There is no right answer.
Damned if we do impose sanctions on Syria. And damned if we don't.
Foreign companies are enriching Assad's brutal regime – but even the Syrian people are divided on the issue of sanctions.
This piece was written by George Monbiot after he had publicly asked for feedback
What do you think – should we impose sanctions on Syria?
The moral line is unclear, but I'm writing a column next week about this issue and would appreciate some of your input.
Useful background :
Geopolitics of the 2011 Syrian Uprising.
Some voices from the street.
(
Previous 1; 2; 3; 4 ).
posted by adamvasco
on Sep 20, 2011 -
32 comments
"The Court makes no apology for the tone of its previous orders. They were direct and strong but apparently not strong enough. They certainly do not demonstrate personal bias. They do demonstrate a lack of tolerance for frivolous legal claims asserted by lawyers who
should know better." In a thorough and often hilarious
43 page opinion, Judge Clay Land of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia imposes
sanctions on
lawyer (for now)/dentist/real estate agent
Orly Taitz for her abusive and frivolous conduct.
posted by kosem
on Oct 13, 2009 -
116 comments
Bobby Fischer found, trying to travel from Tokyo to the Phillipines. He has been detained and is awaiting deportation to the states for attending a 1992 chess match in Yugoslavia in violation of international sanctions.
posted by o2b
on Jul 16, 2004 -
46 comments
Cool War: "In searching for evidence of the potential danger posed by Iraq, the Bush Administration need have looked no further than the well-kept record of U.S. manipulation of the sanctions program since 1991. If any international act in the last decade is sure to generate enduring bitterness toward the United States, it is the epidemic suffering needlessly visited on Iraqis via U.S. fiat inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that body, the United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most basic humanitarian needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon, and, despite recent reforms, continuing to do so. Invoking security concerns -- including those not corroborated by U.N. weapons inspectors -- U.S. policymakers have effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized act of mass slaughter." [More inside]
posted by stonerose
on Sep 16, 2003 -
36 comments
This war plan forces me to stand by the dictator who tortured me. Iraqi writer, an exiled dissident and victim of Hussein's regime speaks against war and sanctions: "
You are "either with us or against us", they say. As an Iraqi that means choosing between war and the dictator. To be on the side of the oppressed does not mean we are unaware of the complexity of the situation. To campaign for the lifting of sanctions, for an end to the paralysing bombardment and daily threat of war is to stand by the Iraqi people; it is that policy which will help them to change the oppressive regime. Any change should be initiated from within Iraq, not imposed by Bush or Blair."
posted by talos
on Sep 18, 2002 -
11 comments
Has one of terrorism's former poster children, Qaddafi, finally turned over a new leaf? At last some genuinely good news from the Middle East. Libya's offer to pay $2,7-billion in compensation to the families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland seems to indicate so. Although the Libyans are almost certainly motivated by their desire to end sanctions against them as a 'state sponsor of terrorism,' this is a hopefully a declaration of 'mea culpa' from the 'colonel' and maybe a sign of better things to come from others in the region that still think that there is something to be gained from blowing up so-called 'infidels' in civilian aircraft.
posted by murray_kester
on May 29, 2002 -
10 comments
Drug War roundup. The US will end
drug-related sanctions against Afghanistan and Haiti. Neither country stopped producing drugs, they need loans sanctions stop them from receiving. A British journalist compares the
drug policies of Holland to Britain. Noteworthy: despite heroin being half the price, there are 25% fewer Dutch addicts. The FARC and Columbia are openly warring again. So far, only
civilians have been killed. The California Medical Association voted to lobby the state government to
raise the smoking age from 18 to 21.
posted by raaka
on Feb 25, 2002 -
22 comments
Today the EU imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe. For a long time, critics have charged "President" Robert Mugabe with everything from murder to corruption, but the expulsion of Pierre Schori, an EU election observer, for "political arrogance" was the last straw.
posted by Bag Man
on Feb 18, 2002 -
13 comments
Iraq's Kurds OK with sanctions? (and from the Washington Post
here)
The Kurds in the no-fly zone recieve a fraction of the oil money under the sanctions and seem to be doing pretty well; there's food and medicine enough to go around, to say nothing of free elections and an abundance of political parties. Is there something I'm missing? It doesn't feel like it's being spun; nobody's making a big deal about it. But it does go against the conventional wisdom on sanctions...
posted by dreamless
on Sep 16, 2001 -
16 comments
Reuters confirms that our friend Dubya did in fact authorize the attack on Iraqi radar stations. We're killing people and giving a dictator fuel for the propaganda mill he needs to prop up his regime. But that's okay, because the people who are dying don't share our race and religion and so, in fact, they're not really "people" at all. They're ciphers and objects and statistics. Apparently it's only when white Protesetants die that death really matters. Incidentally, remember this bombing isn't a matter of protecting the Kuwaiti ethnic minority (read: our oil interests), this is over perceived violation of arbitrarily imposed NATO sanctions. Scum. Scum scum scum!
posted by hanseugene
on Feb 16, 2001 -
40 comments
Sanctions Born Of Indifference The United Nations' sanctions against Iraq - which would have been lifted long ago, if not for America - have been killing 4,500 children a month for nearly 10 years now. A million people in all so far, half of them kids.
The Iraqis die because America insists the sanctions continue - despite their illegality under the principles of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, the United Nations Convention Against Genocide Convention and particularly the Geneva Convention: (Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions - 1977 Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 54)
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
posted by lagado
on Oct 25, 2000 -
31 comments
West steps up threats against Yugoslavia -- "The Democratic Opposition of Serbia has signed up to the platform of the G17, a think-tank of market economists again funded by National Endowment for Democracy [an adjunct to the CIA]. This economic blueprint calls for the adoption of the German mark as the main currency for all of FRY, following in the footsteps of the Montenegrin republic last year. Other proposals include reduction of public spending, ending subsidies on food and other forms of social protection. The continuation of US and European economic sanctions on the FRY is being cynically exploited to bludgeon the population into accepting these terms as the condition for ending their economic isolation...." [more...]
posted by johnb
on Sep 25, 2000 -
11 comments
