8 ms·

Please to all the posters, stick your head out of your butt for a sec, this Iran thing is not something related to just some poor dev unable to publish on their

Please to all the posters, stick your head out of your butt for a sec, this Iran thing is not something related to just some poor dev unable to publish on their store, it is a world wide dumb reaction all started from the USA foreign agenda. I'll give you an example to highlight how f'd up is the situation, in Italy, country with a quite respectful relation with Iran, banks started kicking out clients (with a one month notice) like my friend just because she was BORN in Teheran grew up in Italy (she's a fucking grown up working as a doctor), with dual italian/iranian citizenship due to the ius sanguinis (iranian mother, italian father) just because of the USA sanctions. If that's not WRONG, tell me what it is.

catmanjan 7y ago
That is straight up racism.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  No it's not, Americans have had difficulties getting banking in Germany because banks fear having US customers exposes them to liabilities. It's all a huge pile of steaming manure, especially that the US considers companies in the US liable for things that their holding or child companies do in other countries - even if the behavior is fully legal in the place where it happens. And banks and other corporations with even the tiniest amount of US connections are rightfully scared of excessive punishments dealt by the US "judicial" system.
  - toong 7y ago
    Yes, it is.
  - mcherm 7y ago
    > This is straight up racism >> No it's not, [banks are scared if the US] Yes, banks are scared of the US. And perhaps the racism stems from the Italian bank, perhaps it stems from the US government, perhaps it stems from the Iranian definition of citizenship, perhaps all share a part of the blame. But regardless of who gets the blame, it most definitely IS straight up racism.
    - bsaul 7y ago
      So, racism now doesn't mean race ? Or does race includes nationality in your definition ?
      - izacus 7y ago
        What's the practical difference? You're being punished due to a place you've been born in. Not something you did wrong. Just a luck of nature. And that's wrong. By any moral standard.
        enedil 7y ago
        If you're in a place where being woman is disadvantageous, would you call such disadvantage "racist"? Clearly it fits your description. If you think it's wrong, then I agree with you. If you think it's racist, then no way, it isn't and you just don't know the words you use.
        izacus 7y ago
        Is that the most useful direction you could take this debate? Will changing the word for the same thing change anything? Racist, sexist, nationalist, whatever, people are having their livelihoods broken and you want to debate grammar?
        blodstone 7y ago
        It is not grammar issue but vocabulary. Having the right word is important if you want to be taken seriously. As you have pointed, these issues are serious, and the least thing people want to hear is to be accused for something that they didn't do. You don't call a thief a rapist even though both of them broke the law.
        bsaul 7y ago
        You’re just using a broader abstraction to define the original problem. This usually doesn’t help solving or understanding problems in general (you end up with general statement as « it’s wrong », which frankly doesn’t lead to anything). As an example, it would be interesting to know if relocating to some other country, or give up your nationality solves the issue. In the case of racism, it wouldn’t for sure. In this case, i don’t know.
  - chaosite 7y ago
    That's because having US citizens as customers requires them to file tax information for those customers with the US government, and the German banks don't want the overhead.
    - q3k 7y ago
      And that's because for some unknown reason the US is one of the few countries that tax based on citizenship, and not residence [1]. It's absurd. Even resigning your citizenship is taxed [2]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Citizen... [2] - https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/06/16/tax-consequences-of-renouncing/ https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/06/16/tax-consequences-of-r...
      - arcticfox 7y ago
        > It's absurd As someone who has paid a truckload of these taxes: I don't think it's that absurd. You're not double-taxed. And if you want to relinquish citizenship, you can.
  - mpweiher 7y ago
    Oh, not just Americans. I am German. When I moved to the US for a while, most German banks wanted nothing more to do with me.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    > No it's not, Americans have had difficulties getting banking in Germany because banks fear having US customers exposes them to liabilities. That's just reaction to stupid US FATCA laws pushed by US down the throat all countries out there. Same is for Switzerland - quite hard to open an account for anybody qualifying as US citizen, although banks are mostly fully compliant with FATCA processes. But this was pushed by the guy before the Big Blonde
- espeed 7y ago
  Regardless what you think of the tactics, the sanctions are an economic vise -- a negotiating tactic to leverage a position -- it has nothing to do with race.
  - qubex 7y ago
    The reasons for the power asymmetry do not affect the severity of the asymmetry.
    - alehul 7y ago
      I’m trying to understand and make this analogous to what you were replying to: The reasons for the act (racist or not) does not affect it being racism?
      - qubex 7y ago
        Perhaps it makes more sense if I phrase it thusly: the consequences of the decision do not depend upon why the decision was taken. It certainly sounds like a discriminatory practice, based on what is indicated. For sure, even if it had a decorous reason behind it, the consequences thereof are no less severe and irksome.
        sokoloff 7y ago
        In this case, it seems that the companies are following a reasonable interpretation of the law of the land in which they operate. I don't the vast asymmetry of "break this law, do a [relatively] small amount of good for a [relatively] small number of people, put a substantial amount of the company at risk" makes any kind of logical business sense.
      - gwd 7y ago
        I think part of the problem is the fact that there's a real phenomenon that's important to talk about and describe, but rather than invent a new term, that the word 'racism' has repurposed to describe it instead. 200 years ago, everyone would have understood "racism" to mean what you have implied it means: conscious individual racial prejudice. And of course, one problem that (say) blacks in the US face is widespread, individual, conscious racial prejudice. But there's yet another problem blacks face: the mechanisms of society as a whole disproportionately cause problems for black people, even when nobody involved is consciously prejudiced. When this was pointed out, people would respond, "But nobody in this organization is prejudiced". Well, it doesn't matter if the people are prejudiced or not, the emergent property of the system as a whole affects black people as though it was set up by people who are racist; and so the system is called "racist", even if nobody in it is trying to be racist. I think the argument here is the same: Iranians are facing persecution for no other reason than the country they were born in. It doesn't matter if people making the policies of the US government is prejudiced against Iranians as individuals or not; the net effect is the same. (FWIW I think the concept of "institutional racism" is useful, but the overloading of the term 'racist' to describe it is counterproductive in the long run.)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tomxor 7y ago
  > That is straight up racism. More specifically discrimination of nationality, but almost the same as discrimination of race in this case. Either way, it's not fair on any of the people affected.
mrmonkeyman 7y ago
Why the dual citizenship? Ius sanguinis is not sufficient. Give it up and we'll reconsider. Two-faced sons of b.
jankotek 7y ago
It is targeting everyone. As an European I would love to visit Iran. Amazing country, some friends there, direct flights... But I would lose ESTA and would need to apply for a visa before visiting US.
- rbrtdrmpc- 7y ago
  I feel you, this friend of mine had the same thought one year ago, he then decided that it will be ok for him to not visit the US in the next ten years then he went to Iran and had a lovely time there, he was so overwhelmed by the iranians and didn't regret anything. One of the funniest thing he saw was this kid dancing with a donkey costume and blasting a trumpet (you know the annoying vuvuzela thing) in a mosquee, what a dangerous country.
- liuw 7y ago
  It's such a shit show. A few years back, one of my ex-colleagues who needed to travel to US frequently for work was stopped right before boarding a plane because he had a layover in one of the blacklisted countries while on holiday. He didn't even know he lost his ESTA.
- whermans 7y ago
  Visit it. While you sitll can. It's an amazing country. A price of "more paperwork to enter the USA" was an absolute bargain in my book.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  A fantastic, cheap country where almost everybody speaks OK english, great and amazingly helpful people. And the most important thing - completely unspoiled by mass tourism. You just don't see that in the world where there is actually something to see anymore. I gained much respect for persians and their history when doing a short trip there (Mont Damavand, Isfahan, Yazd & desert, Tehran). Losing an ESTA for such an enriching experience? Definitely worth it. Plus when I flew through Miami last year, I had already new passport and all was OK.
pfortuny 7y ago
This is really upsetting: it is exactly what happened elsewhere like 80 years ago: laws against people just because of their birth conditions. Edit: and people abiding by them because “it is the law”...
- bhouston 7y ago
  This is wrong what is going on and we should talk about it, but please stay away from Godwin'ing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
  - pfortuny 7y ago
    Oh no: I am not staying away from REALITY. This is not a metaphor, this is just plain facts: they are being treated like that exactly because they share a trait at birth. In this case being Iranian. In the past, being Jew. This is exactly where reality meets history. And not as a metaphor.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't up the flamewar ante like this. It doesn't help—it just destroys the discussion, at which point no information is being exchanged and no minds or hearts will ever change. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - FussyZeus 7y ago
    When discussing matters of states acting very much in the same vein as Nazi Germany, of course the Reich is going to come up. How can it not? Fuck Godwin's law. If people are acting like Nazis, you call them fucking Nazis. And then you punch them. That's how we make sure those kinds of atrocities never occur again.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into ideological battle, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for—and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
buboard 7y ago
That is the intented effect of sanctions.
nashashmi 7y ago
Granted that US and Iran had good relations in the 1970s. And many people exmigrated from Iran after things changed. Those people are also treated the same way.
yyyk 7y ago
"with dual italian/iranian citizenship due to the ius sanguinis (iranian mother, italian father)" How did she even get Iranian citizenship? Iranian law does not provide citizenship to children of Iranian mothers with foreign fathers even if they are born in Iran, and the Guardian Council has so far vetoed all attempts to change it[0]. [0] https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/iran-nationality-law-citizenship-foreign-fathers-bill-mps.html https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/iran-nati...
- rbrtdrmpc- 7y ago
  Didn't know, thanks, i should ask if I am wrong about her father, though she has italian citizenship and she was born in Teheran, that was the reason for her being kicked out from the bank, that's what i know for sure. Just to restate, i'm quite sure her mother is iranian and i thought her father is italian because in Italy ius sanguinis law is the rule, so one of the parents should be italian born to get the citizenship from birth, if i mixed up the nationality of both parents is me being dumb, so thanks for pointing that out.
- rbrtdrmpc- 7y ago
  Found this[0] though, is this retroactive? [0] https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/435807/Iranian-nationality-transferrable-through-mother-by-new-legislation https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/435807/Iranian-nationality-...
  - yyyk 7y ago
    It has been voted for by parliament (again) but not yet approved by the other authorities.
mc32 7y ago
The author left one of the protagonists out of the picture completely. The Iranian regime. If the US and US-based companies have a fault in this, so too does the recalcitrant regime which should be called out for its part in this.
RobertoG 7y ago
Have your friend checked with a lawyer? Because I have serious doubts that is legal in the EU.

catmanjan 7y ago

That is straight up racism.

mschuster91 7y ago
No it's not, Americans have had difficulties getting banking in Germany because banks fear having US customers exposes them to liabilities. It's all a huge pile of steaming manure, especially that the US considers companies in the US liable for things that their holding or child companies do in other countries - even if the behavior is fully legal in the place where it happens. And banks and other corporations with even the tiniest amount of US connections are rightfully scared of excessive punishments dealt by the US "judicial" system.
- toong 7y ago
  Yes, it is.
- mcherm 7y ago
  > This is straight up racism >> No it's not, [banks are scared if the US] Yes, banks are scared of the US. And perhaps the racism stems from the Italian bank, perhaps it stems from the US government, perhaps it stems from the Iranian definition of citizenship, perhaps all share a part of the blame. But regardless of who gets the blame, it most definitely IS straight up racism.
  - bsaul 7y ago
    So, racism now doesn't mean race ? Or does race includes nationality in your definition ?
    - izacus 7y ago
      What's the practical difference? You're being punished due to a place you've been born in. Not something you did wrong. Just a luck of nature. And that's wrong. By any moral standard.
      - enedil 7y ago
        If you're in a place where being woman is disadvantageous, would you call such disadvantage "racist"? Clearly it fits your description. If you think it's wrong, then I agree with you. If you think it's racist, then no way, it isn't and you just don't know the words you use.
        izacus 7y ago
        Is that the most useful direction you could take this debate? Will changing the word for the same thing change anything? Racist, sexist, nationalist, whatever, people are having their livelihoods broken and you want to debate grammar?
        blodstone 7y ago
        It is not grammar issue but vocabulary. Having the right word is important if you want to be taken seriously. As you have pointed, these issues are serious, and the least thing people want to hear is to be accused for something that they didn't do. You don't call a thief a rapist even though both of them broke the law.
      - bsaul 7y ago
        You’re just using a broader abstraction to define the original problem. This usually doesn’t help solving or understanding problems in general (you end up with general statement as « it’s wrong », which frankly doesn’t lead to anything). As an example, it would be interesting to know if relocating to some other country, or give up your nationality solves the issue. In the case of racism, it wouldn’t for sure. In this case, i don’t know.
- chaosite 7y ago
  That's because having US citizens as customers requires them to file tax information for those customers with the US government, and the German banks don't want the overhead.
  - q3k 7y ago
    And that's because for some unknown reason the US is one of the few countries that tax based on citizenship, and not residence [1]. It's absurd. Even resigning your citizenship is taxed [2]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Citizen... [2] - https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/06/16/tax-consequences-of-renouncing/ https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/06/16/tax-consequences-of-r...
    - arcticfox 7y ago
      > It's absurd As someone who has paid a truckload of these taxes: I don't think it's that absurd. You're not double-taxed. And if you want to relinquish citizenship, you can.
- mpweiher 7y ago
  Oh, not just Americans. I am German. When I moved to the US for a while, most German banks wanted nothing more to do with me.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  > No it's not, Americans have had difficulties getting banking in Germany because banks fear having US customers exposes them to liabilities. That's just reaction to stupid US FATCA laws pushed by US down the throat all countries out there. Same is for Switzerland - quite hard to open an account for anybody qualifying as US citizen, although banks are mostly fully compliant with FATCA processes. But this was pushed by the guy before the Big Blonde
espeed 7y ago
Regardless what you think of the tactics, the sanctions are an economic vise -- a negotiating tactic to leverage a position -- it has nothing to do with race.
- qubex 7y ago
  The reasons for the power asymmetry do not affect the severity of the asymmetry.
  - alehul 7y ago
    I’m trying to understand and make this analogous to what you were replying to: The reasons for the act (racist or not) does not affect it being racism?
    - qubex 7y ago
      Perhaps it makes more sense if I phrase it thusly: the consequences of the decision do not depend upon why the decision was taken. It certainly sounds like a discriminatory practice, based on what is indicated. For sure, even if it had a decorous reason behind it, the consequences thereof are no less severe and irksome.
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        In this case, it seems that the companies are following a reasonable interpretation of the law of the land in which they operate. I don't the vast asymmetry of "break this law, do a [relatively] small amount of good for a [relatively] small number of people, put a substantial amount of the company at risk" makes any kind of logical business sense.
    - gwd 7y ago
      I think part of the problem is the fact that there's a real phenomenon that's important to talk about and describe, but rather than invent a new term, that the word 'racism' has repurposed to describe it instead. 200 years ago, everyone would have understood "racism" to mean what you have implied it means: conscious individual racial prejudice. And of course, one problem that (say) blacks in the US face is widespread, individual, conscious racial prejudice. But there's yet another problem blacks face: the mechanisms of society as a whole disproportionately cause problems for black people, even when nobody involved is consciously prejudiced. When this was pointed out, people would respond, "But nobody in this organization is prejudiced". Well, it doesn't matter if the people are prejudiced or not, the emergent property of the system as a whole affects black people as though it was set up by people who are racist; and so the system is called "racist", even if nobody in it is trying to be racist. I think the argument here is the same: Iranians are facing persecution for no other reason than the country they were born in. It doesn't matter if people making the policies of the US government is prejudiced against Iranians as individuals or not; the net effect is the same. (FWIW I think the concept of "institutional racism" is useful, but the overloading of the term 'racist' to describe it is counterproductive in the long run.)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tomxor 7y ago
> That is straight up racism. More specifically discrimination of nationality, but almost the same as discrimination of race in this case. Either way, it's not fair on any of the people affected.

mrmonkeyman 7y ago

Why the dual citizenship? Ius sanguinis is not sufficient. Give it up and we'll reconsider. Two-faced sons of b.

jankotek 7y ago

It is targeting everyone. As an European I would love to visit Iran. Amazing country, some friends there, direct flights... But I would lose ESTA and would need to apply for a visa before visiting US.

rbrtdrmpc- 7y ago
I feel you, this friend of mine had the same thought one year ago, he then decided that it will be ok for him to not visit the US in the next ten years then he went to Iran and had a lovely time there, he was so overwhelmed by the iranians and didn't regret anything. One of the funniest thing he saw was this kid dancing with a donkey costume and blasting a trumpet (you know the annoying vuvuzela thing) in a mosquee, what a dangerous country.
liuw 7y ago
It's such a shit show. A few years back, one of my ex-colleagues who needed to travel to US frequently for work was stopped right before boarding a plane because he had a layover in one of the blacklisted countries while on holiday. He didn't even know he lost his ESTA.
whermans 7y ago
Visit it. While you sitll can. It's an amazing country. A price of "more paperwork to enter the USA" was an absolute bargain in my book.
saiya-jin 7y ago
A fantastic, cheap country where almost everybody speaks OK english, great and amazingly helpful people. And the most important thing - completely unspoiled by mass tourism. You just don't see that in the world where there is actually something to see anymore. I gained much respect for persians and their history when doing a short trip there (Mont Damavand, Isfahan, Yazd & desert, Tehran). Losing an ESTA for such an enriching experience? Definitely worth it. Plus when I flew through Miami last year, I had already new passport and all was OK.

pfortuny 7y ago

This is really upsetting: it is exactly what happened elsewhere like 80 years ago: laws against people just because of their birth conditions. Edit: and people abiding by them because “it is the law”...

bhouston 7y ago
This is wrong what is going on and we should talk about it, but please stay away from Godwin'ing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
- pfortuny 7y ago
  Oh no: I am not staying away from REALITY. This is not a metaphor, this is just plain facts: they are being treated like that exactly because they share a trait at birth. In this case being Iranian. In the past, being Jew. This is exactly where reality meets history. And not as a metaphor.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't up the flamewar ante like this. It doesn't help—it just destroys the discussion, at which point no information is being exchanged and no minds or hearts will ever change. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  When discussing matters of states acting very much in the same vein as Nazi Germany, of course the Reich is going to come up. How can it not? Fuck Godwin's law. If people are acting like Nazis, you call them fucking Nazis. And then you punch them. That's how we make sure those kinds of atrocities never occur again.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into ideological battle, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for—and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

buboard 7y ago

That is the intented effect of sanctions.

nashashmi 7y ago

Granted that US and Iran had good relations in the 1970s. And many people exmigrated from Iran after things changed. Those people are also treated the same way.

yyyk 7y ago

"with dual italian/iranian citizenship due to the ius sanguinis (iranian mother, italian father)" How did she even get Iranian citizenship? Iranian law does not provide citizenship to children of Iranian mothers with foreign fathers even if they are born in Iran, and the Guardian Council has so far vetoed all attempts to change it[0]. [0] https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/iran-nationality-law-citizenship-foreign-fathers-bill-mps.html https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/iran-nati...

rbrtdrmpc- 7y ago
Didn't know, thanks, i should ask if I am wrong about her father, though she has italian citizenship and she was born in Teheran, that was the reason for her being kicked out from the bank, that's what i know for sure. Just to restate, i'm quite sure her mother is iranian and i thought her father is italian because in Italy ius sanguinis law is the rule, so one of the parents should be italian born to get the citizenship from birth, if i mixed up the nationality of both parents is me being dumb, so thanks for pointing that out.
rbrtdrmpc- 7y ago
Found this[0] though, is this retroactive? [0] https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/435807/Iranian-nationality-transferrable-through-mother-by-new-legislation https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/435807/Iranian-nationality-...
- yyyk 7y ago
  It has been voted for by parliament (again) but not yet approved by the other authorities.

mc32 7y ago

The author left one of the protagonists out of the picture completely. The Iranian regime. If the US and US-based companies have a fault in this, so too does the recalcitrant regime which should be called out for its part in this.

RobertoG 7y ago

Have your friend checked with a lawyer? Because I have serious doubts that is legal in the EU.