Analysis: Hunt, State talked on Iraq oil

Hunt, a good friend to the Bush family, gets to sign a huge oil deal with permission from the White house. Why am I not surprised.

By BEN LANDO
UPI Energy Editor
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (UPI) — A representative from Dallas-based Hunt Oil Corp. did talk with the U.S. State Department prior to signing a controversial oil deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, according to an internal department communication obtained by United Press International.

Hunt Oil, whose chief executive officer is connected to the Bush administration by campaign donations and a seat on an intelligence advisory board, had previously denied the meeting.

The company now says the meeting took place but that Hunt did not seek advice from the U.S. government on investing in a country with the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves.

The Sept. 8 production-sharing contract with the KRG set off Baghdad, which accuses the region of unilaterally and illegally signing oil deals. The Hunt deal wasn’t the first or final such contract signed between private oil companies and the Kurds, who say they have the constitutional right to sign deals and blame Baghdad for its inability to make headway on a national oil law.

The U.S. government has been cautious in comment, aside from maintaining that it hurts their efforts in bolstering the ability of the central government to reconcile and rule the country.

A day after the Kurds announced two more oil deals, with Canadian and French companies, Hunt Chief Executive Officer Ray Hunt told the Wall Street Journal: “The State Department must have been misinformed. … We did not consult with anyone in the (U.S. government) prior to signing our agreement.”

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New Evidence That Blackwater Guards Took No Fire

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — Fresh accounts of the Blackwater shooting last month, given by three rooftop witnesses and by American soldiers who arrived shortly after the gunfire ended, cast new doubt Friday on statements by Blackwater guards that they were responding to armed insurgents when Iraqi investigators say 17 Iraqis were killed at a Baghdad intersection.

The three witnesses, Kurds on a rooftop overlooking the scene, said they had observed no gunfire that could have provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards. American soldiers who arrived minutes later found shell casings from guns used normally by American contractors, as well as by the American military.

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US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly

If you’re not on the list, you’re not getting on

By Wendy M. Grossman → More by this author

Published Friday 12th October 2007 13:18 GMT

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Under new rules proposed by the Transport Security Administration (TSA) (pdf), all airline passengers would need advance permission before flying into, through, or over the United States regardless of citizenship or the airline’s national origin.

Currently, the Advanced Passenger Information System, operated by the Customs and Border Patrol, requires airlines to forward a list of passenger information no later than 15 minutes before flights from the US take off (international flights bound for the US have until 15 minutes after take-off). Planes are diverted if a passenger on board is on the no-fly list.

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The new rules mean this information must be submitted 72 hours before departure. Only those given clearance will get a boarding pass. The TSA estimates that 90 to 93 per cent of all travel reservations are final by then.

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Prime minister says Turkey is ready to pay the price of any military campaign in Iraq

ANKARA, Turkey – Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey would not be deterred by the possible diplomatic consequences if it decides to stage a cross-border offensive into Iraq against Kurdish rebels.“If such an option is chosen, whatever its price, it will be paid,” Erdogan told reporters in response to a question about the international repercussions of such a decision, which would strain ties with the United States and Iraq. “There could be pros and cons of such a decision, but what is important is our country’s interests.”

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The Sino-Russian Alliance; Challenging America’s Ambitions in Eurasia

“But if the middle space [Russia and the former Soviet Union] rebuffs the West [the European Union and America], becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South [Middle East] or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor [China], then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically. The same would be the case if the two major Eastern players were somehow to unite. Finally, any ejection of America by its Western partners [the Franco-German entente] from its perch on the western periphery [Europe] would automatically spell the end of America’s participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard, even though that would probably also mean the eventual subordination of the western extremity to a revived player occupying the middle space [e.g. Russia].”

-Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, 1997)

Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” These precepts of physics can also be used in the social sciences, specifically with reference to social relations and geo-politics.

America and Britain, the Anglo-American alliance, have engaged in an ambitious project to control global energy resources. Their actions have resulted in a series of complicated reactions, which have established a Eurasian-based coalition which is preparing to challenge the Anglo-American axis.

Encircling Russia and China: Anglo-American Global Ambitions Backfire

“Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible. We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.”

-Vladimir Putin at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in Germany (February 11, 2007)

What American leaders and officials called the “New World Order” is what the Chinese and Russians consider a “Unipolar World.” This is the vision or hallucination, depending on perspective, that has bridged the Sino-Russian divide between Beijing and Moscow.

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Russia: Stop threatening Iran

I was wondering about Condi’s remarks about supporting humanrights activists in Russia.

The Russian Foreign Minister urges the West to encourage Iran to cooperate with the IAEA, instead of constantly threatening Tehran.
In a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sergey Lavrov slammed the West for threatening to take military action against Iran.

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Rice pledges support to Russian activists

MOSCOW (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Russian human rights activists on Saturday she wanted to help them build institutions to protect people from the ‘arbitrary power of the state’.

The meeting could irk the Kremlin, which is sensitive to Western accusations it is rolling back democratic freedoms and suspects foreign governments of trying to influence the outcome of next year’s presidential election.

Rice told eight human rights leaders she wanted to hear about their efforts to protect freedoms in Russia.

“I am quite confident that your goal is to build institutions that are indigenous to Russia — that are Russian institutions — but that are also respectful of what we all know to be universal values,” said Rice.

She said these were: “The rights of individuals to liberty and freedom, the right to worship as you please, and the right to assembly, the right to not have to deal with the arbitrary power of the state.”

“How is it going and what can we do to help Russia to build strong institutions that have these universal values?”

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Afghanistan ‘is going down fast’

THE bloodshed in Afghanistan has reached levels not seen since the 2001 invasion as anger at bungling by an ineffective Government in Kabul and its foreign backers stokes support for the Taliban and other extremist groups.The death of Trooper David Pearce underlines the rising dangers for Australia’s 1000 soldiers in Afghanistan, most of them deployed in the Taliban’s southern heartland — a region some of Canberra’s NATO allies consider too dangerous to fight in.

“This place can only go up or down, and it’s going down fast, which is something the international community simply will not understand,” said a security analyst who has been working in and out of Afghanistan for 30 years.

Almost six years after the hardline Islamist Taliban were ousted, their insurgency is gaining strength, fuelled by resentment at NATO bombing of civilians, billions of dollars of wasted aid, a lack of jobs and record crops of opium, the raw material for heroin.

The fighting is spreading to places once relatively safe, including the capital and the western and northern parts of the country.

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Good neighbor?

Apart from the fact that no reasonable human being would want Blackwater anywhere near were they live, why does a private mercenary firm need three bases spread all over the country? Why is a private mercenary firm accused of war crimes, who has withdrawn from their lobbying organisation for fear of an investigation into their professional conduct allowed to train American police officers? There are only a thousand Blackwater mercenaries in Iran, so what else do they do on those bases? And let’s not forget that they also have a fourth base in the Philippines.(Travellerev)

Blackwater keeps its eye on a tiny East County enclave.

By Pat Sherman 10/09/2007

Blackwater USA Vice President Brian Bonfiglio flashed a self-satisfied smile, gazing east across Round Potrero Road where, on Sunday, more than 200 Potrero residents and antiwar activists streamed onto an adjacent parcel of land. They had come-some from as far as Ventura-to protest the 824-acre paramilitary training facility the company hopes to open a mile down the snaky dirt road.”I don’t think the war profiteering signs are appropriate, quite frankly,” Bonfiglio said. “At the end of the day, this will be determined as a land-use project by the [San Diego County] Board of Supervisors.”

As the public face of the project-dubbed Blackwater West-it’s Bonfiglio’s job to sell the facility as a non-invasive windfall to the residents of Potrero, a rural hamlet 45 miles east of San Diego. Given his employer’s image as a supplier of trigger-happy mercenary armies, unaccountable to neither the Iraqi nor American governments, wooing Potrero’s 850 residents has been a dicey game. Five members of the Potrero Planning Board who voted in December to support the project are facing a recall election. Some 320 residents signed a petition opposing the project that was sent to the county Board of Supervisors and Congressman Bob Filner, the Democrat whose district includes Potrero.

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War clouds loom ever more menacingly over Iran

FROM this week, it emerged that Britain and France have joined Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as allies in a new US war against Iran. 

While the West Asian nations have not only agreed to assist US forces in logistics but are also training with them for aerial coordination and forces interoperability, the European nations add a special weight as permanent members of the UN Security Council. 

The Sarkozy government has made France an unreserved US war ally, and last month Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned the world to prepare for a war against Iran. In recent days the Britain of Prime Minister Gordon Brown has gone further, reportedly supporting a drive to war with a supply of British special forces troops. 

The official word from London is that diplomacy is still the preferred course to stop Iran’s nuclear enrichment project. But that is not expected to work since unlike North Korea, the United States is offering neither concessions nor compromises to Iran.

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