Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract
by claudeganon on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:13PM
(#21705068)
This is complete absurd, nihilistic, and disempowering. People all over the world have joined together in protest and support for the treatment of each other, in the context of local conditions separate from their own, and driven change and progress. This is happening now between the US and Hong Kong and in solidarity struggles across a Latin and America.
By your line of reasoning, no one in the west should’ve have supported divestment from South Africa during apartheid, even though that was a wildly effective strategy.
You don’t wait for power to grow a conscience, you force it into a corner with your own and the solidarity you build with others.
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract
by mc32 on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:30PM
(#21705289)
Yes countries have the option to blockade, sanction, tariff, ostracize and so on. National governments can do that.
We do some of those things with DPRK, Iran and Russia, among others. Still, some countries are more resilient than others of more stubborn than others and will press on. Iran is a decent example. We sanction and apply other pressures, they go in killing and persevere despite all that.
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract
by claudeganon on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:39PM
(#21705404)
You’re wrongly conflating state power with that of bottom-up mass organization rooted in empathy and mutual solidarity. What’s happening at Github is more akin to the latter than the former, unless your also arguing that states should quash all internal rebellions and challenges to their power.
The thing is while we disagree with those companies and their government, there isn’t a mechanism to address those issues. Just like there wasn’t a way to address the Gulags.
That has to be addressed by the people internally in that jurisdiction. It has to be addressed by the laws available. Fortunately the US is better at following our own system of laws that say China where on paper people might be better off than us, but sadly their constitution is simply a formality.
So your question is not answered very simply and does not have a simple solution. For example, we were not about to invade the USSR over the Gulags, we were not about to invade China over its multiple purges, despite the horrendous atrocities. I can think of Vietnam as the only country invading another to stop mass systemic purges when they went into Cambodia.