond his Muslim education, and then took off the robe and put on a suit. This is what he said about Islam (and they killed him for it):
One is the religion that that honorable Arab man brought one thousand, three hundred and fifty years ago and was established for centuries. The other is the Islam that there is today and has turned into many colors from Sunnism, Shi'ism, Esmaili, Aliollahi, Sheikhi, and Karimkhani, and the like. They call both Islam, but they are not one. They are completely different and are opposite of one another.... Nothing is left of that Islam. This establishment that the mullas are running not only does not have any benefits but it also causes many harms and results in wretchedness.
This scion of the "aristocracy of clerics" [2], Ali Shariati, who was a sensitive and intelligent sort, but obviously lacking in the intellectual integrity department [according to moi], was the piped-piper of psuedo-intellectuals, left wing wannabes, and conflicted Muslims who failed to grok how to square scientific and technological advancement with the (claimed) eternal guidance of Almighty. So they decided to politicize Islam and mix their intellectual, political, and economic notions [mostly left] with religion.
These are the people who are in power (minus comrades that met the bullet of the "saint", of course).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Kasravi
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shariati
[p.s.]: Yes, that is the title of the awaited Mahdi ("Guided One", think Dune :)] but the entire doctrine of Khomeini Velayateh Faqih, means "the Supreme Leader" is the mullah-council annointed proxy.
p.s.s. I am personally convinced Shariati could have been Iran's Foucault IFF he had the integrity of Kasravi.
Actually, did the Iranian Revolutionaries really copy the structure of Iran, I'd bet Iran would be in a much better position right now - either similar to China, or much more democratic.
And yes, a big criticism I have of the Arab left too is their almost delusional characterization of Islam, but I digress.
Also, I was unsure which way the substitution was going, which is why I also made the other criticism, but now I can see clearly that you meant that the IRI is based on Plato's idea in the Republic, which I can see is defensible.
He is using a language that was mainly developed by Israeli and has Israeli on its core team, this is a flimsy excuse not to merge a PR. Laravele itself probably already has Israeli contributors too. This argument makes no sense. If he is using PHP and Laravele he is allegedly already in danger by your logic, since using code and libraries authored by Israeli. This isn't a github or a git issue, at all.
The Iranian government already has a case against him then, he is using PHP and committing code on github.
What do you think is going to happen to that story relayed on hackernews and reddit? This developer by doing so has made himself a target of the Iranian governement already which is going to check how much "Israeli code" this developer relies on, just by looking at the composer.json dependency file. What chances are you talking about again?
You've done it! You've found a logical hole in the policies of a government! Everyone is happy, the maintainer is no longer at risk of death if they approve this PR, and the world is saved once again.
Thank you for your service.
For an actual response, the maintainer only states that they are not allowed to have any relationship with someone from Israel. While possible, they do not state that they cannot use software that was contributed to by someone from Israel.
That developer made himself a target for retaliation the moment he started using github and commit code there. Spare me your sarcasms.
And if you are toeing the line with what's acceptable, increasing your exposure by even a little could cross that line.
Spare me your lack of empathy.
This has nothing to with empathy, you can't be on Github and discriminate PR submitters because they are Israeli. Pretty sure it violates github TOS.
That is a hard decision.
If the maintainer denies this PR for being from Israel, you're pretty sure it violates ToS, which in the worst case could result in their account being suspended.
If the maintainer knowingly or unknowingly accepts a PR from Israel, the very real worst case is that they could be executed.
I'm not sure which decision I'd make if I were in their shoes. I see your point now.
> Let the problem be until it escalates to GitHub's (Microsoft) management to find a proper way to deal with this.
If MS management gets wind of this, I fear the most likely outcome would be "Thanks for bringing this to our attention! By being an Iranian citizen, this account violated our TOS. This account is now permanently closed."
I know it's written with a smile, but being serious for a second, it won't happen since sanctions on Iran only apply to the public sector, or perhaps companies, but certainly not individuals.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...
As for individuals, it's way too risky.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/29/8934694/github-us-trade-s...
Accounts from such nations have their functionality restricted, commercial use in any form is not allowed.
So, if at some points Iranian police will start going through Github and monitor all PRs and check user's origin countries — then yes, you're in trouble. But I judging from first-hand contact with how authoritarian police operates, they almost never know English well enough to go through foreign resources. And if someone who's educated (and competent) enough to do it is after you, then you're already in great trouble anyway.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
I have personally done business with individuals in countries that are on my country's "naughty list". This is one of the reasons I fully support the concept of cryptocurrencies - even though there are myriad problems with there current implementation, Bitcoin has allowed me to transact with individuals in both Venezuela, which is on the "naughty list", and Somalia, where to my knowledge no major bank allows direct fund transfers.
I really applaud Yehuda for handling things appropriately after putting in the work.
This is a sticky situation that has existed longer than any of us have been alive. As much as I want to see a resolution where all people can live under peaceful, democratic, non-authoritarian governments that respect all of the various differences between us, I don't know that we'll get there in our lifetimes. Especially if we continue to jump to conclusions.
This is a hard problem that manifests itself out of inequity, generational hurt, and hate. And as long as people are exploited and taken advantage of, there will continue to be pain.
We should always strive for greater understanding and cooperation, and empathy should be at the root of the framework we use to deal with this complex issue. I feel for both Arman and Yehuda, and all of the countless people impacted by these tensions.
If we learn anything from this, I hope that it is kindness and understanding. The world needs more of it.
https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-fro...
If there's #metoo movement for this, put me and other +85 million Iranians in it.
Ref: https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-...
2. Countries have the right to have trade sanctions towards other countries. Does US abuse its rights some times? Absolutely. But does not make it not their right.
2. Countries have rights to impose trade sanctions on whoever they want as long as their intentions is not malicious and not directly toward the individual and citizens in hope to cause revolution and civil war to topple the government (what has been said by Brian Hook, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and ...) or making Iran the bogeyman to increase the arm industry sales in the region.
If you're not aware, the WW3 has been long started, it's not by bullet much anymore, but by much gruesome and brutal tactics such as prohibiting the sale of medicine in the pandemic or preventing to get a simple cancer medicine for small children.
The same protests that was caused by US to make civil unrest and riot to topple the government
I'm sure the "anonymous" sources have a lot of hard evidence to say he has been tortured. The same kind of evidence (excel files) they provided to show Iranian death over COVID19 were many times more than official numbers
seriously dude, says who? This will be all good, but then there is no point to a sanction if its not targeting change in the other country. Jumping to revolution is extreme, but isn't the whole point of a sanction to change another countries behavior?
"Iran’s police, intelligence and security forces, and prison officials have committed, with the complicity of judges and prosecutors, a catalogue of shocking human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, against those detained in connection with the nationwide protests of November 2019, said Amnesty International in a damning new report published today."[0]
[0] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/iran-detainee...
Edit: This report came out Sept 2nd, 2020.
Last time I worked with crypto, the sanctions had been aligned with overall trade sanctions, so after wasting hours talking about it, turns out my code could go everywhere our products could be legally sold so it wasn’t an issue? You could have led with that.
To be fair, who knows what the 'thumbs down' emoji is meant to represent in context and probably varies from each person who flagged it as such. It could mean 'boo maintainer', or it could be 'boo to the law and circumstance'. It's just an emoji.
>I dare you to do a single tiny transaction with Iran or an Iranian citizen which would be in violation of unilateral sanctions
Yeah. That's the reality. Like you imply, it's not the maintainer's fault. He's just trying to do the best he can in a situation that he doesn't control. Just as an American would if they found themselves in a situation that could intentionally be interpreted as breaking sanctions.
>you'd see how you'll get a taste of freedom and liberty and some prison time to sweeten the deal by US.
I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, though you are overstating it. There is plenty of blame to go around, but let's not absolve Iran of their responsibility in getting getting themselves to a place of direct conflict with the United States. After all, there are a lot of non-democratic/authoritarian nations that do not, in fact, have these kinds of sanctions placed on them. Since the Iranian revolution, the Iranian government has been following a path of direct confrontation with the United States and this is the end-result - their economy and people (like yourself) have been hurt through their policies, while United States is fine.
I agree, Iran is really threatening US: https://lipstick-and-war-crimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/... how Iran dares to put the country next to US military bases ?
Jokes aside.
A simple map could clearly shows, US is thousands of miles away from Iran. What they do here ? This place was fine and long before any US warship show up in the Persian Gulf.
Was it Islamic Republic in 1953 when US (CIA) and Britain toppled democratically elected prime minister Mosadeq ?
Or how about Iran-Iraq war were Iraq was supplied with intels, luxury weapons, naval and air help from US or many other country and being funded billions to continue the war, even French pilot flying their airplanes and Germany supplying them chemical weapons to be used on Iranian civil and US calling Saddam "Our Man in Baqdad", he was the sweetheart until he dared to do something US didn't like and you see what happened to Saddam and great people of Iraq being mascaraed and bombed to ashes. (_Saddam dared to attack Kuwait to take on oil fields because he felt that war with Iran caused tons of financial damages to the country so he thought he deserved the money back from the Arab World, US didn't like it and ..._)
Umm, how about Iran and US cooperation to topple Taliban government ? Wasn't that a token of "deescalation", that ended for Iran being called "Axis of Evil" by George W. Bush.
How about assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani ? was that a token of friendship by US? He was carrying a meeting response from supreme leader for Saudi Arabia for deescalation and lowering the tension between both countries.
For US, a country is either a client state or "let's give them a taste of democracy and libation!"
Just because US can bully countries around, it doesn't mean it's a tough guy and we have seen it several times.
I hope one day, me and you don't need to have such conversations, ordinary people that only want to have a simple life, food on the table and a peaceful environment where any person on earth can be free from damages caused by others on them, well that's a wishful thinking, but I like to believe someday that would happen.
>Umm, how about Iran and US cooperation to topple Taliban government ? Wasn't that a token of "deescalation", that ended for Iran being called "Axis of Evil" by George W. Bush.
You're under the mistaken impression that all nations are equal before the law and it seems to you unfair that America is able to do things that Iran is not. The problem is that there is no universal inter-nation law, or a global constitution. At the nation level it's all ad-hoc realpolitik and hegemony and geopolitical interests - as has been the case since the civilization begun. You can continue raging against the unfairness of it all (and I may even agree), just as Iranian government is doing - but in the end, things are the way things are, and the only entity that is hurt by Iranian actions is Iran and its people.
And it's not just America that has issues with Iran, by the way. Until very recently Iran has been under broad international sanctions. The recent normalization of relationship (implicit and explicit) between various Arab-states and Israel is a direct response to Iran as well. Think about it, even though there continues to be tension between Arab states and Israel, they are all willing to put that aside because they view Iran as a greater threat.
So tell me, how is that when you take all this in, and see that it is pretty much just Iran that is treated as piranha, not just by United States, but also by the entire region, how is it that you don't think they share any responsibility for conducting their policies in a way that got them to the place they are presently in - under sanctions, with no friends. You can blame America for that. You can say it's unfair. But it is the way it is.
I agree completely that countries are not bound by law or any centralize law or government/authority (_Jokes on you UN_), I don't mean countries having human emotions, after all, they have their interest, as long as their interest is met, they do what they can do, be it US, UK, Iran or any other country, even their mutual alliance is for their own interest (_which could be with compromises as well, such as JCPOA accepted by Iran_)
As an ordinary citizen, I'm outraged by the situation (_that's so far I can do_) and how it has affected my life and loved ones. Was I looking at Iran government and say "why our gov is not friend and doesn't do what they say so it's could be blue sky and peaceful life?", I did but later looking more closely and looking at events and see how thing turned out to be it was clear I can't say "Iran/we deserve it because we don't do what they telling us to do."
Like many others I had great hopes with JCPOA and I witnessed how it fallen apart by US unilaterally. Tell me honestly, buying commercial airplanes risks the global security while people in Iran have to fly with +40 years old commercial planes ?
> Arab-states and Israel is a direct response to Iran as well.
Yes, exactly, isn't nice that both countries joined together to counter the "bogeyman" that has been created ?
If I keep telling you Mexico will someday take all American jobs and all the drug dealers are Mexicans, eventually someone gonna take advantage of the situation and gonna come and say, "let's build a wall" and many will vote for him to do that.
The greatest mistakes Iranian did was to do a revolution and have new government, suddenly all the universe hated them and we have our neighbor knocking on the door and invade us :D
I agree with you, it's unfair, it's what it is and how it is right now in the current time and all I'm saying is, well, it's unfair and I hate it that many people point out "If Iran doesn't like it, they can change and submit", niet, it hasn't ever happened and will not happen.
The oppressed will be always to blame by the _oppressor_. Fun fact, "De oppresso liber", taught to 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade of Iran by their long ago American friend and has been with them ever since.
Take care you good sir ;)
You're focused on what is and isn't fair. But fairness is subjective in a complicated world and everyone has their view of fairness. Not everything Iran got, they deserved, but Iran is where it is due to their choices.
But I look at it from a level of pragmatism. The prosperity of US and its people isn't dependent on good relations with Iran. On the other hand, the prosperity of Iran and its people is dependent on not being antagonistic to the United States. That they continue to be, guarantees that Iranian people will not able to fully participate in the global economy, and may even lead to armed conflict or war, with the surrounding Arab states or Israel or America. In other words, Iran's actions led to Iranians flying on 40+ year old commercial planes, while Americans are flying modern Boeing and Airbus jets.
>Like many others I had great hopes with JCPOA and I witnessed how it fallen apart by US unilaterally.
That was unfortunate. Obama made two bad calculations:
1) that he could push through the deal without broad internal political consensus. He knew he could never get the deal passed through Congress, but he went along with it anyway because ...
2) he gambled his successor would be a moderate Republican or Hillary and therefore would uphold it. Unfortunately for him and Hillary and Iran, Trump won.
In this case, Iran made a mistake as well. Iran came into the negotiation trying to give up as little as possible. Specifically Iran wanted to limit the deal to their nuclear weapons program (and in a way, that they could restart it after the term of the JCPOA was up), without impacting their broader geopolitical goals. They succeeded in doing that. But in doing so they made it far easier for American hawks, Israel, and regional Arab states to pressure Trump to rip up the deal.
>Take care you good sir ;)
You too. It's a big world, and us little people can only be spectators.
PLEASE assume goodwill and cooperative intent for all parties. Goal is merely to help educate all as to parameters and guidelines for safe global work together.
This type of internet "stupidity" is in every government DNA lol
That's still the case for many encryption products from Oracle. You have to register and sign T&C which say you will not export this .jar to a banned country. It's been like this since I remember... 2005 maybe?
Interestingly merged by Behdad Esfahbod who is also iranian. He was even arrested by the iranian government in the past
> Esfahbod claims that he was arrested by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence echelon during a 2020 visit to Tehran. He was then moved to Evin prison, where he was psychologically pressured and interrogated for 6 days. Iranian security forces let him go based on his promise to spy on his friends once he was back in United States.[2]
[1] https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-link/pull/9#i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behdad_Esfahbod#Detention_Iran...
Oh, that can't be good...
https://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=behdad&l=linux-il%40cs...
Some years ago, the CEO and Chairman of Telefonica/Movistar, who should have a minimum understanding of how the internet works, said Google should pay them money because, and I quote him, Telefonica had all the infrastructure, the customer support and Google only had algorithms.
If this kind of stupidity comes from a guy like this, imagine what could come out the rulers of a theocratic regime.
[1][https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-fro...]
He acknowledges the lack of human rights in Iran, but then casts blame on the US when Iran shoots down the Ukrainian airliner. Which is odd.
Can Iranian-built websites not use PHP?
It's possible 'usage' might not be considered a relationship, but 'interacting' with a PR might?
But I'm trying to be practical and I suspect the law was not written by anyone intending to be practical.
This whole story makes me sad.
What?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zend_(company)
>Zend, formerly Zend Technologies, is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based software company owned by software developer Perforce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perforce
>Perforce, legally Perforce Software, Inc., is an American developer of software [...]
Zend was founded by Israelis, from that same article on Zend:
> Zend Technologies was founded by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski who, along with other Israeli graduates of the Technion, the Israel Institute of technology
I am currently assuming it was founded in Israel, but to be fair the article does not explicitly say where it was founded.
> Zend Technologies was founded by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski who, along with other Israeli graduates of the Technion, the Israel Institute of technology, further developed PHP after its initial creation by Rasmus Lerdorf. The name Zend is a combination of Suraski's and Gutmans' forenames, Zeev and Andi.[citation needed]
Deliberately kept the citation needed, but still it is Israil origin which is enough for persecution.
"was" an Israeli company is entirely accurate.
Probably confusion stemming from one of PHPs well known hebrew identifier names that ended up making some error messages useless: T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM .
What you do is stay far from Sauron's eye. And if you're under Sauron's eye, you make sure you look loyal.
Once you're being "investigated" anything you've said or done, your entire history is up for grabs. If that's not enough, the "investigators" will create the "evidence" or find "witnesses" who can claim you've said/done horrible* things so they can quickly handle the punishment.
Astute observers will see some parallels with other groups.
* For whatever today's definition of "horrible" is.
I'm a little naive and curious about this. The examples that come to mind are HR departments I've worked with. What were you thinking of?
“Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him.”
That aside, I dont see any first hand source for the repo owner being Iranian, only speculation in the comments. The situation is sad, but a reasonable response to a PR that has legal issues. I don't think there's much intelligent discussion that can be had about this.
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...
EDIT: github doesn't show profile location on mobile. My bad.
But they're in a country where the law also might not make sense.
Technical / administrative issues aside here I can understand how an individual might fear some sort of retaliation... even if the basis for it is absurd, the consequences could be very real.
I don't know what you mean by that. I get the rest, but not that.
The extent to which you agree with that is a question of political philosophy :).
Perhaps the original sources from the Iranian government (e.g., legal texts, judicial rulings, etc.) provided clearer language.
It wouldn't surprise me if the Github discussion comments used simplified / less-precise language for the sake of readability.
> Furthermore, hardware and software developed in Israel or by companies that have production branches in Israel are forbidden.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I find the whole situation quite insane -- nobody benefits from governments blocking collaboration over the internet.)
[1]: https://www.jns.org/opinion/irans-anti-israel-law-desperatio...
US has a lot of law and rules against many countries including Iran, no one argues about that. And some guys want to escalate a PR up to governmental level. It's ridiculous...
There is no specific law for git PR. It's a very general law. Many middle eastern countries would not recognize Israel as a country, it is called Occupied Palestin. Citizens of these countries shouldn't interact with ppl from occupied territories.
I wrote a blog post with my personal perspective here: https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iran...
https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iran...
The last time I had a provenance problem with source code (multinational, could not utilize public domain code for liability reasons), I clean-roomed a solution. It took longer to explain why I wanted this to the intended author than it did for him to write it. But I had a knack for filing bug reports such that the maintainer can fix the problem cheaply (same employer, I could not file PRs against OSS, but I could tell them the bug was on line 53 and what input triggered it)
You’d need someone who has read the PR to write tests and/or a spec and for someone else who has not read it to file an equivalent PR.
But I’d want to talk to some Iranian lawyers first. Plural.
I don't really understand this PR as GitHub is an American company that is forbidden to do business with Iranians. It seems weird to me to use the website but not take a PR. That said I am sympathetic to the package maintainer and I hope to never live in a place so repressive. It's scary as it is.
The long and short of it is that he's more afraid of his government than the US government.
I don't think GitHub would be any help here, as I imagine the author is worried about personal retribution from the Iranian government, not the US govt. He is probably right to be concerned. I'm afraid there's probably not much we can do here.
FWIW, as a Palestinian, I think this law is idiotic. FOSS does not discriminate on geographical origins, particularly when any submitted code can be freely audited.
"Hi, I'm from the IRGC secret intelligence, we just wanted to test your loyalty to the regime, therefore we create fake accounts. You can merge the PR without any problem"
1. repo owner is justified. Understandable from the lens of living under an oppressive regime that could use anything to justify your imprisonment or whatnot... Even if he has good intentions, fear of disproportionate response keeps him from collaboration
2. repo owner is just not being friendly. The risk is so minuscule here that any intelligent person would just merge a PR. After all, theyre having a discussion in a public forum... so they've already past the point of "no contact"...
3. repo owner has government ties.
Out of curiosity, have you ever lived under a repressive regime? Because I have, and even when "the risk is minuscule", when you know what could happen you tend to think twice.
Oh I bet it’s known. But to announce it means you can’t use the same trick for the next asylum seeker. I wish the Internet had this level of class more often.
It was more fun when it was anonymous and the person you were talking to could have been a 43 year old neo nazi with blue hair, but their code or stuff was good, so you didn't have that getting in the way of you.
And that aside, what about the name?
Going this direction seems like a very strange aside to a situation where the law is clearly bonkers...
Not sure what you mean about the name.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iran-passes-law-...
Don't tell them about the Linux kernel.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran#Mo...
This reads to me as passive-aggressive
To add insult, a superficial search for Iran sanctions show that Israel is pushing hard for US sanctions on Iran [0][1]
So even if Israel hasn't sanctioned Iran, they sure seem to want the US as a proxy sanctionner
[0](https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-iran-sanctions-1.55989...) [1](https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/iran-sanctions/)
Israel has never restricted private individuals from collaborating on open source with Iranians (afaik).