HIT SQUADS, MUTINY, LOBBY-TOYS, A DEAD POPE, MORAL OUTRAGE -- WHAT 'FREE PRESS'? -- AND MOSSAD
Started my browsing adventures off with looking for evidence of Iranian hit squads, cos I'm on a half-hearted mission to figure out who's knocked off Argentina's prosecutor, Alberto Nisman.
Yet to find Iranian hit squads ... but I've been distracted by this find: a hilarious 2011 article on Libyan & Iranian 'Greatest Hit Squads' in America:
By Mark Ames
If you’re feeling like you’re being taken for a ride with all this nonsense about Iranian-Narco-Mexican terror hit-squads infiltrating this great nation, read on…
Think this is the guy who's written about American support for Chechen extremists.
Yeah, checked and confirmed it's the same guy that wrote the Chechen article I liked. Posted in relation to it here. Remember also liking the humour that came across.
Anyway, as I get distracted easily, the very next thing, I'm getting blown away by the news that John Boehner and Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer have teed up a Benjamin Netanyahu Congress speech on February 11th, having cut out the main man, Obama, and having seemingly rigged up a scandalous (and mutinous?) scenario, where Bibi gives a speech rebutting US foreign policy.
Behind Obama's back: How Netanyahu's US trip was cooked up << Boehner initiated >> http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.638396
> departure from protocol - Israel ambassador Ron Dermer & speaker John Boehner cook-up
> Prevent Iran nuclear weapons shared goal
John Boehner’s Bibi invite sets up showdown with White House >>>
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/john-boehner-invites-benjamin-netanyahu-congress-iran-114439.html
<<< "Republicans & Democrats in the Capitol seem more closely aligned with Netanyahu than with Obama" >>>
Bibi’s Congress speech Feb 11 = foreign leader, blocks from WH (invitation of Congress) to rebut the US foreign policy!!
Boehner: "serious threat that exists" "serious conversation" "how serious the threat is" >> Going with 'serious threat', eh?
The news seemed massive to me and I got super excited ... but nobody else seems as excited as I was.
Just checked to see if it was reported elsewhere and found that The Guardian has also reported on Boehner's moves, rather coolly:
John Boehner invites Netanyahu to address Congress on Iran next month
However, that's a rather mild take on what seems to be going on, when you consider that the authority of the President of the United States is being challenged here by some lobby-toy politican, Boehner.
The Guardian continues:
Invitation, provocative move by House speaker, came hours after Obama threatened during State of the Union address to veto any Iran sanctions bill
'Threatened'? Sounds a rather extreme way to describe what is a statement of Presidential intent made during the President's SOTU address, and presumably within the President's authority.
An odd way to convey what seems to be the other way around: Congress threatening to pass a sanctions bill that the President considers counter-productive to furthering negotiations with Iran, who may well choose to walk, rather than negotiate, at the end of the day.
As for 'provocative move', I'd have called it an underhand, backstabbing, embarrassing mutiny. So what gives?
The White House, meanwhile, is downplaying this by calling it a "break of normal diplomatic protocol". Yeah, I'll say. If this was happening in Russia, can you imagine the screaming headlines?
Anyway, I wanted to know a bit more about Boehner and I found this fantastic Rolling Stone article:
The Crying Shame of John Boehner
He's a lazy, double-talking shill for corporate interests. So how's he going to fare with the Tea Party?
written by Matt Taibbi, who turns out to be another really clever and funny guy, who's co-edited The eXile with Mark Ames (of the 'Greatest Hit Squads' article fame, above).
Not only that, turns out Taibbi's written a piece that was denounced by US politicians and talking heads:
"The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope"
At first I was like, dude, this is a bit sick ... but then I got reading and saw the humour in it.
Personal favourites:
28. Bears everywhere shitting in woods.
8. Bush continued: "He touched all of us in places no one else could reach."
Sure, it may not be to everybody's taste, but so what?
This is the condemnation bandwagon list:
Matt Drudge (political commentator, creator of news aggregate site Drudge Report)
Abe Foxman (Soviet-born, US lawyer, national director of Anti-Defamation League)
Perhaps others also complained, but from the above list of denouncers (referred to in Wikipedia), there's not a single Catholic among those that took umbrage, so what's the real agenda?
In addition to a pious whinge-fest, "the editor who approved the column was fired".
A look-up elsewhere indicates that the New York Press editor, Jeff Koyen, was given two weeks unpaid leave but chose to quit, and:
Koyen called his former publisher "a spineless alt-weekly weenie" for not standing up to the harsh criticisms the article received. Criticisms came from a variety of people such as U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph Guliani.
Koyen also reacted to statements made by Rep. Anthony Weiner who was quoted by the New York Daily News calling on New Yorkers to "exercise their right to take as many of these rags as they can and put them in the trash."
Interrupting the distribution of a newspaper -- even by purchasing a large quantity of them and throwing them out -- is illegal, koyen noted.
Ooh, look, finally a (thrice-married) Catholic among the condemning mob, the toothy Guliani, who caused some controversy by supporting:
People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO), from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. [Wikipedia]
Cool, Iranian assassins is what I was originally looking for!
Uncertain why a bit of satire caused such political outrage at the time (guessing nearing April 2005).
There was four different incidents of US gun violence leading up to that time and 22 people were killed within a short amount of time, but I guess 22 people among a population of over 300 million doesn't upset things as much as it might in a smaller population. Well, not enough to challenge the armaments manufacturers and the gun lobby.
During 2005, USA was 2 years into the Iraq invasion and had been in Afghanistan since 2001.
The other thing happening at that time was the final stages of the Terri Schiavo drama being played out. Basically, heart attack and severe brain damage in 1990; kept on artificial supports until 2005, when feeding tubes were finally removed. What is horrific is the amount of time this person had to linger in a vegetative state, as well as the amount of time (13 days, I think it was) it then took to die after removal of feeding tubes. It's like something out of a horror story.
It's really doing my head in that something like that can happen to a person and that medical people are not permitted to step in to do the right thing and euthanase the vegetative person, who will exist (if supported) in a vegetative state (which nobody could possibly want as an existence) or otherwise die ... slowly.
Anyway, there seems to be some interesting reflections of the past in the present.
Currently there's a satire and freedom of press related hysteria that's done an outraged wave around the world (but not as much outrage at the barbaric slaughter of people who have a right to live, to express themselves politically or otherwise, and to work without the threat of violence or death).
The current touring Pope has tried to declare religion as off-limits (self-serving, or what?) and virtually justified the violence along the lines that it could be expected, given his rather stupid insult-my-mother analogy. The mommy insult analogy makes it sound like some playground bit of bullying between children (unless his Holiness thinks it's fine for adults to go around assaulting or murdering one another because they don't like what's said).
Automatic weapons and a rocket launcher aren't a bit of school-yard 'you-said, so I'm getting even' bullying. Why trivialise something so ugly and uncivilised that we should all despair for the future on this planet?
Opportunistic politicians and others have also tried to deny the right and merit of free speech, effectively blaming the victims of extremist violence. A number of figures have also tried to use this atrocity to further state control agendas of (a) suppression of free speech and (b) expansion of state controls, such as mass surveillance and denial of encryption services etc.
Getting back to the Netanyahu and US Congress drama, a Bloomberg article indicates that Mossad has broken ranks with the Israeli PM, telling US officials that new Iran sanctions would 'tank' the nukes negotiations.
Israeli Mossad Goes Rogue, Warns U.S. on Iran Sanctions
Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee --
supported by Republican Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain -- is
pushing for his own legislation on the Iran nuclear deal,
which doesn't contain sanctions but would require that the Senate vote
on any pact that is agreed upon in Geneva. The White House is opposed to
both the Kirk-Menendez bill and the Corker bill; it doesn't want
Congress to meddle at all in the delicate multilateral diplomacy with
Iran.
Israeli intelligence officials have been briefing both Obama
administration officials and visiting U.S. senators about their concerns
on the Kirk-Menendez bill, which would increase sanctions on Iran only
if the Iranian government can't strike a deal with the so-called P5+1
countries by a June 30 deadline or fails to live up to its commitments.
Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister’s office has been supporting the
Kirk-Menendez bill, as does
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, ahead of what will be a
major foreign policy confrontation between the executive and legislative
branches of the U.S. government in coming weeks.
Evidence of the Israeli rift surfaced Wednesday when Secretary of
State John Kerry said that an unnamed Israeli intelligence official had
said the new sanctions bill would be “like throwing a grenade into the
process.” But an initial warning from Israeli Mossad leaders was also
delivered last week in Israel to a Congressional delegation -- including
Corker, Graham, McCain and fellow Republican John Barrasso; Democratic
Senators Joe Donnelly and Tim Kaine; and independent Angus King --
according to lawmakers who were present and staff members who were
briefed on the exchange. When Menendez (who was not on the trip) heard
about the briefing, he quickly phoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron
Dermer to seek clarification.
OK, what's going on here? How is who Israeli intelligence (or Israeli politicians) favour in the USA sphere of national sovereignty even relevant, and why are these American politicians -- who are answerable to the American voters -- even in Israel on a 'congressional delegation'?
Don't know why Obama doesn't just step down so Netanyahu can take his rightful place at the helm of US politics, if Israel is pulling that many strings in the US through its intelligence services addressing a visiting congressional delegation, as well as addressing politicians in the US, while Israel's Foreign Minister is making arrangements directly with Boehner (rather than Obama), and even the pro-Israel lobby group, AIPAC, happens to be playing some role in the decision-making process in the US, by the look of things.
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC
Annual budget $67 million @ 2010
America's powerful Pro-Israel Lobby
Critics have accused AIPAC of acting as agent of Israeli govt, with a "stranglehold" on the US Congress. [Wikipedia]
All of this congress squabbling, and appearance of rogue senators and rogue Mossad, sounds like crap to me. We wouldn't be privy to any of this if the politicians didn't want us to know about it.
I'm going to take a guess and say this is some kind of smokescreen for something. But I'm not sure what, seeing the final decision can only go as follows:
1) either the US goes with sanctions against Iran or it doesn't.
2) either the Senate gets to vote on the results of any Geneva agreement with Iran or it doesn't.
Well, that's that.
But I still don't know what the Iranians get up to, I'm no closer to finding out who killed Alberto Nisman and no wiser about the sport of US Congress.
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