Detente Poisoning

The Foreign Ministers of Japan, South Korea & China have been meeting together, finding areas of agreement and building a groundwork for a possible upcoming trilateral leadership summit.

Photo: Michael Gross & US State Department

Somehow, at the same time, diplomat Stephen Bosworth, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea (and eight-year President of the Sasakawa-funded United States-Japan Foundation) is widely quoted in the press declaring Japan "should not go back on what it has already agreed ... on the subject of comfort women and other subjects."  Major story in Korea!

This important topic has simmered for more than seventy years. It's a poorly-timed coincidence that the former U.S. official undiplomatically stirs-up trouble the same day a foreign minister's trilateral meeting is being held (to which the USA was pointedly not invited). 

Ambassador Bosworth & Secretary of State Clinton, 26 Feb. 2009

Bosworth goes on to discuss what he believes is "in Japan's interest" -- but if he really cared, he'd zip his lip.

Two friends? Hamster duo.

The USA is frightened of East Asia finding common ground & co-prosperity. Discussions find Yankee somehow pushing in...

Today's BBC (link) reports of meetings between China, the ROK and Japan:
'The poor relationship between Japan and South Korea has become a concern for the US, which sees the two countries as its main military allies in Asia. Last week, US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel described the tension between its "two friends" as a "strategic liability".'

"Team USA" is an increasingly illusive domestic abstraction, as 1% hoodwink the vast majority to submit.

South Korea & Japan are more apparently subjugated: the USA bases tens of thousands of young & vigorous American military troops in each nation. For more than sixty years the two lands and their gelded leaders have been reliable pet hamsters to American Empire.

Poison Japan

20 March 1995 I had an early appointment at a western Tokyo university. I walked from my home to Kasuga subway station, then rode a packed commuter train to Suidobashi and changed to the westbound Chūō Line for a 30-minute standing ride.

The trip just then was memorable for being crowded. At the start we were packed so tightly, I still remember being unable to move my arms to wipe my forehead or pat-down my hair. Swearing to avoid Tokyo rush hour trains, I've kept off 'em for the past 20 years.

The morning's further memorable dimension emerged later in the day, after returning home on an almost empty train: nearby painful death. Deluded people on five Tokyo subway trains silently released sarin nerve agent (a deadly poisonous chemical weapon) and then disembarked. I'd been blissfully unaware; the cars I rode were spared, and I saw nobody sick. But I was perhaps just a few meters away from the poisoners and their clear plastic bags of liquid. Hundreds were sickened, a dozen people were killed.

Spooky?  Sure. But two points are most horrible:

1) Nine-months earlier (on 28 June 1994, 240km west of Tokyo) the same group wreaked their first sarin attack in Matsumoto: killing eight & injuring 200 people (link). Japanese Police took some time to discover the killing agent was sarin, and the police throughout were woefully inept. A victim identified as the prime suspect, Yoshiyuki Kōno (河野義行), was vilified by media around Japan (Shincho Weekly later reportedly disavowed its article 「毒ガス事件発生源の怪奇家系図」 after threat of lawsuit - link; see also here). If Japan's police had been slightly alert that year, they'd have solved the Matsumoto case and avoided the Tokyo attack.

2) Response to the Tokyo sarin terror attack on the day was very poor & slow. One Marunouchi line train with poison gas went on its route back and forth and back again for one hour and forty minutes. Many stations were visited three times... and that train passed through my neighborhood twice while dripping poison (and a prior time with culprits pre-release)...

Lessons? Avoid reliance on Japanese officials. One book on the incident (Murakami's Underground. - link) depicts the sarin attacks as laying bare glaring problems of fragmented & sensationalized Japanese society. I wholly agree.

Israel's War

Israeli PM Netanyahu, facing a tight election, tried to position his opponents as Arab-leaning, and promised never to allow a "two-state solution" ...

Netanyahu and his supporters have chosen WAR -- a continued genocidal policy to expand the  Zionist state for Jewish settlers.

Similar to the Cherokee and Comanche while the US Army butchered them without mercy, the local Palestinian people and the Palestinian State will never be completely exterminated. They've good reason to be upset.

Israel should get no support for its political war.
STOP U.S. aid & political graft to Israel NOW.

Israeli Election Day

Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו

Tuesday 17 March (2015) at 3:23AM (Israel Standard Time) 
Israeli Election Day

== שתפו עכשיו ==

שלטון הימין בסכנה. המצביעים הערבים נעים בכמויות אל הקלפי. עמותות השמאל מביאות אותם באוטובוסים.

לנו אין V-15, יש לנו "צו 8", יש לנו רק אתכם. צאו אל הקלפי, תביאו את החברים ובני המשפחה, הצביעו מחל כדי לסגור את הפער בינינו לבין מפלגת "העבודה".

בעזרתכם ובעזרת השם נקים ממשלה לאומית שתשמור על מדינת ישראל.


 == שתפו עכשיו ==

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152778935532076

Polls had actually not opened when PM Netanyahu posted his video (hover mouse on Netanyahu's page "March 17" date to see his Facebook time stamp)  - Nobody observed hordes of Arabs bussed to the polls -- clear bullshit [ just the PM's personal 3AM nightmare ] -- He's trying gross inflammatory scare & fear tactics...

And this troubled dude can set-off multiple nukes

ByeBye Bibi?

Can Israel cast-off the rightwing shackles of Netanyahu - Lieberman?

HOPE

The present belligerent government suffers economically, and is able only to buy or bully "friends" -- While the likely alternative is continued chauvinism, there are some encouraging signs of change. In any event, Netanyahu is a mean-hearted despot whose time is past.

PS - Here's a link to Israel's decayed PM appealing to his right-wing constituents, calling for all help defeating the droves of lefties and Israeli-Arab voters. "With your help, and with God's help, we will create a Nationalist Government to protect the State of Israel." (link)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERc6hi_F9LA

Politicized Poor

Self-absorbed people in the USA have some sense of how Vietnamese and Venezuelan people, Haitians & Hondurans, comparatively are more politicized.

Them folk mess with politics & revolution!

Because they've been driven like sheep to the slaughter, and have fought-back at great cost, they're now politicized. Oligarchs of their nations, backed by the USA, raped the land and enslaved their people with empty dreams of excess and extravagance.

"El Tigre" -- helping the Honduran people?

Most of the world are naturally calm & happy folk who'd prefer a mañana lifestyle - to relax & not worry much. But that's difficult when US-sponsored paramilitaries & death squads seize the neighborhood... when your cousin disappears, or your uncle's defiled corpse is dumped in the village center.

Even one death squad's too many.  
How many murders have we funded?

What's responsible for this dirty business?  (link)     Greed.
Me-first big wealth is an unsustainably violent motivator...

Obama in 2012

I don't like President Barack Obama... but there's much more to dislike about Mitt Romney, the arrogant Republican who lost the 2012 Presidential election...

Why conjure up the past?

It is worth considering what we'd be facing if Romney had been elected. We'd almost certainly be in open war with Iran (bowing to Israeli demands) and also more actively fighting Venezuela. American forces might also be more extensively deployed in the Ukraine, and around China...

Militarism has engulfed America -- greedy, deadly & grotesquely limitless.

Thank President Obama  for avoiding even more War.

Dead Beyond Count

Militarism is expensive. Costs are more than monetary -- including many forms of continuing trauma and death.

Afghanistan intervention cost at least 2356 American lives (link)

Iraq intervention cost at least 4489 American lives (link)

Each fatality is a tragedy (with far more killing of local people). Death is a continuing shock to friends & loved ones. The victim may suffer an instant of surprise, but hopes & promises are muddied & too-quickly erased.

The heroism of those serving overseas is tempered by reality: they should be home -- not enslaved to Big Capital or protecting an ugly foreign potentate. Courageous people who risked life & lost everything for an unknown flag. Bad choices led each of these troops to work & die overseas, away from family, far from home.