Obama Foreign Policy May Keep Some Bush Initiatives

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama is committed to a foreign policy of intense diplomatic engagement with allies and adversaries alike and an international approach to curb nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Read more

Ecuador says CIA infiltrated its military

QUITO (AFP) - The US Central Intelligence Agency had “full knowledge” of the deadly Colombian raid March 1 on a FARC rebel camp inside Ecuador that led to a rupture in ties between Bogota and Quito, Ecuador’s Defense Minister Javier Ponce said. Read more

World faces growing risk of war: US intelligence chief

The world faces a growing risk of conflict over the next 20 to 30 years amid an unprecedented transfer of wealth and power from West to East, according to the US intelligence chief.

Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, predicted rising demand for scarce supplies of food and fuel, strategic competition over new technologies, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

“What I’m suggesting — there’s an increased potential for conflict,” McConnell said in a speech Thursday to intelligence professionals in Nashville, Tennessee. Read more

No opt-out of filtered Internet for Australians

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say. Read more

Why the Bailout Stinks

For nearly a year, we have been asking ourselves why the investors and foreign banks that bought up hundreds of billions of dollars of worthless mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from US investment banks have not taken legal action against these same banks or initiated a boycott of US financial products to prevent more people from getting ripped off? Read more

2008 Vice Presidential Debate - A Foreign Policy Breakdown

The first and only 2008 Vice President Debate is over, and between Governor Sarah Palin’s “shout out” to third-graders from a particular elementary school and imploring “Joe Six-packs” and “Hockey Moms” to band together or Senator Joe Biden’s quip about the “ultimate bridge to nowhere” and comments about how much time he spends at the Home Depot in Wilmington, Delaware the two actually spent quite a bit of time discussing their respective positions on foreign policy. Read more

Buckingham Palace butler ‘ran paedophile sex ring while working for the Royal Family’

A former Buckingham Palace butler has been unmasked as a sexual predator who ran a paedophile ring while serving the Royal Family.

Bachelor Paul Kidd, 55, groomed at least one of his teenage victims for sex by taking him for tea with the Queen Mother at Clarence House, it has emerged.

To the public, he had been the urbane gent who waited on the Royals for nine years - first the Queen at the Palace and then her mother.

He often publicly gushed about his blue blood employers talking of the Queen as ‘courteous and genuinely caring.’

But behind the facade, Kidd was leading a secret double life as a serial child abuser who molested a string of boys over a 30 year period.

He was finally exposed after one of his victims read a newspaper article in which he boasted about his links to the Royals and talked fondly of Princess Diana and her musical tastes.

Police raided his two bedroom home in St Johns Street, Stalybridge, where they found almost 19,000 pornographic pictures and videos of children.

Included in the haul were some nude pictures of a teenager who officers were able to trace and interview.

Some images were hidden in a safe while others were encrypted on his computer.

Kidd admitted 29 sex charges involving three boys namely indecent assault, sexual activity with a child and the possessing and making of indecent images of children between December 1974 and January 2008.

An accomplice David Hobday, 56, of St Johns Street, Dukinfield admitted seven charges involving one of the victims of sexual activity with a child and possessing indecent images. Both men face a maximum 14 years in jail.

A police source said: ‘Kidd was a very accomplished groomer of children.

‘Given that he has been behaving like this for 30 years the likelihood is there could be many other victims out there who have not yet come forward.

‘This man used his Royal connections to impress and seduce young boys. He even had autographed pictures of Manchester United players on his walls at home.

‘He was acting with at least one other man and it’s possible he could have been communicating with many other paedophiles over many years.

‘These offences are probably just the tip of the iceberg.’

Kidd had honed his skills as a silver service waiter when he joined the Royal Navy after leaving school - looking after the captain and officers.

During his naval service he visited 22 countries around the world. In 1976 he was appointed as butler to the Queen at Buckingham Palace and served there for six years until being transferred to Clarence House where he served the Queen Mother.

During his years in Royal service, he was said to have met and looked after three American Presidents including Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan plus many other Heads of State from around the world.

He was also said to have worked closely with Princess Diana at Buckingham Palace in the six months prior to her wedding to Prince Charles.

In 1985 he gave up Royal Service due to a cancer scare but then started charging up to £4,000 a time as an after dinner speaker talking about his work with the Royal Family.

He ran a series of lectures including one he called: An uncomfortable experience for the Queens page boy.

Kidd also starred on numerous TV chat shows in the UK and USA including the Caroline Rhea show in New York.

He also appeared on stage with Hollywood actor Robin Williams at the Nemacolin Spa & Resort Centre in the USA.

He joined Robert Kilroy Silk’s UK Independence party standing unsuccessfully as a candidate in local council elections.

In one interview Kidd said of the Queen: ‘She was always very courteous, but she only ever addressed me as ‘Kidd’ - never by my first name.

‘She deals with people in a genuinely caring manner. Her children are the future of the country, they cannot be brought up in a namby-pamby manner.

‘But in private, as a mother and grandmother, she dotes on the children.’

Police began investigating Kidd earlier this year after a victim, now 41 read a newspaper article about Kidd in which he talked about Princess Diana on the 10th anniversary of her death.

The victim was thought to be so disgusted by his bragging, he went to police and told officers how he was 14 when he was abused by Kidd after meeting him through a CB radio group.

Kidd introduced the lad to his Royal employers and took him for tea with the Queen Mother in the late 70s.

It is believed the victim even spoke to the Queen Mother - at a time when the late Royal had no idea he was being secretly abused by her servant.

It emerged he had met Kidd though a religious group when he was 14 and he was sexually accused and passed onto another paedophile.

A third victim later came forward to say he was abused in the 1980s when he was 15 after meeting him when Kidd was training to be a nurse.

At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, Kidd and Hobday were told they would be sentenced on November 20 after probation officers complete a report assessing whether they are a risk to the public.

Various other charges will be allowed to lie on file.

Both were remanded in custody and Judge Mushtaq Khokhar told them: ‘You have both pleaded guilty to serious offences and you will be under no illusion that the likely sentence is going to be custody.’

Daily Mail | Wednesday, October 1, 2008

UK to conduct one of the largest military exercises of all time in preparation for WWIII

FIGHTER jets, infantry troops, destroyers and submarines will converge on Wales next month for one of the largest military exercises of all time.

The two-week exercise - codenamed Joint Warrior - is designed to recreate a scenario in which Britain and other sovereign nations go to war against a “state-sponsored terrorist movement” - using a vast array of lethal modern weapons.

Taking place between October 6 and October 16, it will provide coordinated training for all three UK Armed Services, plus forces from EIGHT allied nations.

The whole of Wales has been designated as a flying area for the exercise, while so-called “managed danger area” ranges at Castlemartin and Manorbier in Pembrokeshire and Pembrey near Llanelli will be used for ground strafing, bombing and missile practice using live ammunition.

An area of the West Wales coast has also been earmarked as a maritime “warfighting” area for Joint Warrior.

The exercise is aimed at giving pilots, ships’ crews and ground troops vital training before they deploy to war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan.

According to the RAF, Joint Warrior will be particularly useful for Forward Air Controllers (troops directing airborne missile strikes), the role made famous by Prince Harry who became known by his call sign Widow Six Seven while directing fire against the Taliban.

Six companies of infantry, 29 surface and four sub-surface maritime units and 60 aircraft - flying at a rate of about 80 to 100 sorties a day - will be involved in the exercise.

An MoD spokesman said: “The two weeks will develop through a period of tension into simulated warfighting/open hostilities.”

The exercise aims to provide opportunities for all warfighting disciplines including:

nClose Air Support (CAS) - executed by fast jet aircraft and Forward Air Controllers, often using live weapons;

nConvoy Support, Time Sensitive Targeting (TST) and urban close air support scenarios - “in order to replicate current Middle-East operational missions”;

nLarge Force Element (LFE) missions - which will target fixed and mobile targets including inflatable Scud Decoys and Electronic Warfare (EW) emitters simulating surface-to-air threats;

nAnti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), Anti-Surface Warfare (AsuW) and also, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions - all carried out by Maritime Patrol Aircraft;

nJoint fires - involving live weapons on ranges in Welsh Wales;

nSubmarine training - boats will complete sub-vs-sub and sub-vs-ship exercises.

The MoD spokesman said: “The exercise will accommodate a squadron of Tornado GR4s from 12 Sqn, RAF Lossiemouth and a squadron of Gripen aircraft from 171 Sqn, Swedish Air Force plus asso-ciated support personnel drawn from support units throughout the RAF.

“This is a particularly important exercise for the Tornado GR4 deployment as this will also act as a full mission rehearsal for their forthcoming deployment to Afghanistan.”

But Squadron Leader Peter Sinclair of the RAF in Wales moved to allay fears about the impact on people - and the environment.

He said: “Some of the exercise areas overlap environmentally-sensitive conservation zones, which contain a wide variety of marine wildlife, sea bird breeding grounds and protected fauna and flora.

“Furthermore, the farming, fishing and tourist industries are important economic activities, which benefit from the natural beauty and relative isolation of some of the exercise areas. Against this background, the MoD recognises the impact of military activity and takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously.

“During the planning of the exercise, Environmental Impact Assessments are conducted for all potentially damaging activities, such as the use of active sonar and live weapons. Furthermore, close working relationships with landowners and key national stakeholders, combined with engagement with local communities, ensure that appropriate environmental mitigation procedures are put in place and then adhered to.

“It should be noted that the MoD has decreed that environmental considerations are always to take priority over the achievement of training objectives. This direction remains a primary consideration throughout exercise planning and execution.”

The director of the exercise, Capt Paddy McAlpine OBE said: “Joint Warrior will offer high-quality joint tactical training with maximum tactical interaction, tailored to meet the participants’ requirements across the whole of the UK whilst creating as little impact on the environment as possible.

“I am sure that the high-fidelity joint tactical training environment provided by JTEPS within Joint Warrior will ensure that UK and allied participants are rigorously prepared for operational tasks in theatres world-wide.”

North Korea bars inspectors from nuclear complex

PARIS: North Korea has barred international inspectors from its nuclear reprocessing facility and intends to begin introducing nuclear material in a week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Wednesday.

The decision by North Korea comes as the Vienna-based nuclear agency also announced it had completed on Wednesday the removal of all seals and surveillance cameras from the reprocessing plant at the Yongbyon complex. The removal was carried out following a formal request to the agency by the North two days ago.

“There are no more seals and surveillance equipment in place at the reprocessing facility,” IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna.

She added that the North Koreans “also informed IAEA inspectors that they plan to introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week’s time. They further stated that from here on, IAEA inspectors will have no further access to the reprocessing plant.”

The decision by the North is a serious setback both for the Bush administration and an international nuclear disarmament agreement that was aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

While the request to remove the seals and surveillance equipment had been anticipated, the nuclear agency and the United States and the other governments involved in delicate diplomacy with the North Koreans had hoped that they would not begin operations there again and that inspectors would still have access to the facility.

The move followed reports that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, was seriously ill, and was clear evidence that the North plans to restart the facility, which separates plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

More ominously, it suggests that the North may be preparing to restart its nuclear weapons program at a time when the United States is distracted by the financial crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and unrest in Pakistan.

The move by North Korea is dangerous because the reprocessing of nuclear fuel from spent fuel rods can begin within months, according to arms control experts. It would take years, by contrast, for North Korean to produce fresh nuclear fuel if it decided to restart its nuclear reactor which is also on the complex at Yongbyon.

The announcement of the decision was first made by Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s deputy director general and head of the department of safeguards, to a closed meeting of the agency’s 35-country board of governors which is meeting in Vienna this week.

In prepared remarks at the meeting, Gregory Schulte, the chief American envoy to the IAEA, on Wednesday called North Korea’s move “unsettling.” He added, “We are working in close consultation with our six-party partners to determine the best way forward.”

North Korea has not told the nuclear agency whether its small permanent group of inspectors will be allowed to remain at the vast Yongbyon complex or whether they will continue to have access to other buildings there, a European official linked to the agency said.

The inspectors have worked there, living in guest quarters on the site, since July 2007.

The United States, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea have been engaged with North Korea in tortured six-country negotiations, which produced an agreement in February 2007 for North Korea to abandon its nuclear activities in exchange for aid and diplomatic incentives.

In July 2007, North Korea told the United States that it had shut down its nuclear reactor at the Yongbyon facility and readmitted an international inspection team. The move completed the first step toward reversing a four-year confrontation with the United States during which North Korea had made fuel for a small but potent arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The shutdown of the reactor and the return of the inspectors allowed the Bush administration to claim that its strategy of rejecting the North’s calls for bilateral talks and insisting on negotiations that included North Korea’s neighbors finally was working.

Since last November, North Korea had been dismantling the massive complex under the complicated disarmament-for-aid agreement.

But last month, North Korea announced that it had stopped dismantling the facilities to protest the failure of the United States to remove it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Amid reports that Kim was ill, North Korea seemed to harden its position last Friday, saying that it no longer wanted to be removed from the terrorism list. “We can go our own way,” a Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying.

Officially, Washington has said that it will remove North Korea from the list after it permits inspectors to verify claims about its production of nuclear weapons.

International Herald Tribune | Elaine Sciolino | Wednesday, September 24, 2008

US generals planning for resource wars

ANALYSIS:The US military sees the next 30 to 40 years as involving a state of continuous war against ideologically-motivated terrorists and competing with Russia and China for natural resources and markets, writes Tom Clonan

AS GENERAL Ray Odierno takes command of US forces in Baghdad from troop surge architect Gen David Petraeus, America has begun planning in earnest for its phased withdrawal.

The extra brigade combat teams - or battlegroups - deployed to Iraq by Petraeus have already withdrawn and a further 8,000 troops have been diverted to Afghanistan.

In January, the next president of the United States will conclude America’s timetable for withdrawal in final negotiations with the Iraqi government.

Further evidence of America’s future military intentions is contained in recently published strategy documents issued by the US military.

Under the auspices of the US department of defence and department of the army, the US military have just published a document entitled 2008 Army Modernization Strategy which makes for interesting reading against the current backdrop of deteriorating international fiscal, environmental, energy resource and security crises.

The 2008 modernisation strategy, written by Lieut Gen Stephen Speakes, deputy chief of staff of the US army, contains the first explicit and official acknowledgement that the US military is dangerously overstretched internationally. It states simply: “The army is engaged in the third-longest war in our nation’s history and . . . the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) has caused the army to become out of balance with the demand for forces exceeding the sustainable supply.”

Against this backdrop, the 90 page document sets out the future of international conflict for the next 30 to 40 years - as the US military sees it - and outlines the manner in which the military will sustain its current operations and prepare and “transform” itself for future “persistent” warfare.

The document reveals a number of profoundly significant - and worrying - strategic positions that have been adopted as official doctrine by the US military. In its preamble, it predicts a post cold war future of “perpetual warfare”.

According to its authors: “We have entered an era of persistent conflict . . . a security environment much more ambiguous and unpredictable than that faced during the cold war.”

It then goes on to describe the key features of this dawning era of continuous warfare. Some of the characteristics are familiar enough to a world audience accustomed to the rhetoric of the global war on terror.

“A key current threat is a radical, ideology-based, long-term terrorist threat bent on using any means available - to include weapons of mass destruction - to achieve its political and ideological ends.”

Relatively new, “emerging” features are also included in the document’s rationale for future threats.

“We face a potential return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets.”

This thinly-veiled reference to Russia and China will, perhaps, come as little surprise given recent events in Ossetia and Abkhazia. The explicit reference in this context to future resource wars, however, will probably raise eyebrows among the international diplomatic community, who prefer to couch such conflicts as human rights-based or rooted in notions around freedom and democracy.

The document, however, contains no such lofty pretences. It goes on to list as a pre-eminent threat to the security of the US and its allies “population growth - especially in less-developed countries - [which] will expose a resulting ‘youth bulge’.”

This youth bulge, the document goes on to state, will present the US with further “resource competition” in that these expanding populations in the developing world “will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy”.

The document goes on to describe in broad-strokes the manner in which its downsized military might ensure survival of the fittest for the US and its allies in future resource wars for water, food and energy.

As a consequence of identifying growing populations in the developed world as a threat in itself, the strategy document highlights a number of paradigm shifts in the way future wars are to be conducted.

It predicts that “21st Century operations will require soldiers to engage among populations and diverse cultures instead of avoiding them”.

The document reveals that new US tactical doctrine provides a template by which air, naval and field commanders will no longer just secure traditional strategic targets such as airspace, seaports and bridgeheads, but will, of necessity, also deploy and fight amongst and against the target population itself to win wars.

The document refers to this euphemistically as “commanders employing offensive, defensive and stability or civil support operations simultaneously”.

The remainder of the document is devoted to describing in detail how a downsized all volunteer US military - numbering approximately one million soldiers, aircrew and sailors - could maintain an ever-present, international, offensive posture in many countries across many time-zones.

It describes how information communication technologies and digital technologies will create a new “networked” human soldier - the ‘Future Force Warrior’ - who will deploy among the target population and will operate simultaneously several remote, unmanned ground and air weapons systems.

To this end, the US military is rapidly expanding its inventory of computerised, robotic ground weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles .

According to the strategy document, by supplementing relatively small forces of US troops - brigade combat teams - with ever-larger fleets of remotely controlled, unmanned weapons systems, America will be able to successfully deploy its downsized military to maximum effect among the emerging international youth bulge.

Supplementing these future global offensive operations, according to the strategy document, is the US military’s planned domination of inner space or the earth’s exo-atmospheric zone.

The document states: “Space is a significant area of joint development that supports battle space awareness and is the backbone for the national and military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance architecture, as well as being the domain of choice for commercial broad-area sensing enterprises with military utility.”

Together with the US Missile Defence Agency, the US military is currently developing “space-based assets continuously monitoring the globe”.

The report elaborates on this by stating that “army space forces are deployed worldwide supporting US efforts to fight and win [the global war on terror].”

The report adds that US military “space control operations ensure freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies and when necessary, deny an adversary freedom of action in space”.

The document refers to operations in Iraq in the past tense. It implies that operations in Afghanistan may be expanded.

It states explicitly that the US military is preparing to fight continuous resource wars “for the long haul”.

The document also describes explicitly the manner in which the earth’s orbit is now deemed a legitimate zone for offensive military activity. This extraordinary document describes US strategic doctrine in terms worthy of 20th century science fiction.

The mix of 20th century science fiction and Orwellian perspectives unwittingly contained in the document appear rapidly to be materialising as fact.

Dr Tom Clonan is the Irish Times Security Analyst. He lectures in the School of Media, DIT. tclonan@irish-times.ie

The Irish Times | Monday, September 22, 2008

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