I'm afraid I'm not a fan of sanctions, simply because they don't work and generally hit the wrong people.It is political tokenism at its worst. Rather than actually do something, politicians from almost any part of the spectrum "send a message" of disapproval. Almost invariably the net effect is to hurt the bottom end of the population, whilst allowing the top end to look "strong" against a foreign nation screwing them around. Often the friends of the government do very well out of sanctions busting and rationing.So stupid are sanctions, one could even imagine a 3rd world leader trying to cause them to enrich his tribe/friends/mistress.Its pretty hard to see sanctions really affecting the Sudanese government. They're not exactly a major trading nation.Israel does trade more, but the only sanction with any hope is for the USA to withdraw its financial support. This would be a stronger stimulus, but the Jewish lobby would throw merry hell, and water it down. The last set of sanctions against Israel were actually agreed with them, politely over a negotiating table.Normally, I'd say that sanctions would support the nasty end of the hardliners in Israel, or Sudan. However both nations seem governed by the worst people available anyway.

Iran Says It May Pre-empt Attack Against Its Nuclear FacilitiesQuoteTEHRAN, Aug. 19 - Iran's defense minister, Vice Adm. Ali Shamkhani, has warned that Iran may resort to pre-emptive strikes to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.Admiral Shamkhani made his comments in an interview on Al Jazeera television on Wednesday in response to a question about the possibility of an American or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear projects."We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," he said. "Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly. Any nation, if it feels threatened, can resort to that."There has been speculation here that Israel may attack Iran's nuclear sites, as it struck against Iraq's nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981.A commander of Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guards warned this week that Iran would strike Israel's reactor at Dimona if Israel attacked Iran's nuclear sites."If Israel fires one missile at Bushehr atomic power plant, it should permanently forget about the Dimona nuclear center, where it produces and keeps its nuclear weapons," said the commander, Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr.Admiral Shamkhani said Iran was certain that Israel would not carry out such an attack without a green light from the United States. "So you cannot separate the two," he said.On Thursday, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to close its file on charges that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, state-run television reported. This month, the United Nations agency affirmed Iran's claim that the highly enriched uranium found at an Iranian site had been carried in on equipment Iran purchased in the black market."If the case is not closed, it intensifies the suspicion about interference of political motives and pressures within the agency," Mr. Kharazi said.The nuclear watchdog agency is scheduled to report its findings on Iran's nuclear activities at a meeting in Vienna starting Sept. 13. The United States has urged the agency to send Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council, which can impose sanctions.IDF must be jumping from joy.... they know they can intercept anything Iran sends their way and an attack by Iran would give them a pretext to destroy the reactors without impunity.

Israel does trade more, but the only sanction with any hope is for the USA to withdraw its financial support. This would be a stronger stimulus, but the Jewish lobby would throw merry hell, and water it down. The last set of sanctions against Israel were actually agreed with them, politely over a negotiating table.Not sure if youre talking about nukes or palestinians.Actually, economically, Israel would survive if the US withdrew financial support. The real support Israel receives from the US is diplomatic and contrary to standard mantra, withdrawl of diplomatic support would result in a much more aggressive Israel.Normally, I'd say that sanctions would support the nasty end of the hardliners in Israel, or Sudan. However both nations seem governed by the worst people available anyway.The analogy between Sudan and Israel is crude at best. Ppaupers post exposes how shallow most people's understanding of the Sudenese conflict really is. Israel is fighting a difficult war and attempting to maintain as moral a position as possible. No such attempt has been made by the Sudanese.

Having their leaders being dumb enough to tell the enemy the precise target doesn't really help Iranian pilots either....I observe that lots of celebs are converting to a Kebbalah, apparently a mutant strain of Judaism. At first I assumed it was just gullibility. But Madonna does rather come across as rather hard and not gullible at all.I'm now leaning towards the theory that Jehovah really does have chosen people. Israel seems to be blessed with the least competent enemies one might ever hope for. Is this guy auditioning for a part as a super villain in an Austin Powers Movie ?My model suggests that the next threat from this bunch of deluded cretins is thay rig their reactor so that it explodes if anyone attacks it, causing fallout that would kill many Israelis. (and 20 times that number of Moslems)They'd probably see such a chance of Martyrdom as a god given opportunity.

Actually, economically, Israel would survive if the US withdrew financial support. Yep, it is almost impossible to do sanctions that would destroy an economy, and that which does not destroy them makes the hawks stronger.The real support Israel receives from the US is diplomatic and contrary to standard mantra, withdrawl of diplomatic support would result in a much more aggressive Israel.Hmm, maybe. Having a protector makes a bully worse. If they didn't have such protection thay might start thinking.The analogy between Sudan and Israel is crude at best.Yes, agreed.However, when attempting political change by remote control, you have to look at which factions will benefit and which be weakened by your actions. In both cases, there isn't any obvious set of worse people who might get power. Do you know of anyone worse to lead Israels than Sharon's factions ?Israel is fighting a difficult war and attempting to maintain as moral a position as possible.It is fighting the war because of its failure to do it morally. Stealing people's land ain't moral. Torture ain't moral. Not enforcing your own laws because of the political clout of crazies, ain't moral.It's also dumb.I don't believe Israelis to be evil, I prefer the term malicious incompetence. People knowing there is a better way, but choosing the stupid and violent path because it makes them feel better. Pain can be an addictive drug, the Israelis do dumb things get hurt, do yet more dumb things.No such attempt has been made by the Sudanese. Israel is better than the Sudanese government.Oh wow.I'm not sure I'd be flattered by such a weak compliment. They're a Moslem government, of course they're bad. There are criminals locked up in Western jails for life who are more fit to govern than most of these crazies.The difference between Israeli and Moslem governments is that the Israelis know the right thing to do, but don't, and the Moslem rulers don't know what the right thing is.

Do you know of anyone worse to lead Israels than Sharon's factions ?Bibi makes Sharon look like a dove. Under Bibi there would be no unilateral withdrawl.Stealing people's land ain't moral. land aquired in war from an invading enemy is not stolen. The West Bank was jordanian, the Jordanians invaded.Torture ain't moralI don't like it but if a Jew was about to blow up the Mosque on Temple Mount I'd bloody well torture him to find out where the explosives were.Pain can be an addictive drugThat's arrogant of you. Israel is not addicted to pain - it wants to leave the territories - it has tried to do so under four successive governments - its economy is suffering, over 1000 civilians have been killed in the intifada.

Bibi makes Sharon look like a dove. Under Bibi there would be no unilateral withdrawl.The wirhdrawal under Sharon is close to useless, I rather suspect a harder hawk would still do the same, just to keep America happy.In any case it is not Sharon being a hawk that I see as bad, it is being a crap hawk that causes so much misery. I don't know if Bibi is better at being a hawk, but few would be worse than Sharon.land aquired in war from an invading enemy is not stolen. The West Bank was jordanian, the Jordanians invaded.Err no.Land was stolen before the attack, and land is still being stolen decades after the last fight with Jordan.I don't like it but if a Jew was about to blow up the Mosque on Temple Mount I'd bloody well torture him to find out where the explosives were.Strange how that never happens in Israel. Lots of Moslems get dead in ways the authorities are "at a loss" to explain.In any case. Think your statment through. Palestinians use suicide bombers and occasionally men with guns. The mode of operation very rarely includes planted explosives.The bloke you're torturing isn't in a position to know things like this.Of course in your scenario, we'd all do much the same thing. But that scenario isn't one faced by Israel. It is simply a technique for intimidating the Palestinians.That's arrogant of you. Israel is not addicted to pain - it wants to leave the territories -Many addicts try to give up and fail. Indeed not being able to stop is the definition of addiction.Exactly why is Israel "trying" to leave the occupied territrories ? Is it lost ? Are Palestinians blocking the way with their bodies.No, the state of Israel isn't leaving because it doesn't want to. Maybe some people within it want this, but for all its faults Israel is a democracy.it has tried to do so under four successive governments Is it your position that Jewish Israelis are congenitally stupid ?They've elected several government who ignore the will of the people ?They still vote for them ?Are you saying they're that dumb ?- its economy is suffering, over 1000 civilians have been killed in the intifada. If you vote for people who do bad things, you are guilty as they are. As you say 4 governments. This is not even a situation where a leader suddenly changes policy.Sharon gets his kicks from murdering Palestinians. This cannot be a surprise to Israelis, but they vote for him and his allies, nearly all the armed forces are happy to go along with it. He sees 1,000 as acceptable losses, I note you're not inluding the rather higher number of Palestinian deaths.But of course they're Uentermenscen, so they don't count ?Israel is lucky it doesn't have competent enemies.

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCIf you vote for people who do bad things, you are guilty as they are. As you say 4 governments. This is not even a situation where a leader suddenly changes policy.Sharon gets his kicks from murdering Palestinians. This cannot be a surprise to Israelis, but they vote for him and his allies, nearly all the armed forces are happy to go along with it.He sees 1,000 as acceptable losses, I note you're not inluding the rather higher number of Palestinian deaths.But of course they're Uentermenscen, so they don't count ?Israel is lucky it doesn't have competent enemies.Sharon is the most supported prime minister in the history of Israel. Nobody ever won the elections with such score. Most of the 1000 Israeli causalities happened when left wing goverment was around. They were trying to struck a deals with palestinians, to appease arabs and europeans and as a result of this the majority of Israeli public came to the conclusion that they need a guy like Sharon to do the job. As a matter of fact he did something that looked impossible a couple of years ago, the idiotic plan to create a second palestinian state (besides Jordan) looks like a bad fantasy now. And by the way the most usefull methods to deal with palestinians were borrowed from british (eg. Charles Orde Wingate). The ideas to blow up a house of terrorist family or to burry them in pork skin (will be implemented sooner or later) seems to work just fine. Israel does have competent enemies. For example if guys like Dominic sincerely beleive that land was stolen from palestinians it means that arab propaganda reached its goals. Israel is clearly completely failed to represent its case in eyes of public opinion in Europe. Ussualy european antisemitism is quoted as an excuse for this failure, but this is just an excuse isn't it?

QuoteOriginally posted by: ErrrbIsrael does have competent enemies. For example if guys like Dominic sincerely beleive that land was stolen from palestinians it means that arab propaganda reached its goals. Israel is clearly completely failed to represent its case in eyes of public opinion in Europe. Israel IS an unjust occupant. Where's the Arab propaganda here??

QuoteAmend International Law To Allow Preemptive Strike on IranBy ALAN DERSHOWITZAugust 20, 2004Intelligence reports about Iran's capacity to produce nuclear weapons aimed at Israel are becoming ominous. Unless diplomatic pressure causes the Iranian mullahs to stop the project, Iran may be ready to deliver nuclear bombs against Israeli civilian targets within a few short years. Some Iranian leaders, such as former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, have made it clear that this is precisely what they intend to do. Killing 5 million Jews would be worth losing 15 million Iranians in a retaliatory Israeli strike, according to Rafsanjani's calculations.No democracy can wait until such a threat against its civilian population is imminent. Israel has the right, under international law, to protect its civilians from a nuclear holocaust, and that right must include pre-emptive military action of the sort taken by Israel against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 — which resulted in only one death.Thousands of lives — Israeli, American and Kurd — were almost certainly spared by Israel's pro-active strike. Imagine what danger American troops would have faced during the first Gulf War if the Iraqi military had developed nuclear weapons. Still, Israel was unanimously condemned by the United Nations Security Council, with the United States joining in the condemnation. Today, most reasonable people look to Israel's surgical attack against the Osirak nuclear reactor as the paradigm of proportional pre-emption, despite the Security Council's condemnation. (Many forget that Iran actually attacked the Iraqi reactor before Israel did, but failed to destroy it.)National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice recently said that history has vindicated the Israeli strike, but she declined to say whether the United States would support an Osirak-type attack by Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities. Although she declared earlier this month that the United States and its allies "cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon," current international law — at least as defined by the U.N. — preclude a democracy threatened with nuclear annihilation from taking proportional, preventive military action to dissipate the threat to its civilians.Under this benighted view, the United States would not be able to take proactive steps against terrorist groups that threaten our civilians. We would have to wait until the terrorists attacked us first, even if they were suicide bombers. This unrealistic perversion of international law must be changed quickly to take into account situations in which deterrence simply cannot be counted on to work. Democracies must be authorized to take pre-emptive military actions against grave threats to their survival or to their civilian population.Current international law is woefully inadequate for the task of preventing the deployment of weapons of mass destruction. It requires that the threat be immediate, as it was when Israel pre-empted an imminent coordinated attack by Egypt and Syria in 1967.But the threat posed by the future development of nuclear weapons does not fit this anachronistic criterion. It is the nature of the threat — the potential for mass casualties and an irreversible shift in the balance of power — that justifies the use of preventive self-defense with regard to the Iranian threat. International law must be amended to reflect this reality, but it is unlikely that any such changes will take place if it is seen as benefiting Israel.Although military pre-emption has gotten a bad name among some following the attack on Iraq, it must remain an option in situations where deterrence is unrealistic and the threat is sufficiently serious.If the Iranian nuclear facilities were located in one place, away from any civilian population center, it would be moral — and, under any reasonable regime of international law, legal — for Israel to destroy them. (Whether it would be tactically wise is another question.) But the ruthless Iranian militants have learned from the Iraqi experience and, according to recent intelligence reports, deliberately have spread its nuclear facilities around the country, including in heavily populated areas. This would force Israel into a terrible choice: Either allow Iran to complete its production of nuclear bombs aimed at the Jewish state's civilian population centers, or destroy the facilities despite the inevitability of Iranian civilian casualties.The laws of war prohibit the bombing of civilian population centers, even in retaliation against attacks on cities, but they permit the bombing of military targets, including nuclear facilities. By deliberately placing nuclear facilities in the midst of civilian population centers, the Iranian government has made the decision to expose its civilians to attacks, and it must assume all responsibility for any casualties caused by such attacks. Israel, the United States and other democracies always locate their military facilities away from population centers, precisely in order to minimize danger to their civilians. Iran does precisely the opposite, because its leaders realize that decent democracies — unlike indecent tyrannies — would hesitate to bomb a nuclear facility located in an urban center.Israel, with the help of the United States, should try everything short of military action first: diplomacy, threats, bribery, sabotage, targeted killings of individuals essential to the Iranian nuclear program and other covert actions. But if all else fails, Israel, or the United States, must be allowed under international law to take out the Iranian nuclear threat before it is capable of the genocide for which it is being built.Alan Dershowitz is the author of "America on Trial" (Warner Books) and "The Case for Israel" (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).

QuoteOriginally posted by: balajiQuoteOriginally posted by: ErrrbIsrael does have competent enemies. For example if guys like Dominic sincerely beleive that land was stolen from palestinians it means that arab propaganda reached its goals. Israel is clearly completely failed to represent its case in eyes of public opinion in Europe. Israel IS an unjust occupant. Where's the Arab propaganda here??"unjust occupant"?!? I'm sorry but that's one of the most laughable statements in this thread. Did the Jews fabricate all of their 2200+ year old artifacts that lie all across Palestine?! Palestine was and is an extremely turbulent part of the world and the ethnicity and religion of 'land owners' has changed every 100 years. To say that one side has more rights to the land than the other is either uneducated or just plain disingenuous. Land is yours if you can defend it. That's all! It's winner take all and has been that way forever in the history of the mankind. Just because some tribe owned the land hundreds of years ago doesn't mean they have any kind of right to it today.

Sharon is the most supported prime minister in the history of Israel.If that statement were untrue, it would qualify as anti semitic propaganda.And by the way the most usefull methods to deal with palestinians were borrowed from british (eg. Charles Orde Wingate)I don't really know how to put this to you.I live in Britain, and trust me, we don't rule any Moslem lands any more. We lost control of Moslem lands varying from whatis now Pakistan all the way to Jerusalem. Copying British methods is not exactly a brilliant idea.The ideas to blow up a house of terrorist family or to burry them in pork skin (will be implemented sooner or later) seems to work just fine. It does ? Why the wall then ?Israel does have competent enemies. For example if guys like Dominic sincerely beleive that land was stolen from palestinians it means that arab propaganda reached its goals.You haven't read my posts have you ? I am not sympathetic to Islam. At all. Even slightly.A good test of a moral position is to change the labels, and see if you reach the same conclusion.If Russia decided to destroy the houses of Jews because they were in the way of a settlement of Russian Orthodox people, would you fell the same way ?If it were Mexico doing it to Americans ?If Iran decided that its small local Jewish population was a "security risk" to its reactors, would it be OK to build walls so that the Jewish people could not get water, medical help or even to their place of work ? Swap Palestinian for Jew here. Tip: "If you say but Israel is different", ask yourself why ?If you regard it as wrong for the Nazis to have taken things from Jews, and it be right for them to be returned, why is that different for Palestinians ?Why would it make a difference if the documentation produced by those Jews was deemed "old" by the Nazis ?Israel is clearly completely failed to represent its case in eyes of public opinion in EuropeIsrael gets to present its case, at length, huge length. That doesn't make it a better case. It's a bad one.The trick is to have a better case.Ussualy european antisemitism is quoted as an excuse for this failure, but this is just an excuse isn't it?It is an excuse. Israel treats any criticism as anti semitism. This is both dumb and incorrect. Ironically it is because Israel has made its case so well as a democracy with western values that we expect it to behave as well as us. That's frankly not that high a standard, but they screw it.

QuoteOriginally posted by: balajiQuoteOriginally posted by: ErrrbIsrael does have competent enemies. For example if guys like Dominic sincerely beleive that land was stolen from palestinians it means that arab propaganda reached its goals. Israel is clearly completely failed to represent its case in eyes of public opinion in Europe. Israel IS an unjust occupant. Where's the Arab propaganda here??By the same token, would you assert the Indian occupation of Kashmir is unjust?

What's the 'token' you are talking about?But yes. Indian and Pak occupation of Kashmir is unjust (the indians and pakis out here are going to kill me!). By a different token US occupation of Iraq (and Afghanistan) is unjust . By a yet another token occupation of the land of Red Indians (i.e. USA) by others too is unjust ! Can anyone help me with other non-trivial unjust occupations (by whatever tokens)?