Afghan embassy scandal compared to Abu Ghraib

AFP | Sep 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — Scandalous photographs of contractors at the US embassy in Kabul Monday could hurt US interests in the same way as images of abuse in Iraqi prisons, the head of a US investigating panel said Monday.

“This is the equivalent of Abu Ghraib,” said Dov Zakheim, who chairs the Congress-appointed commission on war-time contracts, referring to the notorious photos of abuse at the US-run jail in Baghdad, which emerged in 2004.

Samuel Brinkley, the vice-president of Wackenhut Services, appeared before investigators to explain photos showing embassy security staff in various states of undress and inebriation, but said he would not try to justify their conduct.

“Let me say that I am not here to defend the indefensible,” Brinkley told the panel.

“I am personally embarrassed by their misbehavior and I am embarrassed to be here speaking about their poor judgment and inappropriate actions,” he said.

Employees of the Wackenhut subcontractor ArmorGroup are accused of undermining security at the embassy by engaging in a series of hazing rituals and offending local customs.

The State Department’s head of management, Patrick Kennedy, told the commission that US diplomats should have done more to monitor the contractors’ behavior.

“There’s no question that we could have done more,” he said.

“As the department’s senior management officer, I take responsibility for having failed to prevent them and for having not uncovered them earlier.”

Meanwhile, panel commissioner Linda Gustitus urged officials to end ArmorGroup’s contract to send the message that such behavior would not be tolerated.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters that 165 employees of ArmorGroup had been interviewed during the investigation, adding that 12 guards had either been removed or had resigned.

“As you know, alcohol has been banned there,” Kelly said, adding that a US embassy security officer had also been assigned to oversee the contractor’s camp.

Kelly said Kennedy’s briefing had stressed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, and senior State Department leadership “were outraged by the misconduct of these contractors, and of course, they have ordered… immediate and strong action.”

But he added the State Department had not uncovered any security breaches despite the contractor behavior, and that department employees in Kabul had not been put at risk.

Russian researchers: Earth doesn’t need dinosaurs to produce oil

Russian research has shown that the Earth doesn’t need dinosaurs to produce oil

Financial Post | Sep 12, 2009

Endless oil

By Lawrence Solomon

Do dead dinosaurs fuel our cars? The assumption that they do, along with other dead matter thought to have formed what are known as fossil fuels, has been an article of faith for centuries. Our geologists are taught fossil fuel theory in our schools; our energy companies search for fossil fuels by divining where the dinosaurs lay down and died. Sooner or later, we will run out of liquefied dinosaurs and be forced to turn to either nuclear or renewable fuels, virtually everyone believes.

Except in Russia and Ukraine.

What is to us a matter of scientific certainty is by no means accepted there. Many Russians and Ukrainians — no slouches in the hard sciences — have since the 1950s held that oil does not come exclusively, or even partly, from dinosaurs but is formed below the Earth’s 25-mile deep crust. This theory — first espoused in 1877 by Dmitri Mendeleev, who also developed the periodic table — was rejected by geologists of the day because he postulated that the Earth’s crust had deep faults, an idea then considered absurd. Mendeleev wouldn’t be vindicated by his countrymen until after the Second World War when the then-Soviet Union, shut out of the Middle East and with scant petroleum reserves of its own, embarked on a crash program to develop a petroleum industry that would allow it to fend off the military and economic challenges posed by the West.

Today, Russians laugh at our peak oil theories as they explore, and find, the bounty in the bowels of the Earth. Russia’s reserves have been climbing steadily — according to BP’s annual survey, they stood at 45 billion barrels in 2001, 69 billion barrels in 2004, and 80 billion barrels of late, making Russia an oil superpower that this year produced more oil than Saudi Arabia. Some oil auditing firms estimate Russia’s reserves at up to 200 billion barrels. Despite Russia’s success in exploration, most of those in the west who have known about the Russian-Ukrainian theories have dismissed them as beyond the Pale. This week, the Russian Pale can be found awfully close to home.

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden and the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington joined colleagues at the Lomonosov Moscow State Academy of Fine Chemical Technology in publishing evidence that hydrocarbons can be produced 40 to 95 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. At these depths — in what’s known as Earth’s Upper Mantle — high temperatures and intense pressures combine to generate hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons then migrate toward the surface of the Earth through fissures in the Earth’s crust, sometimes feeding existing pools of oil, sometimes creating entirely new ones. According to Sweden’s Royal Institute, “fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.”

The Institute’s lead author, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology, is even more brash at the implications of his findings: “With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” he delights. Kutcherov’s technique involves dividing the world into a fine-meshed grid that maps cracks (or migration channels) under the Earth’s crust, through which the hydrocarbons can bubble up to the surface. His advice: Drill where the cracks meet. Doing this, he predicts, will dramatically reduce the likelihood of dry wells. Kutcherov expects the success rate of drillers to more than triple, from 20% to 70%, saving billions in exploration costs while opening up vast new areas of the planet — most of which has never been deemed to have promise — to exploration.

The Nature study follows Kutcherov’s previous work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that created hydrocarbons out of water, calcium carbonate and iron — products in the Earth’s mantle. By superheating his ingredients in a pressure chamber at 30,000 times atmospheric pressure, simulating the conditions in the Earth’s mantle, Kutcherov’s alchemy converted 1.5% of his concoction into hydrocarbons — gases such as methane as well as components of heavier oils. The implication of this research, which suggests that hydrocarbons are continuously generated through natural processes? Petroleum is a sustainable resource that will last as long as Planet Earth.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

In public health bill, a contagion of fear

State rebuts talk of forced injections

Boston Globe | Sep 17, 2009

By Stephen Smith

The banner, bold and provocative, was tattooed with a syringe, skull and crossbones, and a call to action: “Say no to forced vaccination.’’

The message, delivered last week on Beacon Hill, was aimed at a seemingly prosaic piece of legislation that aims to better define – and, in some respects, restrict – the emergency powers of the state’s public health officials.

Within the bill’s arcane language, a 16-month-old activist coalition sees government authority run amok: mandated vaccinations, quarantines, arrests, fines. Swine flu, they warn, will be the virus that opens the door to the public health police.

“We have a concern that we will be forced to be quarantined if we refuse the vaccine,’’ said Laura Jackson, president of the Liberty Preservation Association of Massachusetts, which mustered 30 to 40 members for the lobbying drive. “What I’d like to see done with this law is have it burned.’’

Those concerns, public health authorities insist, are entirely unfounded. But the association’s multimedia campaign – aired over talk radio and its website – compelled state Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach to send an italicized, bold-faced missive to legislators, stressing that “mandatory vaccination is not and has never been part of the plan or discussion in Massachusetts’ pandemic response.’’

The bill, Auerbach and other top officials said in interviews, would never force anyone to be vaccinated unwillingly, and its extraordinary measures – such as quarantining people who decline inoculations – would be reserved for equally extraordinary times, such as a bioterror attack or the emergence of a highly lethal, rapidly spreading germ. Swine flu, caused by the H1N1 virus, is not such a germ, Auerbach said.

The protest by the group, whose founders supported Republican Ron Paul in the 2008 presidential election, reached its pitch at an especially delicate moment for public health authorities. Auerbach’s letter demonstrates that his agency is worried the dissent could raise doubts about vaccination and imperil an unprecedented campaign to inoculate millions this fall against the seasonal flu and the swine strain.

“Accuracy of information is going to be key in terms of the public understanding what they should do,’’ Auerbach said in an interview.

In the opposition to Massachusetts’ revised public health emergency law, as well as in the combustible health care town hall meetings that greeted some members of Congress this summer, analysts see more than traditional conservative concerns about individual liberty and big government.

They also find signs of deeper worries about a world descending into uncertainty, with panic over economics and the emergence of a novel flu strain.

“It doesn’t surprise me that when you have another epidemic, another threat of a disease, then you get emotions tweaked up, and separately in the health care debate, we’ve seen a rise in emotionalism replacing logic,’’ said Gene W. Matthews, a senior fellow at the University of North Carolina’s Institute for Public Health.

Matthews was among those who presided over efforts to update public health emergency regulations when he was the top attorney at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the arrival of anthrax-laced letters at congressional and media offices a month later revealed a largely ignored truth about those laws: In many states, they had not been updated for decades.

A team led by Lawrence O. Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor, drafted the language that has served as a model for Massachusetts’ proposed law and for revised rules adopted in 37 states so far.

“Most of the laws were very antiquated,’’ Matthews said, “and they didn’t recognize concepts of due process and individual rights and legal evolution that had occurred in the last 50 years.’’

In times of emergency, medical authorities had long possessed sweeping powers to do what was necessary to protect the public’s well-being. According to the state Department of Public Health, such emergencies have been declared only three times since the 1970s, with the most recent being a 2006 order for aerial spraying to combat Eastern equine encephalitis in Southeast Massachusetts. In 1993, when West Stockbridge’s water supply ran dry, the agency used its powers to tap water from a private source. And in the 1970s, the state took control of a financially teetering nursing home.

The updated legislation, passed by the Senate in late April and awaiting action in the House, carries penalties for certain violations: People who refuse orders to remain isolated could face up to a month in jail and fines as high as $1,000 a day.

But the proposed law also would, in certain instances, provide a check on the power of health officials. For example, a judge’s approval would now be needed before a government agency could perform tests or a physical examination on someone thought to present a significant medical risk to the community.

Bob Dwyer, an opponent of the law, said the Liberty Preservation Association was “not trying to say don’t take the vaccines’’ against the flu.

Still, he said, he believes the emergency law “violates numerous rights that we have in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution,’’ including the right to freely assemble. The law is unnecessary, he insisted, because most people don’t need the threat of legal action to persuade them to remain home when they’re sick.

It’s understandable that some people might greet talk of quarantines with trepidation, said Valerie Bassett, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Health Association.

But such measures, taken in rare circumstances, are “the same reason you drive within the lane on the highway,’’ Bassett said. “It’s about the protection of health and life.’’

Two thousand schoolgirls suffer suspected ill-effects from cervical cancer vaccine

Thousands of schoolgirls have suffered suspected adverse reactions to a controversial cervical cancer vaccine introduced by the Government.

A support group says it has received dozens of calls from parents who believe their daughters have been damaged by the vaccine.

Telegraph | Sep 12, 2009

By Laura Donnelly

Doctors’ reports show that girls of 12 and 13 have experienced convulsions, fever and paralysis after being given the vaccine, which is now administered in schools as part of efforts to prevent women developing cancer.

Others suffered nausea, muscle weakness, dizziness and blurred vision, according to a special report drawn up by drug safety watchdogs.

A support group says it has received dozens of calls from parents who believe their daughters have been damaged by the vaccine.

The parents of one teenage girl given the jab last autumn believe it was to blame for repeated seizures which have left her with brain damage and psychosis.

The immunisation programme for teenage girls is controversial because it protects them from the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus which causes 70 per cent of cervical tumours.

When the Government introduced the Cervarix vaccination programme last year, some campaigners dubbed it a “promiscuity jab”.

Campaigners and families said the new figures showed the vaccination should not have been introduced via a mass programme.

More than one million girls have already been given the jab, which is offered to all as they enter their teens.

Until 2011 it will also be administered to older girls, so that all female teens below the age of 18 will be covered by the programme.

Ministers say that ultimately the scheme will save 700 lives a year, while drug safety experts insist the number of suspected reactions are outweighed by the benefits from the jab.

Most of the more than 2,000 suspected reactions recorded by drug safety watchdog Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) were mild, with dozens of girls recording rashes, pain in the arm, and allergies.

But the report prepared by the MHRA earlier this month also discloses cases in which teens have suffered convulsions, eye rolling, muscle spasms, seizures and hyperventilation soon after being given the jab.

The analysis by the MHRA, drawn up this month, found 2,107 patients had reported some kind of suspected adverse reaction to Cervarix. Several reported multiple reactions, with 4,602 suspected side-effects recorded in total.

Jackie Fletcher, founder of Jabs, a support group for families whose children have fallen ill after immunisation, said she had taken dozens of calls from parents who believed their daughters had been damaged by the cervical cancer vaccine.

She said: “We have spoken to parents whose daughters have had seizures, paralysis, blurred vision, severe headaches and the loss of feeling in parts of their body.

“Doctors will try to convince parents that these problems are in their child’s mind, or have nothing to do with the vaccines, but we don’t think there is sufficient evidence to show Cervarix is safe.”

Medical safety experts insist the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.

They say many of the patients who experienced an “adverse” reaction to the jab since April 2008, including some who took part in drug trials or bought the drug privately, only suffered short-term side effects from the injection process, not as a result of the drug.

There was no evidence to suggest “isolated cases of other medical conditions” were actually caused by the vaccine, and not just a coincidence, the regulator’s report said.

Cancer charities urged parents to continue allowing their daughters to have the jabs, saying the numbers were well within what would have been expected for a large-scale programme, and that most of the side effects were minor.

Robert Music, director of cervical cancer charity Jo’s Trust said: “I can understand why parents would feel cautious, but this programme could reduce 70 per cent of cervical cancers.

We need to keep reviewing the evidence, but we would really urge parents to make sure their daughters have the vaccination.”

Stacey Jones is one of those who believes she has suffered side effects from the vaccine. She was 17 when she had her first Cervarix injection.

Her parents Julie and Kerry, from Bilston, West Midlands, noticed her becoming increasingly emotional in the weeks following the first two jabs, but feared their “happy-go-lucky” girl had finally succumbed to adolescent moodswings.

Within four days of the third injection in March of this year, Stacey suffered an epileptic seizure, followed by 17 more in the following week.

She has now been diagnosed with a brain injury, caused by inflammation of the brain, and is being treated in an NHS rehabilitation unit in Birmingham, which helps her with basic tasks like making a sandwich.

Seizures are minimised by five types of medication, but her memory is badly damaged.

The family has been given no explanation for how the damage occurred. Mrs Jones, 44, said: “She was such a lovely, happy go-lucky girl, now she is just a shell.

“When we go to see her, she can’t remember what she has just eaten for tea. The impact on her and all of us has been absolutely devastating. I feel she has been used as a guinea pig.”

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Cervarix, said the drug had to undergo rigorous testing, with over 70,000 doses used in trials before a licence was granted.

He said: “The UK medicines safety agency has reviewed all reported adverse events relevant to Cervarix and there is no evidence to suggest that the vaccine carries any long-term side effects.

“The symptoms this girl has experienced are clearly upsetting and it is understandable that the girl and her parents want to uncover the cause.”

Clinton Aide Takes Responsibility in Afghan Embassy Hazings

Bloomberg | Sep 14, 2009

By Janine Zacharia

Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) — The State Department’s personnel chief took the blame for lewd acts by the guard force at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, a hazing scandal that has raised questions about the outsourcing of diplomatic security.

“As the State Department’s senior management officer, I take responsibility for having failed to prevent them and for not having uncovered them earlier,” Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, told an oversight panel today of the incidents documented in photographs, testimony and e-mails.

Eight guards assigned to secure the embassy in Kabul have been fired and four quit after appearing in scenes of nudity and drunkenness. In addition, the senior management team in Kabul for the contractor, ArmorGroup North America, is being replaced. ArmorGroup is owned by Wackenhut Services Inc., whose parent company is West Sussex, U.K.-based G4S Plc.

The company has said it is cooperating in the State Department probe.

Kennedy, who reports to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, spoke before the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, born out of legislation signed last year by President George W. Bush.

Commission co-chairman Chris Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut, said the incidents in Kabul “undermine American efforts to build a stable, peaceful and democratic Afghanistan” and they “provide free recruiting material to the Taliban.”

Abu Ghraib

Commissioner Dov Zakheim, a former undersecretary of defense, called the scandal “the equivalent of Abu Ghraib for Afghanistan,” referring to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. personnel at a facility west of Baghdad.

The scandal emerged as President Barack Obama is trying to develop a more effective strategy to fend off the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Obama has ordered an additional 21,000 troops and trainers to the war, which will bring the total U.S. force there to 68,000.

Still, since 2004, the U.S. military hasn’t provided soldiers to secure the embassy. The State Department has since relied on outside contractors to provide that function.

A total of 2,500 contract workers serve as guards in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kennedy said. He added that finding contractors for those countries presents “unique logistical challenges” for the State Department.

More Scrutiny

Kennedy said an embassy regional security officer is being stationed at Camp Sullivan, the housing complex about four miles (six kilometers) from the embassy compound where the activities took place.

“These recent events make evident the need for stronger State Department oversight, including now when contractors are off duty,” Kennedy said. “And unless that oversight can be effectively provided by our contractors, closer management by government personnel will be necessary.”

Commissioners questioned why the State Department hadn’t terminated the ArmorGroup contract even after it issued repeated reprimands of the contractor’s conduct since 2007.

Commissioner Linda Gustitus said the State Department need not wait until the end of an investigation to terminate a contract and likened the incident to one involving the company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, which provided security in Iraq.

Five guards employed by Blackwater, now known as Xe, were charged in December with manslaughter and weapons violations in the deaths of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in a hail of gunfire at a busy Baghdad intersection in 2007. A sixth Blackwater guard has pleaded guilty to related charges in the case.

Sending ‘Message’

“When you didn’t terminate your contract with Blackwater,” Gustitus, a former chief of staff to Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said, it sent “a message to other contractors that you can do a lot” and not lose a contract.

The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based non-profit organization that investigates misconduct, prompted the State Department actions. In a Sept. 1 letter to Clinton, released to the public, the group detailed how some guards and supervisors engaged “in near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates.”

The watchdog group described and provided photos of scenes of nudity and drunkenness and said guards who refused to participate were ridiculed, demoted and even fired.

Guards also remained sleep-deprived because of staff shortages, and the inability of some personnel to communicate adequately in English forced the use of pantomime in dangerous situations, the group said.

Mafia ‘was paid to sink ships carrying radioactive cargo’

London Times | Sep 17, 2009

Richard Owen in Rome

About 30 ships containing radioactive and other poisonous refuse may have been scuttled off the Italian coast in an illegal Mafia operation to dispose of dangerous substances at sea.

Italy’s political opposition yesterday demanded an investigation after the wreck of a cargo vessel containing 120 barrels of potentially radioactive waste was found in waters off the southern province of Calabria. Environmental campaigners said that many more ships containing toxic and radioactive rubbish were believed to lie near by.

The discovery of the Cunsky, sunk in 1992, came after her location was revealed to anti-Mafia investigators by Francesco Fonti, a former member of the ’Ndrangheta, or Calabrian Mafia, who has become an informant. Mr Fonti claimed that the Cunsky contained radioactive material.

Mr Fonti has told police that he had used explosives to sink her and two other waste ships. The introduction of tighter European Union environmental legislation in the 1980s made illegal waste disposal a lucrative business for organised crime.

Investigators using a robot submersible filmed the Cunsky lying in 1,600ft of water nearly 20 miles off the coast. They said that the ship’s name was not visible, but it tallies with Mr Fonti’s information. The submersible recorded images of containers marked “toxic”.

Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria’s environment agency, said: “Even without taking into account investigations that suggest over 20 ships were sunk, the government must at least find these two other ships.” He said the presence of toxins and heavy metals in the Mediterranean was a matter of international concern.

Sebastiano Venneri, of the environmental group Legambiente, said that several former ’Ndrangheta members had confirmed that it had been paid to sink ships with radioactive material “over the past 20 years”.

Iran hopes for a New World Order

Ahmadinejad has managed to engage the major powers on a range of issues, the very discussion of which could create the impression that Iran is being accepted as a partner in creating “a new global order”.

Gulf News | Sep 15, 2009

By Amir Taheri

Has Iranian President Mahmoud won his first diplomatic victory since his disputed re-election last June?

Last Thursday, Tehran presented what it called “an updated package” as the basis for fresh negotiations with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (5+1).

On Friday, P.J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman in Washington, said the package was “unacceptable” because it did not address the Iranian nuclear issue.

Nevertheless, he continued to say that the US would seek “an early meeting” while giving Iran until the end of the year to make up its mind.

On Monday, however, Iran announced that October 1 has already been fixed as the date for starting a fresh round of negotiations. The official Islamic Republic News Agency (Irna) reported that Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy czar and the point man on negotiations with Tehran, had agreed to the date after studying the Iranian ‘package’.

If the proposed round of talks, the first since last autumn, actually take place, Ahmadinejad would be able to claim a diplomatic victory.

There are three reasons for this. The first is that, for the first time since the nuclear dispute started almost a decade ago, it would be Iran and not the big powers, acting on behalf of the Security Council, setting the agenda.

To be sure, the 5+1 would have every opportunity to raise whatever issue they want, including the nuclear dispute. However, they would be doing so solely within the framework fixed by Tehran and not the three mandatory resolutions passed by the Security Council.

Even before being elected, US President Barack Obama had promised “direct and unconditional talks” with Iran.

However, what he ends up getting next month will be conditional talks, with conditions fixed by Iran.

Nor would he get the one-on-one talks he had hoped for. The US would be ‘engaged’ in a multilateral context in which China and Russia would act as ‘restraining powers’, anxious to prevent undue pressure on the Khomeinist regime.

The second reason why Ahmadinejad could claim victory is that he has managed to engage the major powers on a range of issues, the very discussion of which could create the impression that Iran is being accepted as a partner in creating “a new global order”.

Without saying so in public, the Iranian leadership has resented the fact that it has been shut out of the G20 negotiations into which others such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and South Africa have been welcomed.

Ahmadinejad likes to refer to Iran as “a world power” with “both the right and duty to offer mankind an alternative vision.” His hope is to transform the 5+1 into a new G7 of which Iran is a full partner. The proposed ‘package’ is a script for a thorough re-orientation of global policies, rather than settling the dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Ahmadinejad claims that in today’s world only two powers count: Iran and the United States. This is why he insists on being treated as a world leader and not a regional pariah. His address at the forthcoming general assembly of the United Nations in New York has already been described by the official media in Tehran as a “blueprint for a new world order”.

Finally, even if Iran fails to secure a place at the top table through the 5+1 group, the coming negotiations could provide a mechanism for buying time. Weeks, if not months, could be spent on ‘clarifying’ aspects of the proposed ‘package’.

In fact, Obama has already given Ahmadinejad a whole year, free of pressure and additional sanctions.

The consensus in Tehran is that Iran would reach the so-called nuclear threshold within the next 18 months. This means it will have the technical, scientific and industrial wherewithal to build a nuclear arsenal. Once that threshold is reached all talk of stopping Iran from acquiring a military nuclear potential would be academic. The issue would become one of persuading Iran not to build the bomb.

There are two reasons for Tehran’s self-assurance as it prepares for next month’s talks. The first is that Ahmadinejad and his advisors are confident that the Obama administration has already accepted a nuclear Iran but dare not do so openly because it is afraid of the ‘Zionist lobby’ in Washington.

Here is how Ata-Allah Bahrami, senior analyst for the official news agency Irna, puts it: “Leaving aside the literature of propaganda and judging by the real yardsticks of national interests and threats, the United States has no problem with Iran’s nuclear project and does not regard it as a threat to itself”.

He continues: “American [officials] have repeatedly spoken of accepting a nuclear Iran and tried to propose counter measures. [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton has spoken of an American nuclear umbrella for the Middle East”.

The second reason is that Ahmadinejad believes that Obama is anxious to organise the United States’ strategic retreat from the Middle East. With help from Iran, Obama could obtain an orderly retreat. With a hostile Iran, the planned retreat could turn into “an historic catastrophe” for the United States.

The message from Tehran to Washington is simple: “Your time in the Middle East is over, and you know it. You are looking for ways of getting out without being routed. Recognise Iran as the new dominant power in the region and we shall help you get out with minimum losses”.

One in three votes for President Karzai ‘was faked’, EU observers find

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai.

London Times | Sep 16, 2009

Jerome Starkey, in Kabul

One in three votes cast for President Karzai in Afghanistan’s presidential elections were faked, with the official body overseeing the ballot condoning the massive fraud, EU election observers said today.

Around 1.1 million votes in favour of Mr Karzai met Afghanistan’s electoral fraud criteria, as well as 300,000 cast for Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Karzai’s main rival. A futher 100,000 suspect votes were cast for other candidates.

The EU team accused Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission of ignoring its own rules on identifying and eliminating suspect votes, and thus of sanctioning the fraud.

If the suspect votes had been excluded, Mr Karzai’s total share of the vote would fall to 47 per cent and a second round run off in the presidential election would be triggered, the observers found.

The experts chose to issue their damning assessment only hours before the IEC released the final results of the first round ballot.

“Large scale ballot stuffing has taken place at the polling station level and all those results were entered into the system, at the tally centre in Kabul, and published as good results,” said Philippe Morillon, the EU’s Chief Observer.

“We will not make the choice of who your next president is, but refuse to be complicit in any massive fraud.”

The president reacted with fury to the allegations, accusing the EU team of interference.

“Hamid Karzai’s election campaign team believes today’s announcement of the number of suspected votes by the head and deputy head of (the) EU Election Monitoring commission is partial, irresponsible and in contradiction with Afghanistan’s constitution,” said a statement issued by Mr Karzai’s office.

“The role of national and international monitors is to monitor the election process and refer their findings to the Independent Election Commission and the Electoral Complaints Commission.

“We believe the only way we can have a legitimate result out of the current process is to allow the legal institutions to complete the process and refrain from interfering in their affairs.”

The EU team said that more than a quarter of the 5.5 million votes counted so far should have triggered fraud alerts – easily enough to affect the outcome.

Full Story

Habsburg royal family demands right to seek Austrian presidency

Habsburg family demands right to seek Austrian presidency

Members of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty that ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire have asked for the right to run for the Austrian presidency.

Telegraph | Sep 16, 2009

Habsburg coat of arms with 'double eagle' symbolism shared by the Vatican and Freemasonry

Rudolf Vouk, their lawyer, said the family has lodged a request for the repeal of a 90-year-old ban that prohibits its members from being elected Austria’s head of state.

“Such a disposition is no longer justifiable and contravenes the right to free and democratic elections” as well as the principle of equality before the law, Mr Vouk said.

The family’s application to end the ban – a year before Austria’s next presidential elections – was filed with the constitutional council, with a copy sent to Werner Faymann, the Austrian Chancellor.

The Habsburgs ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1438 to 1806, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1867 until its demise in 1918 with defeat in the First World War.

Since the proclamation of the Austrian republic in November 1918 and the abolition of the aristocracy, the family has been prohibited from contesting the position of head of state.

“After 90 years, the republic can start to have a bit more distant relationship with history,” said Mr Vouk, who is representing Ulrich Habsburg-Lorraine, a Green councillor in Carinthia state.

The Austrian presidency – now held by Heinz Fischer, a Social Democrat elected in 2004 – is largely ceremonial, but carries significant moral authority.

Japan ready to withdraw support for Afghanistan war

Yukio Hatoyama’s choice of Defence Minister suggests that he will keep an election pledge to withdraw from the Afghanistan campaign.

London Times | Sep 16, 2009

Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo

Japan’s new Defence Minister is a strong opponent of the country’s military support for the US, making it more likely than ever that the Government of Yukio Hatoyama will withdraw its naval ships from the war in Afghanistan early next year.

Mr Hatoyama was formally elected Prime Minister by the Diet, days after his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a crushing election victory on a platform of bureaucratic reform, welfare spending and a less deferential relationship with the United States.

The appointment as Defence Minister of 71-year old Toshimi Kitazawa suggests that he will follow through in his election promise to withdraw from the Nato-led Afghanistan campaign.

Japan’s Maritime Defence Forces deployed a supply ship and a destroyer to provide fuel and water to US and British naval vessels in the Indian Ocean. Compared to other international contributions, it is small, but for Japan, which has taken part in only a handful of overseas military operations since World War II, it is an important and controversial commitment.

When the former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sent Japanese soldiers to Iraq in 2004, the country’s biggest and most risky post-war deployment, Mr Kitazawa staunchly opposed the plan. It seems increasingly likely that the ships will be called home when the current terms of their deployment expires in February.

It is all the more probable with the inclusion in the new cabinet of Mizuho Fukushima, leader of Mr Hatoyama’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Formerly called the Japan Socialist Party, the LDP is committed to upholding Japan’s “peace” constitution, with its explicit ban on the use of force in resolving international disputes.

With 308 DPJ members in the 480 seat Diet, plus 19 more votes from the SDP and the smaller People’s New Party, Mr Hatoyama was easily elected Prime Minister, bringing to an end 54 years of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.

“At the very moment I was chosen as Prime Minister, I was moved, and trembled in the knowledge and responsibility that the history of Japan is about to change,” he said. “We may have failures, but please be generous. This is a close encounter of the third kind, and I am leaping into a world I have never experienced before.”

The other senior members of the new government had been predicted, after several days of leaks to the Japanese media. Mr Hatoyama’s Foreign Minister will be Katsuya Okada, a 56-year old former bureaucrat with a reputation for earnest sobriety who studied at Harvard. His Finance Minister, Hirohisa Fujii, 77, is one of the handful of members of the party to have had experience as a minister, in the LDP’s only other period out of power in 1993-94.

One of the key positions goes to 62-year old Naoto Kan who, as minister of newly formed National Strategic Bureau, is responsible for breaking the power of Japan’s mighty bureaucracy and putting policy making responsibility back in the hands of the cabinet. As Health Minister in an LDP-led coalition in 1996 he won nationwide popularity by accepting government responsibility for a scandal involving tainted blood products which infected thousands of haemophiliacs with HIV.

The most controversial appointment is that of Shizuka Kamei, the head of the People’s New Party, who will be Minister for Financial Services and Postal Affairs. Mr Kamei is a former member of the LDP who resigned because of vehement opposition to the party’s plans to privatise the office.

Mr Hatoyama will depart almost immediately for the United States where he will attend the UN General Assembly in New York and a Group of Twenty economic summit in Pittsburgh. He will also hold summit meetings with leaders such as Barack Obama and Hu Jintao of China. In his first speech as Prime Minister, Mr Hatoyama played down suggestions that he would adopt a cool attitude to the US.

“The key is to build up relationship of trust, to talk each other without reserve,” he said. “In the past, sometimes Japan took passive attitude towards the US, but I’d like to build up the relationship where Japan can talk honestly and from an active position.”