Unlikely to ever travel to Australia, the seven will [not]suffer grievously from the Australia’s sanctions and travel bans. But this Government and Foreign Minister Wong are able to hold their heads high because they have taken decisive action against these insignificant seven.
US/ Israeli Circus
The IDF conducted an investigation and discharged two junior officers from the unit, but no legal action was taken. This is just one episode in a list of human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by members of Netzah Yehuda on Palestinian civilians that have come under investigation by the US government.
Source: Netzah Yehuda: the ‘Violent and Aggressive’ IDF unit the US is Thinking of Sanctioning
Joe Biden has announced sanctions on Israeli settlers in Palestinian territory. But the sanctions themselves are toothless — a way to signal displeasure with the Israeli government without actually doing anything to change the situation.
Source: Biden’s Sanctions on Israeli Settlers Are Just for Show
Will Australia go down with the dollar? Why are we AAA-rated but only valued at $0.66 cents?
Earlier this week the BRICS nations asked the bloc’s specially created bank to provide guidance on a how a potential new shared currency might work, including how it could shield member countries from the impact of sanctions such as those imposed on Russia.
The original goal of the United States blockade against Cuba was to worsen conditions and inspire Cubans to overthrow their government. Regime change hasn’t been forthcoming. Now the US maintains the devastating sanctions as a threat to other nations.
Source: The US Is Punishing Cuba to Send a Message to the Whole World
If the Biden administration wants to stop the mass displacement that is leading enormous numbers of Cuban and Venezuelan migrants to the US-Mexico border, it should end the sanctions that have made life in those countries all but impossible for average people.
Source: US Sanctions Are Driving Displacement and Migration From Cuba and Venezuela
Sanctions are a form of collective punishment. Their costs are overwhelmingly borne by innocent people rather than governments. And they are just another form of war, not an alternative to it. The US’s many sanctions across the world need to end.
Source: US Sanctions Are Brutal and Inhumane. And They Don’t Work.
Among the sanctioned individuals are journalists from ABC News, Sydney Morning Herald and Sky News, as well as various defence officials.
If the US were genuinely interested in some sort of political solution to the Israeli Apartheid practices regarding the Palestinians, nothing would be easier than to just step aside and let the world punish the Bennett government for these policies, which amount to war crimes. Washington wouldn’t even have to be proactive itself. Or Israeli officials could start being targeted for economic sanctions by the Treasury Department the way Russian high officials are being fingered. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made $200 million with software and would feel the pain if he were sanctioned. But official Washington is so in the tank for Israeli Apartheid that making such a suggestion sounds outlandish.
In contrast, Washington is attempting to reshape the entire world so as to get Putin back out of Ukraine, and we see exactly what it looks like when an illegal Occupation is genuinely unacceptable to the White House.
If the west could find the courage, it would order an immediate freeze of Rupert Murdoch’s assets. His Fox News presenters and Russia’s propagandists are so intermeshed that separating the two is as impossible as unbaking a cake.
Why is Morrison applying a feather duster to the Russians and Australian Corporations still doing business with Putin’s State? Are they L-NP donors?
The Morrison government is facing questions over why it has not included two Russian oligarchs, who have assets in Australia, among those it has imposed sanctions against over the invasion of Ukraine.
Economic boycotts have been a common and effective means of protest in the US in the past century, and Americans rightly saw it as a civil and democratic way to exert non-violent pressure to effect political change.
Boycotts are legitimate tools of protest against injustice | The Electronic Intifada
The Trump Administration is adding foreign individuals and entities to US sanctions lists at a rate never before seen and it’s increasingly been done without Congressional oversight, judicial review or any requirement to produce evidence, writes Marcus Reubenstein.
Amidst the chaos of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests and the COVID-19 outbreak across the United States, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in June sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, including its lawyers, investigators and human rights advocates.
The move by the White House to sanction the ICC was in response to a unanimous ruling of the five judges of ICC Appeals Chamber to allow prosecutors to investigate, and potentially lay charges against, US military personnel for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
This executive order is more an act of strident protest and petulance rather than anything effectual. ICC officials are concerned but undeterred. Magnitsky remains the spectre at the feast; but he would surely find this latest chapter both comical and slightly absurd. “Asset freezes and travel bans are for human rights violators, not those seeking to bring human violators to justice,” insisted an alarmed Richard Dicker, international justice director at Human Rights Watch. The human rights defenders have become the sanctioned ones.
The US has been at war since the end of WW2 both physically and with trade sanctions on any companiy that doesn’t play their game. The EU Iran Cuba Venezuela and others have felt their sting. Isn’t it time there really was a free market and not the pretence of one? (ODT)
The angle taken by the European Union, Germany and Russia can hardly surprise. Themes of energy security are reiterated. The Nord Stream 2 consortium makes the claim that, “Completing the project is essential for European supply security.” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spikily condemned the sanctions measure. “A state with a $22 trillion national debt prohibits creditworthy countries to develop the real sector of their economies!”
For a EU spokesman, this constituted “the imposition of sanctions against EU companies conducting legitimate business.” A German government spokesman suggested that such actions “affect German and other European businesses, and we see the move as meddling in our internal affairs.” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has sees it as an infringement of sovereignty. “It is up to the companies involved in the construction of the pipeline to take the next decisions.”
Nothing is quite so simple. Gas pipeline politics has always been contentious. One state’s sovereign promise is another’s weakening. Concessions made to corporate monopolies are risky, capable of fostering insecurity as much as reassurance. Those who control the tap control a country’s future.
But the imposition of any sanctions regime signals another bout of economic violence. In the international market, where governments operate as ready gangsters for corporate interests, prompted by such motivations as seeking more natural resources, tools of state become handmaidens of economic self-interest. And in all this, the prospect of ecological devastation remains genuine but an aside to the jabbering disagreement of political interests.
via Sanctions, Security and the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Budapest: European leaders have hinted at financial incentives or compensation for Iran to persuade it to stay it in the nuclear deal that the US has rejected.
And they are likely to act to protect European companies trading with Iran despite the US re-imposing sanctions.
via Europe pledges to save Iran nuclear deal ‘for our shared security’
As the Democratic party regroups ahead of the next election cycle, it would be wise for its leadership to examine areas where the Clinton campaign diverged from the party’s base. Israel-Palestine is one of those issues. The number of Americans who support imposing sanctions on Israel over its defiant settlement policies has shot up to 46 percent, the same percentage of Americans who voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election. [tmwinpost] That number has shot up nearly 10 percentage points over the past year, according to a national poll published by the Brookings Institute on Friday, on the sidelines…
Source: Nearly half of Americans support sanctions on Israel, poll finds | +972 Magazine
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