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.
A tactic that takes 80 million people as hostages. Just as a side note: you can not give back Iranian citizenship (if that would be possible most Iranians in the West I know would do it). This concept does not exist. So even if you are the most western, fully integrated European which happens to have some Iranian roots you are still treated in a racist way because those new sanctions are so totally all-encompassing that you get fully subjected to it even if no practical connection to Iran exists.
You can totally "accidentally fail to declare" it. That's what I'd do living anywhere in Europe. For the most part, Europe won't put you in prison for ticking the wrong box on a form.
It is an objective fact that this president made the central issue of his campaign portraying two groups - Muslims and Hispanics - as a threat to the United States, and his two key differentiating policies from his peers in the republican primaries reflect that - respectively his "Muslim Ban" and "The Wall".
It is absurd to characterise this president's foreign policy on Iran as separate from that background.
I think you're getting caught up in semantics here. If you want to tie this back to the 'actual racism' you're inferring, the prejudice of the US polity towards the Iran people is what enables this policy to be enacted without any serious counter of moral concern from the populous. This actual racism is what permits the foreign policy, that ruins the lives of innocent people in far off countries. Further to that, if someone is okay with their government using this tactic on the innocent people of one foreign country vs another, you can tease apart their actual racism from nationalism.
Yes, PNAC's plan to dislodge the middle east was formed in the '90's. Their strategy and tactics included a series of kinetic wars that culminated with Syria, which they viewed as the most politically challenging situation. In contrast, Trump's strategy and tactics is based on economic force rather than kinetic wars. For economic force to work, the Iranian people must rise and act. Sanctions put the Iranian government into a weakened position and provide an opportunity for the people to act. The globalists don't believe in this strategy and will likely return to their strategy of kinetic war in the next administration if this doesn't work. The Iranian people are in a strong position to choose to act and prove the globalists wrong and kinetic wars are obsolete.
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.)
Surely the right term for what you describe is “discriminatory”. All forms of undesirable -ism fall within the broader, general purview of “discrimination”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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?
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.
> (ii) which he cannot show to be justifiable irrespective of the colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins of the person to whom it is applied ; and
See also Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination:
> In this Convention, the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
Both "descent" and "national or ethnic origin" appear relevant here.
It is extremely shitty behavior, but not racism. The sanctions are in place because the Iranian government is racist and innocents suffer from that, which could in turn increase racism again.
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.
