> A children's block game is not going to help us build nukes or anything, so the sanctions excuse doesn't make sense especially since I already own it.
While I agree with that sentiment, and while I admit that I don't know exactly what the sanctions entail, it is quite possible that this is a legal compliance issue and not strictly Microsoft's doing. And of course it could also be a "better safe than sorry" policy when it comes to legal compliance.
It's not all about preventing the creation of nuclear weapons. It's also about making sure the common person in $SANCTIONED_COUNTRY feels the pain. User UncleEntity says it better than I could in a comment that is buried a few levels:
Iran is one of those dictatorships where the majority of the population already dislikes (or plain hates) the government, as we have seen in many demonstrations that have been extinguished through use of extreme violence by the regime.
Making life more difficult for ordinary Iranians isn't going to change anything as long as the army and revolutionary guard stay loyal to the criminals in power.
> Iran is one of those dictatorships where the majority of the population already dislikes (or plain hates) the government...
Right, just like the people of Afghanistan must have hated so much the Taliban, with their cruel and tyrannic grip on power... just waiting for a saviour like the Americans to bring them up to the modern age...
Well, we all know that's a load of bullshit now. The very moment the Americans left, without resistance of any kind, the Taliban is back. This happens again and again, in country after country, but people still seem to forget (or not even be aware of anything happening) and think everyone in the world wants to be like them, and when those in faraway places are not behaving like themselves it must be because they're being forcibly coerced by some maleficent dictator or some other imaginary villain.
Things are not black and white. Sure, some people in Iran would love a more West-friendly regime, but almost certainly, most would be horrified if their government suddenly started implementing laws to guarantee freedom of speech, legalize abort, separate state and religion, allow same-sex marriage and sex change operations, and a whole lot of stuff that's only preached by the West and is not at all accepted as good by most of the other cultures in the world... can't people just accept that not everyone thinks the same or want to be the same as themselves?? That goes against the Western's own modern values of being accepting of differences and not trying to submit other cultures to our own values and believes.
I don't think this is what they were saying. The political and economic state in Iran is about as far from Afghanistan as possible. Iran/Persia has a long history of national identity and has a highly organized society. Afghanistan is a tribal region and still does not have a sense of nation or really a mature sense of political identity. Iran is also a major power player in Asia with a far stronger economy, with a GDP in the top quartile in the world, and with one of the best performing stock exchanges in Asia in the last decade, while Afghanistan has for many years been the poorest country in Asia.
That said, Iran has a political structure that owes little to no obedience to the will of the people, with a non-elected supreme leader and guardian council (half of which are appointed by the supreme leader) who have the final say in all political decisions, so the actions of Iran should not be mistaken as the will of the people, even in the loose sense that representative democracies are.
Very valid points. But how would you be able to tell whether the majority of Iranians aren't happy with their Government with confidence?
I find that difficult to believe because, if that were the case, at some point, specially because of all the reasons you mentioned, the people would just get over it and kick the current Government out of office for good?! It may be bloody, but if the people really want it, it's not unreasonable to assume, IMHO, that the military would be onboard with it?? Once the military is on board, there's nothing the politicians and cleric can do to stop it as in a revolution, the only thing that matters is physical power.
IRI is likely in control of IRGC at this point. They summoned ambassadors the other week with FM completely out of the loop! The revolutionary courts just ignored the supreme court's judgment and sentenced Toomaj Salahi -- a rap artist that expressed the voice of the people in his dissident songs -- to death.
IRI is the acronym for Iran's official name, Islamic Republic of Iran. I'm reading this as Iran is in control of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. What are you referring to exactly in your first sentence?
First of all, the I in IRGC stands for Islamic and not Iran. In fact, neither their logo or any of their patches mentions the word IRAN.
As my beloved homeland is, imo, under effective coercive occupation of Islamist ideologues (there is not a even hint of godliness in that regime) it is preferred that you refer to the regime by its name IRI and not cast calumny on the beauty that is IRAN.
The name of the IRGC was not the part of your original comment that I was questioning, but your use of IRI. Did you mean to say that the IRI is no longer in control of the IRGC?
Many people in Iran hate their government, but they hate America more. At least the Iranian government always pulls out a “Death to America” rally as a distraction whenever it’s ion the rocks popularity wise. Internal protests show some discord, but it isn’t clear if that’s just cities and the government is still popular in more rural areas.
Maybe the population hates the dictatorship in the same way that pretty much every country hates their government.
Does that mean that they would cheer for a western take over of their land and economy?
It seems pretty damn unjust to indiscriminately punish people (the Iranian citizens) who may or may not even agree with what the government is doing and certainly have no power to change it in any case. Unfortunately I, too, have no power over my government or else I would lean on them to stop making life worse for people who did nothing wrong.
Yeah, it sucks. The only silver lining I see is that it seems this is the alternative to war, in which case people would be indiscriminately enlisted and killed. Maybe things wouldn't go that far either way but it's all I can think of.
Look at how well sanctions worked on Russia. /s. They sure backfired. Especially the USD based sanctions. The idiots who thought them up managed to do more harm to the U.S. than Russia with them. Just go ahead and send in real troops already. At this point, it’ll be better for the US economy and Ukraine.
Putin claims the US already pays mercenary forces from the U.S, UKraine, and elsewhere already. He also makes the claim that “talk about Russia using a nuke is just U.S. propaganda” from the government to gather consent from the general population to raise taxes.
It might be better, though, to keep open communication channels between average people in the two nations. The more you isolate people in $SANCTIONED_COUNTRY the more they get their information filtered by those in power. Iran is likely perfectly happy that Iranians have been cut off from Minecraft.
> It's also about making sure the common person in $SANCTIONED_COUNTRY feels the pain.
This is exactly it - otherwise the populace can just ignore their government's foreign policy decisions. There's consequences for being a bad actor on the global stage... and today that means no more Minecraft, of all things.
Perhaps the OP can write a letter to their representative and pressure them to work on easing sanctions...
Which is why I'm surprised the response is "sanctions" and not topple the government and install western democracy. It's what the countries imposing the sanctions want to happen anyway.
There's so much historical precedent for this working. If a consortium of Western militaries show up and say "join us fighting against your government or when we win you'll be killed/exiled as a traitor" the population will flip immediately.
It's not as if we don't do this already, we just quietly orchestrate violent revolutions and install people loyal to the west. This method would at least be more honest about it.
What historical precedent? Just in the last 3 decades you had afghanistan, iraq, libya and (ongoing) syria in the middle east alone showing how horrific the consequences of this type of meddling are.
> It's what the countries imposing the sanctions want to happen anyway.
Perhaps that's what the countries wish would happen - but there's dictatorships all around the world that don't enjoy the pointy end of the international community's proverbial sanction stick.
Iran simply has to stop being an international nuisance and people would happily return to doing business there.
In the past decade, we've had two US Administrations that desperately sought to warm relations with Iran. Ball is/was in Iran's court, and so far they keep forcing people to punish them...
These aren't really consequences for being a bad actor on the global stage, these are consequences for being deemed a threat to the interests of the military superpowers and their close allies, this is a very important distinction.
The interests might at times be veiled under a discourse of "rights" or "democracy" or whatever and at times this discourse might even be valid, however the underlying reasoning for it rarely lies there as the kings and his friends are free to do whatever they please.
Their government says that America is an evil spiteful bully. The apparent truth of that claim has now been demonstrated to any Iranian who plays Minecraft. You think the result is more Iranians questioning their government? I doubt it.
There are plenty of Iranians alive today that were around before the current Iranian government. Iranian youth are also much more "aware" of global politics than any generation before them...
I think it's difficult for most Iranians to not be aware of their government's decisions and actions around the globe...
Besides - what alternative would you propose? Just pretend everything is ok and business as usual? Bomb their government instead of using sanctions?
I would suggest creating sanctions that hurt those in power, meaning mainly old bearded men who probably don't play Minecraft. Ordinary people have no power to change anything over there, they get shot if they try.
> I would suggest creating sanctions that hurt those in power
People in power remain in power by keeping the population under control. If the population is indifferent to consequences of the power-class' decisions, then everything can keep rolling along as-is. When the population is impacted negatively by the power-class' decisions - then civil unrest happens. With enough of that, the power-class loses power...
This[1] video does a decent job of highlighting the careful balancing act that's required to remain in power... it also highlights the difficulties of changing the status-quo even for a benevolent dictator that desires to remain a dictator - ie. they have to appease all of the powers-that-be under them.
Sure - but it would be ridiculous to expect the world to continue business as usual with a nation that has dedicated the past few decades to being as big of a nuisance as possible.
Given our administration's current views on Iran, and the Obama administration's similar views, it would have been trivial for Iran to be welcomed back into the international community.
Yet... they once again chose the opposite. So, today, that means no more Minecraft. Perhaps one day the population of Iran will have had enough of their government and make changes.
I applaud sanctions because this time Iran simply went too far. It is completely unprecedented that Iran bombed the consulate if Israel. This is an incredibly reckless escalation of violence.
so lets get this straight, in your opinion, it's better for a state to fund a non state actor and direct them to do terrorist activities, than for the state to do it itself?
i.e. the terrorism should be condemned but the state sponsor of the terrorism has clean hands.
I'd argue just the opposite, the state sponsor of terrorism is actually worse than a state that takes action itself and doesn't delegate it to a 3rd party.
b) consulates are not military bases, so unclear why there was a meeting of Iranian Revolutionary Guard in that building if it was a consulate as you said.
c) It wasn't in Iranian territory
d) Iran is trying to build Syria as a base to attack Israel
e) Israel hasn't fired 300+ ballistic and cruise missiles in the Syria attack. The scale of the Iranian attack is absolutely enormous.
I'm sure these children, who just lost their beloved game character and in-game creations, are going to get right on the task of pressuring their government.
Not all wine and cheese is imported.
+ lack of imported wine or cheese should --eventually-- boost the appearance of local alternatives
+ lack of foreign video games? I don't think it's a cornerstone of the economy the way foodstuffs are. Will a local-grown alternative appear? Maybe; that depends on the local priorities and capabilities.
They also appear to be banning the country, not the people. People cannot play from Iran, but Iranians apparently remain free to play the game while outside the country. That suggests it is something to do with the provision of network services to Iran IPs rather than anything about the game itself being/sold used by Iranians.
If this was the case, wouldn't the VPN work? Reddit OP said that it didn't.
> Even VPN doesn't work. Because Microsoft has linked Minecraft to your Microsoft account and it's hardcoded into it that I am iranian. I tried VPN, and it still said it's banned in my country.
From my experience with and in Iran: every western sanction leads to more products and services from China. Life becomes a bit more difficult, yes. But the government does what it wants to do. And China essentially takes over the economy. At the expense of the West. Is the Western behavior wise? I do not know. Sometimes, I hear a "boom" in the air, coming from far away. Those are the bottles of champagne that Chinese entrepreneurs open to celebrate new sanctions on Iran.
So Roblox will take Minecrafts place? Trying to remember if they were Chinese owned. Theres definitely plenty of open source knock offs that are just as good.
First, sanctions on Iran have zero to do with its authoritarian government - the US has no problem selling to authoritarian governments - but rather the geopolitical conflict stemming from a slew of lovely US actions such as overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran and installing a repressive and brutal dictator which destabilized the country to a degree that the events of 1979 and after were possible.
The efficacy of economic sanctions is complicated and debated, but one can absolutely say there is little compelling evidence that they result in positive outcomes for anybody.
The U.S. funded and actively supported Saddam. We don’t mind trading with and funding dictators so long as they are our dictator. That said, the IRGC deserves to be eliminated and it is OK to sanction Iran.
The petty dictatorships are forming their own trading club: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.
The combination of shallow + inflammatory on divisive topics is guaranteed to make HN discussion worse, at least for its intended purpose, which is curious conversation.
This was the reason why Cuba was kept out of the “organizations of Americas”. When they finally let this stupid reasoning go, it was too late. And Cuba was no longer interested in being part of the org.
Democracy is a doorstop for foreign enterprises and influence. The locals suffer.
That's not a dictatorship. It's a leader without powers to make laws. The leader makes decrees. And the leader is selected by a small council. It is akin to the monarchy in Britain.
Have a look at Wikipedia -- there can be a small group of people who are the dictators, doesn't have to be just one:
"A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations."
Except the leader is not a group of leaders. It is just one leader. And he answers the council who can vote to remove him. This is far from a dictatorship
It seems that most of the world (population- and GDP-wise) is drifting towards authoritarian rule with immutable Dear Leader. Russia, then Turkey, then China, India is arguably getting there too. You're placing Iran in the same bucket. Maghreb countries? Middle East? Central Asia?
As far as dictatorships go, Iran actually has some political life.
That would eventually make your position untenable.
Then you need a part which is only produced in China, or a chemical compound which is only produced in India, or you need a plane ride and it has titanium parts from Russia?
I expect a significant change of tone once you need to change your own usage patterns because of your principles. Or a straight out "fight dictatorships, but only when it's convenient".
I would be happy to see a long-term plan to phase out trade with China. Of course that couldn't change from one day to the next, but I wouldn't mind a plan to phase out trade with countries like China.
America doesn't care whether a country is a democracy or a dictatorship. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship and America does business with them, even sells them weapons to murder Yemenis with. Iran was a democracy but America and the UK deliberately undid that.
In some ways that makes it worse. When Hamas abuses the population we can at least say that the majority of people have never had a chance to vote for anyone else. In contrast the Israelis chose Bibi. This is what the majority of the population wants.
Isn't there some form of governance that chose Hamas as leaders? I might not understand the distinction from how Gaza is governed vs. Israel though.
I'm also curious if the motivation for abuses as call it matters. I think there was some significant event that Hamas coordinated that then prompted a response from Israel?
There was an election eighteen years ago in 2006; Hamas won a plurality but not a majority. So most Palestinians didn't vote for them then, and since then none have. Most Palestinians alive today weren't old enough, or even alive, to have voted in 2006.
So you really can't call Hamas's rule democratic in any meaningful sense.
A country doesn't become a dictatorship simply because not everyone is allowed to vote in elections. The US used to require land ownership to vote, then women weren't able to vote, and even now felons can't vote (at least in some states). None of those things meant that the US was or is a dictatorship.
I'm not saying "everything is just fine over in Israel". But the original context was about not trading with dictatorships, which Israel is not.
Yes, just like apartheid SA had free and fair elections.
Palestinians have no rights in their homeland, Israel invaded it and every time they take more land they simply claim the original occupants aren’t part of the country their home is/was in.
There's a lot to say about Israel, but what you said isn't true.
Israel didn't "invade" the land. Jews moved into the land legally, and then the rulers of the land at the time gave it to the UN to recommend what to do with it, given that there were two peoples there. The UN recommended splitting it into two parts, one for each people (the Arabs and the Jews). The Jews agreed to this plan, the Arabs didn't. The Jews then declared independence, and other Arab countries launched a war on Israel, urging the current Arab inhabitants of that land to flee, and return when the land is taken away from the Jews.
Some of the original Arab inhabitants fled (there are massive debates on whether they fled because of the urging of the Arab leaders, or out of fear). When Israel won the war, these original inhabitants were unable to return.
Other Arab inhabitants of that land stayed, and they and their descendants are now Israeli citizens, that have full rights and can vote just like any other citizen (Arab Israelis make up 20% of Israel).
So:
> Palestinians have no rights in their homeland,
Not true. 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinians.
> Israel invaded [their homeland]
No, Israel didn't exist, and the Jews who came to Palestine weren't "invading" anything, they arrived legally for the most part (and many were turned away, even during the Holocaust, and ended up dying).
The Zionists conspired to take over Palestine since before they even set foot in the middle east. Your historical account is carefully crafted propaganda to make it seem like the Zionists didn't simply bully their way into Palestine, but that is exactly what they did and no amount of biased twisting of facts will ever be able to explain how the Palestinians who are the natives of that land, ended up landless and stateless, whereas the Zionists stemming from foreign European and Middle Eastern countries ended up with a fully recognized state.
Your forgot to mention the Zionist terrorism, the Zionist pogroms and massacres, the very biased western diplomats involved in splitting a land that was not theirs, and the fact that neither the Turks nor the Brits had any legitimacy over Palestine.
The Palestinians did nothing wrong, but they ended up the victim of a bunch of fanatical ethnonationalists who wanted to build a Jewish state on their land.
> Israel didn't "invade" the land. Jews moved into the land legally, and then the rulers of the land at the time gave it to the UN to recommend what to do with it, given that there were two peoples there.
Right, and remember, slave owners didn't kidnap people, slaves were legal property.
Moreover, there were not two people living there, there were the people who had been living there for thousands of years, who had been claimed by Britain (though not colonized). Claiming there were "two people" is revisionist BS.
> The UN recommended splitting it into two parts, one for each people (the Arabs and the Jews). The Jews agreed to this plan, the Arabs didn't.
That is, the government sold half your home to a stranger, they agreed to this, you however unreasonably did not. What an asshole you are.
> The Jews then declared independence, and other Arab countries launched a war on Israel, urging the current Arab inhabitants of that land to flee, and return when the land is taken away from the Jews.
The jews, who just moved into a country, and seized a pile of land and property from the occupants of that country without the occupants consent "declare independence", starting a war. Civilians flee there home so as to not be killed, these are called normally called refugees, but in this case they are Palestinians which Israel has established are not people. When the fighting ends, the refugees returned to their homes to find that the Israeli government had now given their homes to yet more settlers. Opposing that is a criminal offense.
I don't know about you but this sure as shit sounds like their homes were illegally invaded. To back up my assessment: Israel has never stopped doing this, and it has been found to be explicitly illegal every single time it has gone to court.
> Arab Israelis make up 20% of Israel
Right, except 100% of Israel is Palestine, and the overwhelming proportion of the Palestinian population has been forced into ghettos that are not considered part of Israel and have no voting rights in Israel, despite Israel having near total control of all food, water, medical care, ...
You're playing BS semantic games, and by your logic SA could have claimed to not be apartheid by just saying that the black South Africans were part of a "different" country that just happened to significantly overlap .. South Africa.
I want to be absolutely clear, these BS arguments about Israel not be a colonial invader are no different from claiming that there was nothing illegal when the US government sold the land of native Americans to colonists, and allowed them to eradicate those inhabitants.
I get it, you're pro-Israel, and believe the Palestinians don't have any rights to their own homeland, but pretending that Israel is not an invading colony, and pretending Palestinians have equal rights to Israelis (or lets be honest, Israeli jews - the discrimination against muslims and even arabic jews in Israel is well documented - is objectively false. Just say you don't believe Palestinians are people so didn't have any right to their homeland.
Prior to British Mandatory Palestine, everyone living in the territory you're talking about was a subject of the Ottoman empire; the British --- certainly not the heroes of this story --- didn't steal any self-determination from the people there, because none existed.
I don't see the commenter you're replying to saying that Palestinians don't have any rights to their own homeland, for what it's worth.
Always useful to keep in mind that this is an immensely complicated struggle, not well captured by any slogan or argument that fits in an HN comment, and that it is extraordinarily unlikely that we're going to resolve it on HN at all.
You're both great commenters on this site. If you're at an impasse over this, maybe agreeing to disagree is a strong move here?
> Just say you don't believe Palestinians are people so didn't have any right to their homeland.
This kind of comment is not warranted. It is beneath the standards of Hacker News. It's putting words in my mouth which I vehemently disagree with. I will attempt to answer the rest of your comment civilly, but if you think that anyone who disagrees with you is evil, may I suggest your worldview is... incorrect.
> Moreover, there were not two people living there, there were the people who had been living there for thousands of years, who had been claimed by Britain (though not colonized). Claiming there were "two people" is revisionist BS.
Not sure why you think so. There had always been a minority of Jews in Palestine. By 1890, that was a 10% minority. By 1947, that was a 30% minority. What exactly is bullshit about saying this?
> That is, the government [the UN] sold half your home to a stranger, they agreed to this, you however unreasonably did not. What an asshole you are.
Or how about: the UN, the representative of all countries, which was given custody of the land by Britain, who had owned that land, recognized that there was an issue, both because two different peoples had legitimate aspirations for that land, and because many Jews who had managed to survive the Holocaust had nowhere to go. Given that Jews were by this point a 30% minority on that land, and given the many Jewish refugees, the UN decided to suggest a compromise.
And like I said, you can think this was a bad decision by the UN, it's certainly debatable, though I'm not sure what you think should've happened instead (either to the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust, or to the Jews living in Palestine). Was starting a war probably aimed at wiping out Jews really the correct alternative?
Either way, I don't think calling it "an invasion by Israel" makes any sense, since Israel didn't even exist.
Btw, serious question - what would you have suggested if you were the UN? What would you think should've been done in Palestine, and with the Jewish refugees?
> The jews, who just moved into a country, and seized a pile of land and property from the occupants of that country without the occupants consent "declare independence", starting a war.
It wasn't a "country" into which the Jews moved, it was part of the Ottoman empire in the early 20th century, then later British territory. Also, which land did Jews "steal" from the occupants of that country before 1947?
> When the fighting ends, the refugees returned to their homes to find that the Israeli government had now given their homes to yet more settlers. Opposing that is a criminal offense.
> Right, except 100% of Israel is Palestine, and the overwhelming proportion of the Palestinian population has been forced into ghettos
After the war, the Palestinian refugees were actually taken in by Jordan and Egypt. They didn't "return to their homes" and "get put in Ghettos". I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to. The Palestinians that stayed in Israel were kept under some kind of military rule, but eventually made equal citizens.
As for 100% of Israel is Palestine... ok. What do you think should happen to the 9 million Israeli citizens on that land currently (or 7 million Jews if you prefer to split it by ethnicity)?
> You're playing BS semantic games,
I'm really not, I honestly think you're just wrong on many actual facts, as I pointed to above. These are not at all semantic distinctions.
> I want to be absolutely clear, these BS arguments about Israel not be a colonial invader are no different from claiming that there was nothing illegal when the US government sold the land of native Americans to colonists, and allowed them to eradicate those inhabitants.
"Israel" being a colonial invader makes little sense, since Israel didn't exist before that. You may mean "Jews" were colonial invaders, which is more understandable, though still not really in line with a lot of facts, like that they moved in mostly legally, and that most Jews in Israel were actually refugees themselves. Not exactly scheming colonial invaders. Most Israeli Jews had and have nowhere else to go.
As for the legal status of what Americans did in the colonies - firstly, Israel never "eradicated" the Palestinians. Secondly, even assuming your history is 100% spot on - what now? Because of the past, should the Americans living in American now be.. what? Removed? And sent where? Similar questions to what you think should happen to Israelis now.
> pretending Palestinians have equal rights to Israelis (or lets be honest, Israeli jews - the discrimination against muslims and even arabic jews in Israel is well documented - is objectively false.
Let's leave aside "arabic Jews", which is not how most of that group chooses to identify for various historical reasons (and which make up the majority of Israelis, btw).
Yes, there is a lot of discrimination and racism against Israeli-Palestinians. Yes, things are not perfect, not by a long shot. But legally, Isareli-Palestinians have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen, including voting rights. (And including there being many Arab members of the Israeli parliament.)
But legally, [non-Jewish citizens of Israel] have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen, including voting rights.
How does this square with the Nation-State Law, which states that the former group has precisely zero rights to "self-determination"? And while you're at it, can you tell as about the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law and how that affects the right to apply for citizenship rights for one's spouse, in practice?
(Correcting the term used for this group, given that the vast majority of them do not self-describe as "Israeli", per numerous polls).
> How does this square with the Nation-State Law, which states that the former group has precisely zero rights to "self-determination"?
I highly dislike the Nation-State law. That said, its effect in practice is almost nothing, it is mostly symbolic. I disagree with the symbolism, but it doesn't negate what I said. This is confirmed by the Israeli Supreme Court:
> The court's majority opinion concurred with arguments that the law merely declares the obvious—that Israel is a Jewish state—and that this does not detract from the individual rights of non-Jewish citizens, especially in light of other laws that ensure equal rights to all.
Question - is your criticism of what I said only because of that law? It was passed in 2019. Did you have no criticism before that?
> And while you're at it, can you tell as about the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law and how that affects the right to apply for citizenship rights for one's spouse, in practice?
Israel defines its citizens in whatever way it wants, just like any other country. It has immigration laws, just like any other country. Trying to analyze this as something unique is just wrong.
Just like I can't just go to France and instantly become a citizen, unless I have some kind of French ancestry, as defined by France itself, in the same way someone can't just become a citizen of Israel without having what Israel considers Israeli ancestry. Since it was started specifically as the homeland of the Jews, as a place for Jews who had nowhere else to go cause everyone else was too busy killing them, that's what it uses for ancestry.
People try to make this seem weird, but this is pretty consistent with how most democracies work.
> Not sure why you think so. There had always been a minority of Jews in Palestine. By 1890, that was a 10% minority. By 1947, that was a 30% minority. What exactly is bullshit about saying this?
There were the indigenous inhabitants of the region. Then European powers started funding and arming a mass migration into Palestine, and in a totally unsurprising turn of events that increased the proportion of that region that were jewish. This is like saying america was not invaded, people just migrated to it, and suddenly there were more europeans than the indigenous population.
And much like america, the non-invading migrants ended up with all the power and resources.
> "Israel" being a colonial invader makes little sense, since Israel didn't exist before that.
Israel is the name the invaders gave to the country after they seized control of it from the people who lived there prior to the invasion. We could call it a European invasion, because the colonizers were from all over Europe, and were funded by Europe, if that helps?
> Yes, there is a lot of discrimination and racism against Israeli-Palestinians. Yes, things are not perfect, not by a long shot. But legally, Isareli-Palestinians have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen, including voting rights.
I just checked, and indigenous Palestinians can't vote in Israel's elections, so I'm not sure where your getting this claim that they have equal rights? Yes there are _some_ Palestinians that are allowed to vote by magically being classified as Israeli, but the overwhelming majority are not permitted to because Israel decreed that only specific parts of Palestine count as being Israel for the purpose of having rights.
We're still waiting for an answer to this most crucial question that you were asked above, as to what should happen once Palestine becomes truly "free":
What do you think should happen to the 9 million Israeli citizens on that land currently (or 7 million Jews if you prefer to split it by ethnicity)?
Whoah. The majority of Israeli Jewish people are not European; they're people of MENA origin. And, of course, there are over 2 million Israeli-Arab citizens.
> There were the indigenous inhabitants of the region.
That region has a long history. How do you think those inhabitants got there in the first place? They also migrated there. Long in the past, Jews were there, and were probably there before these current "indigienous" population, if they weren't all part of the same group (Jews and Palestinians are basically cousins, genetically speaking).
But does any of that really matter at this stage? Does the fact that there were 250k Palestinians in that land 200 years ago really mean that all that land now rightfully belongs to them and no one else is ever allowed to live on it, despite it being home to 15 million people now? Does the fact that at this stage, multiple generations of Israelis have been born and raised in Israel not mean anything, because "they weren't there originally"?
> Israel is the name the invaders gave to the country after they seized control of it from the people who lived there prior to the invasion. We could call it a European invasion, because the colonizers were from all over Europe, and were funded by Europe, if that helps?
Why do you insist on calling it an invasion at all? Are the Chinese "invading" the US because some people from China have legally moved to the US?
Invasion implies this was illegal and/or done using force, neither of which is true of the Jews that moved to Palestine.
> Yes there are _some_ Palestinians that are allowed to vote by magically being classified as Israeli, but the overwhelming majority are not permitted to because Israel decreed that only specific parts of Palestine count as being Israel for the purpose of having rights.
There's nothing "magical" about it. Some Palestinians fled Israel when it was founded, for various disputed reasons. Some fled to Jordan, some to Egypt, some to Syria I think, etc, and they had various different statuses until 1967. Some are still in refugee camps in Syria, for example. The ones in Jordan were given Jordanian citizenship. None of these are Israeli citizens, nor did Israel have any control over their lives until 1967.
The Palestinians that didn't flee but rather stayed in Israel, became Israeli citizens, and now have full rights.
The reason Israel has any control over the Palestinians who are not citizens is that there was a war with the Arab countries surrounding Israel, and in that war, Israel captured a few territories from its neighboring countries - Gaza, the West Bank, and the Sinai peninsula. The Palestinians in the West Bank have since then been under military occupation, the ones in Gaza were under occupation until 2005, when Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza and left them to govern themselves (though some people consider it still under some form of occupation because of the blockade and other reasons).
(Worth noting that the Sinai was given back to Egypt for a peace agreement with them, a peace that has held for 50 years.)
The Palestinians themselves, in the Oslo agreements, recognized Israel as a state, and got a form of self-government. They are not Israeli citizens and are not trying to be Israeli citizens; at least officially, the representative of the Palestinian people work towards a two-state solution, which would mean a Palestinian state side-by-side with an Israeli state.
This has unfortunately not been achieved yet, for many reasons, with Israel definitely sharing a lot of the blame IMO. But it is the agreed-upon end-state by almost anyone with any actual position among the Palestinians.
What do you think is a good end-state here? You raise a lot of legit grievances that Palestinians have, and though I dispute much of the details of your history, I don't disagree that Palestinians in some ways got the short end of the stick here. Still, that was 75 years ago - relitigating the past is different from actually trying to solve the situation today, and I wonder what you think should happen.
Invasion implies this was illegal and/or done using force, neither of which is true of the Jews that moved to Palestine.
"Invasion" perhaps isn't the best term to use, as it implies some sort of one-shot military deal. The actual process involved multiple steps of course -- Resolution 181 (imposed by European powers); the additional land gains by 1949 (unequivocally by force); the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967 (same); and of course the fact that very few people were allowed to return after they were brutally expelled and/or temporarily left during the course of events.
Which after all was said and done, from the perspective of the vast bulk of the pre-1947 inhabitants -- amount to pretty much the same thing.
Resolution 181 was the UN looking at a complicated situation that had arisen, an area that contained two different people who wanted to build a homeland there, and trying to figure out how to deal with it. It was accepted by the Jews, just as they had accepted even earlier plans that gave them even less land. It was rejected by the Palestinians.
The Arab states instead attacked Israel, which is why additional land was gained in 1949. It's true that it was by force, but it's just as true that it was unequivocally a defensive war the Israel fought. If you launch a multi-state attack on another state and you lose, it makes sense you'd lose territory.
1967 is a more complicated story. Israel considers the things Egypt were doing to be tantamount to declaring war, so it launched a pre-emptive strike on Egypt. Israelis usually consider this a defensive war, though I think majority opinion outside of Israel is that it was an Israeli attack.
> Which after all was said and done, from the perspective of the vast bulk of the pre-1947 inhabitants -- amount to pretty much the same thing.
This is simply flattening the actual history. Look, there were legitimately two peoples on that land at the time. They both wanted a home state. One group, the Jews, agreed to every single compromise put forward. The other refused every single one, and with their neighboring friends, launched a war of annhilation against the Jews.
You can't refuse every single compromise without offering an alternative, launch a war to force your way, and then complain when you lose!
It's also worth noting that Arab countries controlled the WB and Gaza for twenty-something years after the founding of Israel. And yet none ever did anything to give Palestinians independence or create a Palestinian state on that land, the same land that everyone is shouting "free Palestine" about, including all those Arab countries.
There were mitigating factors, to be sure. But it sounds like, to a first-order approximation, we agree: the land was taken by force.
I'm not trying to flatten history - just to get to the basic point. The other aspects that you're bringing up (Arab aims during 1947-1949; which side has been more intransigent since, etc) touch on narratives that are hotly contested as you know, but in any case are even further from the original topic of this thread (which had something do with Microsoft and Minecraft, apparently).
So if you like we can keep our powder dry in regard to those, and concentrate on hopes for some form of de-escalation and a cessation of massive bloodletting in the current moment.
And of course of further attempts at encroachment upon anyone else's land.
Edit: I removed language that, on reflection (after it being pointed out by my co-partner in this discussion), I shouldn't have used.
> There were mitigating factors, to be sure. But it sounds like, to a first-order approximation, we agree: the land was taken by force.
While it might be a "true fact", it's gaslighting to suggest that despite Jews agreeing to a non-violent plan, despite Israel being attacked with the probable intent of wiping it out completely, despite all that, it's ok to characterize the land capture to help protect itself in this defensive war as "land taken by force". That's just not how most people would use that phrase.
> So if you like we can keep our powder dry in regard to those, and concentrate on hopes for some form of de-escalation and a cessation of massive bloodletting in the current moment.
This I can agree with wholeheartedly. I have no idea what is best for the future (I don't see any peace being achieved with Hamas in place, frankly) but the current situation is awful and has to change.
I apologize, I wasn't trying to be offensive or hurtful, I was just reaching for an example and phrased it poorly and thoughtlessly.
(I'll also edit my comment.)
> And I think I'd prefer not to pursue this line of discussion any further.
Fair enough.
For the record, from what I've read of your comments so far, I think we mostly agree about things, apologies that I let the topic make me talk in a way that is inappropriate. (I also like your username for the record)
Apology accepted, and I appreciate the thoughtful clarification.
I'd pick up on the other topic (the Nation-State law, etc), but apparently there's a very insecure person out there right now who is vindictively flagging nearly all of my recent posts -- including the one just above your, just now.
Okay, it seems in one post I was quick to misread someone, so I can see an issue there. But definitely not in all of them).
> but apparently there's a very insecure person out there right now who is vindictively flagging nearly all of my recent posts -- including the one just above your, just now.
I'm sorry that that's happening to you, looking at your comment history it doesn't seem right. I'll try to do what I can to stop this, though it might be worth reaching out to dang and ask him to look at this.
It would be up to Microsoft to say why they did it. It's probably buried somewhere in the sanction documents. [1] If Microsoft are complying with a sanction then perhaps they may have issues getting a refund, but could at least open a ticket to get an answer if they have not already. Maybe there is a corporate lawyer on here with experience in this matter?
I think the bigger point is that software you pay for, which requires a bannable login to use even the offline component, should not be allowed to exist.
It's possible to comply with sanctions and offer some services to people in Iran. It's been a while since I read the text, but I'd expect purchases and refunds are difficult, but allowing login should be ok in theory.
On the other hand, actually doing it is a lot of compliance work, and some hosts block traffic to Iran by default. Could be that something changed in the hosting and it's going to take attention and time to get it back to opened up. Microsoft should know better, but...
Sanctions sometimes ban providing services to people in countries.
Apparently Minecraft requires you to login (a service) to use the game. If the game was completely offline this wouldn't be a problem.
Barely a week goes by without some variant of "Iranian Hackers" in the tech/security press - maybe, inshallah, they could release a version that lets you play on Iran-hosted servers without needing to connect to the US for a login?
No, they don't need a 'new' client for that. That already exists. Since minecraft is basically open source, it's not really a secret that how to make a client that simply don't require login. (Surely you don't want to say it loud or legal team of MS is going to chase you hard, but lots of client just slip that function in silently)
Besides that.
The minecraft login is basically a license check allow you to join 'legal purchase required' server. And whether you want to enable the enforcement is up to server owner.
Open source means the developers release the source code willingly and encourage other people to use it. Minecraft is not now and never has been open source.
They do release the source mapping of the java version alongside the binary. Which can be used to decompile the whole game back to compilable java file. (And you can fiddle it around starting from there). It's source available if you do own the game. So I say 'basically'.
The bedrock version on the other hand is completely proprietary. With very little extension api exposed. So there is very few mods of them.
That's decompiled source and while, for Java at least, it can be pretty usable, it's actually going to differ in many ways from the original source due to optimization and obfuscation. I'm fairly sure neither Mojang nor Microsoft were particularly pleased about this, indeed their use of obfuscation implies they want to make your life more difficult doing it.
I think your point is that the Java version at least is easy to modify, but that's because it's in Java, not because Microsoft wants you to. "Open source" and even "source available" are terms of art which don't apply here. "Very hackable" seems more appropriate.
Before this exists, there is a community project to de-obfuscate naming back to readable human names. And it usually took about a month after new minecraft version released. But this is no longer needed because mojang now release the actual mapping.
So microsoft(mojang) do want to make modders live easier out of own willing. Not just because it is java. Or they don't really need to publish that at all.
Ok, it seems we're both right in a sense. They do release obfuscation maps to help modders. However, they are adamant that this does not make Minecraft open source. I'd also be a bit surprised if they include in those maps the source of DRM/online activation components (relevant to the original topic).
Also, I looked at one of these things, and it's just class names, method names, and source line/column numbers. There's no comments, no variable or parameter names, no original source lines, and no hints about what optimizations or inline obfuscations were done.
This reply is probably a little late, but that check is just a line in the config file. You change something like verify-purchase=true to verify-purchase=false, and it's done.
Minecraft is not an online game, it has a multi-player option sure.. but it doesn't strictly need to be online. There is a single-player mode since basically forever..
I'm not arguing your point, but this is the general state of gaming today. A significant portion of "single player only" games require you to be online, contain "online" content, and access to the game can/will be effectively removed when servers/services go offline.
It's a sad state of affairs that you can buy an offline game, and then the developer/publisher can push out an update that turns it into an online game and then disables your access to it
Half the point of sanctions is making the life of average people difficult so the leaders fear them revolting over not being able to play a game or, you know, feeding their children.
The other half is to reduce their ability to wage war on their neighbors.
Either way, the leaders are still sipping wine and eating cheese.
Honest question; has that ever worked? Cause I could see it just as easily weaponised by a sanctioned state to cause one to dislike "the west" more. Would you be more likely to overthrow your government when other governments start making your life more difficult?
You can use the US embargo on Cuba as a case study -- see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJETjgJM-Q4. The conclusion is roughly that the sanctions did not work, they only strengthened Cuba's relationship with the Soviet Union, as well as serving to unite the citizens of Cuba against a common enemy and thus consolidating support for Fidel Castro. Another comment makes the same point about Iran and China today
Sanctions may be a very weak measure when it comes to inciting revolutions. But in general, yes, sanctions against non-military goods do work to change the minds of greedy leaderships if they can be tailored to remove a sufficient part of their income. However, that is not always the case, e.g. in Iran it is rather a measure of the "we are doing as much as we can, more than sternly worded letters, less than violence or war".
> But in general, yes, sanctions against non-military goods do work to change the minds of greedy leaderships if they can be tailored to remove a sufficient part of their income.
Why are they not working to bring about regime changes in Russia and Iran, and why did they not work to bring about regime change in Cuba and Iraq?
Because Russia and Iran have leadership that has other sources of income outside of the sanctioning west. Cuba and Iraq had that historically (with the eastern bloc as trading partners), and the regimes began to change (at least a little) when those sources for income vanished. That they didn't immediately disappear comes from the fact that the respective leadership is caught between a rock and a hard place: uncomfortable in power at home, but no safe place for comfortable exile available.
Even for a moderately tech-savvy person, finding a usable crack of the most popular game ever is a treacherous task. Sailing the high seas as a layman is as risky today as it has ever been, especially after so many old hats (kickass, rarbg, etc.) have been decapitated by law enforcement.
The most effective anti-piracy tool today is to prevent communities from actually earning trust and moderating content trackers.
Minecraft is likely one of the easiest popular games to find a crack for in existence. You just Google "reddit Minecraft cracked launcher" and you'll find the popular choices.
Of course, you'll only be able to play on servers that do not authenticate accounts this way.
> Yes, but what are the chances the one you choose comes with malware?
These aren't 10 download, unknown group uploads. These launchers are used by thousands of people, and if you just go to the one with hundreds of upvotes on reddit it's the same risk as downloading any other kind of non-billion-dollar-company software.
Cracked minecraft clients have been around for over a decade at this point, and third-party minecraft launchers are not a niche thing at all. Compromises have happened, but that's not unique to Minecraft.
> Think of it this way: if I want to spread malware, what better way than a cracked Minecraft launcher?
Fake leaked songs, videos, new video games, Roblox/Fortnite in-game currency generators, video streaming sites with malware ads...
My point is that while you (a moderately tech-savvy person) can easily find a download that is very likely to be safe (and you can feel confidence this is the case), the average person who wants to play Minecraft for free might not.
Sure, but my point is that is true for all software, not just Minecraft. It becomes a moot point in the context. Non-tech savvy people do not know how to calculate risk of malware in any context. That's basically the definition of being tech savvy. It's tautological.
You could just as easily say that non-tech-savvy people will download malware trying to download the official minecraft client from google, and instead click a malicious "minecreft.com" ad link.
The abundance of pirated software and the absence of international copyright law in Iran makes it difficulat to argue for free software over there. As a free software enthusiast it made me always somewhat sad, when I used to live there.
AFAIK, you still can play offline with alternative launchers like Prism Launcher (you need an account to do the initial setup and download, but once everything is downloaded, you can add as many offline accounts as you want), and the downloadable server still has a "do not validate the accounts online" option which allows offline users to connect and play.
Not the most approachable option, but you can also setup a mod dev workspace and launch that way. Or download and launch the game directly with a `java -jar ...` comand.
Good thing Java edition is a trivial game to pirate. Microsoft stole my legit copy of the game by demanding I sign up for a Microsoft account and accept a new TOS. So I downloaded a third party launcher and commented out the account verification code. There are also prebuilt "cracked" clients of course.
Pirate servers with friends is more fun anyway, people can change their nicknames on a whim as they can on IRC/discord. And you don't have to worry about the built-in snitchware banning you for talking shit with your bros, or daring to be born in a country the state department is mad at.
One side effect of such bans is that when something stops working in Iran, you can't easily figure out whether it is blocked by the operators inside the country, or by the operators outside the country...
Instead of actually doing anything serious about the regime, they have chosen to do meaningless stuff that only strengthens the military dictatorship regime. I wonder what kickbacks the politicians get from literally helping them.
Im not blaming microsoft, im blaming the leadership and their half-assed policies. They are forcing microsoft to have there meaningless sanctions blocking minecraft for example
"Inclusive" really just means "we are going to make sure to include people we have no problem with". As Scott Alexander eloquently put it in his essay "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outrgroup", this is because people's actual outgroup isn't the ones they are being "inclusive" to. Human nature hasn't changed, sadly.
I don’t play Minecraft, but I’ve noticed that there are plenty of what appear to be open source Minecraft clients and servers. Presumably one could connect an open source client to an open source server without any particular involvement from MS. It’s not even immediately obvious that doing so would infringe on any of MS’s rights.
So why do people, especially in places like Iran, use Microsoft’s Minecraft implementation? Is it just ease of use?
I had my children playing one of the open source Minecraft clones for a few years, but after they saw all their friends playing Minecraft, they wanted the "real thing". It's not exactly the same game, and don't discount the value of shared experience with other people. Minecraft is as much about the community that you play with, and it's hard to get people to play an open source clone that sits in this uncanny valley of looking and playing just a little bit different than Minecraft.
Also, the open source versions are usually MineTest based, which is less a game, and more an engine that you add mods to to make your minecraft. That's another added layer of complexity to deter beginners, even if more advanced players enjoy the freedom for customization
The obvious answer is that either you eat it up and build an Iranian community based on the OSS thing, or use a VPN and conceal your connection to Iran.
Just to clarify, no it isn’t theft. For most games and software that cost money, you never really buy it, but rather you’re buying a license to use it, with strings attached for rules on the possibility of being banned, of which there is usually some vague, overarching “if the company feels like it” or “if the government asks us to” clause.
Not saying that this is the way it should be, but at least read the ToS before agreeing to it.
It is known and at least somewhat documented that some criminal organizations have used video games "for children" for communication. US intelligence agencies see multi-player video games as a way for terrorists to communicate, so it makes sense they would sanction if that's their fear.
I've been pretty concerned about Microsoft since their quality is low and their customer service is AOL tier.
My kid loves minecraft, I've made some cool worlds, my wife is/was into it. I have realized that everything ends, and I think Minecraft is going to end before and of us 3. It has got to be Greed at this point? Minecraft becomes p2p or similar.
I'm really hoping the FOSS variants can catch up before its too late.
Minecraft is a psyop platform used to cultivate certain personality types, to be exploited by other organizations that buy the data. Many intelligence organizations built them specifically to use them for recruiting tools. Iran being blocked suggests to me that the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was using it too...
So... when my daughter is building a train track and a house in the game, what specifically is the psychological effect that the intelligence services want?
While I agree with that sentiment, and while I admit that I don't know exactly what the sanctions entail, it is quite possible that this is a legal compliance issue and not strictly Microsoft's doing. And of course it could also be a "better safe than sorry" policy when it comes to legal compliance.