US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati | Hacker News Reader

US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati

home.treasury.gov

235 pointsunfocso233 comments

>A/I’s cadre of radical hackers and tech developers provide a full spectrum of services – including encrypted chats and email, web hosting, secure video conferencing and streaming, anonymity shields, and a suite of other technological tools [...] while remaining anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law.

ignoring the political leanings, this type of rhetoric will certainly be used to further the campaign against encryption, bolster the case for id verification requirements, etc. it paints the use of everyday normal tools: email, web hosting, etc. as inherently bad if they are private.

A/I mails weren't e2e encrypted.

not sure if that's relevant.

the announcement specifically calls out "encrypted chats and email" and implies that it's a bad thing because it is private

That's probably the point of it?

"We're murdering people and they have the audacity to organise against us"!

And it will have the effect of making these tools more popular, as it boldly proclaims how effective they are against even nation-state–level threats.

> it boldly proclaims how effective they are against even nation-state–level threats

it boldly proclaims how effective they are against even rogue nation-state–level threats.

There, FTFY.

it almost reads like an advertisement! Secure video conferencing!

What the US government is doing here is a perversion of justice. Anyone running web services critical of those in control of the US government should be extremely concerned.

and we never even saw it coming... sigh.

US sanctioned ICC, Francesca Albanese and a lot of other people who simply tell the truth.

The United States may still have power, but they no longer have any credibility and no longer deserve any respect, neither they nor their zionist partners

Really best for the US to get rid of the zionism ties. I'm fine with US imperialism, which actually benefits us, not this bs where we spend all our money and diplomatic strength on some other country.

Supporting allies like this by supplying weapons is is one of the main ways the us projects military strength abroad and the situation with Israel shows how that can actually be counterproductive by escalating hostilities.

If you don't want the us to waste money on that you probably actually shouldn't want the us to engage in "imperialism" at all.

The problem with Israel is we do anything they want without getting anything comparable in return. And they control both our parties. It's not like this in Ukraine or the Asian Pacific.

Supporting imperialism, any imperialism, simply is wrong.

Is this really all that humanity amounts to in 2026? Thinking about imposing its own hegemony on others, the way kings did with their subjects in the Middle Ages? Massacring defenceless peoples like the Palestinians? Behaving like the Nazis?

And expecting that no one will respond to such abuses and when they do, calling them terrorists?

Are you really okay with imperialism even when you’re the one benefiting from it?

Is this all the ‘civilization’ we’ve reached in 2026? Really?

No?

Different arguments for different audiences.

Some people respond to moral arguments directly.

But even if you're all about extractive imperialism, you can make a case for "starting fires in your own backyard is going to be costly for you, especially in the long term."

Declaring a group of "hackers" as global terrorists? Mark off that spot on your Cyberpunk Dystopia Bingo cards.

granted when I fire up Cyberpunk 2077 nowadays I'm not sure if I'm playing a computer game or a documentary

considering the state that cyberpunk was in on it's release lead to so much backlash that Sony and other digital storefronts allowed unconditional full refunds as the developers knowingly shipped out unbuggy untested garbage, I would say you also have a starring role in that documentary by supporting cdprojektred. Might be a game, I respect myself a little too much to engage with it though

The cyberpunk dystopia we were promised was much more stylish than the cyberpunk dystopia we got.

Written by artists, built by businessmen and engineers.

The total attention given to this is a little bit goofy given the small sums involved. According to Autistici Invenati's costs page[1], the total they spend every year is €20,300. It's strange to see it trumped up as anything like a major entity.

https://www.autistici.org/who/costs

The current US government is trying to create a narrative where America is under siege from a shadowy army of foreign left-wing forces.

In particular, this aligns with several of Umberto Eco's fourteen properties of Ur-Fascism[1]:

4. Disagreement is treason

7. Obsession with a plot

8. The enemy is at the same time too strong and too weak.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

super!

First they came for the Autistici Invenati

And I did not speak out

Because their budget was €20,300

...

To be clear, I mostly mean attention and PR from the administration.

Why US financial sanctions against an EU-based non-profit? Making it harder to accept money from the US does not seem like quite the right tool. Are they known to be primarily sponsored by US individuals, or depending on other service providers with US presence?

It means no use of Visa or American Express bank cards, which are US companies.

I think SWIFT transactions are under US control.

No use of Apple, Google, Amazon, AirBnB, Uber, or other US-based services.

Eg, "Canadian judge Kimberly Prost is unable to use credit cards or access everyday services in what she calls an attack on the independence of the judiciary " - https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/12/12/its-surreal-u...

And, of note, online payments across EU countries is most often done with American payment methods. Most Chinese companies only take US-based payment methods.

Such a sanction really narrows down where they can buy online — it's not just the US that becomes off-limits.

Every day it seems a little weirder how many of these other countries are apparently passively tolerating the US/Google/Apple/etc-centric nature of parts of their internal economy.

The US had THAT much trust, not necessarily influence, which just went down the drain.

In Europe, "US had trust" only in the "free" european media, and among politicians..

People knew and know quite well what US was and is, besides the leading academia (many, if not most, lured there by money from other countries) and the holywood circus.

And no, it is not "because of Trump".

It's worse than that. No bank will have business with you because that would potentially affect _their_ other customer's ability to operate normally

This is a very big hammer and reveals how foreign entities are deeply dependent on the American financial system and thus exposed to the political whims of the US.

The objective is to target USA citizens who host their blogs there. Italian banks, EU-based payment processors and domain registrars will still block you if you are sanctioned by the USA Treasury, to avoid being cut off the global financial system.

Being designated a "terrorist" by the USA means it can use ANY means to destroy you: overt violence, subversion, propaganda, and financial.

Not that the USA NEEDS to apply that designation to use those methods....

https://www.autistici.org/donate

Damn I had my first email account with them more than 25 years ago. Nice to see they are still around fighting the good fight.

The US govt can go fuck itself, with their agenda in which antifascism has become the big bad monster to replace the evil terrorists of the Bush era. Fight against fascism is still a point of pride in Italy.

both of their .orgs appear to be down, got any mirrors?

I wonder how did they even know about A/I.

To give a bit of context, A/I has always been closer to a conceptual group than an active hacking organization. Think Luther Blisset[1], or for a more US-centric community, the Yes-Men group[2].

Like, if they said "We're indicating Red Brigades as a terrorist group" at least it would be... understandable. But all in all Banksy has probably pulled way riskier political stunts than those guys in the past.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Blissett_(pseudonym) [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men

While they are not directly in trouble, this is yet one more reason to have a sovereign financial system in Europe. Especially a direct competitor for the credit card networks (VISA, Mastercard) and SWIFT. These are the immediate threats.

What do you mean "not directly in trouble"? Their bank account will be blocked.

Sorry, what I meant is that they are Italians and as much as the US would like to exercise extraterritoriality, they are safe in Italy

Safe from arrest/execution, you mean? Abu Omar may disagree, but hopefully we won't get that far.

I guess you are talking about that guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case

If so this was an action coordinated between the US and Italy, and he was not Italian either.

Beware of patterns that scale and accelerate.

A universal financial blocklist that can be added to or retracted algorithmically is a great, inexpensive way of murdering people you don't like.

There is no legal limit to the number of (if you will) seats on the blocklist, nor meaningful legal limit to how often, or for what reason, people are put there. Cheaper than Shaheds, with much greater range.

The real weapon of the future, there for the grasping.

Antifa to me has always been the guys who beat up skinheads. I wonder who they're emailing?

A shop with leather jackets

They have to schedule the hourly arguments about anarchy & what it means w the co-op!

Hey -- not all skinheads are Nazis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Redskins

Well this is concerning, hopefully they aren’t planning to go after Disroot and Riseup as well. The ability to access secure hosting shouldn’t depend on political orientation.

Every announcement from these psychos reads like a missive from the Ministry of Peace

It is an interesting read, because of how odd an attack it is. The rationale itself is technically not new and 'hacker known as 4chan' is a meme for a reason.

However, it may be worthwhile to consider those sanctions in light of Bessent's recent conference, where he failed to deliver on his own overpromise of economic d-day, which, reasonably, a lot of professionals interpreted as Chinese banks sanctions.

In other words, while notable and maybe even worrying in terms of precedent it is apparently trying to set up ( because it does ), compared to a broader failure to deliver on a rather massive threat suggests this is weird distraction and not the main course.

The 2001 AUMF (authorization of us of military force) needs to be repealed so that these "special designations" are no longer allowed and war has to be declared. The US federal government will still perform the same acts but at least after the 2001 AUMF is repealed they'll have to go back to secret assassinations. Instead of flouting it in semi-public with the executive disposition matrix system.

As long as the same lens is applied equally to far-right and white supremacist groups, then this is fine.

This question is rhetorical with this administration, however.

We all know it won't be, so it's not fine. Because they've been told to 'stand back and stand by' and now they work in ICE: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/ice-proud-boys-...

You know you don't have to always accept government overreach under the guise of "fairness." It's not fair, it was never fair, why are you expecting it to be fair?

Just look at how the US treats "ecoterrorists" versus white supremacist; or if you want historical examples look at how the FBI treated labor groups versus fascists ones in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s (no need to worry about the decades after, they killed enough leaders to stop leftwing voices in the US).

Labor groups up to and including in the 60s were fiercely anti-immigration [1], and wanted to expand laws like the Chinese Exclusion act. You would call them white supremacist today. But as you say, the FBI did its job, and eventually the unions accepted immigration, just like capital wanted. Now Amazon can release a study showing diversity impedes unions [2], and Wikipedia helpfully summarizes it to give the opposite impression [3], while the FBI can better spend its time investigating "It's okay to be white" as terrorism [4], libeling whites with fabricated extremism cases [5], and taking instruction from the ADL [6].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policies_of_Americ...

[2] Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks - https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat...

[3] Factors including racial diversity, proximity to other unions, poverty levels in the surrounding community, and calls to the NLRB were named as contributors to "unionization risk." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon

[4] Ohio universities involve FBI in investigation of ‘It’s okay to be white’ and white nationalist group’s postings on campus - https://www.thefire.org/news/ohio-universities-involve-fbi-i...

[5] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/sep/15/biden-accus...

[6] Did you know ADL trains every new FBI agent on their role as protectors of the American people and the Constitution? - https://x.com/ADL/status/472384478464061441

"You would call [groups from a time when white supremacy was widespread and socially acceptable] white supremacist today" is not the gotcha you seem to think it is.

It's not a "gotcha", it's correcting the GPs deceptive contrast of labor groups versus white supremacists, when they were one and the same.

They contrasted ecoterroists versus white supremacists now, and labor vs fascists in the past.

If you insist on nitpicking, I'll spell it out for you:

> look at how the FBI treated [white supremacist] labor groups versus fascists ones in the 20s [..] no need to worry about the decades after, they killed enough [white supremacist?] leaders to stop [white supremacist??] leftwing voices in the US

So the fact that the labor groups the FBI targeted were white supremacist by today's standards makes those sentences complete nonsense.

If you say so. Makes sense to me, just weird to so specifically call out something that doesn’t distinguish them from half the population at the time.

Yes, some groups which you would call that have also been designated as terrorist organizations by the US.

January sixers got collective pardons and a pat on the head. (Plus a bunch of money IIRC?)

The state department only designates foreign terrorist organizations, as far as I know.

I find it extremely hard to believe that the current administration would do that. If it has happened, it was prior administrations (which honestly were just as weak in addressing this concern). And if they still are on some list, its likely just an oversight and is a matter of time before they get the Proud Boys treatment (a presidential pardon, a settlement for emotional damage or...whatever, and a bunch of confidence that they don't need).

Willy-nilly terrorist designation serving as an anything-goes legal loophole is an import from Israel. It goes against all American and British legal traditions and it needs to die.

Rose City Antifa: Oregon gets a shout out. Seriously.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

But at this point "To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world" is seemingly more relevant.

Very strange to decide to only supply a communications system to people ideologically aligned with one. That seems like it would make one stand out to an undesirable degree, and it makes me wonder whether these groups actually do this, or whether they're setting others up. If this is correct I almost whether they're going after something set up by the Italian government.

Still, it seems like this would likely to be protected under the US first amendment, and it would probably be reasonable to bring legal action in the US to avoid silly stuff happening in Europe, when this in inevitably used to send goons and annoying infiltrators across the sea to Italy and Europe.

It’s fairly common, given the presence of Disroot and Riseup. The problem for political groups is that they can’t necessarily trust non-aligned hosts not to betray them. A warrant is one thing, you have to comply regardless, but non-aligned hosts may hand over data upon request even if there is no warrant.

Yeah, but it is possible to make distributed systems.

I've written up a little toy in Erlang where you have lots of connections to peers and send dummy messages, all of the same size, to all your peers continuously and then, because of this, you can obviously send a message to whoever you like without anyone being able to know to whom you sent it. With a bit of extra delay you can add retransmission, and then you can have huge networks. Complete resistance to traffic analysis.

The only thing you need to accept to have this kind of security is to accept that message timing might be 1/s, or 0.1/s, but for things like e-mail that isn't a problem at all.

My system is not done. I had intended to finish it if ChatControl 2.0 passed, but since it didn't, and there's upon that a war on I didn't put it out, and I thought it was a bad idea to popularize this kind of thing since there was a war on, but it's quite straightforward. Many here could probably write something like it.

There are plenty of P2P and anonymous collaboration tools out there, but the problem for these groups is that members will use insecure tools unless they are as convenient and capable as what they are used to. This is the same reason that the government constantly screws up its own opsec. Nontechnical people in any group are a serious problem for maintaining security.

(This is also why law enforcement concerns about encryption are overblown.)

Yes, but then you have to accept that they can't be part of a group that needs security.

If they aren't willing to do things correctly, not be lazy etc., and you tell them that this means that adversaries will be able to pinpoint them, and pinpoint you and everybody else, and they don't express that they're going to take the effort to be reasonable, then maybe you shouldn't talk to them.

True. If you look at the average person who gets involved in radical politics, many often have issues sticking to a strict security regime. I think this may be why “black bloc” groups and the like are normally smaller splinter groups within the larger movement. Garden variety protestors, activists, and local organizers are probably fine using something like Signal.

They are splinter groups because they are violent cowards who use mainstream protests (that might actually have a shot of convincing people of something) as a meat shield for their vandalism.

Minneapolis showed us the way. Sandwich guy showed us the way.

The civil rights movement showed us the way.

Black bloc is embarrassing and associated with the consistent failures of post 60s left wing bubble politics.

The most obviously incompetent right wing government in the United States in years, and we are talking about black bloc? How about getting someone capable to make an argument against them instead of resorting to street tactics - literally the one thing this administration is salivating for as it would offer them an opportunity at mainstream redemption.

Left wing politics is truly so depressing. At this point I would respect a movement that openly argued/modeled a path for blue state secession more than the multitude of left wing degenerates who seem to have gotten their civics from V for Vendetta.

I mean, you’re not wrong, but that’s not really on topic.

POSIWID applies to political groups as well. Real change would require hard work, vision, and group discipline. We don’t do that here!

Doesn't that scale up terribly? If everyone has 100 friends and is constantly pinging them every second, you're just flooding the internet with junk.

Yes, but it's fine.

If you receive 10,000 messages per second, that's nothing. That means that you can have 10,000 people online simultaneously with 1 message per second and 100,000 people online simultaneously with 1 message every ten seconds even in the version where there is no retransmission.

American companies have contested warrants have they not? The jump from request to warrant is not the major hurdle.

Imo people often make the wrong tradeoff here. If the government really wants something jurisdictional questions will not stop them. You're actually inviting them to just steal it at that point.

Better to keep things in the US where there will at least be a clear paper trail. And instead of wasting money on non-aligned infra budget for a half decent lawyer. American companies and citizens will have an easier time holding the American government accountable than "non-aligned" hosts. The current administration in particular is routinely embarrassed in the courts.

Sometimes I read about left wing civic groups and their privacy efforts and it feels delusional. You would think many of them would relish a paper trail of persecution and the publicity of a victorious court battle. The US government will not be deterred because you are hosting something in Europe or your homegrown service. It's really a bit of a joke to think so.

Plus what do you think is going to happen in two years? It feels like now is the time to lean into being on the shit list (if you can manage it - most of them are so ineffective they barely even register) so you can benefit when the tables turn in two years.

To be fair, most US companies aren’t particularly sympathetic to radical politics, and many will cave in with only a little pressure. There may also be concerns of a secret FISA warrant.

The downside of hosting overseas is that you’re exposing yourself to the full NSA toolkit, without the usual fig leaf of legal protection.

Dark web P2P is probably the best option.

You forget that a portion of the radical left truly believes that there won’t be an election.

> The downside of hosting overseas is that you’re exposing yourself to the full NSA toolkit, without the usual fig leaf of legal protection.

We know that the NSA is spying on every American, and every communication they make no what the source or destination. Sending traffic overseas might cause the collected data to surface more often or be subjected to additional scrutiny but it's all going to be collected and scanned over either way.

> The current administration in particular is routinely embarrassed in the courts.

this might be true, but they also routinely make big wins. theres enough shit thrown at the wall that some of it sticks

in terms of making alternatives to large platforms, some ideological bias as the differentiator is pretty common.

its a reason for people to ditch the larger platforms with higher reach and bigger audiences

Statement from A/I Collective about US Sanctions

https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076

I refuse to believe that people throwing paint on factory windows are terrorists.

You do realize it's not the great depression anymore, right?

The Smithsonian might be next… https://folkways.si.edu/this-machine-kills-fascists-sticker/...

This administration has already been targeting the smithsonian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/08/donald-trump...

Sounds like the Trump administration is looking to shift the news away from Iran and Ukraine and back to the things that work for its voters: immigration (see the visa thread also on the main page) and antifa.

Expect more of this until the midterms…

US sanctions all kinds of completely non-threatening individuals based purely on ideology and attempts to silence their speech, and discourage them from making the world a better place. So this may be yet another such thing. By itself, being sanctionned by the US doesn't say anything about the person or entity.

Eg. ICC-EO14203

What a petty country, sanctioning judges of international criminal court, or UN workers, as if that means anything. ICC gets authority from countries that formed this court not from appointed judges. If you want to fight the court, you have to sanction entire countries. Sanction the entire assembly of state parties. You sanction one judge or one prosecutor, we elect another. It's not just petty, it's idiotic.

Why can't capitalism be judged on its own merits? Why do we need the state to get involved in shaping hegemony?

You know the answer. There’s a reason the state considers antifa a threat.

Capitalism has been judged on its own merits, and been found to be a ridiculously simplistic, unworkable system that tends toward oligarchy, massive inequality, and authoritarianism.

The state needs to get involved to protect the unworkable system.

Worth noting that at scale larger than family/clan/tribe it beats communism and feudalism on all relevant - to people - metrics.

(though unconstrained capitalism is not ideal)

> unworkable system

? unconstrained pure capitalism has bad effects, but it is not unworkable unlike say pure communism applied at scale larger than a family

> Worth noting that at scale larger than family/clan/tribe it beats communism and feudalism on all relevant - to people - metrics.

No, it demonstrably doesn’t. The countries that have the least problems with the issues I mentioned are ones that combine market economics with socialist approaches.

In many ways, those countries are closer to market socialism than they are to pure capitalism.

Also, the US’s historical use of socialism and communism as a bogeyman is starting to look less defensible as China succeeds while the US is failing, and actually doing all the immoral things it used to accuse its opponents of.

> those countries are closer to market socialism than they are to pure capitalism

so they are closer to capitalism than communism

> US’s historical use of socialism and communism

I never visited USA or America

> China succeeds while the US is failing

Part of China's success was more capitalism and far less communism

(and China's success is in large patch catchup after what Mao et all did)

Maybe you are right, at least partially, I can identify many of its flaws myself. However for example my homeland has tried communism/socialism, and went through brief periods of anarchy, and the same can be told about all. My family has lost a lot to all of these experiments (including the current capitalist one), but stability and modest prosperity are the best, and anarchism is as far from that as it gets, especially as represented by the Antifa.

Even the communist regime persecuted anarchism. (though they supported it when it was not at home, as a destabilizing tool)

> the same can be told about all.

Because the idea that there's one simple ideologically-based system that's going to solve all problems is simplistic.

Markets are useful, but that doesn't mean that societies should be organized around entirely around markets and private ownership of almost everything as the primary governing principle.

The US has really taken this to an extreme, to the point that it has legally ruled that "money is speech", which essentially guarantees an oligarchy.

Treating capitalism and communism/socialism as two sides of a binary choice is a propaganda trick, basically.

if the US considered money as speech, like code is speech, we would not be having crypto math wars on crypto/financial privacy as a concept. Tornado-cash for example would not be getting an execution with an audience in the joker "send a message" style.

No, the US govt does NOT consider "money is speech".

Capitalism "needs to win", but there's no way it can without being ruthlessly forced upon people. Heck even forcing it is just delaying the inevitable decline/crash.

Certain elements of Capitalism (cough AI) seem to simultaneously be speedrunning its decline and keeping it on life support. What strange times we find ourselves in.

Siamo tutti antifascisti!

Not in the tech industry, apparently. As a 50 year old, it's really shocking to see what I thought were just solid, solid underpinnings of a modern liberal society like "white nationalists are bad and should be ostracized" eroding.

too true, but "dovremmo essere tutti antifascisti!" doesn't have much ooomph to it unfortunately.

Not around these parts, especially not in the European sense.

This means that all involved will have their google/apple/whatever account blocked and revoked, correct?

No more services from the USA.

Their websites seems to be based on gandi.net, and this document is threatening secondary sanctions. Will be interesting to check the fallout.

I hope the guys will be able to scramble and move registrars and backup all their data from any service they use personally.

Good luck.

Is antiantifascism profascism?

>Rose City Antifa also used A/I Collective tools and services to disseminate doxing lists and release illegally obtained personal information of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with calls for targeted attacks on ICE agents in the streets and “in their homes.”

That's what DHS does. They dish it out but can't handle it when it's done to them. Cowards.

Dishing it out but not accepting it being done to them is exactly what it means to be a monopoly on legitimate violence. When two parties are dishing it out separately to each other, and one of them calls themselves the government, this is called a civil war or at least a terrorist insurgency.

ICE has been harassing, imprisoning, and murdering people for no legitimate reason.

Fascism is alive and well

The far more worrying development is that Tyrant Trump has declared the Palestine Action organization an official terrorist organization, to whatever degree it is an organization at all. Have there actually been threats or acts of violence with political objectives or are we just now calling everything the ruling maniacs don't like a terrorist, as I predicted before the "patriot" act was magically pulled out of a desk on 9/12 and rammed through congress in 6 weeks, before the dust had even settled over the rubble of the twin towers?

That should worry anyone, regardless of whether you agree with them or not unless they have perpetrated some kind of violent acts to scare people in pursuit of political aims like the US government. Trump may only be able to be a Tyrant for about 31 more months at best unless he goes full tilt, but the precedent he is setting will be used against any and all civic and resistance organizations that the ruling maniacs don't like in the future too.

I do not say this lightly, but everyone should be getting serious about what their plans will be when tyranny goes full mask off in the USA and your house and your land and your stuff all the sudden is said to belong to someone else and if you oppose that, you are a terrorist whose children deserve to be shot in the head by government snipers as the try to get water so they don't die of dehydration. No one ever thinks it will affect them, but you are already in the cage, the door is just not closed yet and it's clad in a pleasant facade. What happens when the psychopathic Epstein clan is facing total loss of power because the bond market has collapsed from their evisceration of all trust in the USA and they send their police and military goons after you as you try to scrounge for food to feed your family like in Palestine/gaza? You are the Gazans of tomorrow, you just don't know it yet.

I have been a personal victim to PA's violence and attacks. I could explain more details but essentially, they caused a bunch of damage and assaulted some employees of a workplace simply due to the fact we sold a piece of equipment to our middle eastern distributor that was going to a non-military Israeli company.

The rest of the designations are bullshit

> they caused a bunch of damage and assaulted some employees

Does this look like terrorism to you?

In the US, people get assaulted for political reasons all the time.

Does this look like terrorism to you?

Yes, it does. The use of violence and threat of violence to pressure people into being aligned with belief and ideology is terrorism.

At my place of work, the building vandalized and two coworkers were threatened and one assaulted just for wearing a uniform and going to a place of work. Regardless of how you feel about any of the conflict ultimately the person cleaning up the mess and the people assaulted were innocent and had nothing to do with sales or even manufacturing of that specific product.

Rose City 'Til I Die. Go pound sand fascists. Traitors to the Constitution.

Beyond parody

PKK is an actual terrorist organization, with half a century history of bombing shopping malls and hospitals and responsible for the death of tens of thousands of civilians. If any organization perpetrated even a single of their attacks on US soil or EU, nobody would dare to talk about them as freedom fighters (perhaps instead NATO's 5th article would get invoked and a global war on terrorism would be declared and all perpetrators would be chased down to the depths of hell, until their deaths put on display alongside a Mission Accomplished banner) but since they're bombing Turkish malls and killing Turkish school teachers, f*ck'em, let's put PKK in the same category as Green Peace.

Imagine a 50000-strong armed Native American organization started bombing supermarkets and schools in DC and New York, kidnap and assassinate big-name businessmen, in addition to engaging in cross border guerrilla warfare and say they won't yield until US yields back all historically Native American lands back to them so they can create a new country. Would you put them in the same basket as Antifa or Green Peace? Or how would you feel Russian and Chinese media making ceaseless woke reporting and framing them as freedom fighters and US soldiers and police as oppressors and the root cause, while indirectly bankrolling them and providing them with platform of operations and weapons, and use all of this (their support or protections for the group, and the woke propaganda machine/condemnation of US gov acts) as a political bargaining chip at every chance.

>half a century history of bombing shopping malls and hospitals and responsible for the death of tens of thousands of civilians

That's still a few orders of magnitude fewer than number of Armenian, Assyrian and Greek civilians killed by the Turks, but nobody's calling for Turkey to be designated a terrorist organization.

Seems like a "what-about-ism."

But also, winners write history. The suffragettes of the UK had a bombing campaign that killed four and injured two dozen people. Literal terrorist group was one of the earliest forms of feminism.

well, for the americans, the trump and bibi governments were hoping to ally themselves with kurdish terrorist groups to attack and overthrow the iranian government

properly kurdistan should exist, and turkey/syria/iran/iraq should lose territory to make it.

the list of states is arbitrary, and the kurds have just as much right as the turks to a state and government such their violence is consider state acts of war rather than terrorism.

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