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Iranian Players Blocked From World of Warcraft Due To Trade Sanctions
cold fjord writes "Is this the end of the world . . . of Warcraft? Maybe for Iranian gamers who are undergoing a forced morale check due to tightening sanctions cutting access to their game of choice. From the article: 'Iranian players of "World of Warcraft" ... have found themselves frozen out by Blizzard Activision Inc., the American company behind the game. Iranian role playing enthusiasts have spent much of the past week peppering Blizzard's message board with complaints about how they weren't able to log on to the service — only to be told recently that U.S. law was to blame. "United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran," the company said in an email sent to players last week...'"
Thanks to the sanctions, they can't get refunds either.
There are a lot of factual problems with your statements. I'm not going to list all the Soviet space accomplishments I learned about in school, because that's likely a function of specific school one went to and how much detail on the space program one had. But let's look at your other claims.
First of all, the US has not (until very recently in some states like Arizona) been a papers-please state, that is a state where the police can just stop you on the street and ask for your ID and other paperwork. The difference with cars is that you need a license to drive a car. Comparing that to what the USSR did is just not accurate.
Second, it is possible to travel to Cuba and has been for over a decade, and in fact it just got easier about a year ago. http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/travel/at-long-last-legal-trips-to-cuba.html. Even in years where it has been difficult, a minimum of around 50,000 Americans traveled there has been around 50,000. Moreover, there's a very large difference between it being difficult to travel to a specific country and making it nearly impossible to travel to most of the planet. Remember the Berlin Wall at all? People were shot trying to flee as a regular occurrence. The US may do nasty things sometimes to keep people out, but they aren't threatening their own citizens to keep them in.
None of this is to say that the US is perfect. There are serious problems with civil liberties. And in many ways they've gotten much worse in the last decade. But that doesn't mean it is at all like how things were in the Soviet Union.
So what was it that the USSR did exactly? I don't mean in Berlin near the wall, I mean in Moscow or Stalingrad or a Russian city with russian citizens, not conquered and occupied territory.
In the papers context, anyone authorized (police, KGB, GRU, etc.) could stop citizens at any time and ask for their papers, that included identification information, where they worked, etc. and could ask them why they were they were, what they were doing etc. Failure to cooperate was a crime. And this was frequently used and moreover was used to intimidate groups they didn't like. For a personal example, I know someone who grew up near Moscow in the 1970s who had become interested in Judaism. She joined a group of people who were reading and studying old texts. After a few months, it reached the attention of the government, and one time they went to their regular meeting, she was stopped by KGB people and asked where she was going, and told that it was an unwise thing to do. At the next meeting, they were raided and all arrested. She served a few months in jail and upon being released couldn't get any jobs. In the US, nor in most of the Western world do things like that happen. The USSR wasn't just bad compared to the US, it was bad compared to most civilized countries.
I'm perfectly fine with flying pretty much anywhere in the world, but I won't currently fly to the U.S..
Sure, the current restrictions on flying are stupid, petty and deeply inconvenient. If I were not a US citizen I'd probably not be that inclined to fly here either. But that goes to the "things aren't perfect and have gotten worse" matter, not to any sort of comparison with the USSR.
NO! You cannot be detained in the U.S. just for not having ID. You are simply wrong.
The U.S. also does not have any requirements for exit. Airlines will check that you have a passport so that you can get intothe country you arrive at. But the U.S. has no exit restrictions at our borders. You are free to leave.
Actually, there are currently 24 states (that's roughly half of the US) that have "Stop and Identify" laws.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes