Tag: Punishments

Those Inevitable Sanctions

Sanctions seems to be the word of the Trump administration…..we have imposed sanctions on Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela and several others…..sanctions are the only diplomatic tactic the president and his band of slow thinking slugs have in their book of “things to do”…..

Recently the Trump admin has issued more sanctions against Venezuela….because they are subverting democracy (at least that is the excuse….this time)……

Personally I do not believe that these sanctions will work without covert action by one of our shadowy groups…sanctions do not work as a sole penalty…..they are basically a feel good attempt to control another nation.

Economic sanctions are the penalties of choice for the start of hostilities with any given nation…..the US uses this penalty liberally (that is with a small “L”)……in recent history sanctions have been imposed in Iraq, Iran, Venezuela (most recently) and in all that time what has it accomplished?

Good question, right?

But what is included in “sanctions”?

The Council on Foreign Relations defines sanctions as “a lower-cost, lower-risk, middle course of action between diplomacy and war.” Money is that middle course, and economic sanctions are the means. Some of the most common punitive financial measures include:

  • Tariffs: Surcharges on imported goods, often imposed to aid domestic industries and markets.
  • Quotas: Limits on the number of goods that may be imported or exported. 
  • Embargoes: Restrictions on or cessation of trading with a nation or bloc of nations. These can include limiting or banning travel by individuals to and from nations.
  • Non-tariff barriers: These are designed to make foreign goods more expensive by complying with onerous regulatory requirements.
  • Asset seizure/freeze: Capturing or holding the financial assets of nations, citizens, or preventing the sale or moving of those assets. 

If the US is honest then they would also state that sanctions only work about 30% of the time…..that is not a good chance for success.

If the reader would like more info on what sanctions are about………https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-are-economic-sanctions

I am opposed to these types of punitive action because they seldom have the intended result of punishing the elites and leadership of any given nation instead the average person suffers far more than the intended targets.

Economic sanctions have long been used as a foreign policy tool, sometimes perceived as the tool of choice for nations where diplomacy has failed to yield desired results. Yet as widely used as they are, and despite the fact that some sanctions may remain in place for years, they generally fail to achieve their objectives. One of the most definitive studies on the effectiveness of sanctions — covering the period from 1915 to 2006 — has shown that comprehensive sanctions are effective at best 30 percent of the time, and that the more comprehensive the level of sanctions, the lower their degree of success. In spite of this, sanctions remain one of the few internationally accepted means (short of military conflict) of attempting to change the behavior of national leaders.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/do-sanctions-work_b_7191464.html

Again the people of the targeted nation suffer far more than the elites…..so the conclusion is that economic sanctions have a dismal record of success…….of course the establishment will point to the success of sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s…..they will ignore the failures like Iraq in the 1990s, Iran since 1979……

In short economic sanctions, in my opinion, are a worthless exercise that punish NO one but the people to the targeted nation……diplomacy is more effective (at least it was prior to the Trump presidency)……

Corporal Punishment

A Sunday of lots of rain so the garden is out of the question without a slicker…..but what crops I have planted can use the water….

I’m gonna step back in time……

When I was in high school I was a bit of a trouble maker….I was a member of a group called the Red Tidal Discussion Group…..we protested that our history book was printed in 1942 and not updated….we lead a sit-in in protest of no black history classes and I lived in Mississippi in the 1960’s….enough about my earlier years…needless to say that punishment in those days was a good paddling…or what they call ‘corporal punishment’ these days….I visited “coach” several times for he was our disciplinarian……5 whacks per offense we had to remove our wallets and anything else we had in our pockets so the full impact could be appreciated (sarcasm)…..by my junior year I had lost count of the trips to “Coach”……

I bring this up because of something I read about the students that recently walked out of class to protest the deaths of 17 students in the most recent school shooting…..

I seems that some things die hard in the South….Arkansas will deal out corporal punishment to those students that walked out of class….

Three students were punished for walking out of their Arkansas school Wednesday during the national protest against gun violence, and their punishment is now in the spotlight. Per ArkansasMatters.com, the Greenbrier Public Schools superintendent says the students never gave a heads-up so their school could prep for their demonstration, adding they were disciplined not for exercising their First Amendment rights, but for leaving class. Their choice of punishment, per the super: suspension or getting a parent-OK’d paddling. He wouldn’t say which punishment was selected, but the mom of one student did. On Wednesday, Jerusalem Greer tweeted that the kids “chose corporal punishment,” adding: “This generation is not playing around.” Her revelation soon went viral, with reactions ranging from calls to contact the ACLU to a horrified “Holy hell. Corporal punishment is still a thing in schools?!”

And that’s proven surprising to many, as, yes, many states do still allow it, though the exact number differs (it’s usually said to be 19). The Daily Beast reviewed Greenbrier’s school policy and found it stated physical punishment couldn’t be “excessive, or administered with malice”; an attempt to talk to the school’s assistant principal about the policy was met with a hang-up. Greer’s son, Wylie, told the Daily Beast his two “swats” didn’t hurt or cause any injury. He says he has “the utmost respect for all the adults involved,” as they were “merely doing their job,” though “the idea that violence should be used against someone who was protesting violence as a means to discipline them is appalling,” he noted. (Alabama paddled 19,000 kids in one school year.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/teens-face-corporal-punishment-in-rural-arkansas-for-participating-in-student-walkout

Too bad we cannot use corporal punishment on politicians…kinda like a public flogging….I know where I would bring…..you?

The South hangs on to their institutions from the past…statues and corporal punishment and a simmering racism…..