Boycotts & Sanctions

[Flying Pig]

Boycotts are collective punishment. It doesn't matter what the intentions were.

So do you propose that there should be no economic sanctions against Iran to deter it from enriching uranium? Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure that not being allowed to read Ian Banks' sci-fi necessarily constitutes punishment...

 

[Masada]

tl;dr: boycotts are only awful if Israel is involved.

So do you propose that there should be no economic sanctions against Iran to deter it from enriching uranium?

of course not those are muslims stuck in 600s.

 

[JohannaK]

Boycotts are punishment. But are boycotts violent? Can punishments be not violent? What is violence?

 

[Masada]

boycotts are violent only when applied against Israel but when Israel champions sanctions against Iran hahaha muslims.

 

[Mouthwash]

Wow!

That seems very strange to me, when it's applied to a novel!

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/05/iain-banks-cultural-boycott-israel

If I, as an author, refuse to allow my book to be published in a certain country, what am I responsible for?

Especially if, as it would seem, the citizens of that country refuse to read my book in return.

Denying them the right to read my book. Which, if applied to only the citizens of a particular country for no good reason, becomes bigoted.

So do you propose that there should be no economic sanctions against Iran to deter it from enriching uranium?

No. It's obvious why we have them: geopolitical expediency. Are they moral? Ask a philosopher.

But it's not obvious what preventing Israelis from reading your books is doing, besides alienating them further.

Boycotts are punishment. But are boycotts violent? Can punishments be not violent? What is violence?

What about breathing? Eating? Drinking? Are these not also exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse? Food markets are global, and when the US and other nations manipulate food prices, people die.

Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise staples heavily.

The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a "perfect storm" of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75 million people became malnourished because of the price rises.

- http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/jan/23/food-speculation-banks-hunger-poverty

This is violence. Even without any rioting or political reaction, the people in these malnourished places still would have either died of starvation or went on strict rations.

boycotts are violent only when applied against Israel but when Israel champions sanctions against Iran hahaha muslims.

It's funny, I don't see any "cultural" or "educational" boycotts against Iran. Guess it's only justified when the recipients aren't poor oppressed brown people who need us to reach out to them and teach them tolerance and democracy.

 

[Masada]

It's funny, I don't see any "cultural" or "educational" boycotts against Iran. Guess it's only justified when the recipients aren't poor oppressed brown people who need us to reach out to them and teach them tolerance and democracy.

Israel has a habit of boycotting Iranian speeches at the UN.

 

[Borachio]

Wut? Where did this bit of thread appear from and why?

It seems to have included a quote from me, and a subsequent reply by Mouthwash, but then doesn't include what I said in reply to Mouthwash.

I can't remember what I said now.

 

[Tahuti]

Wut? Where did this bit of thread appear from and why?

It seems to have included a quote from me, and a subsequent reply by Mouthwash, but then doesn't include what I said in reply to Mouthwash.

I can't remember what I said now.

Probably a split off by the mods. Frankly, the "Apartheid" thread can be split in a dozen threads by now.

It's funny, I don't see any "cultural" or "educational" boycotts against Iran. Guess it's only justified when the recipients aren't poor oppressed brown people who need us to reach out to them and teach them tolerance and democracy.

There are several state-enforced academic boycotts against Iranian scientists in the US and even though Iran is a brutal dictatorship, it is hardly justified to target any scientist based on the country he works and lives in. The South African boycotts targeted scientists and universities as well, in spite of being hotbeds for Anti-Apartheid activism, and was arguably a highly morally questionable aspect of otherwise appropriate sanctions.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Wut? Where did this bit of thread appear from and why?

It seems to have included a quote from me, and a subsequent reply by Mouthwash, but then doesn't include what I said in reply to Mouthwash.

I can't remember what I said now.

It is the opposite of a necro. Call it a Phoenix? Or a Frankenstein?

 

[Mouthwash]

Wut? Where did this bit of thread appear from and why?

It seems to have included a quote from me, and a subsequent reply by Mouthwash, but then doesn't include what I said in reply to Mouthwash.

I can't remember what I said now.

The book recommendation thread, remember?

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm not really a fan of sanctions. They're a reality of the world and merely 'not trading with you' is a reasonable method of force except that it can really decimate the peasants who can't try to change the mind of the tyrant anyway.

 

[Flying Pig]

Yes, that's the problem. I've got to say that it's remarkably Machiavellian to try to pressurise a government by squeezing the ordinary people and hoping that those in charge crack before they do.

 

[Tahuti]

I'm not really a fan of sanctions. They're a reality of the world and merely 'not trading with you' is a reasonable method of force except that it can really decimate the peasants who can't try to change the mind of the tyrant anyway.

You're largely right there: A few symbolic sanctions like boycotting Olympic Games may make voluntary boycotts as well as awareness more popular and will not hurt significantly civilians in the process.

If you want to dislodge a hostile regime, deprive it of vital money that is used to pay off cronies: The USA didn't really get that when they imposed sanctions on Iran. I bet Putin would be a goner if the EU started to boycott state-owned Russian oil and gas companies...

 

[Borachio]

The EU's not going to boycott Gazprom, surely?

Domestic heating is expensive enough as it is.

 

[Tahuti]

True and that's why it won't happen. But if it did happen...

 

[Borachio]

Denying them the right to read my book. Which, if applied to only the citizens of a particular country for no good reason, becomes bigoted.

You overstate it, imo. Banks refused to allow publication of his books in Israel. It was just a token gesture, I think. There's absolutely nothing to prevent any Israeli reading his books. I imagine that when you, personally, go into a book shop you're practically having to break your neck refusing to even look at his books.

You've said (or certainly implied) yourself that you're only not reading Banks because of his refusal to allow publication in Israel.

Biting your nose off to spite your face, much?

As for "no good reason", he does give his reasons in the link I supplied above. edit: Here it is.

It doesn't feel like much, and I'm not completely happy doing even this; it can sometimes feel like taking part in collective punishment (although BDS is, by definition, aimed directly at the state and not the people), and that's one of the most damning charges that can be levelled at Israel itself: that it engages in the collective punishment of the Palestinian people within Israel, and the occupied territories, that is, the West Bank and – especially – the vast prison camp that is Gaza. The problem is that constructive engagement and reasoned argument demonstrably have not worked, and the relatively crude weapon of boycott is pretty much all that's left.

And Alice Walker does the same. You remember her, surely! The Color Purple.

The BDS campaign calls for sanctions against Israel "until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights" and goes significantly further than a separate and parallel campaign for the boycotting of goods produced in settlements in occupied territory, which are widely regarded as illegal in international law. Ms Walker says she hopes the BDS campaign "will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation".

 

[Tahuti]

The problem of the BDS campaign against Israel is that it likely won't work anyway, because it is mistargeted at the first place. The premise of the boycott against Israel is that the Israeli government and the settlers form one political current, which is patently false and a self-fulfilling premise as well.

 

[Formaldehyde]

That is only if you believe the nonsense that Israel cannot control the criminals who continue to move to the West Bank in defiance of international and apparently Israeli law. That the government isn't itself engaged in the systematic oppression and apartheid against Palestinians by conflating them with terrorists.

 

[Tahuti]

That is only if you believe the nonsense that Israel cannot control the criminals who continue to move to the West Bank in defiance of international and apparently Israeli law.

It can, and often, it does. The key to achieving final settlement will be to politically isolate the die-hards within both the Israelis and Palestinians who have interest in continuing the conflict. It has largely been done for the Palestinians with the break of Hamas from the rest of the Palestinian movement, and now the settler movement will need to be isolated form the mainstream of Israeli politics. Yet BDS against Israel will accomplish the opposite: Political integration of the settler movement and Israeli mainstream politics.

 

[Formaldehyde]

You seem to be under the impression that the settlers represent the only group in Israel which is trying to sabotage any sort of peace settlement when that is clearly not the case. Those who wish to continue to do so are even in control of the government, and they have been for quite some time now.

It is much like white supremacy in South Africa. While they represented a sizable minority they depended on enough other whites going along with their practices. It wasn't until the majority of whites had had enough that things finally changed. Boycotts were a fundamental aspect of why this eventually occurred.

It is also why so many Israelis are so adamantly opposed to them. They know how effective this pressure really is. Israel is becoming more and more isolated from the rest of the world, just like what occurred in South Africa.

It is also the reason why so many Israelis don't trust Barack Obama. They know how crucial it is to continue to have presidents in office who unilaterally support whatever atrocities they may commit next. They know Obama has his limits.