From Haaretz:
Israel apparently doing nothing to enforce international sanctions on Iran
Benjamin Netanyahu, who endlessly preaches the need for firm action against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear arms, is not lifting a finger to stop Israeli companies and individuals indirectly trading with Iran.
By Yossi Melman
The Ofer Brothers Group [Israeli shipping billionaires] may be scurrying into damage control in Israel, Singapore, London and Washington, after the United States blacklisted it for trading with Iran, but Israel seems to be doing nothing to enforce international sanctions on Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who endlessly preaches the need for firm action against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear arms, is not lifting a finger to stop Israeli companies and individuals indirectly trading with Iran.
Nor is he acting against international companies and corporations that operate in Iran, while maintaining huge contracts with Israeli companies - including state bodies like the Electric Corporation and Airport Authority.
This incompetence, bordering on grave deficiency, is causing severe damage to the image of both Israel and its prime minister.
Or, maybe not. Maybe the 21st Century world just isn't really as exciting a life-or-death place teetering on the edge of the precipice as it seems to be on the 24-hour news channels.
Maybe the 21st Century world just isn't really as exciting a life-or-death place teetering on the edge of the precipice as it seems to be on the 24-hour news channels.
ReplyDeleteSomething like 25% of the federal budget is spending for military and the interventionist foreign policy. Perhaps we should get rid of it and have the military necessary to protect our own country from attack and thats it.
It's the Jewish way of the dual-approach. Use America to bash and pressure Iran while Israel profits from doing business with Iran.
ReplyDeleteAnd remember South Africa? American Jews attacking South Africa while Israeli Jews traded with South Africa? American Jews win with the MORAL card while Israeli Jews win with the MONEY card.
"Maybe the 21st Century world just isn't really as exciting a life-or-death place teetering on the edge of the precipice as it seems to be on the 24-hour news channels"
ReplyDeleteWhiskey bait.
~GP
This sounds like a counteroffensive by the Obama administration - they're on the attack now against Bibi.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes think people are so gullible that if the TV just told everyone to stick their heads in the oven and turn on the gas the entire country would be depopulated by nightfall.
ReplyDeleteanonymous 7:15
ReplyDeleteYou're anti-Semitism is beyond the pale! (i.e. your analysis is correct).
James O'Meara (whom you all should be reading) calls it the Judaic Two-Step. Always on both sides and as such always on the winning side.
ReplyDeletehttp://jamesjomeara.blogspot.com/2009/06/judaic-two-step-judaic-seems-smarter.html
a few years ago, the US did (slightly) punish israel for taking possession of a shipment of US military (something, i think it was either aircraft or missiles) and then turning around and selling it to china, after explicitly agreeing in the contract that the stuff could not be sold to nations X, Y, or Z (america's most serious large enemies).
ReplyDeleteisrael, america's "only when it's convenient for us" ally.
Steve, I'd think you'd understand "gold-chainer" morality by now. It's just business. Business is business. As long as you're not whacked or bombed yet, we can do business. Capisch?
ReplyDeleteHmm, politicians being duplicitous? Color me surprised.
ReplyDeleteOne could take the obvious tact here, namely that the reason Netanyahu is letting companies trade with Iran is because they're getting humint established on the ground there, not to mention sticking Stuxnet viruses on all the computers they can get their hands on and otherwise undermine the Iranian regime in broad daylight through "trade." That would be too obvious, no, I'm sure it is because the Jews are evil or something.
Hey, what's the deal with Ahamdinejad? I mean he keeps promising to wipe the evil Joos off the face of the Earth and here he is allowing them to trade freely with his country. Hey, maybe he's lying too. And maybe the bunch of bozos at the CIA who couldn't find Osama (despite the fact a geology professor published a paper 3 years ago telling them exactly where to look based on his much less sophisticated GIS software), maybe they really did know, maybe they know what the Joooos are up to, and maybe they know what the Persian Mafia is up to. And maybe they're all lying. Seems plausible.
Alternately, it could be....Ahmadinejad is a complete nutcase, reviled by most people in his country, and has less than a firm command over his nation. It might be other elements in the country are rather free to operate and conduct commerce without checking with the little man in the members only jacket. And it might be Israel, kinda, sorta, believes in some free trade as well, and gee, maybe traders from both sides are getting together and doing business and ignoring their respective governments.
These two people have a history going back thousands of years, including periods of war, and periods of peace and trade. Leave them to it. They'll figure it out like they have the last 2000 years. It's an insignificant sliver of land with no resources. Who cares? Leave 'em alone.
American Jews have plenty to worry about besides Israel, like self-loathing for being so darn successful, and finding ways to give their and everyone else's income away in taxes so we can have a utopian welfare state.
I'm so over the middle east. Seriously, can we just start using up all this shale oil, tar sands oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels we have in abundance on this continent so as to never need to pay any heed whatsoever to various flavors of sand people? Don't care what they do. Doesn't matter. We have our own oil, thanks. Now go get into your idiotic religious war on your own dime. The end.
kurt9 said...
ReplyDeleteSomething like 25% of the federal budget is spending for military and the interventionist foreign policy. Perhaps we should get rid of it and have the military necessary to protect our own country from attack and thats it.
I guess then you don't have to think hard whom to vote for in the next election: Ron Paul
"Hey, what's the deal with Ahamdinejad? I mean he keeps promising to wipe the evil Joos off the face of the Earth and here he is allowing them to trade freely with his country."
ReplyDeleteHe NEVER said that. If you repeat a lie too many times, it becomes the 'truth', or when legend becomes fact, print the legend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mScWWtRfGQ
Bibi is doing nothing here to endanger Israel. Here, Rumsfeld provides the REAL explanation for this: there are things we know we don't know, and there are things we don't know that we don't know.
ReplyDeleteYou don't suppose Bibi knows that Iran is not a threat to Israel, do you? After all, Israel has 100+ nuclear weapons and Iran has 0.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, we spend about 3% of GDP on the military budget, when Iran, North Korea, PAKISTAN all have or will shortly have nuclear weapons, think us weak, and don't believe much that we would or could do much of anything if we were attacked through a "deniable" proxy. Pakistan has more than 100 nukes and growing, in five years they will have more than France (aided greatly by Russia and China in particular).
ReplyDeleteIf anything the Cold War has merely mutated into a proxy phase where China and Russia (to a lesser extent) leverage long-standing Third World hatred of the US into attacks. Don't forget Afghanistan's leaders OK'd AQ's attacks on our capitol and NYC.
The best way to deter attacks, proven throughout history, is to be so strong and willing (but with "outs" for those wishing to avoid fights) as to deter attack. The best way to GUARANTEE attacks is to be WEAK. That's why Reagan spent 8% of GDP on defense.
Need I remind anyone that Reagan's defense build up was classic Keynsian pump priming that actually worked? Because it led to massive and immediate internal industrial orders and mass hiring? Unlike dams that take half a century of litigation before the first shovel is turned.
ReplyDelete------
Israel is just not very competent, and divided. Power shifted culturally to women, who are basically incompetent in managing armed conflict. Israel is 5 million Jews or less, surrounded by hundreds of millions of Arab Muslims who wish to exterminate them all. The pathetic performance against Hezbollah in Lebanon, alone shows how Israeli deterrence has eroded. Not even being able to stop Iran's nuclear march (Iran very much wants to exterminate every Jew in the World, starting with Israel, they've said it over and over and over again) is typical of the Western, feminist inspired incompetence.
Yeah, the US housing market can NEVER all go plotz all at the same time, it has been 75 years since it's done so! Subprime is safe! Shoveling mortgages to strawberry pickers making $14K a year is safe as can be! No worries, the world is made up of safe, nice people who all love each other, except for those JOOOOOSSSSS!
ReplyDeleteWhat's that, a plane approaching my office building! Nope, can't be. The world is a Disneyland ride.
[Finding bin Laden required finding the actual house, not a geographic region. Unless you wanted a nuclear war with Pakistan, you had to find the actual HOUSE bin Laden was living in. The CIA is not made up magic people, finding a guy who's protected by the Pakistani military and intel people required years of work, because he did not want to be found and Pakistan protected him.]
Israel's Minister for Strategic Affairs is floating a trial balloon that an Israel pre-emptive strike on Iran may be required to stop its nuke program. Since the probability of Obama authorizing that is zero, obviously a trial balloon. Cutting Israel loose means ... it will look to its own actions before getting nuked.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile of course Israeli companies sell to Iran. Reminiscent of the US selling to Japan shortly before Pearl Harbor when everyone knew WAR was imminent.
I'm sure Steve will be surprised and amazed, when the toxic combination of Western Civilizational weakness, Islamic militancy, nuclear weapons, and Jihad vaporize some city. I mean after all, nothing bad ever happened in America, right? Globalization means more than jobs fleeing to China and cheap Chinese junk in return, it means dysfunctional Third World Jihadis can show up anytime to vaporize your city if control lapses.
Former Amb. John Bolton is not worried about Jihadis seizing a spare nuke, he's worried about an Islamist coup and the ISI (which sheltered/protected Bin Laden) giving LeT or Jamaat al Taiba or one of the other Islamist groups nukes to "deniably" attack the US.
Ugly fact: Saudi Arabia has started its own Sunni Defense League with Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and a few other big Sunni Muslim countries to counter Iran, convinced that Obama is weak and unwilling to stop Iran's advances in the Gulf.
No worries, the world is made up of safe, nice people who all love each other, except for those JOOOOOSSSSS!
ReplyDeleteNo worries, those JOOOOOSSSSS will be tirelessly defended by millions of those SCOTTTTTSSS IIIIIIIRISSSH like WHIIIISSSSSKEEEEY!
Whiskey said, "Iran very much wants to exterminate every Jew in the World, starting with Israel, they've said it over and over and over again)..."
ReplyDeleteWhy doesn't Iran start with the Jews in Iran? You keep making these claims, yet you never explain why the Jews in Iran have not been eradicated.
>Maybe the 21st Century world just isn't really as exciting a life-or-death place teetering on the edge of the precipice as it seems to be on the 24-hour news channels.<
ReplyDeleteIf so, then life simply has no meaning. [/sarcasm]
Whiskey hasn't gotten the word yet that the old Keynsian pump-priming trick is played out. Military spending is the worst sort of pump-priming anyway, since missiles and tanks are not capital goods producing goods themselves (unlike dams that produce electricity and supply water).
ReplyDeleteDavid "Brooks' not the writer but the guy who is most famous for having a 10 million dollar bat mitzah for his daughter- was pro israel, pro iraq war but sold faulty body armor to the government - so american kids were dying in iraq -
ReplyDelete"they" are so myopically greedy that they lose all rationality or maybe they never had it in the first place.
Whiskey's posts are good for my figure.
ReplyDeleteAnytime I've overindulged, I just come to iSteve to read his latest blovious bilge. It affects me like a finger in the throat.
Forgive my ignorance, but I don't understand the reference to Norman Angell. What did he say that is relevant to this story?
ReplyDeleteSorry about the shorthand.
ReplyDeleteNorman Angell was an English journalist who published around 1910 a book called The Great Illusion pointing out that war in Europe would be bad for business.