Iran has an actual civil society unlike the gulf oil slave states we've sucked up to for ages, so they way we've picked sides with that regional rivalry in particular is also a pointless mockery of good planning.
This seems to be a like pointless tradgedy that will in no way benefit the citizens of the United States.
Do you think that to occupate the nazi germany was wrong? Or that Cuba was a fine democratic place when ruled by the dictator Batista? Are you aware that the British Company of East India assasinated anybody that would stand in the middle of their way or that US United Fruit Company assasinated more than 1800 people and promoted coups in several countries?
If everybody is evil there is not any difference when people in power change.
Americans thinking that Cuba is a terrible place now and should be punished by that (and it IS a terrible place in lots of ways, for sure), forget that living under the iron fist of the big fruit companies was a slave distopic nigthmare. But this never was a problem for them, for some reason.
Is ridiculous if we think about it. Americans are taxed since that "to keep alive, generation after generation, the flaming revenge of a bunch of great-grandpa mobsters that everybody today would find despicable". A terrible business for US that were paying good money to people for things like to infiltrate and put concrete in the milk truck of Cuban scholars. Benefit to the operation for American people: Zero; here is your bill. How many years the US people will need to pay still for this dusty "revenge business" nonsense?
It's not possible. If a country enacting sanctions has a large enough economy (and thus significant global influence)*, the sanctions are essentially a siege of an entire country. Those who advocate or consent to them in policy should be aware that they are waging a war of attrition and the goal (and only possible effect) is for the castle to run out of food and water or, before that happens, for the peasants to revolt and fight their war against the king for them.
* This is because that country can force all other countries it trades with to get in line with those sanctions by refusing to trade with them if they don't. If those countries are dependent enough, then they have essentially no choice. Even if they are not, they may end up facing their own internal revolts by giving up that trade.
You don't.
You can't reasonably ensure that, so by induction the only solution is to sanction (read: blockade) the entire population and its real economy. Which is a massive human rights abuse.
Perhaps Iranians will be forced to use the Chinese versions of Github, Fedora and kernel.org. Is that the future anyone wants? I don't think the Iranian engineers will quit and become plumbers or farmers.
It is selfish and demanding and bullying, but it's not pointless. Iran and its people can change things to pursue further interaction with the US sphere of business influence or they can choose to go their own way. It is nonviolent pressure towards one of two outcomes where either is acceptable to the US.
Violence isn't restricted to physical harm, though. Bullying people is a violent process.
All my sources seem to disagree with you.
> Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."
Sanctions _are_ backed by the threat of very real physical force and power. Pretty much all state violence is.
> Violence isn't restricted to physical harm, though. Bullying people is a violent process.
Where even the WHO definition requires physical force to be a part of the calculation. Calling someone insulting names could easily be considered bullying, but that has nothing to do with violence.
All that aside, I'm fine with words being 'abused' to help make a rhetorical point. My issue was attempting to redefine the word rather than acknowledge it as an attempt to borrow the connotation. I.e. borrowing violence to describe bulling by name calling is fine, but saying that bullying is violent by definition does a disservice to both.
Of course, you may want to use a dated definition of violence, which doesn't account for the evolution of our medical knowledge. You may find out that it's not very helpful to establish an open discussion.
> even the WHO definition
A quick lookup at the WHO page [1] further clarifies this point by listing different types of violence:
> This typology distinguishes four modes in which violence may be inflicted: physical; sexual; and psychological attack; and deprivation.
This is not an invitation to debate the definition of violence, though, and my initial message isn't an appeal to a rhetorical debate. This topic is covered by an extensive litterature, and my initial message was merely a reminder of what people currently understand to be violence.
[1]: https://www.who.int/violenceprevention/approach/definition/e...
The word literally also includes the definition for the word figuratively. Just because a word happens to include additional definitions doesn't make those additional definitions reasonable or beneficial.
> Of course, you may want to use a dated definition of violence, which doesn't account for the evolution of our medical knowledge. You may find out that it's not very helpful to establish an open discussion.
I never claimed to want to use a dated definition of the word violence but I think you'll find that straw manning an argument is also counterproductive to establishing an open discussion.
Why do people insist on making these trite comparisons between businesses and literal governments, especially governments that are straight up among the most powerful entities on the planet?
Then again I keep forgetting that I am often talking to people who are so removed from the ill effects of the state that they can even begin to think that a company's actions can ever compare.
For instance, it's also a very contemporary thing to avoid calling war vets wimps, but it's better explained by the evolution of our understanding of their condition than by an ideological plot to reframe discourse.
You seem to have read a lot into what I wrote. You're in basic agreement that "violence" in contemporary understanding has evolved to include non-physical contexts but you seem to have imputed that I have the belief that it is due to an "ideological plot to reframe discourse". That's odd and completely absent from any statement I've made.
My apologies, then. That part of the answer was in response to the general reaction to what I meant to be an uncontroversial statement. I should have clarified that it wasn't yours.
ethically I don't agree that inaction is as bad as action, only that it's close.
silence could be apathy and apathy + inaction cannot reasonably can be considered violent
I 100% agree that it is not peaceful, I think I just (incorrectly) assumed a specific definition of the word.
It's big picture and definitely not pointless to do this to the ITAR countries.