The commission also took a unanimous stand in favor of relaxing export controls on high-technology goods and limiting the use of unilateral economic sanctions to punish nations that disagree with the United States.

The memo begins with considering the difficult matter of how to punish nations that violate "a balance between two potentially conflicting priorities: promoting trade expansion versus protecting the regulatory rights of governments".

Global labor markets punish nations with a high minimum wage or costly environmental standards.

The sword which has governed Colombia is not the scales of justice, but the whip of misfortune which, sometimes, Heaven lets fall to Earth to punish tyrants and boastful nations.

Kushiel is one of the seven angels of punishment, and was said to punish nations with a whip of fire.

For their part, one official said, the executives made a case against unilateral American sanctions to punish other nations for violations of human rights.

European allies, who had been making friendlier noises, are angry again, this time about President Bush's misguided decision to turn the rebuilding program into a way to punish nations that did not agree with the war by excluding them from reconstruction contracts.

In the video they say that they will attack sites in Europe to punish nations with forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last week, a Senate committee shelved a popular bill to punish nations, including China, that endorsed or permitted religious persecution after business groups protested that the punishments would alienate allies and trading partners.

That's because the markets that set the value of freely traded currencies, like the dollar and the euro, punish indebted nations by pushing down their currencies.