U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

I'm not crying for no Al-Qaeda or 8chan, mind you. In this very year UN and ICJ officials have been targeted in a similar fashion though. When the pax americana ends like this, I don't know what else is needed for EU and Asia to raise tougher walls around the woes of any idiot hyped enough to be voted by USA citizens.

a) According to that article, what it seems they are about:

> Its manifesto describes the project in explicitly political terms. A/I is antifascist, anti-capitalist and antimilitarist. It promotes free software, encryption, pseudonymity and the independent circulation of knowledge and cultural work. It reserves its limited, volunteer-run resources for people and projects broadly compatible with those principles rather than businesses, political parties, organized religions or institutions already possessing the means to make themselves heard.

b) And the issue U.S. has with them:

> The United States alleges that A/I supplies specialized digital architecture, encrypted communications and hosting to antifascist groups and other radical movements, including organizations already designated by the United States.

> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements.

they are a group of people providing services to activists. services include email, web hosting, chat, and other anonymity services. (see https://www.inventati.org/services/)

From it:

> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism

I suspect they have some "not mainstream" political views; although I think understanding what these views are requires more in-depth reading of the blogs that they host.

> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.

It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.

Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.

I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"

"HN cheering", true or not, doesn't really matter in the end, either.

Given the timing around putting economic pressure on Iran, I'm assuming that they had some financial connection to Iran.

Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1

There is a law (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) that says you cant knowingly provide material support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. A law firm wanted to provide financial support and legal services to some, including the PKK (the same group A/I was accused of helping). They argued the federal law violated their first amendment rights.

The court concludes that the first amendment doesn't protect your ability to provide material support including services and communication equipment and the law still stands today.

Im curious. How would you argue the first amendment protects knowingly providing material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations?

This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.

they've been around 25 years, which is nothing to sneeze at

There are many of us who do not live in the US, so many still can. Just not through paypal.

The US would also like to use the equivalent of the PKK in the large Kurdish part of Iran against Khamenei.

Nothing to say of using the PKK rebranding of SDF in Syria as well as receiving "global terrorist" Al Jolani in the White House.

  • Bank accounts and payment processing.
  • U.S.-linked donations and fundraising services.
  • Hosting, cloud infrastructure and upstream network services.
  • Domain registration and related technical services.
  • Certificate, security and email-delivery accounts.
  • Software and communications services.
  • Relationships with non-U.S. providers frightened by American secondary   sanctions.
  • Access for people in the United States who currently use A/I’s services.

They are very clearly providing IT support for free to anti fascist organizations.