TOKYO MASTER BANNER

MINISTRY OF TOKYO
US-ANGLO CAPITALISMEU-NATO IMPERIALISM
Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies
Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships
Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY
[LINK | Article]

*U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR*

Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
[info from Craig Murray video appearance, follows]  US-Anglo Alliance DELIBERATELY STOKING ANTI-RUSSIAN FEELING & RAMPING UP TENSION BETWEEN EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA.  British military/government feeding media PROPAGANDA.  Media choosing to PUBLISH government PROPAGANDA.  US naval aggression against Russia:  Baltic Sea — US naval aggression against China:  South China Sea.  Continued NATO pressure on Russia:  US missile systems moving into Eastern Europe.     [info from John Pilger interview follows]  War Hawk:  Hillary Clinton — embodiment of seamless aggressive American imperialist post-WWII system.  USA in frenzy of preparation for a conflict.  Greatest US-led build-up of forces since WWII gathered in Eastern Europe and in Baltic states.  US expansion & military preparation HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED IN THE WEST.  Since US paid for & controlled US coup, UKRAINE has become an American preserve and CIA Theme Park, on Russia's borderland, through which Germans invaded in the 1940s, costing 27 million Russian lives.  Imagine equivalent occurring on US borders in Canada or Mexico.  US military preparations against RUSSIA and against CHINA have NOT been reported by MEDIA.  US has sent guided missile ships to diputed zone in South China Sea.  DANGER OF US PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES.  China is on HIGH NUCLEAR ALERT.  US spy plane intercepted by Chinese fighter jets.  Public is primed to accept so-called 'aggressive' moves by China, when these are in fact defensive moves:  US 400 major bases encircling China; Okinawa has 32 American military installations; Japan has 130 American military bases in all.  WARNING PENTAGON MILITARY THINKING DOMINATES WASHINGTON. ⟴  
Showing posts with label Ron Dermer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ron Dermer. Show all posts

March 11, 2015

FOREIGN SERVICE UPDATES



Anti Benjamin Netanyahu protest: 35,000
--
#Israel
Tel Aviv's Rabin Square Saturday
35,000 - anti #NETANYAHU rally
reckon ignoring domestic / obsessed with Iran

Dissenters say Bibi focus on Iran
= avoiding Palestine issue
also 'ISIS excuse'
>made the security of Israel hostage settlers

Issues raised by speech-makers:
>peace with Palestine
>occupation
>economy
>housing crisis
>damage to relations with USA
Ditch Ron Dermer

Writer suggests #Netanyahu get rid of 'political hack' at embassy - Ron Dermer  presumably -  replace with competent and professional ambassador

http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political-insider/israel-wants-change

--
Israel - Non-residents Voting - General Election

Israel elections limited absentee votes for citizens abroad mainly for diplomats & other official emissaries

Israel - other citizens return to Israel to vote / civic commitment driving force

Israel - Woman interviewed says overseas voters not fair having say a on issues affecting her & other permanent residents.

Well, yeah, I'd be complaining about that as well ... if it's people that have been away for ages.

http://www.jewishaz.com/us_worldnews/israel/for-some-israelis-abroad-cost-and-distance-no-barrier-to/article_7c6104a8-c777-11e4-a102-8f52dd54429f.html

--
LatAm  Venezuela
Following US sanctions,
Venezuela demand:
Washington cut embassy staff from about 100 to 17
{same number Caracas is allowed in WA}
LatAm Venezuela vehemently criticised new US sanctions.
Washington goal:  for new govt to be installed.

LatAm Venezuela
US = Venezuela top trading partner
Venezuela in 2014 = 4th largest oil supplier to USA
*trade unaffected by sanctions row

http://www.spyghana.com/venezuela-vents-her-anger-on-new-us-sanctions/

---

Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim, 60, #Canada
detained #NorthKorea in Feb.
#Sweden embassy mediating for US (US = no ties)
http://www.christiandaily.com/article/canada.church.prays.for.pastor.detained.in.north.korea/49931.htm

#Indonesia #auspol
Jakarta
= abt 10 death row prisoners to finish legal appeals before setting a date for executions 
http://www.echo.net.au/2015/03/sukumaran-paints-jokowi-portrait/

#India
Delhi Police baton charged & detained exiled Tibetans staging a protest outside #Chinese Embassy.

#Tibet March 10 Tibetan National Uprising Day (1959)
http://www.newkerala.com/news/2015/fullnews-29562.html
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between #EU & #KoreaSouth is in effect
South Koreans want to suspend NorKs nukes program
Bilateral buddies #Latvia
 #Latvia   http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/legislation/?doc=103532
--

Said it before and I'll say it again:  look how buddied up the Swedes are with the US, standing in for the US in negotiations with North Korea.





February 05, 2015

Politico: "Israeli officials fail to quell Democratic revolt"




Israeli officials fail to quell Democratic revolt
By Edward-Isaac Dovere

2/4/15 7:28 PM EST

Updated 2/4/15 8:19 PM EST
Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein rushed to meetings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday trying to calm a furor created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress next month and quell a Democratic revolt that has dozens threatening a boycott.

It didn’t work.

If anything, Democrats finished the day more frustrated. According to a source in the room, one Jewish Democratic member of Congress even accused Dermer of being insincere when he claimed not to have anticipated the partisan uproar he’d ignite when he skirted protocol and went around the White House and scheduled the speech only with House Speaker John Boehner.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest, meanwhile, dangled the possibility that the White House would have Vice President Joe Biden skip the speech in what the West Wing acknowledges would be a serious snub.

The U.S. and Israeli alliance is rooted in deep defense, security, economic and investment ties, and all sides insisted the U.S. commitment to defend Israel is unaffected by the unseemly dispute of the last two weeks. And with Netanyahu on course to be reelected in March, he and President Barack Obama will need to find a way to talk again.

But the ongoing dispute over the speech seemed likely to make that more difficult than ever.

Biden has to date missed only one speech by a foreign leader at a joint session of Congress, Earnest said. The vice president really likes his ceremonial duties, he added, but might be busy on March 3, when Netanyahu is scheduled to deliver his warning to Congress about U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. The Obama administration considers the talks an important diplomatic opening that could lead to the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Netanyahu believes Iran has no intention of holding to any deal and U.S. diplomats are being naive.

The speech, which would also come just two weeks before Israeli elections, was widely interpreted as an attempt to rally opposition in Congress, which is considering legislation to try to block a deal.

“The muddled manner in which this invitation to speak to Congress has been handled is striking,” said Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and the founding director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “This is an unnecessary irritant in the basic U.S.-Israeli relationship and it couldn’t come at a more delicate time, where the Middle East region is in such turbulence and there’s so many challenges.”

Dermer and Edelstein running around the Hill on Wednesday is “symptomatic of what’s happened as a result of the speaker’s invitation and the prime minister’s acceptance of this speech,” said Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel under Bill Clinton.

If Dermer really wants to fix the problems created by the speech, goes the consensus among Democrats in Washington, he’ll need to do more than apologize: he and Netanyahu have to cancel or reschedule the speech.

Otherwise, Wednesday won’t be the lowest point of the relationship.

“It’s going to get worse: because Democrats, whether it’s Jewish Democratic congressmen, or Jewish voters for the Democratic Party — which is the majority of American Jewish voters … nobody wants to be part of that position,” Indyk said. Democrats who are supporters of Israel don’t want to have to choose between supporting Israel and supporting their president.

Earnest ducked answering whether Obama would ask Biden to attend the speech; an Oval Office meeting with the president has already been ruled out. Earnest acknowledged that a Biden snub might hurt Netanyahu in the Israeli elections March 17. [Josh Earnest, White House Press Secretary.]

“We’ll see,” Earnest said. “As we consider the vice president’s attendance, that’s one of the factors that will weigh on that decision.”
 
Seven Jewish Democratic members of Congress who met Wednesday in Rep. Steve Israel’s (D-N.Y.) office — Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Ted Deutch of Florida, Jerry Nadler and Nita Lowey of New York, Sander Levin of Michigan and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois — lit into Dermer. The invitation, they said, was making them choose between Netanyahu and Obama, making support for Israel into a partisan issue that they never wanted it to be, and forcing them to consider a boycott of the speech. One member, according to someone in the room, went so far as to tell Dermer it was hard to believe him when he said he didn’t realize the partisan mess he was making by going around Obama to get Boehner to make the invitation.

They suggested Netanyahu consider speaking to members of Congress privately, and not from the podium of the House.

“There were a wide range of views that were discussed, but one thing we all agreed on emphatically is that Israel should never be used as a political football,” Israel told POLITICO. [No idea who this may be. ]

As that was happening, a new diplomatic rift was opening. The Israelis sent Edelstein, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, to meet with Boehner. Boehner’s office remembered to invite Pelosi’s rival, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), but left House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) out.  [Is this some kind of faux pas or an outright snub?]

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy didn’t return a request for comment.

Hoyer and House Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Eliot Engel, who’d also been invited, both pulled out when they realized Pelosi was being left out.
 
“Had we been told that Rep. Pelosi wanted to attend, she certainly would have been welcome,” explained Boehner spokesman Michael Steel afterward.

By then the Israeli embassy was scrambling. Pelosi got her own meeting with Edelstein added to the schedule for Wednesday afternoon. She brought along Hoyer and Engel, as well as Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Pelosi’s office told POLITICO Tuesday that she’ll go to Netanyahu’s speech if it happens. But Wednesday, she used the Edelstein meeting to tear into the Israelis directly.

Pelosi “expressed her concern that casting a political apple of discord into the relationship is not the best way forward given the formidable challenges our two countries are facing together,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

Dermer, meanwhile, scheduled another rushed meeting with Engel for Thursday. Nothing that happened Wednesday seems to have calmed the revolt that has dozens of Democrats considering skipping Netanyahu’s speech. Earnest said that the White House can see why they might.

“Individual members of Congress will have to make their own decision, some of which I assume will be driven by their schedule and some of which will be driven by their own views about what has transpired over the last several weeks as it relates to this speech,” Earnest said.

Asked whether the president believes the America-Israel relationship would be harmed by Democrats skipping the speech, Earnest ducked again.

“The president believes that individual members of Congress will have to decide for themselves,” he said.

Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/israeli-officials-fail-to-quell-democratic-revolt-114923.html

COMMENT

This stuff sounds pretty exciting, but it's really not that big a deal (I think).  Hard to see any of it affecting US-Israel relations.


LINKS

Josh Earnest - White House Press Secretary - here.
Democratic
Rice University
Assumed office:  June 2014

UPDATE

Haartz article:

Israeli foreign ministry receiving consul general reports of criticisms regarding planned Netanyahu speech.

Criticism is mainly levelled at Benjamin Netanyahu,  Israel ambassador Ron Dermer and US speaker John Boehner.

Main supporters of the Netanyahu speech are right winger types:
  • Republican Jewish Coalition
  • Zionist Organization of America
and Christian evangelists.

Netanyahu is determined to press on.

More on ... 

Consuls in U.S. warn: Israel's friends fear Netanyahu's speech to Congress will harm ties



January 22, 2015

HIT SQUADS, MUTINY, LOBBY-TOYS, A DEAD POPE, MORAL OUTRAGE -- WHAT 'FREE PRESS'? -- AND MOSSAD

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:
Hillary Clinton (US lawyer, politician)
Michael Bloomberg (businessman, magnate, mayor of NYC)
Matt Drudge (political commentator, creator of news aggregate site Drudge Report)
Abe Foxman (Soviet-born, US lawyer, national director of Anti-Defamation League)
Anthony Weiner (New York politician, House of Reps, sexting scandal)
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.