All the people arguing semantics when the author lives in a repressive dictatorship that would literally torture you for a confession and then execute you for it.. if anyone EVER comes by this PR even a decade from now.
Meanwhile, no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea... when the consequences are likely just prison time.
Iran is repressive, and fraught with problems, but it's not a dictatorship. There's a reasonably intricate bureaucracy, much of which is semi-democratic: for example, the supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate doesn't always win. The current president, Rouhani, is a moderate, and is not especially liked by the hard-liners. It's pretty crazy that your comment comparing it to North Korea and insinuating that someone would be tortured and executed for merging a Github PR is top rated.
Whether the civil administration is elected is irrelevant to the threat that this person faces, although to be sure, the Guardian Council dictates who is an acceptable candidate. Rouhani does not have control over the IRGC, which has engaged in a years long campaign of arrests and threats of software developers with links to the West, e.g. Arash Zad, Naranji, and, most recently, Behdad Esfahbod, among others. Once in the hands of the IRGC, neither the President nor the courts can save someone, and the facts of the case matter little -- Rouhani can't even save his own brother. One would have to be profoundly ignorant of Iranian politics and the IRGC and Iranian state media's campaign of intimidation against software developers, the startup community, and other tech figures to not understand that this is the direct result of the security apparatus's propaganda and coercion, and that this person's decision is rational based on well-founded fears -- despite being unfortunate and regrettable.
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".
It's definitely a theocracy, but the president does have some measure of real power (e.g. for better or worse, the nuclear deal almost certainly wouldn't have happened had Rouhani not been elected). I'm not saying that the government isn't problematic, just that every problematic government isn't a dictatorship.
It’s not semi because there is a completely parallel government and an executive branch that holds supreme power over everything even if they don’t administer the day to day dealings of the “normies”.
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.
I would be careful of using semi-democracy as a word. Democracy is power by the people, and the Iranian theocracy is ultimately not a democracy. There are too many caveats, too many powers under the authority of religious unelected people to call it a democracy. It’s a theocracy through and through.
What country doesn't have caveats to its democracy tho? I live in the UK and there are far too many caveats to call it a democracy IMO. At the end of the day it is subjective.
This is getting absurd: a representative democracy as many European countries have is not a close relation to the GP's "semi democratic" Iran. It's as "subjective" as being hit with a brick.
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.
Are you from Iran? I am iranian and regularly in touch with friends and family in iran and its a dictatorship. (I guess Theocracy works too). The ayatollah has complete unimpeded rule, he allows a moderate to be president because a vast majority of iranians are very unhappy with him and his government. If Rouhani wants to do something and the ayatollah disagrees, then whatever the ayatollah says goes, no questions.
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.
An Iranian wrestler was just given two death sentences for participating in peaceful protests regarding economic policies, so someone being jailed or executed for merging a GitHub PR is not wildly out of possibility.
You are leaving out a very important piece of detail. The reason he was sentenced to death is that he was convicted of murdering someone during the protest. You can argue that he is not the murderer and it was pinned on him. You might be even right. But it is undeniable that someone was murdered in the protest, and that his sentence was because he was convicted of his murder. Had there not been a dead body on the ground, he would not have received a death sentence.
I thought he's comparing the law in Iran with a similar law in the US (CAATSA I think?) directed at North Korea.
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.
I happen to know that two popular machine learning libraries (MLPack and Vowpal Wabbit) have merged pull requests from North Korea. I know this because I was teaching a class on open source software development to North Korean students in 2015 (at PUST, a university in North Korea), and this was the final project for two student groups. The pull requests got merged fine, and the country of origin was never an issue.
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.
I'd have to look it up to be sure, but I believe US law only restricts dealings with North Korea that are political or commercial in nature. Merging a PR shouldn't qualify.
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.
Let's be honest, the reason Iran is a pariah state isn't because it's a repressive, tyrannical regime, it's because it doesn't fall in line with the US/UK demands. Saudi Arabia is worse, and their leaders get to hold hands with US presidents while they go for a stroll.
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.
I see a lot of commenters railing against Iran's lack of perfect, free and fair elections, so just wanted to point out that that has nothing to do with their geopolitical problems. The world realpolitik game doesn't actually care if you're a human rights-abusing, tyrannical hellscape as long as you play ball with the oil companies.
> the supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate doesn't always win
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.
So is US. Last time I checked it was not possible for an outsider (third party candidate) to participate in US election.
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?
They didn’t do anything to Bernie Sanders; the big-tent party moved rightward after Raegan but it’s progressive wing didn’t break off. His placement in both primaries reflects that.
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.
Isn't the current President, Donald Trump, an outsider? He calls himself a Republican, but he wasn't involved with that party prior to deciding to run, and he certainly didn't seem to have the support of the party while running.
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.
It's awfully suspicious how all of the other candidates except Warren dropped out and endorsed Biden overnight, right? Meanwhile, Warren, who was presumed to draw votes from Bernie, was all of a sudden awash in SuperPAC money despite her campaign having no chance.
I was specifically responding to a comment talking about the 2020 primaries, and I talked about the 2020 primaries.
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.
I would disagree with you except the result of the 2016 democrat primary was a lawsuit where the democrats argued and won on the basis that party nominations are not democratic even within the party.
I think if you believe the America portrayed on the news you may come to believe that. But social enforcement whatever you mean by that is much different than being thrown in jail for protesting the government while in the us they've been rioting for 90 days almost without repercussion.
The real world difference is huge no matter how you try to portray it.
That's ridiculous. The Supreme Leader's Council of Guardians personally certify any and all Presidential candidates. They may choose to allow candidates from other factions from time to time for political reasons, but they're still choosing. In a Democracy, the leader don't get to decide who is allowed to run for office.
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.
If anyone is interested in a different perspective (the Iranians you will interact with online know English, have affinity for the West, etc. These are not representative of majority of Iranians, just like many Americans aren't represented by the Twitteratti for example), there is a book by Hermann Hesse called The Glass Bead Game, where humanity has undergone a devastating Third World War and in attempt to keep it from ever happening again they install a council of ascetic Monks who have final veto power on any action of any state. The idea is that people who are experts in morality, who have no worldly attachments or things to gain by leveraging their power would be the best check on a society which routinely falls into war.
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.
OP is not wrong. It is a huge risk for the maintainer to merge the PR in it's current form or as a fork no matter how you classify the present Iranian government. Anyone knowing anything about Iran would sympathize with the maintainer.
> It's pretty crazy that your comment comparing it to North Korea and insinuating that someone would be tortured and executed for merging a Github PR is top rated.
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 isn't a dictatorship, but it does issue the death penalty for quite minor offenses. Iranians have been sentenced to death for protesting, for drinking, for adultery.
“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.”
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.
All presidential candidates must be approved by a religious council. It's not democratic they just let you pick which of the narrow approved candidates gets in.
The IRI and Das Kapital have nothing to do with each other. Moreover, Das Kapital is a treatise on economics, and says almost nothing on how a government should be structured, except that power should be held by the majority class. If you're going to make an argument for some other text Marx worte, AFAIK the only endorsement he ever made of a mode of political organization was that of the Paris Commune, which is, to put it mildly, completely unrelated to Iran's.
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 read carefully. Das Kapital has nothing to do with the Iranian government of today or at any time, neither do the Soviets. The structure of the governments are incomparable, and that book talks almost exclusively about economics. It's completely devoid of sense.
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.
> Das Kapital has nothing to do with the Iranian government of today or at any time
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).
[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.
I agree with most of what you said, but that still doesn't adress my original criticism of the comment. It's just that I just can't see the parallel between the structure of the IRI and that of the Soviet Union. They're only really similar in that they are dictatorships by a ruling class, but the Soviet system is seriously much more flexible, capable of reform, and unlike the Iranian system in theory and in a world free of corruption, would actually be fully reformable by the people, and indeed was in the end - see Gorbachev, much to the willingness of the people. Whereas the Iranian system fundamentally is unreformable and has little pretense of democracy.
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.
Also, one more comment in the page reads very naive:
> 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.
It's been awhile since I did work that required (super fun) export controls training sessions but I really don't think this is accurate. For certain the sanctions apply to all government and non-government entities in Iran with exemptions for a few categories. Technological goods and services are generally not exempted.
You summed this situation up perfectly. Arman's life and safety takes priority over any of our personal grievances about the situation.
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.
> All the people arguing semantics when the author lives in a repressive dictatorship that would literally torture you for a confession and then execute you for it.. if anyone EVER comes by this PR even a decade from now.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
That developer made himself a target for retaliation the moment he started using github and commit code there. Spare me your sarcasms.
> 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.
In these cases often optics matter more than facts. Using something common that has some israelian authors? Probably fine. Personally accepting a contribution from someone with a very israelian sounding name? Possibly treason, I would want to take chances.
> In these cases often optics matter more than facts. Using something common that has some israelian authors? Probably fine. Personally accepting a contribution from someone with a very israelian sounding name? Possibly treason, I would want to take chances.
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?
I don't think he has anticipated this and I think he is probably panicking right now. I would be. Even though this got attention because he tried to comply, getting any government attention for any reason is not a good idea in such situatios.
Not really, in practice no one will get you from using publicly-available code that is part of a larger project. Directly interacting with someone, that's different.
Dictatorships are scary, but they're sloppy, bad at police work and don't apply their laws consistently. May be in a western country you have to worry about whether or not you broke the letter of the law. In an authoritarian country, you have to worry about whether you made someone in power upset, or just presented an easy target for some police officials to close another case they need for their KPI — which they do absolutely heartlessly, but in the most primitive and least labour-intensive way.
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.
Especially given the recent case of Navid Akfari. He's a very popular Iranian wrestler that made the mistake of being tangentially involved with anti government protests in 2018. He and his brothers were tortured into giving confessions, and is now sentenced to more torture and then execution. It is not something to take lightly.
> Meanwhile, no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea
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.
Tbf, one of the comments is from an Iranian natural in Canada that apparently was captured and held by the Iranian government. He has a story that's worth sharing:
> no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea
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...
> 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.
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.
I never knew about such law.
For those who have Pikachu eyes now, or whoever gave thumbs down on the maintainer comment, I dare you to do a single tiny transaction with Iran or an Iranian citizen which would be in violation of unilateral sanctions imposed by US on Iran and Iranian national globally and you'd see how you'll get a taste of freedom and liberty and some prison time to sweeten the deal by US.
If there's #metoo movement for this, put me and other +85 million Iranians in it.
>or whoever gave thumbs down on the maintainer comment
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.
From maintainer prospective he has gotten thumb down, whether it's "boo to to maintainer or to the law". That may not be the actual case but the majority of people surprised here clearly shows they're not aware or don't want to see the other side of the table.
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.
You're throwing the kitchen sink and arguing against the current reality. Sure. You can do that if you want. But whether you or I dislike the current state of things, the reality is that things are the way they are. United States exists in the present form, with alliances in the middle-east and as a nation-state Iran can choose to engage with it through confrontation or not. Iran has chosen consistently to do it with through confrontation. Iran can't control United States, and they can't control our present reality, but they can control how they conduct themselves. And they are choosing a path of confrontation.
>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 disagree with the statement that "all is on you is caused by you" (_or maybe it's not your direct point_) although that's what it is in reality when dealing with bullying, from the bully point of view.
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.
>Tell me honestly, buying commercial airplanes risks the global security while people in Iran have to fly with +40 years old commercial planes ?
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.
First time I worked with crypto, it was still a munition. Things were so bad, you weren’t even supposed to ship code that was set up to handle crypto with the crypto removed. Which is why some APIs are still convoluted today.
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.
I get why people should not thumbs down and the whole tough guy angle, but I have never heard US putting someone in jail for a merged PR. Many of the big open source projects are american citizen lead and they accept PRs from all around the world.
1. There is a difference between jailing/torturing someone and a private company restricting its user base.
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.
1. Torturing is illegal and prohibited by constitution in Iran. A single sign of torture can easily make a judge dismiss the trial. Although this was not the case pre revolution era (where the Shah, head of state was a US and west puppet). A private company restricting its service to a certain nationalities is clearly racist. What would a private repo would do ? Hide the secret nuclear weapon design system in a US company?
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.
He has killed a police officer and his brothers would have done if they could.
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
"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]
> 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.
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?
Not sure what voting is supposed to accomplish here, Democrats love sanctions. Even Elizabeth Warren, who is decidedly pretty far left as far as the party goes, voted for Iran sanctions in 2017.
Noticed this on Reddit. Very little context in the above. Posting here in hopes that knowledgeable individuals can chime in with links and info.
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.
I lived in Syria before the war and stuff, even back in 2010, because of the US export laws Syrians were banned from downloading the most basic shit like Java runtime, adobe flash player, and Nvidia gpu drivers, Skype, Messengers like Yahoo etc...
This type of internet "stupidity" is in every government DNA lol
>US export laws Syrians were banned from downloading the most basic shit like Java runtime
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?
Edit: Sorry I completely misread it. I thought he said just "merged" it instead of encouraging "merge" it. Still interesting to learn about Behdad though, cool stuff about localization and language support.
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]
Behdad used to post on an Israeli LUG message board nearly 20 years ago! I completely forgot about it but his name rang a bell now, and I went and looked at the archives.
I'm a bit confused here - how are people under Iranian jurisdiction going to use GitHub anyway? Isn't this against GitHub ToS, given Iran's status as a country that's under international sanctions?
If you think this is stupid, just think about all the times western politicians have made laws and rules for tech stuff they don't understand.
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.
It's scary business doing anything like that if you are living in Iran. Just read[1] what Behdad (guy who finally merged it) went through when he visited Iran recently. I don't blame them to be scared.
Yikes. That's a great summary of what can happen to you when you piss off a government in a country where they don't have many limitations on what they can do to you.
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.
It has nothing do with if you can or not. It depends on if you do something to attract their negative attention.
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.
There is no rule of law in dictatorship so your question makes no sense. The proper question would be "What are my chances of being repressed given my connections to the opposion|ruling elites?".
This is the only right answer here at this time. If you haven't lived in these conditions you don't really know how it works. "Plausible deniability" does not work. "Citing which laws make this legal" do not work. It doesn't actually matter whether or not Zend is Israeli or whatever. Forming some coherent reductio ad absurdum (ah ha! But if we followed your law then it is clear we would not be able to function at all! But we are able to function, a contradiction! This must mean your law is not to be followed!) will only welcome you to jail.
What you do is stay far from Sauron's eye. And if you're under Sauron's eye, you make sure you look loyal.
Depends if the Iranian authorities in question care about prosecuting/arresting the person in question, aka how connected is the coder to the government
Really? Did you somehow miss the whole section describing Israeli founders, Israeli VC, and the fact that it has been acquired not once, but twice since founding?
Zend was bought by RogueWave who was bought by Perforce.
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.
Probably confusion stemming from one of PHPs well known hebrew identifier names that ended up making some error messages useless: T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM .
This is disheartening but nothing new. My memory is rusty at this point, but I thought OpenBSD/OpenSSH wouldn't take crypto code from US developers when the US was still squashing all (strong) crypto code as munitions exports (more than they do now).
Weren't Iranian devs banned from github last year[0]?
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.
How is accepting a PR account to having a relationship with an individual. Popular OS repository would have code contribution from 1000s of contributor, it's possible that the maintainer don't personally know a majority of them. This just don't make sense.
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.
In every country there are laws that don't make sense. Yes, the same can be said for your own country. The quantity and ridiculousness can be argued, but there's no place on Earth that's "good", just "better". For any given person, they will have some disagreements regarding the body of law that applies to them.
I assume they're saying that, in an absolute sense, all systems of law are arbitrary and capricious. Some might be much better than others, but none are sufficiently fair or transparent to be "good".
The extent to which you agree with that is a question of political philosophy :).
I can't say I'm well versed in this idea but if people are creating the laws they've got some motivations and trigger for the law.... I think we can evaluate those on some sort of practicality / sense of justice or other scale rather than declare them all arbitrary.
The word "relationship" in this context refers to any kind of relationship including a business relationship. And a quick search shows that the law in question appears to basically make any interaction (no matter how minor) with people from Israel or the Israeli government a crime, so it does seem that it applies here[1]. In particular note this quote:
> 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.)
Then in that case, could even interacting with the PR at all count as a “relationship”? I doubt they’d be prosecuted for simply posting this and closing it, but I’m looking from through US eyes.
I think "relationship" might be bad translation. It's more helpful to think about it from a sanctions point of view. If you own a B2C software company you wouldn't personally know most of your customers either, but that doesn't mean you can sell to Iranian/North Korean customers.
I think that's still reasonably within the intent of the law. Like, if you had a local eBay competitor you might have tens of thousands of sellers, and you'd certainly have a "relationship" with all of them, even if only via automated systems.
It doesn't need to make sense, but it could be an excuse good enough to get you. In some places there is no functioning rule of law and human rights. And yes, people who would get you -- they also know it doesn't make sense.
Wow, this topic is not that hot.
A very ordinary Iranian developer has a repository (which he shouldn't have it on github, since github belongs to MS and MS is American, at any moment they can close his account with legal excuses, just like what other Americans tech companies did to Iranian users).
A very ordinary Israeli guy made a PR and the repository owner politely rejected it because he doesn't want to interact with any person from that country)
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 just want to let you know the guy is being an asshole. To get a position in government job or something. IRGC doesn't check people's merges on github. His actions are personal choice. You are very welcome to contribute to other Iranian projects.
If this were just an IP problem it would be easy enough to solve, but I don’t think whatever passes for a district attorney in Tehran would be impressed. And as someone else implied: are you willing to stake a life on your solution?
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 would have said "Jerusalem" as a location could lend some ambiguity as to whether the committing user is Israeli or Palestinian, but ah...his username and profile picture certainly leaves nothing to the imagination.
As an Israeli I have exactly zero intention to hide my nationality in order to participate.
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.
I would submit a complain, it would in fact protect that developer FROM the Iranian government since he wouldn't be able to interact with Israeli on github if it's apparently a problem. He can't have it both way at first place, he can't be on github and obviously violate github TOS with anti-Israeli PR merging policies, no matter what the reason is.
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.
On second thought, I should've responded as follows:
"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"...
> The risk is so minuscule here that any intelligent person would just merge a PR.
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.
I can't say for certain, but the tone of his response leads me to think that #2 is not the case. The risk might be minuscule, but the repo owner worried about it anyway, which is natural and doesn't mean they are being unfriendly.
I don't have anything useful to offer, but don't you find it utterly bonkers that a government can tell you who you may or may not associate with. Nothing to do with Iran specifically; the US also has similar claims on its citizens dictating to them who they are and are not allowed to have business relationships with; as probably do other countries. I can't fit this into my head. It's too insane.
Nation-states need to be consigned to the ash heap of history. They do not bring value in the 21st century, the lessons of the 20th ought to show we need to be implementing better solutions for organizing people, making decisions and building public infrastructure.
I am Iranain, and the regime does prosecute people on any bogus thing you can imagine. But in this case, the owner of the repo looks very suspicious to me. Maybe he had his own prejudiced, or he has some relationship with the regime.
I would wonder if this is a misunderstanding of the law (to be clear, I have no idea; not an Iranian lawyer). It would be common for things like this to apply to _commercial_ relationships, or munitions broadly defined.
> On 3 August 2019, Malekpour returned to Canada after escaping Iran through an unknown third country.
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.
This is the problem with the internet now, profile pics, egotistical bio summaries and emojis.
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.
You asked how the comment that "it is the problem with detailed bio" related to the story. I'm not saying it's bad or not, people are free to share what they want, but had the PR author not done that, the PR would have been merged, that's all.
I see. I don't know if the exact policy the maintainer is referring to is only for "people from Israel" or "jewish people in general". If the former, the contributor could be jewish without living in Israel.
He clearly said it was more fun not knowing the personal details of whoever he was working with online, not that he was ever literally working with Nazis.
Iran is known to monitor the internet of its citizens especially social media (of which Github could be seen as a specialized version) and email (where PR notifications go by default) [1]. Even if its not being monitored at the moment, its likely it could be picked up later on by the Iranian government. If the chances are 30%+ that the dev in question could be sent to jail for years, its more than understandable why he didn't merge in the changes.
Probably not, but if a regime wants to persecute someone (maybe they went to a protest?), they could comb through the individual's accounts looking for slightest evidence of breaking the law.
You never know for sure in an authoritarian country, but it's plausible there could be. The Iranian government has engaged in some public efforts recently to get rid of Israel-linked tech.
If this PR would have come from a sufficiently anonymous user (no location / profile picture), I'm sure it would have gone through. I'm certain maintainers don't check identity and nationality of every contributor.
Are you saying in real world we hide our nationality? In what universe does your CV does not include which university you graduated from and which house owner lets you rent without a copy of your ID? Maybe it works differently in america but in the rest of the world I am pretty sure nationality is a standard thing to ask.
