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Archive for category Mr. Bibi N. & Friends

what a gal

Feb 16

Posted by A. Peasant in Haiti, Human Trafficking, Identities, Israel, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Organ Trafficking | No Comments

Here are some of the people who assisted Haiti relief efforts on behalf of Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu - Prime Minister

Yossi Levy - Foreign Ministry Spokesman
Daniel Saban - Head of Ministry’s Latin America Department
Yitzhak Aharonovitch - Public Security Minister
Dr. Eitan Hai-Am - Health Ministry Director-General
Dr. Danny Laor - Director of the Ministry’s Emergency Division

Amos Radian (Radyan) - Israel’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada

Maj. Gen Yair Golan - OC Home Front Command
Brig. Gen. Shalom Ben Aryeh - IDF Commander of the Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue teams
Brig. Gen. Nachman Esh (Ash) - IDF Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Ariel Bar - Officer of the IDF Home Front Command

Rabbi Shimon Pelman, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of the Dominican Republic

Magen David Adam (Israel’s Red Cross) teams
IsraAID search and rescue teams and medical staff
Gal Lusky - Israeli Flying Aid

^^^^^^^^

Gal Lusky with Ehud Olmert
date unknown, perhaps 2007
http://www.ifaid.org.il/mainNews.asp?contentId=3666

Due to IFA`s extensive activities during the war in the north, Prime Minister Ehud Ulmart invited Gal Lusky to a private meeting. In the meeting, Lusky presented IFA`s International disaster response activities and specified IFA`s activities during the war in the north. Lusky reviewed in details the two aspects the organization was focusing on – civilian and military. In addition, Lusky pointed the Prime Minister to five significant issues regarding necessary follow ups and lessons for the future.

Following the experience in the north, IFA sensed the need for a better preparation of the civilian rear area to the next war. IFA called for establishment of a civil humanitarian coordination center that will allow maximum utilization of donations such as: food, equipment, human resources etc. The coordination center will prevent duplicity, improve the supervision on the equipment installations and minimize corruptions. The Prime Minister praised the activity and its extent and encouraged the organization volunteers.

^^^^^^^

Lusky started the Flying Aid organization after her brother was seriously wounded fighting Lebanon in 1992. http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3554523,00.html

“We mainly supply aid to places which Israel is unable to send assistance to due to a lack of diplomatic ties,” she explained. “As a civilian, independent group we are bound only by our conscience, we don’t ask for governmental permission in order to act and it is technically difficult to prevent us from entering.”

…The organization’s volunteers come from all walks of Israeli life including trauma therapists, logisticians, doctors, Jews, Christians, Druze and Bedouins. The hardcore participants entail about 100 people who are alerted and act immediately in the case of an emergency. They leave their homes, families and work, at their own expense and completely voluntarily go out to the field.

The IFA is subsidized by contributions from an array of organizations including the American-Jewish Committee (AJC) the Israeli companies Suny and Lotus, the Joint and worldwide Jewish federations.

In order to prevent delay of assistance during real time, Lusky works to secure funds for the organization before a disaster occurs. “There is no time during an emergency, people die. In the business world time is money, but in our world time is life and you can’t gain or fix life when it’s gone,” she said.

Lusky and the IFA are in need of additional volunteers, especially in Israel. “Secretarial abilities can greatly ease our work here,” she explained. “In addition, I need writers with outstanding English, almost diplomatic, who can connect the organization with donors worldwide, and who know what titles to give to each leader.”

In this interview with Diva International, Gal explains how Israeli Flying Aid works.
http://www.divainternational.ch/spip.php?article429

Some of the points made:

  • After a year, my brother came out of hospital. It was August 1993. When the next war began I went on my first mission as a private person, not as an organization. I then continued going on these missions.
  • I understood that if I wanted to work according to my conscience and for the victims, I needed to set up my own organization.
  • As an Israeli, I was unable to go to half of the countries in the world, because we do not have diplomatic relations with them.
  • We work mostly below the radar. This is not only because we are Israelis. We do not want to embarrass those who accept our help. They might risk their own lives if it became known that we had come from Israel to help them. We also need to protect our own lives, because after all we are all Israeli citizens carrying that passport.
  • Do you work with other NGOs? No, we work alone. Most of the time, we are the first ones to arrive. We get in first because we try to be there early. Our mission is to save lives.
  • We do not fly in, since we work undercover! We mostly fly in on regular civil flights. We do not take supplies with us –– for two reasons. The first reason is so as not to be conspicuous, and second reason is so as not to be controlled by the local government and the regimes. When you know that all ports, airports, etc., are controlled by the government, the authorities may then do whatever they want with the supplies. Everybody knows it, although it’s not politically correct to say so. We do not go along with that approach.
  • Nothing is missing in the local economy. Nothing! There is not one country where I could not buy what I needed to help the victims. The only thing that is missing is the capability of the victims to pay for aid and to transport it to the location where it is needed. We come with donation money and our intention is to empower the local society to buy everything it needs. Although I can buy, for instance, 100 tons of materials in one place, I will always divide the purchase among several sources in order to help the locals.
  • We do not need anything. We can survive in a foreign area for about a month without the help of anybody. We have our own electricity; we have our own network; we have our own intelligence and maps before we arrive.
  • The problem is donations for the missions. Most donors want credit for their donation. But because our working method is so special and since we are working under the radar, I cannot give them credit. It’s a real difficulty. We tend to keep a low profile, and this makes it really difficult to find funding for the work we do.
  • The American-Jewish committees support us, and some other donors. To raise money, I have to travel abroad. Some donors tell me that I might get killed, and I ask them why is this bothering you? I’m an adult and I know what the risks are. Every single person that is working for us knows what he/she needs to do. It is our choice
  • My dream is that Muslim money will arrive on the table to support this organization. Although I have difficulties because most Muslims will not talk to me, we do not mind working under any flag or any logo in order to save other people’s lives.
  • We do everything in one location. We are able to provide 10,000 hot meals every day (the photos are on the Internet). If I say it, there really are hot meals every day cooked by widows or single women. We have field clinics where we can treat 500 people every day. We have all kinds of doctors, surgeons and specialists –– burns, gynecologists, post-trauma experts, orthopedics, etc.

Make of all that what you will. Most private people I know struggle to pay their bills and can’t fly off to help disaster-struck peoples at a moment’s notice and survive for a month without help while simultaneously providing 10,000 hot meals a day plus surgeons to the local communities….but maybe we’re just doing something wrong here. Not that we wouldn’t like to be more helpful.

^^^^^^^

Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav also invited Gal Lusky to a closed-door meeting at his residence in Jerusalem in December 2005, to thank her for her work in the Republic of Georgia, in Southeast Asia after the tsunami, in northern Pakistan and India after an earthquake, and in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. http://www.israel21c.org/opinion/israel-s-superwoman-takes-flight-to-help-others

Moshe Katsav came under a cloud of scandal in the summer of 2006 for rape and sexual harassment charges. Eventually ten women had made charges against him. He did not go gracefully.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Katsav

A senior police official told Haaretz that “the material that has been compiled thus far in the affair is more significant and dramatic than that which has been made public in the media.”

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/753547.html

Just last month (1/10/10), he began testifying in the case. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1141541.html

Former President Moshe Katsav began testifying Sunday in a Tel Aviv court on accusations of rape and sexual harassment that were brought against him. The charges in this closed door trial were brought by three former employees of Katsav.

Katsav faces two counts of rape against A., who worked at the Tourism Ministry from March 1998 to January 1999, when Katsav served as tourism minister. One rape allegedly took place in the minister’s office in Tel Aviv and the other at a hotel in Jerusalem. Katsav will also be charged with forcible indecent assault against A. and abusing the employer-employee relationship. In addition, Katsav will be charged with lesser offenses against two employees of the President’s Residence - H., whom he allegedly hugged repeatedly against her will, and L., whom he allegedly hugged and kissed on the neck against her will.

^^^^^^^

Katsav and Lusky have also been linked in another scandal that has been, so far, impossible to verify. Some information appears to have been scrubbed from the web. Make of that what you will. The allegation goes like this, which you can google yourself: that certain parties, including Moshe Katsav, used Lusky’s organization to promote a penny stock fraud called UCSY or Universal Communications Systems. There’s a lot of information on this floating around, mostly indymedia, but the links either don’t work or are circular. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true, at least in part, just that I haven’t had any luck verifying it. But it’s really interesting stuff.

I can only verify that Lusky met Katsav, and Olmert, and Katsav is on trial for corruption and rape, and Lusky is sort of famous among Israelis for her work with IFA.

So, for all the talk about working alone and underneath the radar, Lusky has many connections.

And she is on the front lines in Haiti.

That’s the point.

the 11th commandment: thou shalt not make controversial comments about Israel

Feb 15

Posted by A. Peasant in Censorship, Clinton, Iran, Israel, Military, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Nuclear Weapons, Organ Trafficking, Russia, The West, UK | No Comments

1. UK lawmaker sacked for suggesting that Israel conduct an investigation to clear the names of their medical teams in Haiti. so to clarify: calling for an investigation to CLEAR NAMES is outrageous. she loses her job and has to apologize profusely. there will be NO INVESTIGATIONS! the very act of calling for an investigation LEGITIMIZES THE CLAIMS, see? which are scandalous. and nevermind that the Israelis have been caught with their hands in the organ jar before. that makes no difference. it is always scandalous to suggest such things even when there’s a criminal track record.

Party leader Nick Clegg removed Lady Tonge as a Lib Dem health spokeswoman in the Lords on Friday, describing her remarks as ”wrong, distasteful and provocative”.

It is the second time she has been fired for making controversial comments about Israel.

The latest row followed accusations in the online Palestine Telegraph - of which Lady Tonge is a patron - that members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had been harvesting body parts in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.

She subsequently told the Jewish Chronicle: ”To prevent allegations such as these - which have already been posted on You Tube - going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti.”

Fellow Lib Dems were said to have complained to Mr Clegg about her comments.

In a statement issued this evening, the leader said the peer ”apologises unreservedly”.

more @ telegraph

2. Ehud Barak to Mike Mullen: friends overcome differences kiss kiss hug hug

Defense Minister Ehud Barak met with the chairman of the US Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, at his office at the IDF Headquarters in Tel Aviv.

…Mullen met earlier with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Military Intelligence chief Major-General Amos Yadlin. Before meeting Barak he said the relations between the US and Israel had always been good, and that they would forever be so. The admiral also met members of the Israeli delegation to Haiti during a ceremony held at the Tel Aviv headquarters. He said they “symbolized hope” and the possibility of saving lives whenever possible.

… He also stressed that the Israeli mission to Haiti was extraordinary, and that the quake-stricken country would not soon forget everything that had been done to for them. Ashkenazi said that the delegation showed Israel and the IDF’s true faces. “I am proud to be your commander,” he told the delegation members.

more hagiography @ ynet

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3849390,00.html

3. bibi to visit moscow today-wed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Moscow next week, the Kremlin said Thursday, after Russia toughened its stance on Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu will hold talks with President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday, the Kremlin said in a statement, providing no further detail on the Israeli leader’s program for the Monday-Wednesday visit.

Announcement of the visit came after Russia officially questioned the “sincerity” of Iran’s pledges not to develop nuclear weapons and, in a policy shift, said fresh UN sanctions on Tehran were a “realistic” option. It also followed an official visit to Moscow by Khaled Meshaal, leader of the radical Palestinian independence group Hamas that is classified by Israel, the European Union and the United States as a terrorist organization.(AFP)

naharnet

4. Clinton “fears” that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship. where did this come from? Woolsey suggested it at Herzliya, and so basically after that they just start talking about it, and that makes it “true.” voila. the power of experts - no evidence required, just an echo chamber.

DOHA - US SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that she feared Iran is moving ‘toward a military dictatorship,’ with enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard ’supplanting’ the government.

The US chief diplomat told students in Qatar that the United States was not seeking to use military action against Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions but rather seeking to use international pressure through the UN Security Council. Such pressure ‘will be particularly aimed at the those enterprises controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is in effect supplanting the government of Iran,’ Mrs Clinton said.

more @ straits times

5. the real reason for sanctions against Iran

The U.S.-sponsored drive to impose new economic sanctions on Iran has nothing to do with the noble cause of limiting proliferation of nuclear weapons on the planet. It is directly linked to the U.S. military doctrine of establishing ‘full spectrum dominance’ - i.e., military dominance on land, sea, air, and outer space over all other countries in the world. The logical extension of this doctrine is that only countries firmly allied to the U.S. government should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons or to even develop the capacity to do so.

Israel , for example, is widely-believed to hold secret Nuclear weapons. Yet there is no call for sanctions or investigations of them. The reason is simple: They are a U.S. ally. India and Pakistan have declined to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and have developed nuclear weapons. Yet there is no call for sanctions or investigations of them. The reason is simple: They are U.S. allies.

…As a signatory of the U.N. Nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Iran must not develop nuclear weapons.

However - and this is a crucial point - the non-proliferation treaty gives every signatory the sovereign right to voluntarily withdraw from the treaty on three months notice. After doing so, that country has the absolute right under international law to develop nuclear weapons on its own territory.

North Korea , which originally signed the treaty and later withdrew, has now the legal right to develop nuclear weapons. India, Pakistan, and Israel never signed the treaty and therefore also have had the legal right to develop nuclear weapons.

Instead of acknowledging these realities, western politicians and media have systematically concealed them from the public. In place of the truth they have repeated vague mantras like ‘defying the international community’ (i.e., not bending to the will of the U.S.).

In a typical example of this deceptive rhetoric, U.S. President Obama said a few days ago: “Despite the posturing that its nuclear power is only for civilian use … they in fact continue to pursue a course that would lead to weaponization, and that is not acceptable to the international community.”

The absence of any legal argument in this statement reflects the fact that there is no legal argument against Iran’s nuclear energy program, and that even development of weapons would be legal if Iraq withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Of course, Obama invoking the ‘non-acceptance by the ‘international community’ does not mean the nations of the world; it’s code for ‘the U.S. and its allies’.

more @ pravda

6. attack on Iran ‘worries’ Mullen

JERUSALEM - THE chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on Sunday he was concerned about the consequences of any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

‘The outbreak of a conflict will be a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences of a strike,’ Admiral Mullen said.

Apart from saying that ‘it’s pretty hard to be specific about’ the issue, the top-ranking US military official did not expand on his comments.

more @ straits times


Woolsey offers advice for Bibi, a week later it becomes US policy

Feb 11

Posted by A. Peasant in Banks, CIA, Corruption & Crime, Iran, Israel, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Obama/Biden | No Comments

1. huh, look at that. ex CIA director James Woolsey gives some recommendations about how to handle Iran at the Herzliya conference…February 3. he suggests that no banks anywhere in the world can do any business with the Revolutionary Guard, which control about a third of the Iranian economy. that’s the idea… of course, big pharma can do business — that’s grandfathered.

2. lo and behold, a week later - February 11 - they happen! turns out the US is going after the Revolutionary Guard using their weapon of choice: BANKS. so the advice that Woolsey had for Bibi becomes the policy of Obama.

WASHINGTON - THE Obama administration narrowed in on Iran’s all-powerful Revolutionary Guard by imposing new sanctions on Wednesday on the force behind suspect nuclear work and urging the world to do the same.

It ordered a freeze on assets of an individual and four firms linked to the Revolutionary Guard - a unilateral US step toward what President Barack Obama has warned will be a ’significant regime of sanctions’ backed internationally.

The Treasury Department designated a Revolutionary Guard commander and four subsidiaries of a construction firm owned or controlled by the elite unit as ‘proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters.’

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the US is targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for its role in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, alleged links to terrorism and crackdown on anti-government protests. The Revolutionary Guard, which has been hit by repeated sanctions in the past, is also a major business force in Iran.

Mr Crowley said US diplomats put ‘particular emphasis’ on the elite military branch when they consult with other powers about sanctions, but they were not yet ready to put a draft resolution on the table at the UN Security Council. ‘Our objective here is to try to put pressure on the government and those who are supporting its policies, without having undue impact on the Iranian people,’ Mr Crowley told AFP.

The United States has been consulting with Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on Iran, but Beijing now appears to be the lone hold-out against sanctions and is calling for further negotiations. The six powers have been leading a multi-year effort to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which the West fears masks a drive to build a nuclear bomb. Iran denies the charge, saying it is for peaceful use of energy. — AFP

Canada to use its G-8 presidency to press for Iran sanctions

OTTAWA - CANADA will use its G-8 presidency to press the club of world’s richest nations for more sanctions against Iran to try to curb its nuclear ambitions, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday.

‘Canada will use its G-8 presidency to continue to focus international attention and action on the Iranian regime’ and ‘work with its allies to find strong and viable solutions, including sanctions, to hold Iran to account,’ Mr Harper said in a statement.

‘It is time for Iran to end its defiance of the international community, suspend its enrichment activity and take immediate steps toward transparency and compliance by halting the construction of new enrichment sites, and fully cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency,’ he said.

Mr Harper’s announcement came as the US Treasury Department ordered a freeze on assets of an individual and four companies linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. US President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for a ’significant regime of sanctions’ against Iran for seeking to further enrich nuclear materials in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions actions.

In Moscow, the powerful head of Russia’s national security council, Nikolai Patrushev, said Teheran’s announcement that it had started work to produce 20 per cent enriched uranium cast doubt on its claims not to be pursuing weapons. Mr Patrushev indicated the Kremlin’s patience in trying to seek dialogue with Teheran was wearing thin. — AFP

source: straits times

not for nothing

Feb 10

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Angola, Greece, Iran, Israel, Military, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, NATO, NWO, Nuclear Weapons, Oil, Oligarchs, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UK | No Comments

1. heeeyy, good news….Russia’s top ten billionaires — TEH OLIGARCHS — doubled their wealth! turns out this crisis wasn’t so bad after all… PHEW! i dunno about you but i was really worried about those guys.

Russia’s top ten billionaires have almost doubled their aggregate wealth in 12 months to $139.3 billion, the Finans business magazine reported on Wednesday. The global economic crisis saw the combined fortunes of the top ten richest Russians fall from 221 billion to 75.9 billion in 2008, the magazine reported. Since then, however, massive state injections of funds into global financial markets and government support for companies owned by Russian oligarchs has seen the trend bucked.

The 2010 rating of Russian billionaires to be released by Finans next Monday includes 500 people with an estimated fortune of 3.3 billion rubles ($110 million) As many as 77 Russians have a wealth of over $1 billion each.

As before, tycoon and Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich is among Russia’s three richest people. His fortune will enable him to keep the club afloat for another 100 years, Finans reported.

The identities of the top two richest Russians will be revealed by the magazine on Monday.

MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti)

2. Saudi Arabia, Angola, Iran remain top 3 oil suppliers for China

Saudi Arabia, Angola and Iran remained the three largest oil sources for China in 2009, with the three supplying 47.7 percent of China’s total imports, according data released Wednesday by the General Administration of Customs (GAC).

GAC figures showed that China’s oil imports from the three nations last year stood at 41.86 million tonnes, 32.17 million tonnes and 23.15 million tonnes, respectively. They represented a year-on-year increase of 15.1 percent, 7.6 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively.

…Saudi Arabia, the largest oil supplier to China, accounted for 20.5 percent of China’s total imports in 2009. Angola supplied 15.8 percent while Iran contributed 11.3 percent, according to GAC data.

Other main oil suppliers to China included Russia, Oman and Sudan.

more @ people’s daily online

3. Greeks protest as government slashes public spending

Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England was asked about Greece at a press conference on the BoE’s latest inflation report. His second statement could be translated as - their problem, not mine.  “I don’t think you can compare UK with Greece. We have different policies. We have very good track record and most importantly, the maturity of UK debt is much longer.” “This is an issue they’ll deal with within the euro area. It should be for my colleagues in the euro area to decide.”

…For a “I told you so” piece, here is Andrew Alexander of the Daily Mail, no friend of anything to do with the EU. His argument will be familiar to eurosceptics.

A particular flaw in having a ‘one-size-fits-all’ currency covering the rich and the poor, the cautious and the feckless, is that no member nation has its own currency which it can devalue or revalue in an attempt to extricate themselves from this crisis.

more @ guardian, many links

EU fear Greek ’spillover’ - “serious and persistent internal and external imbalance ‘threatens stability’ in the country. This in turn presents a ’serious risk of spillover into other parts of the euro area,’”

Berlin eyes ‘firewall’ to contain Greece debt crisis — “We are thinking about what we should do if the crisis spills from Greece into other euro countries,” said the official. “So it’s more about finding firewalls, containing the problem, than principally about helping the Greeks.”

nice. the EU: one big happy family.

4. Danny Ayalon faces hostile crowd in UK

(VIDEO) LONDON – Despite securing a promise by the UK’s Foreign Office that he would not be arrested upon arrival there, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon was not exempt from the rage of pro-Palestinian demonstrators waiting for him both outside and inside a lecture hall in London. One protestor at the Oxford University hall, where Ayalon spoke Tuesday, waved the Palestinian flag and interrupted Ayalon’s lecture for several long minutes, during which he did not stop yelling at the Israeli minister and called him a “racist” and “a war criminal.”

more @ ynet

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3846746,00.html

5. Marines gear up for assault - “hailed by officers as the biggest offensive in the eight-year-old war.” great. what could possibly go wrong?

Thousands of Afghan, US and Nato forces are expected to launch Operation Mushtarak (Together) in a bid to clear the Taleban out of Marjah, home to some 80,000 people, and expand the control of the Western-backed Afghan government. A US Marines officer said late on Tuesday that the operation, to be led jointly by Marines and the Afghan army had not yet begun. ‘The Marines have not started the operation in Marjah,’ he said, adding: ‘The operation will be led by the Marines and their Afghan partners.’  Officials and witnesses say families have fled, loading goats, furniture and clothes on to vehicles and heading to safety in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province around 20 kilometres to the north.

more @ straits times

6. bases in Afghanistan indicate permanent presence

Today, according to official sources, approximately 700 bases of every size dot the Afghan countryside, and more, like the one in Shinwar, are under construction or soon will be as part of a base-building boom that began last year.

Existing in the shadows, rarely reported on and little talked about, this base-building program is nonetheless staggering in size and scope, and heavily dependent on supplies imported from abroad, which means that it is also extraordinarily expensive. It has added significantly to the already long secret list of Pentagon property overseas and raises questions about just how long, after the planned beginning of a drawdown of American forces in 2011, the US will still be garrisoning Afghanistan.

…The Pentagon’s most recent inventory of bases lists a total of 716 overseas sites. These include facilities owned and leased all across the Middle East as well as a significant presence in Europe and Asia, especially Japan and South Korea. Perhaps even more notable than the Pentagon’s impressive public foreign property portfolio are the many sites left off the official inventory. While bases in the Persian Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates are all listed, one conspicuously absent site is al-Udeid air base, a billion-dollar facility in nearby Qatar, where the US Air Force secretly oversees its ongoing unmanned drone wars.

The count also does not include any sites in Iraq where, as of August 2009, there were still nearly 300 American bases and outposts. Similarly, US bases in Afghanistan - a significant percentage of the 400 foreign sites scattered across the country - are noticeably absent from the Pentagon inventory.

more @ asia times

7. Russia: large-scale war less possible, but threats remain

MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russia’s military policies are aimed at avoiding an arms race and military conflicts, but they should also correspond to real threats which the country faces, Russia’s security chief Nikolai Patrushev said in an interview with the Russian government daily.

On February 5, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he has approved the country’s new military doctrine, which allows preventive nuclear strikes against potential aggressors.

The Rossiyskaya Gazeta published on Wednesday the full text of the doctrine.

“The unleashing of a large-scale war is becoming less possible… At the same time, regions, where conflicts are possible, remain,” Patrushev told the paper, adding “these conflicts could lead to a war with the use of both ordinary and nuclear weapons.”

Among the threats which could destabilize the situation in the world, the Russian security chief named the expansion of NATO, the Iranian nuclear program, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

more @ ria novosti

hasbara: FAIL

Feb 9

Posted by A. Peasant in Censorship, Diplomats, Hasbara, Iran, Israel, Mossad, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Palestinians, Psychopaths, Resistance, Turkey | 2 Comments

1. Michael Oren heckled. professor appears to be practically in tears at the outrage, verbally attacks students and threatens to fail them all for disrupting the important speech of busy man Michael Oren.

2. Elie Wiesel repeats a bunch of lies and misquotes attributed to Ahmadinejad, then suggests it wouldn’t be so bad if he were assassinated. jpost puts headlines thusly, with quote marks: ‘i wouldn’t cry if he was killed’  EXCEPT that’s not what Elie Wiesel said. Elie Wiesel used the assassination word.

“I wouldn’t cry if I heard that Ahmadinejad was assassinated,” he quipped, calling the Iranian president “a pathological danger to world peace.”

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=168217

3. Lieberman whines about Turkey

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday leveled criticism at Turkey for what he called “weekly” condemnations of Israel.

Speaking during a visit to Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, Lieberman said that Israel had been “supporting close relations with Turkey for 10 years.” He said that the recent change in Ankara’s stance, since Operation Cast Lead against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, was “unexpected.”

Turkey can’t keep repeating this “sharp anti-Israel line” every week, the foreign minister told an Azerbaijani television station.

Nonetheless, he said, Israel is doing everything in its power to maintain ties and coordinate closely with Turkey.

“We hope Turkey will make certain amendments to its foreign policy,” he added.

Lieberman’s comments came some two weeks after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an said Israel “should give some thought to what it would be like to lose a friend like Turkey in the future,” in an interview with the Euronews channel.

“We have important ongoing agreements between us. How can these agreements be kept going in this climate of mistrust? I think Israel had better take another look at its relations with its neighbors if it believes it is a world power,” Erdo?an said in the interview.The Turkish premier said that the humiliation of Turkish Ambassador to Israel Oguz Celikkol by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon had “no place in international politics.”

Earlier in January, Aylaon called Celikkol in for a public dressing down over a Turkish television show that depicted Mossad agents as baby snatchers. At that meeting, Ayalon instructed the camera crews, in Hebrew and in the ambassador’s presence, not to film them shaking hands, to show that the Turkish envoy was sitting on a lower sofa, to show that there was only an Israeli flag on the table and not to film them smiling.

When asked by Euronews if Turkey could have handled relations with Israel more diplomatically, Ergodan answered that “I am telling the truth…And I will keep telling the truth.”

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=168212

a resurrected post from december

Feb 7

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Censorship, China, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Minerals, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Oil, Putin, Russia, Terrorism, The West | No Comments

here are some links i had gathered together on 12/13/09, and posted at my news blog, which has since been quarantined as a spam blog by google. somebody in india reviews it about once a week and puts it back in quarantine. this particular page has also been erased from the google cache, for some unknown reason.

1. Kazakh uranium boss trial to proceed - 12/10/09

Prosecutor’s office spokesman Nurdaulet Suindikov commented, “The investigation charges former Kazatomprom president Mukhtar Dzhakishev with theft by way of embezzling a state company’s property.” Suindikov added that Dzhakishev would be charged with embezzling 100 million tenge ($600,000) from Kazatomprom.

Dzhakishev, who was earlier credited with making Kazakhstan a top global uranium producer while overseeing Kazatomprom, has denied all charges against him.

Kazakhstan contains the world’s second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. The country in 2006 produced 5,279 tons of uranium, but as part of its plans to increase output boosted uranium output in January-September to 9,535 tons.

upi asia

2. Chinese president to visit Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan - 12/9/09

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Hu Jintao will pay a working visit to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan from Dec. 12 to14 at the invitation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said here Wednesday.

chinaview

3. Kazakhstan urged to lift visa requirement for Iranian traders - 12/8/09

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran called on Kazakhstan to lift visa requirements for those Iranian businessmen willing to run trade activities in the Central Asian country.

“…if lifting visa requirements comes on both countries’ agenda, then visits by traders and businessmen will be facilitated and the ground will be prepared for the expansion of cooperation,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman Parast said at a round table dubbed as ‘Trade Opportunities of Iran and Kazakhstan’ here in Tehran on Tuesday.

Mehman Parast reiterated that the Iranian foreign ministry is striving to prepare the necessary grounds and conditions for those traders interested in making investments in target markets.

Noting that the trade volume between Iran and Kazakhstan has increased in recent years, he stressed that in case existing problems are resolved, the two countries can boost the volume of annual trade to $10 bln.

Mehman Parast also referred to the strategic situation of Iran and Kazakhstan in the region, and said today the world supplies its needs through importing either the goods and products manufactured by Iran and Kazakhstan or the other countries’ products which should again pass through Iran or Kazakhstan.

fars

4. International Space Station astronauts land safely on Kazakhstan steppes - 12/1/09

BEIJING, Dec. 1 (Xinhuanet) — Three astronauts landed safely on the Kazakhstan steppes Tuesday after spending six months on the International Space Station.

The Russian Soyuz TMA-15 capsule landed as planned at 10:17 a.m. Moscow time (07:17 GMT) about 85 km north of the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan.

chinaview

5. Yunnan Copper mulls buy in Kazakhstan - 12/1/09

BEIJING, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) — Yunnan Copper Co., China’s third-largest copper producer, is thinking of acquiring a copper mine in Kazakhstan next year, China Daily reported Tuesday.

The company is also considering investing in Southeast and South Asian countries including Laos and Indonesia, the newspaper said, quoting the company’s general manager Yang Chao.

Besides investment in the overseas market, the copper producer is also scouting for more copper reserves in the Inner Mongolia and Tibet autonomous regions. The company’s copper reserves would touch 9 million tonnes by 2012, according to Yang.

He predicted that copper prices might even surpass 70,000 yuan (10,294 U.S. dollars) per tonne in 2010, although prices are likely to remain volatile over the next year, and copper demand will increase next year

Copper is widely used in home appliances, wires and cables; it can also be used in water pipes, largely increasing the need for copper in the future, Yang said.

chinaview

6. Kazakhstan: Israel’s Partner in Eurasia by Ariel Cohen in Jerusalem Viewpoints Sept-Oct 2009

http://tinyurl.com/yfw6d8h

The June 2009 visit by Israeli President Shimon Peres to Kazakhstan once again focused Israel’s attention on energy-rich, secular Muslim states of the Caspian and Central Asia: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This was not Peres’ first visit to the steppe country in the heart of Eurasia: he visited Kazakhstan several times before as foreign minister and deputy prime minister. This was a good long-term investment:

Kazakhstan is as large as the entirety of Western Europe, but with a population only 1.5 times larger than the population of the city of Moscow. It is one of the most sparsely populated countries on Earth.

7. 11/16/09 - Germans ID convert, 27, as terrorist suspect

BERLIN — Authorities have identified a 27-year-old German convert to Islam as an al-Qaida associate suspected of traveling to Afghanistan and planning to attack German targets. The report could fuel concerns about European converts being recruited by Islamist terrorist groups for attacks. The Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed a Spiegel Online report Sunday that it had posted notices across Afghanistan warning that Jan Schneider, a Kazakhstan-born ethnic German, may plan attacks on German military or civilian institutions in Afghanistan.

…Schneider, who is also known as Hamza, has recently traveled to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Spiegel reported. He left Germany in 2004 to study Arabic in Saudi Arabia. He was seen in his hometown of Saarbruecken several times after his departure from Germany.

…Spiegel also wrote that the criminal office has warned of several other German extremists who supposedly have traveled to Afghanistan in recent months. More than five million ethnic Germans have immigrated to the country from the former Soviet Union, Poland, Romania and other Eastern European countries since the 1950s under a special migration law for persons who can prove German ancestry.

DEFUNCT LINK: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gRbmVOhddpRWJo-KpO06aa6sHQRwD9C03L2O1

alternate link (cache): http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:hJxPAOZqPHsJ:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33949307/ns/world_news-europe/+BERLIN+%E2%80%94+Authorities+have+identified+a+27-year-old+German+convert+to+Islam+as+an+al-Qaida+associate&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

8. 10/12/09 - Avigdor Lieberman visits Kazakhstan among other countries to discuss Iran

By Roni SoferY Net NewsOctober 12, 2009

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is set to leave for a round of visits abroad this week, after recently returning from Africa, South America, and the Balkans. This time Lieberman will visit Austria, Kazakhstan, Holland, and Denmark, mainly in order to discuss the topic of Iran.

Lieberman says he wants to “invest effort in nations that have not received attention from Israel until now”….The foreign minister is also scheduled to meet with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, following the latter’s request. Lieberman has clarified that the object of this meeting, as well as those in Holland and Denmark, is “to bolster Israel’s status by widening the wingspan of its foreign policy”.

Lieberman will also meet with Israeli ambassadors to Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, as well as the ambassador to the EU.

via aletho news - LINK DEFUNCT


9. 9/10/09 - Caspian sea states shut Iran out of summit

Iran is peeved at its northern neighbors over a decision to exclude the Islamic Republic from a meeting ofCaspian Sea states on Thursday.
Iran’s top diplomat, Manouchehr Mottaki, said today he was outraged that Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan plan to meet in the Kazakh city of Aktau without Iran, according to the website of Iran’s state-owned English-language Press TV satellite news channel.
“In our view the meeting runs contrary to Iran’s national interests,” Mottaki said.
Iran has stewed for years as Russia and its former Soviet satellite states gobble up more and more of the Caspian Sea’s resources.
The four countries attending the Aktau meeting, described as an “informal” summit to discuss “subregional cooperation,” say they don’t plan to make any decisions on the status of the sea or the division of the seabed, an official representative of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry told Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency.

there are no sunglasses

10. 12/2008: Michael Parenti

“While claiming to be fighting terrorism, US leaders have found other compelling but less advertised reasons for plunging deeper into Afghanistan. The Central Asian region is rich in oil and gas reserves. A decade before 9/11, Time magazine (18 March 1991) reported that US policy elites were contemplating a military presence in Central Asia. The discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided the lure, while the dissolution of the USSR removed the one major barrier against pursuing an aggressive interventionist policy in that part of the world. US oil companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these new reserves. A major problem was how to transport the oil and gas from the landlocked region. US officials opposed using the Russian pipeline or the most direct route across Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, they and the corporate oil contractors explored a number of alternative pipeline routes, across Azerbaijan and Turkey to the Mediterranean or across China to the Pacific.”

11. 11/3/08 - Putin: we must end monopoly in world finance

The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has called for a complete overhaul of the world’s financial system in order to guarantee stability and ensure progress. He was speaking in Astana in Kazakhstan, where the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is meeting to in discuss the global financial crisis.
The organisation, which comprises Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is widely seen as a counter-weight to NATO’s influence in Eurasia. It is primarily concerned with security issues. This time, however, the sides are discussing how to develop social and economic cooperation.
At the beginning of his speech at the SCO Council of Prime Ministers, Vladimir Putin stressed the role the SCO countries should play in the changing world political and economic landscape.
“We now clearly see the defectiveness of the monopoly in world finance and the policy of economic selfishness. To solve the current problem Russia will to take part in changing the global financial structure so that it will be able to guarantee stability and prosperity in the world and to ensure progress,” he said.
He also named projects in transportation, telecommunications and modern technology as priorities of the SCO and spoke in favour of mutual space programmes.
While in Kasakhstan, the Russian prime minister is also expected to discuss the formation of a customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan with Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

russia today

12. 11/13/08 - Kazakhstan and the financial crisis

The financial crisis that began in the United States has made its presence felt around the globe and Central Asia is no exception. How is Central Asia’s greatest economic power, Kazakhstan, handling this economic crisis and how is the economic downturn effecting the stability, security, and development of the region. These were the main topics of a conference between many regional experts in Astana last month called “New Challenges and Kazakhstan’s Contribution to Stability and Security.” [link defunct]
Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, a scholar of the region’s economic and strategic outlook attended the conference and not only summarizes the major issues and policies discussed, but also provides a historical perspective of past economic crisis’s in Kazakhstan. Here is an excerpt of what Nurbakh Rustemov, the keynotespeaker and Chairman of the hosting parliamentary committee, had to say of the economic downturn and its consequences:

“He bluntly stated that the world financial crisis was leading to a “misunderstanding” among geopolitical forces, and carried the danger of a direct threat to humanity, through hunger and poverty.(1) He called for uniting forces internationally, to overcome the financial-economic crisis, which he dubbed the “number one priority.” Rustemov mentioned the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which Kazakhstan is a founding member, as well as the OSCE, which Kazakhstan will chair beginning 2010, as bodies his government would like to utilize to find solutions to the crisis. Two concrete means that his country could use to impact the crisis, would be in securing energy resources, and providing grain and meat exports to alleviate food shortages.”
Rustemov is correct in stating that this economic crisis may lead to following and connected geopolitical disruptions and he’s also right in arguing that regional and multilateral groups, such as the SCO and OSCE, will be crucial in helping the world get through this mess in one stable piece. Another important aspect of his comments is the positive role Kazakhstan can play in impacting the crisis in a productive way and that is in securing energy resources and in providing food stuffs to alleviate shortages in other countries, specifically in harder hit CA states, such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan.
Kazakhstan’s abundance of energy supplies, combined with President Nazarbayev’s prudent planning, have left the nation in good condition despite the tough times. Nazarbayev announced last month that the government would spend $2 billion to stimulate the economy, mainly targeting banks and the construction industry, funds drawn from the nation’s oil fund. Unfortunately, not all CA or world states have an oil fund to fall back on.
What the whole of Central Asia can hope for is sturdy economic stewardship by its regional leader,Kazakhstan, and help from regional bodies, both from the East and West to weather what will most likely be a lengthy recession. During this time, it will be vital to keep the region from falling into disrepair as poverty and extremism would both be on the rise and this may lead to conflict. The US, Russia, China, and the EU all have roles to play in mitigating negative ramifications of this crisis in the region, but a strong and active Kazakhstan is crucial. As Muriel Mirak-Weissbach concludes:
“Kazakhstan has become the foremost interlocutor in Central Asia, not only for Eurasian giants Russia and China, but also for the two major economies of western Europe, Germany and France. If the current world crisis can be overcome through participation of major Eurasian nations, Kazakhstan can become the linchpin in the region for stability and security.”
In addition, the US State Department announced a nuclear safety cooperation with Kazakhstan. Read Below. [link defunct]
The United States and the Republic of Kazakhstan reached a new milestone in a multiyear joint project to irreversibly decommission the Soviet-era BN-350 fast breeder reactor located at the Kazakhstani port of Aktau on the Caspian Sea. The participating governments completed a sodium processing facility that will be used to dispose of coolant from the reactor core. This action demonstrates and reinforces the strength of the U.S.-Kazakhstani strategic relationship, and our joint commitment to preventing the proliferation of nuclear materials.

source: foreign policy blogs

http://centralasia.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/11/13/kazakhstan-and-the-financial-crisis/

damage control: you’re doing it wrong

Jan 14

Posted by A. Peasant in Diplomats, Hasbara, Israel, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Stupidity, Turkey | No Comments

Oh dear…

“This is not diplomacy, but rather a mistake by one person. It is good that this man, the deputy foreign minister, fixed his mistake,” the president said at an event in Tel Aviv. “This must not be attributed to the entire country and to all diplomats. We must learn not to make such mistakes,” Peres reportedly said.

Earlier Thursday, Kadima Council chairman and former MK Haim Ramon said

that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government should send a letter of apology

to all the Israeli citizens

for humiliating Israel in an unnecessary confrontation with Turkey.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1263147892230

Also:

Turkey’s main Jewish group on Thursday said the row between their country and Israel must be solved courteously, and warned that continued tensions could inflame anti-Semitism.

…“We continue to be concerned about a new environment in Turkey which permits and even encourages extreme expressions regarding Jews and Israel,” Abraham H. Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement released Wednesday.

“While we have celebrated Turkey’s history of coexistence with Jews and the protection Turkish society provides for its Jewish community, we cannot ignore this new atmosphere and its potential consequences.”

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142658.html

No no, keep talking. You’re doing just great.

See: the full monty:

Ayalon’s associates responded that the messages of praise he had received from inside and outside his party outnumbered the condemnations by a ratio of eight to one. They stressed that everything he did was coordinated with Lieberman.

UPDATE: No no…see, Ayalon meant to threaten the Turkish ambassador, not humiliate him. Sheesh you people are so hyper-sensitive. He tewtally deserved it.

In the interview, Ayalon also said that the incident in which he reportedly ‘humiliated’ the Turkish ambassador by making him sit in a lower chair was intended to send the Turks a threatening message, not humiliate the ambassador. [SEE? Threatening, humiliating...not the same. -ed.]

“The story with the cameras wasn’t planned, I didn’t think it was being recorded, and if it was - I didn’t think it would be aired with sound. [ie: I though I would get away with it... - ed.] My intention wasn’t to humiliate, but to send a visual message. The ambassador didn’t feel humiliated either - only once reporters started calling him. The picture was aimed at the Turks, to send them a message. I think what Erdogan did to Peres in Davos is humiliation, not this,” said Ayalon….During the meeting, Turkey’s ambassador was seated in a low sofa, and facing him, in higher chairs, were Ayalon and two other officials - an arrangement carried out at Lieberman’s orders. [But that doesn't mean it was, you know, "planned." - ed.]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142969.html

Donde los clown pants?

the full monty

Jan 13

Posted by A. Peasant in Diplomats, Hasbara, Israel, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Psychopaths, Turkey | No Comments

Israel displays its petty and sophomoric nature with the Turkish diplomatic incident and subsequent fallout. Behold.

Background: Israel needs Turkey. Turkey doesn’t need Israel. Turkey has been making friends all over the place. Erdogan stood up to Peres last year at Davos over Operation Cast Lead. In typically myopic Israeli style, everything is always about Israel and Israel’s glass feelings. So when a Turkish television drama depicted Israeli security forces kidnapping children and shooting old men — a depiction supported by conspiracy facts on the ground, lest we forget Operation Cast Lead and organ stealing, just two recent examples of genocidal behavior — Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon could not resist behaving like a seventh grader while meeting Turkish ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol in Jerusalem.

At the beginning of the conversation with the Turkish envoy on Monday, Ayalon told cameramen in Hebrew: “Pay attention that he is sitting in a lower chair … that there is only an Israeli flag on the table and that we are not smiling.”

One Turkish source said that Ayalon “set a trap” for Celikkol, and that the envoy had no idea that he was being humiliated until afterward when Ayalon’s words to the cameramen were broadcast. The source also mentioned that Ayalon did shake his hand, but not in front of the cameras.

And does anyone have the sense to say, you know, maybe that’s not a good idea? NO! In fact they all seem to think this is a splendid smack-down. The Israeli dailies splashed the news all over the front pages. We hazed that fucker, boo-yah! High fives.

TEL AVIV - Israeli newspapers on Tuesday played up what they called the “hazing” of Turkey’s ambassador by Israel, in an incident likely to ratchet up already high tensions between the two allies.

The media highlighted the fact that Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon made Ambassador Ahmet Celikkol sit on a low couch while the Israelis sat on high chairs.

Rather than summoning Celikkol to the ministry as is the norm, Ayalon saw him in his parliamentary office after making him wait in the corridor and telling staff to remove the Turkish flag and refreshments that were on the table. “The important thing is that people see that he’s sitting low down and we’re high and that there is one flag,” Israeli television aired Ayalon as telling invited photographers and camera crews.

Israeli dailies all splashed the story on the front page, with Maariv headlining: “The ambassador gets a hazing” above a picture showing the Turkish envoy sitting much lower than Ayalon and looking uncomfortable.

Some people in Ayalon’s party, sensing the faux pas, say he ruined his career. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1263147877256

“He is finished politically,” an Israel Beiteinu official said. “This ruins his reputation as a diplomat. It is a stain that cannot be erased. He damaged Lieberman and first and foremost himself. It is too soon to say if it will completely disqualify him, but people in the party will no doubt remember this if a decision would be made on who should be acting foreign minister. This erases the notion that he is the obvious front-runner.”

…”We have enough problems with the Muslim world without picking a fight with a country that has 72 million Muslims,” Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio from India, where he is on an official visit. “When I met with the Turks [in November], I told them what needed to be said privately. This is not the way [to do things]; it is the way to get the entire Muslim world against us. Whoever wants the entire Muslim world against us, well, the best of luck to him.” Former deputy foreign minister Majallie Whbee of Kadima called for “the diplomat Ayalon to fix the damage of the politician Ayalon as soon as possible, apologize to the ambassador, and promise to put the agenda of the country ahead of that of his party from now on.”

Labor MK Daniel Ben-Simon called upon Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to summon Ayalon to his office and put him on a low chair, “so he will see how low Israeli diplomacy has stooped.” He said Netanyahu should replace Lieberman before he does even more damage to Israel’s image internationally.


But *those* people make up a small minority! Far MORE people consider Ayalon da bomb!

Ayalon’s associates responded that the messages of praise he had received from inside and outside his party outnumbered the condemnations by a ratio of eight to one. They stressed that everything he did was coordinated with Lieberman. “The party seems to be behind him on this,” an Ayalon associate said. “Our phones and fax were ringing off the hook, he got great support on Facebook, and he was received very warmly on a lunch visit to a humous restaurant in the [capital's] Mahaneh Yehuda market. There has of course been criticism, but the support has been overwhelming.”

Not enough rope? Wait there’s more. There’s the non-apology apology — actually several:

Ayalon, before the statement was released, told Army Radio that he would not apologize. “It’s the Turks who should - for what [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan said and for the television series,” Ayalon said. “We are merely setting boundaries.”

…“The prime minister believes that the foreign ministry’s protest to the Turkish ambassador was just in its essence but should have been conveyed in an acceptable diplomatic manner,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

So there. Neener neener to you too. And the truth of the matter: Israel does not like Turkey’s friends. Israel decided to give Turkey a little spanking.

Netanyahu expressed concern at the deterioration of relations between Israel and Turkey. In talks behind closed doors, he said that during the past two years “Turkey has been steadily and systematically slipping eastward toward Syria and Iran,” instead of westward, toward Europe and the United States. “This is a trend that should really trouble Israel,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

Sources in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Bureau said Tuesday the decision to invite the Turkish ambassador for a reprimand by Ayalon was made together with Lieberman. They noted that the Israeli PM was not aware of the way the reprimand would be carried out, “but the minute it happened the prime minister [gave] the foreign minister his full backing.”

Official sources in Tel Aviv said Erdogan had changed his attitude towards Israel since Operation Cast Lead. “This process started when Erdogan abandoned a debate with President Shimon Peres (in Davos), so actually what is being done in Jerusalem is less important than what is happening in Ankara,” one source said.

Aha, still smarting over Erdogan standing up to Peres in Davos. And now Barak has to go to Turkey and make all kiss kiss hug hug. Ha good luck with that.

BEIRUT- Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak will head to Ankara over the weekend for talks with Turkish leaders including Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul and senior military officials , an official in Barak’s office told AFP on Tuesday, as tension between the longstanding allies again spike.

He added that the visit would take place despite the rising tension, which erupted on Monday after [SPIN:] Israel complained to Ankara over the broadcasting of a television series portraying Mossad agents as baby snatchers.

“We give this visit much importance. The ties between the two countries are important, and they must be maintained even if there are ups and downs,” the official said.

Clarification: The tensions erupted after Israel’s obnoxious leaders could no longer maintain diplomatic protocols and revealed their true petty nature for the world to see.

They dropped the mask.

geez that really looks like a cover up of some sort

Nov 3

Posted by A. Peasant in Corruption & Crime, Identities, Israel, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Russia | No Comments

This is bizarre:

TEL AVIV, November 3 (RIA Novosti) - Israeli police have arrested the murderer of a family of six, a police spokesman told RIA Novosti on Tuesday. Thirty-eight-year-old Russian immigrant Dmitry Karlik has confessed to killing six members of the Usherenko family, including a three-month-old baby and his four-year-old sister, in Rishon LeZion on October 17.

Karlik (whose surname means ‘dwarf’ in Russian) hails from Russia’s Urals city of Chelyabinsk. The Usherenkos had moved from Tajikistan and had been running a restaurant. Karlik, a former employee in the family’s business, was fired in 2007 over the theft of alcoholic drinks. Karlik has already confessed to the murder. His wife and sister have also been taken into custody. The latter is suspected of having passed the key from the Usherenkos’ house to her brother.

The investigation into the case, one of the most horrific murders in the history of modern Israel, has been under personal control of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch.

A horrific murder, but why would it need to be under Bibi’s personal control? Never heard of such a thing except in banana republics. What could possibly account for such treatment?

Here’s a clue:
http://samsonblinded.org/news/government-negligence-facilitated-monstrous-murder-14445

Police released the names of Usherenko family’s murderers. The murder, which shocked the country, left dead a family of six, including children. It took the police just weeks to find the murderer, one Dmitry Karlik, a former employee in the family’s business.

The murder was made possible by Israeli government’s refusal to extradite Karlik to Russia, where he is wanted for armed robbery. The refusal contrasts with the government’s readiness to extradite many other suspects. While refusing to extradite Karlik, the government did not prosecute him for the foreign crime, either, or at least made his past known to the employer.

Both the murderer and his victims are non-Jewish.

Well then, it certainly seems that Karlik was and perhaps still is being protected from the consequences of his actions.

Oh wait there’s more…from a Chabad Lubavitch site. The Usherenko family lived across from a Chabad shul. This story was published on 10/18, the very next day after the murders.

http://www.shmais.com/pages.cfm?page=archivenewsdetail&ID=58676

A chareidi website reported that a week before yesterday’s tragic murder of the Usherenko family in their apartment opposite the Chabad shul in Rishon Letzion, a bloodstained shirt was found in the shul.At first, it was thought that the shirt belonged to someone who had gotten drunk and hurt himself during Simchas Torah celebrations. Perhaps he had used his shirt to stanch a bleeding wound. However, others were more concerned as they felt that there was too much blood on the shirt for this to be the explanation.

Eventually, the shirt was thrown out into the garbage. However, yesterday morning, when first reports of the murder, which took place only about 50 meters away, appeared, the congregation started to wonder if there was a connection and they reported the find to the police.

The police have since told Israel’s Channel Two Internet news that there is no connection between the shirt and the murder.

The investigation into the murders, which have rocked the entire nation, is still continuing. Earlier suspicions that a member of the family was responsible for the murders before committing suicide have been ruled out.

Good police work there huh? The blood soaked shirt gets thrown into the garbage, but the police know — already a day after the murder — there is no connection between the blood soaked shirt which they’ve never seen and the murder. How do they know?

And where are all the news stories about this shocking crime, which has “rocked the entire nation”? Go ahead. Try to find them on Haaretz or JPost or anywhere.

cranky

Sep 17

Posted by A. Peasant in Mr. Bibi N. & Friends | No Comments

Boy, I’ll tell you, between covering up illegal organ trafficking, getting away with taking down the economy, trying to get a cocked-up war on with Iran and the Americans to fight it, and now spinning away the UN human rights report on Gaza, guys like Danny Ayalon must be just swamped.
“Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work, but I’ve got my country’s 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I’m swamped.” - Prince Humperdinck

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133472

(by Gil Ronen, IsraelNN.com) One day after the publication of the United Nations report by Judge Richard Goldstone, which blamed Israel for “war crimes,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon met with the heads of the Jewish community in New York and exhorted them to fight the report.

“The Goldstone report should be treated like the U.N.’s Resolution 3379 that compared Zionism to racism,” Ayalon told the local leaders. “That is why we must commit ourselves and act with all our force against the report, with the purpose of removing it and torpedoing it,” he said.

Ayalon was also scheduled to meet Wednesday with Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and with other senior officials in the Obama administration and in Congress. Ayalon intends to raise the subject of the report in all of these meetings and to convey the message that the report is unacceptable and that it undermines Israel’s right to defend itself.Sources close to Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday that the UN. Report “is a reward for terror and encourages [terrorists] to continue on the path of terror.” The sources said that the defense establishment is now preparing to give IDF officers legal support.

The sources close to Barak said that “we are checking, through the international and diplomatic channels, the possibility of making the report inadmissible.” They also said that “the comparison that the report makes between the perpetrators of terror and its victims makes no sense.”


“And when I say that you are a coward it is only because you are the slimiest weakling ever to crawl the earth.” - Buttercup
“I would not say such things if I were you!!!” - Humperdinck