The Rag Blog

[Rachel’s introduction: The fossil fuel corporations have a plan for us, and it does not include any substantial investment in renewable solar energy. Their plan is focused on “geo-engineering” — which means re-engineering the oceans, the atmosphere and the earth itself to make it possible to continue burning fossil fuels. U.S. EPA is on board with the plan.]

It now seems clear that the coal and oil industries are not going to allow the United States to curb global warming by making major investments in renewable sources of energy. These fossil fuel corporations simply have too much at stake to allow it.

Simple physics tells us that the way to minimize the human contribution to global warming is to leave the remaining fossil fuels in the ground — stop mining them as soon as humanly possible. This obvious solution would require us to turn the nation’s industrial prowess to developing solar power in its many forms as quickly as we can — we would need a “‘Manhattan Project’ for Energy,” as the strategy journal of the top U.S. military planners said recently.

Look at the relative size of our current government investments in solar vs. fossil fuels. In 2007 the federal Department of Energy spent $168 million on solar research. On the other hand each year since 1991 the U.S. government has spent 1000 times that amount — $169 billion — subsidizing the flow of oil from the Middle East, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our top military planners. And that figure doesn’t include what consumers paid for the oil itself. If our solar investment remains one-tenth of one percent of our investment in oil, there will be no solar power to speak of in our future.

A rapid shift to renewables based on solar would not be easy and I don’t want to minimize the effort required. It’s stupendously large. But we’ve undertaken heroic industrial projects before — and with notable success. We mobilized quickly and massively to defeat the combined industrial might of Germany, Japan, and Italy in less than five years after Pearl Harbor. The original Manhattan Project turned a physicist’s theory into a working A-bomb in less than 6 years; just building the gaseous diffusion plant near Oak Ridge, Tennessee was a scientific, engineering and industrial feat of astonishing magnitude and complexity. The Marshall Plan successfully rebuilt Europe after WW II. Our Man-on-the-Moon program succeeded just 11 years after the Russians tweaked our national ego by launching Sputnik into orbit in 1957.

Yes, a shift to solar-powered renewables would be difficult, but it’s doable. Unfortunately, any plan to shift from fossil fuels to solar has three fatal flaws, from the viewpoint of Big Oil and Big Coal:

1. The fossil fuel corporations have an enormous investment in fossil infrastructure and they own vast quantities of fossil fuels that they plan to exploit with little real effort over the next 50 years. They have been making excellent profits for a century and, as fossil fuels get scarcer, prices will only rise. In 2006, ExxonMobil reaped profits larger than any other corporation in history ($39.5 billion). If the U.S. does not invest seriously in renewable alternatives, we’ll have no choice but to pay whatever price the fossil corporations demand. Just a few days ago oil hit $90 a barrel; eight years ago it was selling for $10 a barrel. No wonder ExxonMobil now has a book value larger than the national budget of France. Naturally, they intend to maintain their market share, even if it means doing everything in their power to thwart progress.

2. The fossil fuel business is 100 years old and fully understood. No surprises lie ahead. But renewables? Who knows which renewables will win out in the marketplace of ideas? If Uncle Sam were to invest as much money in solar power as it has so far invested in the Iraq war (roughly $800 billion), who knows what new technologies would emerge? (Incidentally, if we maintain our current solar research budget at $168 million per year, it will be 4761 years before we have spent as much on solar research as we have, so far, spent in Iraq.) New technical innovations could be very unsettling for complacent industries like coal and oil. For them, innovation spells trouble. Innovation could render them irrelevant in a decade or two and they could disappear just like the makers of whale-oil lamps and buggy whips 100 years ago.

3. Coal and oil are highly centralized. It’s their nature. Whoever owns the fossil fuels, the big central power plants, and the distribution systems can call the shots. But solar? The sun shines everywhere and it’s free. Suppose some woman at MIT develops a solar panel that you paint onto your roof (from a can you buy at Home Depot), attach some wires, and start generating your own electricity? Central control disappears. This would be like tossing a hand grenade into the current corporate/political structure. Of course even right- wing politicians love lefty-sounding slogans like “power to the people,” but they don’t mean real power like electricity or hot water or home-made hydrogen for transportation fuel. (Check out the Nova TV program, “Saved by the Sun,” which briefly mentions paint-on solar panels.)

No, a serious plan to focus the nation’s industrial prowess onto a solar-powered rebirth will not be allowed by the fossil corporations. Instead we’ll be offered a rolling circus of technical fixes aimed at keeping coal and oil streaming out of the ground. The circus is already well under way.

A Sulfur Parasol to Blot Out the Sun

Just this week the New York Times published a proposal to attach a fire hose to some lighter-than-air balloons for the purpose of injecting at least a million tons of sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere, to create a giant parasol to cool the planet. Such a scheme might further deplete the Earth’s ozone shield, which remains frayed from DuPont’s earlier botched experiment with CFCs. And it could create large-scale acid rain. But contemplating these clownish Rube Goldberg solutions may at least relieve the stress of facing what really needs to be done.

A new word enters our vocabulary: Geo-engineering

Instead of allowing the U.S. to make the transition to solar power, the fossil corporations have evidently decided it’s better to re-engineer the oceans and the atmosphere — and perhaps even the planetary orbit of the Earth itself — to make it possible to continue burning fossil fuels for another 50 years.

Grand schemes for re-engineering the planet now have their own special name — geo-engineering. The word means, “global-scale interventions to alter the oceans and the atmosphere so fossil corporations can continue business as usual.”

The fire-hose-and-balloon project is only one of many “geo- engineering” schemes in the works.

Fertilizing the Oceans with Iron

There are serious plans afoot to dump huge quantities of soluble iron into the oceans as fertilizer, intending to stimulate the growth of plankton, which will then eat carbon dioxide from the air. As the plankton die, their carcasses will sink to the bottom of the ocean, carrying all that carbon dioxide with them, where it will remain for… for… well, actually, nobody knows for how long. How long might it be before that dormant carbon dioxide comes back to bite us? Nobody knows. Would such a plan disrupt life in the oceans? Nobody knows. But private firms are pressing ahead with large-scale ocean- fertilization experiments as we speak. (They are hoping to get rich selling “carbon credits” to polluters so the fossil corporations can continue contaminating the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. We might well ask the ethical question, who gave these cowboys permission to run geo-engineering experiments in the world’s oceans?)

This is all very reminiscent of earlier plans to bury nuclear waste in the floor of the Pacific Ocean, on the theory that the seabed has lain dormant for many millions of years. But that plan never caught on because few people could develop sufficient confidence that the future would unfold exactly like the past. There was that nagging doubt… what if we’ve missed something important and we turn out to be wrong? What if our understanding is flawed? There was too much at stake, and the plan was shelved. (With carbon dioxide, of course, there’s far more at stake.)

Mirrors in Orbit

Now there’s a new plan to rocket mirrors into orbit around the earth. Another parasol to block sunlight. The mirrors would consist of a mesh of aluminum threads a millionth of an inch in diameter, “like a window screen made of exceedingly fine metal wire,” says Lowell Wood at Lawrence Livermore Lab, who dreamed up the idea. The only drawback to this plan mentioned so far is its enormous dollar cost: to reduce incoming sunlight by 1% would require — get this — 600,000 square miles of mirror, which is larger than the combined areas of Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island.

Of course the U.S. has a long history of large-scale interventions above the clouds. In 1962 we conducted an experiment called “Starfish Prime” in which we exploded a small nuclear weapon (equivalent to 1.4 million tons of TNT) 400 miles up in the atmosphere, just to see what would happen. What happened came as a complete surprise to the geniuses who set off the blast. The explosion left so much residual radiation trapped in space that the world’s first communication satellite — Telstar, which was launched after Starfish — failed because it encountered crippling levels of radiation. Ultimately, one- third of all the low-orbit satellites in space at the time were disabled by the residual radiation from Starfish Prime. Another unanticipated cost of Starfish was the temporary shutdown of communications and electrical supply in Hawaii, 1300 kilometers from the blast. Who knew?

Project RBR

Despite lessons supposedly learned from Starfish, just last year the Pentagon proposed a project called RBR (“Radiation Belt Remediation”). The RBR project would generate “very low frequency radio waves to flush particles from the [Van Allen] radiation belts and dump them into the upper atmosphere over one or several days.” (There are two Van Allen radiation belts; the one closest to earth lies 400 to 4000 miles in the sky.) The stated purpose of the RBR project is to “protect hundreds of low earth-orbiting satellites from having their onboard electronics ruined by charged particles in unusually intense Van Allen radiation belts ‘pumped up’ by high- altitude nuclear explosions or powerful solar storms.” It seems the Pentagon is making plans for conducting nuclear warfare above the clouds. But I digress.

Luckily a small group of scientists from Britain, New Zealand and Finland (organized as the “British Antarctic Survey”) caught wind of the RBR plan and actually gave it some thought. They concluded that RBR would “significantly alter the upper atmosphere, seriously disrupting high frequency (HF) radio wave transmissions and GPS navigation around the world.” The world’s commercial (and military) transport systems are now almost completely dependent upon GPS navigation, so disrupting the global GPS system would create economic chaos, not to mention loss of life. Who knew?

A Plan to Change the Earth’s Orbit

As pressure builds on the fossil corporations to quit contaminating the atmosphere with CO2, plans for geo-engineering the planet grow ever-more grandiose and desperate. There is now talk of moving the Earth 1.5 million miles out of its orbit around the sun, to compensate for doubling carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Ken Caldeira of Stanford University has calculated that moving the Earth in this fashion would require the energy of five thousand million million hydrogen bombs (that’s 5,000,000,000,000,000 hydrogen bombs). No doubt the Pentagon is studying it with considerable interest.

The Biggest Geo-engineering Project: Carbon Sequestration

Now, the biggest earth-based geo-engineering project of all is in the late stages of development by the coal and oil industries, and is about to be “regulated” by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This is the plan that convinces me that the fossil corporations have no intention of allowing the U.S. to make a rapid transition to solar power. This Big Fossil plan is called CCS, short for “carbon capture and sequestration” and it, too, closely resembles dozens of previous unsuccessful attempts to figure out what to do with radioactive waste.

Carbon sequestration is a fancy name for what used to be called the “kitty litter solution” to radioactive waste: bury it in the ground and hope it stays there. Carbon sequestration is a plan to capture gaseous carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants (and perhaps from other industrial operations as well), turn it into a liquid, and pump it into the deep earth or perhaps into the ocean, where it will remain for an unknown period of time. Professional optimists employed by the fossil industries claim the unknown period of time is “forever.” But how can they be sure?

Saving the Coal Industry

The future of the coal industry, in particular, is at stake. Without carbon sequestration, the coal industry will not survive. Just this month the state of Kansas refused to license the construction of a new coal-fired power plant simply because of its carbon dioxide emissions. This is the first time a coal plant has been turned down merely because of its contribution to global warming. The hand writing is on the wall: Big Coal is doomed unless they can find some way to demonstrate that “clean coal” is more than an advertising slogan. This is what carbon sequestration geo-engineers are being paid to do.

Saving the Oil Industry (and the Automobile Industry)

But there’s more at stake than just the coal industry. The oil industry, too, is depending on “carbon sequestration” to convince the public that continuing to burn fossil fuels is safe. Even the car companies have recognized that their future depends upon convincing us all that carbon sequestration will work — and work forever.

We know this is really, really important to the fossil corporations because some of the biggest names in global industry are underwriting “geo-engineering” solutions for the carbon dioxide problem at some of the most prestigious U.S. universities. The Center for Energy & Environmental Studies at Princeton University is conducting geo- engineering studies (1.4 Mbyte PDF) funded by BP (the felonious oil corporation formerly known as British Petroleum) and by Ford Motor, the troubled manufacturer of SUVs. Geo-engineering work at Stanford University is being supported by ExxonMobil, by General Electric, by Schlumberger (the oil-drilling services giant), and by Toyota.

To convince the U.S. environmental community that geo-engineering carbon dioxide is the only way to go, the Stanford geo-engineering group has linked up with NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). Together, they are publishing clever propaganda masquerading as science. For example, in a recent letter to California legislators they say, “We only wish to address the science of CCS [carbon capture and sequestration] here.” So we are expecting a scientific argument. Instead, the letter tries to persuade legislators to support carbon sequestration using arguments that have nothing to do with science.

The letter is peppered with distinctly unscientific language like “perfectly safe” to describe the fossil corporations’ favorite geo- engineering solution. “Perfectly safe” is not a scientific concept. It is a political concept.

To be fair, deep in their letter NRDC and friends add a few caveats to their “perfectly safe” claim. For example, they say, “Leakage is conceivable but it is unlikely in well-selected sites, is generally avoidable, predictable, can be detected and remedied promptly, and in any case is extremely unlikely to be of a magnitude to endanger human health and the environment if performed under adequate regulatory oversight and according to best practices.” [Emphasis in the original.]

So carbon sequestration will be “perfectly safe” if it occurs at “well-selected sites” and if performed under adequate regulatory oversight and according to best practices.”

Let’s examine these caveats. Are these scientific concepts? Do they even refer to anything in the real world?

Human History: Selecting Sites for Dangerous Projects

What experience do humans have siting dangerous facilities at only “well-selected sites”? I am thinking of the atomic reactor in Japan sited near an earthquake fault and recently shut down by serious earthquake damage. I am thinking of the U.S. radioactive waste site proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada where government and private engineers felt the need to falsify data to make the site appear acceptable. How do NRDC and Stanford propose to avoid a repeat of these fiascos when it comes time to select dozens or hundreds (perhaps thousands) of sites for pumping carbon dioxide into the ground?

Human history: Best practices with Dangerous Technologies

And that about “best practices”? Does this phrase take into account actual human experience with power plant operators photographed asleep in the control room of nuclear reactors? Or young men deep in missile silos relieving their boredom by getting drunk or taking drugs while standing ready to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with hydrogen warheads?

Will Every Nation Abide by the NRDC/Stanford Prescription?

After the U.S. begins injecting billions of tons of liquid carbon dioxide into the earth, won’t China, India and other countries do the same? If they do, can they be counted on to choose only “well-selected sites” and to follow only “best practices” for the next hundred years? Who will oversee carbon sequestration in Nigeria or Uzbekistan?

How do NRDC and Stanford imagine that standards for site selection and “best practices” will be enforced around the globe? Have NRDC and Stanford published solutions to these problems? Or are they just putting empty words on paper hoping to fool clueless legislators into adopting untestable technical solutions that the fossil corporations are paying them to promote?

But the most dubious part of the NRDC plan to geo-engineer carbon sequestration is their claim that is will be “perfectly safe” if performed with “adequate regulatory oversight.” Can NRDC and their friends at Stanford point to any instances of large-scale industrial enterprises that currently have “adequate regulatory oversight?”

Everyone knows that regulators quickly get captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate. There is a substantial body of social science literature on this point. Regulators are poorly paid, but if they look the other way at regulatory violations, they may find a lucrative job awaiting them when they retire from government. Less sinister but more pervasive is the simple fact that regulated corporations spend a lot of time befriending regulators, dropping by to say hello, asking about the kids, gaining their trust and ultimately their allegiance. Are NRDC and Stanford prepared to deny this indisputable history of regulatory collapse? Have they examined the dismal record of the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency? Are they prepared to design and describe regulatory institutions that do not suffer from these same fundamental human flaws? Or are they just blowing smoke?

So let’s examine these caveats just a bit more.

1. What actual experience to do humans have designing anything to be kept out of the environment forever? Answer: None. Absolutely none. In this context, then, what can “perfectly safe” possibly mean?

2. What human regulatory institutions can NRDC and friends point to that have proven adequate? Let’s see. The regulatory system for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons? Today, 40 years after the inception of the non-proliferation treaty, Israel, India, North Korea, Pakistan — all have The Bomb despite heroic efforts to prevent its spread. The only reason Iraq and Syria don’t have a nuclear weapon is because Israel bombed their nascent nuclear power plants to smithereens.

What about the regulatory system for controlling the discard of radioactive waste? Radioactive waste is loose at thousands of locations around the planet. In hundreds (perhaps thousands) of instances we do not even know where the stuff has been dumped. This technology was developed by the smartest people in the world with unlimited budgets — yet at places like the gold-plated Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico (now renamed the Los Alamos National Laboratory), plutonium, americium-241, strontium-90 and other supremely dangerous radioactive elements were buried in shallow pits, or simply dumped into mountain canyons without any records kept of their whereabouts. The kitty litter solution. And this was a federal scientific laboratory under strict military surveillance and control at the time. Can we expect the fossil corporations under the watchful eye of EPA (wink, wink) to do better?

How about the regulatory system for curtailing the widespread destruction of wildlife and human health from hormone-disrupting, cancer-causing chlorinated chemicals? The arctic, which has no industrial enterprises to speak of, is among the most heavily contaminated places on earth because the chemical regulatory system failed to consider how chemicals migrate once they are released into the environment.

So where can we find real-world examples of this “adequate regulatory oversight” that NRDC and Stanford say will be necessary to make carbon sequestration “perfectly safe”?

Maintaining vigilance for hundreds or thousands of years?

Elsewhere in their letter, NRDC and the engineers from Stanford say they believe carbon sequestration can be maintained for millions of years, but they say, if something goes wrong, rapid response will be possible.

Is this really true?

Again, let’s return to the debates over radioactive waste from the late 1970s. Back then scientists were a bit more candid: they admitted they knew of no way to pass information reliably to future generations describing the location of radioactive waste dumps. Given human history and the evanescence of human institutions, they could not imagine a way to reliably warn future generations about dangers buried in the earth. At one point they considered writing a huge warning across the face of the moon using graphic symbols because they had no idea which human languages would survive thousands of years into the future. Have NRDC and Stanford published their solution for this problem?

Why should we assume that humans a hundred years from now — let alone 500 or 5000 years from now — will be able to monitor for carbon dioxide leaks, locate them, and take rapid action to control them? The prudent assumption would be that humans will NOT have those capabilities. It seems to me it would be unethical to design our technologies based on untested and untestable (and wildly optimistic) assumptions about future humans and their social organizations. Who gave us the right to make decisions now based on assumptions, which, if they are wrong, could destroy the planet as a place suitable for human habitation — which is precisely what the carbon sequestration researchers are intending to do.

With the future of the human species at stake, isn’t a little humility in order? Will these geniuses find themselves staring into the mirror one day toward the end of their shameful careers muttering, “Who knew?”

But ordinary people who aren’t subsidized by energy or automobile corporations are asking the same sorts of common-sense questions they asked 20 years ago when the same sorts of brainy university types were telling us it was “perfectly safe” to bury radioactive waste in the ground:

** What if these scientists and engineers turn out to be wrong?

** What if there’s something important they haven’t thought of?

** Are these people infallible or are they human? They can’t be both.

** Isn’t it unethical to claim that something will be “perfectly safe” when as a scientist you know you can’t be perfectly sure?

** When the fossil corporations impose their plan on us and begin large-scale carbon sequestration, won’t that become a powerful incentive to reduce federal funding for conservation, renewables, and solar power? Then won’t we have all our eggs in one basket? And didn’t our grandmothers tell us that was a bad idea?

** After the fossil corporations impose carbon sequestration on us, won’t we be saddled with even more killer fly ash choking the air, and even more toxic bottom ash threatening groundwater supplies? Won’t we have even more destruction from mountain-top-removal coal mining, plus the enormous waste of water and land in the mid-western and western coal states? “Clean” coal will still be one of the dirtiest and most destructive forms of energy. And oil will still keep dragging us into endless bloody resource wars because we will still need to funnel more and more of the world’s remaining petroleum into our astonishingly wasteful and inefficient enterprises. Is this really the direction we want to be going? Is this a plan we can explain to our children with pride? Is this a plan that will give our children hope?

** Would carbon sequestration truly be reversible if we discovered far in the future that it was a mistake? If not, who can claim that it is ethical to proceed?

** If radioactive waste and carbon dioxide are so dangerous and so hard to manage, how does it make sense to steer the nation and the world onto a course that will guarantee continued production of these lethal substances far into the future?

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is pushing $25 million in earmarked federal funds for a British defense contractor that is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and suspected by American diplomats of a “longstanding, widespread pattern of bribery allegations.”

McConnell tucked money for three weapons projects for BAE Systems into the defense appropriations bill, which the Senate approved Oct. 3. The Defense Department failed to include the money in its own budget request, which required McConnell to intercede, said BAE spokeswoman Susan Lenover.

BAE is based in Great Britain but has worldwide operations, including a Louisville facility that makes naval guns and employs 322. McConnell has taken at least $53,000 in campaign donations from BAE’s political action committees and employees since his 2002 re-election. United Defense Industries, which BAE purchased two years ago, pledged $500,000 to a political-science foundation the senator created, the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.

In June, BAE confirmed that the Justice Department is investigating possible corruption in its Saudi Arabian deals. According to British media reports, BAE set up a slush fund with hundreds of millions of dollars in a Washington, D.C., bank to bribe Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan in order to win weapons contracts. Bandar, who heads the Saudi National Security Council, has denied the allegation.

BAE cannot discuss the allegation, Lenover said.

“We can’t really comment on it because it’s an ongoing investigation,” Lenover said. “We’re continuing to cooperate.”

Since BAE publicly disclosed the federal investigation, causing its stock to drop nearly 8 percent, its chief executive officer has announced his retirement earlier than expected and the company retained Britain’s former lord chief justice to lead an internal ethics review.

Although the current controversy focuses on Saudi Arabia, internal records from the U.S. State Department reveal that diplomats also have worried about how BAE won weapons contracts in South Africa, Austria, Tanzania and Qatar.

In a 2002 briefing memo, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Janice Bay told a colleague to “ask what the British government has done to investigate allegations of bribery by BAE, not only in connection with recent projects, but in connection with older contracts for which bribe payments may still be ongoing.”

“This volume of allegations about one company would have triggered a Department of Justice Criminal Division long ago,” Bay wrote. Bay’s memo, and other State Department documents related to BAE, are posted on the Web site of the British newspaper The Guardian.

The British Serious Fraud Office later opened its own investigation of BAE’s Saudi deals. But Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered the case closed last year, citing potential damage to British-Saudi relations and possible disclosure of military secrets.

Justice Department spokeswoman Jaclyn Lesch said she could not comment on, or confirm, her agency’s investigation. In 2002, BAE and another defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, agreed to pay the Justice Department $6.2 million to settle a False Claims Act case involving defective equipment they sold to the Navy.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Ethics watchdogs say they’re surprised McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, would continue to give earmarks and take donations from a corporation in hot water with his own government. McConnell should keep his distance, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“Most politicians decide that a scandal is a good time to stop doing business with a company, at least until the scandal is over,” Sloan said. “Particularly when we’re talking about a criminal investigation over bribery. You would think that a member of Congress would want to steer clear of anyone accused of bribery.”

Even without the scandal, it looks bad for a senator to earmark federal money for a corporation, as compared to a public university or a local government in his state, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center in Washington.

“Why did they need special favors from Senator McConnell instead of going through the usual open competition and budgeting process at the Pentagon?” Boehm asked.

Nor should McConnell take donations from a company to which he steers federal funds, said Boehm, a former Republican congressional aide.

“Contributions from entities that directly benefit from earmarks are a bad idea,” he said. “There’s a big difference between a company that just likes your general ideas and a company that stands to benefit from one or more transactions that you’re making on their behalf using public money.”

McConnell’s earmarks include $12.2 million for five-inch Naval gun mount overhauls; $8 million for Naval destroyer weapons modernization; and $4.8 million for ammunition pallets for Naval ships.

New Delhi, Oct. 28: Select US corporate giants — long viewed as symbols of America’s military-industry complex — have run into an unlikely hurdle in their plans to recruit and research at the Indian Institutes of Technology.

The red flag has passed on from the Left’s hands to students and faculty members at the IITs, which are as symbolic of India’s brain drain as George W. Bush is of the Iraq war.

Across the IITs, students and professors do not want companies like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Dow Chemicals to have “anything to do with IIT”.

“We don’t allow al Qaida to come and recruit from our campuses. There clearly is some line which has to be drawn,” said Siddharth Sareeen, an IIT Madras student.

The students and faculty want the companies to be scrutinised for their past record in business ethics, environmental issues and human rights before being allowed into any IIT campus.

While Dow and Halliburton want to recruit from the IITs, Lockheed Martin has made requests for cooperation with specific departments like aerospace engineering.

A petition against Dow has been signed by over a thousand IITians, including several faculty members, and submitted to the directors of the seven institutes across the country.

Dow had provided the notorious Napalm — a chemical that sets on fire anything that it falls on — to the American military during the Vietnam War. “Dow’s history, particularly its role in the Vietnam war, is an important reason for our opposition,” Milind Brahme, assistant professor at IIT Madras, said.

Methane leaked from a plant of Union Carbide, now owned by Dow, on a December 1984 night killed thousands — some immediately and many more later from medical complications caused by the gas.

“Dow coming to the IITs is quite disturbing. It has a lot of unfulfilled economic and environmental liabilities in Bhopal,” a professor at IIT Bombay said, clarifying that these were his personal views and not those of the institute.

Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defence contractors, is an integral part of the US military-industrial complex. It is one of the bidders for the 126 fighter aircraft India is seeking.

Halliburton was one of the first companies to win oil contracts in Iraq after the Americans quelled the initial resistance in that country, and has been at the centre of controversies because of its links to US Vice-President Dick Cheney.

At IIT Madras on Friday, students and faculty — including some who believe Dow should be allowed to come to the campus — held a debate. They had invited a Dow representative to participate, but the company did not send one.

IIT Bombay’s placement committee is examining the request to scrap Dow from the list of visiting companies. The company’s representatives were scheduled to come yesterday, but the IIT has asked for the visit to be postponed, citing a busy Sunday schedule.

Dow had also postponed its visit to IIT Madras for recruitment on Friday. The company, which has paid compensation to Bhopal victims but is still battling a case on environmental compensation against the Indian government, said the postponement was unrelated to the campaign against it.

“Our officials who were to visit the campus could not come on the pre-decided date as other meetings suddenly came up. This has been conveyed to the IIT,” Nand Kumar Sanglikar, Dow India’s spokesperson, said. “We are expanding in India. We want the best brains in the country to join us.”

Building consensus against Lockheed Martin or Halliburton will not be as easy as the campaign against Dow, Brahme confessed, because of the absence of an India link.

How I wish Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would adopt San Francisco, as he has the South Bronx.

According to the New York Times, the poorest area of New York has benefited greatly from the South American Socialist leader’s love affair with its working-class neighborhoods. Since 2005, residents have received great discounts in the price of oil from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company (Citgo) to heat their homes during the area’s cold winters. Cooperatives have been started to provide jobs and improve the environment.

Of course, it’s ruffled feathers both here and in Venezuela. American oil companies are worried that it makes them look like the bad guys. Which they are. The greed of the American oil companies is unparalleled. Oil prices continue to soar, with word that this winter, people will pay even more to heat their homes. How much profit do they have to make before it’s enough?

In Venezuela, some wonder why the outspoken leader of their country would spend money in the world’s richest land when there is no scarcity of poor people in his own backyard.

It’s obvious why. Chavez wants to ruffle the feathers of this nation’s leaders, especially President George Bush, whom he has referred to as “the devil.” There’s good reason to equate Bush with the mythological symbol of all evil. Not only did Bush lie to get us into unprovoked wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he continues to spy on American citizens and crush our civil rights via the Patriot Act.

Hugo Chavez should go on ruffling those feathers. Just do a little of it here in San Francisco. We’re a city that should be dear to his heart. After all, we’re staunchly anti-war, and we hate George Bush and everything he stands for. We have much more Socialist leanings than any other city in the U.S. Just ask conservative Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly.

San Francisco could use an infusion of money into its community land trust program. That way, the land trust could buy more property and provide permanently affordable housing for the city’s neediest. Perhaps every building that goes up for sale could be purchased through a grant from Citgo and turned into a land trust. Nothing keeps housing affordable like land trusts. Or coops. With real estate out of the hands of those who profit from it, the massive displacement that is happening now could be lessened.

Then there’s MUNI. Imagine Citgo financing public transportation so that it’s free and runs more frequently. The Board of Supervisors could close off Market Street to traffic and restaurants could put out tables and chairs where cars now spread congestion and pollution. Talk about improving the environment.

With extra dough, San Francisco could also have the best universal healthcare system in the world. The Board has already approved a plan that provides for all needy San Franciscans, but it could use a little green to make it better. It’s a project that a Socialist such as Chavez could support with a good conscience.

Chavez could think of it this way: Nothing would infuriate Bush and the right-wing more than his lending San Francisco a helping hand.

The Venezuelan oligarchy furiously criticizes President Chávez for the aid it provides in the form of cheap oil to the government in Havana. Indeed, Cuba receives 98,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates. Nevertheless, the Caribbean island is not the only nation that benefits from these favorable agreements. Most of the countries in the region, like Haiti, Jamaica, or Nicaragua, are also benefiting from this policy of solidarity. London, along with a number of cities in the U.S, also benefit from Venezuelan generosity, though without as much controversy (1).

Chávez responded to those attacks personally on his TV program “Aló, Presidente”, (Hello Mr. President) on September 30th, 2007. He stated that the debt the Venezuelan people now owe to Cuba is far greater than the petrol aid they provide to the Caribbean island. “Those who […] accuse me of giving oil as a gift to Cuba [are] stupid. If anybody would only calculate it, Bolívar by Bolívar, cent by cent…”. The President reminded his audience that 30,000 Cuban doctors have been working in the country voluntarily and free of charge for more than 5 years. He said that the Cuban health professionals saved more lives in five years than Venezuelan doctors during Venezuela’s entire history of healthcare. “It is priceless,” he emphasized. “What is of greater value, in objective prices, this, or the barrels of oil we are selling to Cuba?” he asked (2).

At present, about 9 million people benefit from the medical care provided by Cuban doctors, who have made a total of more than 60 million examinations nationwide. The healthcare programs, the Missions “Barrio Adentro”, made it possible for all Venezuelans to have universal and free access to medical care. The development of preventive medicine saved the lives of 1,153 children in 2007, according to statistics provided by the Health Ministry (3).

Thanks to the presence of Cuban doctors and the political will of Chávez, 6 new clinics are under construction in Barinas, Mérida, Guárico, Miranda, Apure and in the Metropolitan District. The Mission “Barrio Adentro” has reached its fourth phase. The government foresees to invert a total of 800 million Euros (2,500 million Bolívares) in the public healthcare system (4).

Chávez also announced a 60% increase in the salaries of Venezuelan doctors employed by the state, effective from November 1, 2007. “I know that doctors’ salaries have been falling behind […]. This [Increasing the salaries] is a matter of justice for all those working for the health of the Venezuelan people”, he declared (5). He also emphasized that the rise in oil prices made this investment possible (6). Naturally, the Medical Association of Venezuela welcomed the announcement (7). The minimum salary for a new state doctor will now be 822 Euros per month, which is an extraordinarily high income for a Third World country (8). Teachers haven’t been left behind. The Ministry of Public Education decided to increase their salaries by 40%, also as of November 1st, 2007 (9).

In contrast, President Bush vetoed legislation passed by Congress to provide access to health care for poor children, using the pretext of an austerity budget even as hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent on the illegitimate and genocidal occupation of Iraq. Two radically opposed visions of society are embodied by Chávez and Bush: on the one hand, the wellbeing of those who are in need, and, on the other, the profits of multinational companies (10).

To fight excessive consumption of alcohol and tobacco and thus reduce the health problems of the population, the Venezuelan government has decided to increase by 50% the tax on liquor and by 70% the tax on boxes of tobacco. “As a country, we have one of the highest rates of whiskey consumption,” Chavez complained. The sales of beer on the streets will be prohibited from now on. This battery of measures is part of the preventive policies enacted by the government aimed at improving the state of health of the Venezuelans (11).

Cuba and Venezuela have strengthened anew their regional-based integration by signing 14 new economic cooperation agreements on October 15, 2007 (12). During his speech, Hugo Chávez reiterated his admiration for Cuba, very much to the annoyance of the Venezuelan opposition: “Fidel is a father to our people. Cuba is an example for our Revolution. Venezuela loves Cuba; our people love the Cuban people and owes them a huge debt of gratitude” (13). Then, addressing his detractors, he asked: “How much would any country have to pay to have almost 30,000 doctors, nurses, ophthalmologists and dentists 24 hours per day, all over the country […]? Why don’t you answer me?” (14).

The integration of Cuba and Venezuela is a model the rest of the continent needs to follow. It is the only way to take precautions against Washington’s threats, achieve true independence and improve the living standards of the population.

Notes

(1) Mauricio Vicent, “El presidente de Venezuela alude en Cuba a una confederación entre los dos países”; The Venezuelan President aludes in Cuba to a confederation between the two countries. El País, October 16th, 2007.

(2) Associated Press, “Chávez asegura que Venezuela tiene deuda con Cuba”; Chávez affirms that Venezuela is in debt with Cuba. October 1st, 2007.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, “Arrancó Barrio Adentro IV con la construcción de 6 hospitales especializados”; Healthcare Mission Barrio Adentro IV takes off with the construction of 6 specialist hospitals. September 30th, 2007.

(5) Associated Press, “Chávez anuncia incremento salarial a médicos en Venezuela”; Chávez announces salary increase for doctors in Venezuela. October 8th, 2007.

(6) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, “Chávez anunció incremento salarial de 60% para medicos”; Chávez announces salary increase by 60% for doctors. October 8th, 2007.

(7) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, “Colegio Médico del Distrito Metropolitano conforme con aumento de 60%”; Medical Association of the Capital District in agreement with salary increase by 60%. October 9th, 2007.

(8) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, “Médicos satisfechos con aumento de sueldo del 60%”; Doctors satisfied with salary increase by 60%. October 9th, 2007.

(9) Associated Press, “Chávez anuncia incremento salarial a maestros en Venezuela,” Chávez announces salary increase for teachers in Venezuela. October 5th, 2007.

(10) David Stout, “Bush Defends Veto of Health Care Bill,” The New York Times, October 15th, 2007.

(11) Christopher Toothaker, “Chávez la emprende contra la bebida y el consumismo”; Chávez takes up arms against drinks and consumerism. Associated Press, October 9th, 2007.

(12) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, “Venezuela y Cuba suscriben 14 nuevos acuerdos de integración,” Venezuela and Cuba sign 14 new agreements on integration. October 15th, 2007.

(13) Granma, “Estamos en las mejores condiciones Cuba y Venezuela para avanzar en un proceso unitario. Discurso de Hugo Chávez Frías, Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, en el acto de firma de acuerdos entre Venezuela y Cuba, efectuado en el Palacio de las Convenciones, el 15 de octubre de 2007, “Año 49 de la Revolución,” Cuba and Venezuela are in the best conditions to move forward in a process of unity. Speech given by Hugo Chávez Frías, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, on the event of the signing of agreements between Venezuela and Cuba, at the Palacio de las Convenciones, on the October 15, 2007, “49th Year of the Revolution”. October 16th, 2007.

(14) Associated Press, “Chávez asegura que Venezuela tiene deuda con Cuba,” Chávez affirms that Venezuela is in debt with Cuba. Op. cit.

Salim Lamrani is French teacher, author and journalist, specialist on international relations between Cuba and the United States. He has published the books: Washington contre Cuba (Pantin: Le Temps des Cerises, 2005), Cuba face à l’Empire (Genève: Timeli, 2006) and Fidel Castro, Cuba et les Etats-Unis (Pantin: Le Temps des Cerises, 2006).

Breathing slowly.. In and out..that’s what I have to do to keep myself from crying, and stay alive.
I’m more depressed than I’ve ever been in the last year I think.
It’s weird. I thought going to college would be all I need.

****

Most of the lecturers this year are very educated, mostly professors with PhDs. I feel stupid. Is it possible that I have forgot so much of what I’ve studied before, or is it that my brain needs to be reactivated? I am so not used to keeping silent and having no answers..

Our classroom is in the 2nd floor, we have to go up 44 steps to get to it, down 44 steps to see people, we’re so isolated.. We do this more than 3 times a day, my legs are killing me now.

****

I’m sick of talking about the bad situation.. I just hate the mornings, there’s always shooting and many explosions. I always have doubt that I’ll not make it to college, the roads are rarely open.

I’m so very very depressed.. I almost cry everytime people ask me why I look so sad. I can’t even see the full half of the glass I used to cling to.

My cousin drove me home the other day.. I used to go to college with dad, and my friend’s father would drive us home. Now, and since my friend has failed and is still waiting for the first-graders to start college, I have a problem going home when it’s not at the same time mom finishes her work.
When my cousin drives me, I feel the need to keep talking, I just hate the silence. But because of my deep depression, and to keep myself from crying, I didn’t talk much this time.. I concentrated on the road, something I rarely do (I still haven’t learned the way to my school, I can’t get my brain to concentrate on roads at all). I couldn’t believe all the wreckage on the way.. Building after building, destoyed, burnt.. Black signs announcing deaths.. Smoke from a new explosion. We had to stop few times to clear the road for the police or the Americans.
I asked my cousin about a destroyed building I haven’t seen before, he said it was months ago.. I was shocked; I didn’t ask about the ones that followed.

I had to look for a car to drive me to and fro college daily, I finally found one, and a classmate with a nearby house is coming with me.. Yesterday was the first day he was supposed to come and drive me to the university.
I woke up at 6:40, he was supposed to come at about 7:30 when the roads to the university aren’t very crowded. I got dressed and had my breakfast and decided to go online till it’s time.. There was an explosion, then shooting. I left the computer.
Dad went out and checked, the driver will have to use another road to get to our house, the street was blocked.
I went outside waiting, it was time and they weren’t there.. Helicopters were hovering above the house..
I called my classmate many times but the signal was very weak. When it finally rang she picked up and told me there were Americans searching the cars and she has to hang up.. At 7:45 she called saying they can’t reach the house. Dad drove me to college, we had to drive over about 4 pavements, going through wreckage and severely damaged roads.
I arrived to college at time.. my classmate about 20 minutes later, another classmate in the same neighborhood arrived 2 hours later.
I spent the rest of the day sighing, and the road back hearing all the bad stories of death and killings I could stand to hear from my classmate.

****

That’s not what I call home.. We’re really strangers in our country.. oh well, excuse me, I don’t think “our” should be used anymore.. I’m not sure whose country it is, but it’s not mine for sure.

****

I have spent all day drawing up my family tree i.e my genealogical tree.

I tried assembling all the information together. Souvenirs, memories, faces, locations, names…some sort of a mental compendium of an oral and visual history.

What I heard, whom I met, what was said about who, who married who, where did they come from, their origins, their sect, their religion, where they ended up, their life stories…

I tried to go as far back as I can, gathering all these little pieces and sat down and sketched the family tree, starting with my great grandparents -both maternal and paternal.

It was not easy…

Some of them are already gone for good. Some I never really bothered to find out more about, some I took for granted, some were too distant physically and some emotionally out of reach, and some were a taboo subject…

I spent hours remembering names and faces…They were difficult, painful hours…

My immediate family was just a branch of this tree amongst many other branches but we were all attached to the same trunk. We all belonged to the same trunk.

I got tired after a while and stopped this exercise…But I was curious as to why I had started it in the first place. Why this sudden need to delve into my own personal roots…

I have no clear answers.

Maybe because I have been feeling like a leaf that has fallen, amongst many other leaves, kind of scattered “pêle-mêle.”

Maybe because winds blew us away, apart from one another, sometimes ripping whole branches to the ground…

Maybe it my own feeble attempt to hang on to something solid…like an imaginary tree when my own grounds are so shaky, almost non existent.

So I sketch trees instead, family trees…

I remember a long time ago, I lived through an earthquake, everything shook and not knowing what to do, I held on to some wall only to feel the wall wobble and crack…

It is the same now. Everything around me feels like this wall – wobbly, cracked…Fractured.

I console myself with the thought that I, at least, have the memory of a Tree. Something to give me strength, verticality, and a sense of belonging even if it is on some fictional, imaginary level…

I have serious doubts that the increasing number of Iraqi orphans can console themselves with that same thought.

A friend who is closely associated with an International Organization, told me that the unofficial figure for Iraqi orphans is 5 million. I have no way of verifying this figure but it does not surprise me.

Who will remind these orphans of their family tree? Who will tell them stories about their parents, grand parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, relatives…

Who will feed them? Who will nurse them? Who will hold them? Who will teach them how to draw trees? Who will recount their origins to them?

Thousands are growing up in the streets, in the garbage dumps, sleeping in packs, in some corner, in some rubbly building, in some orphanage, abused, neglected, traumatized for life…

And if they ever make it to adulthood, that is if they do not commit suicide before or fry their brains in drugs or end up incarcerated in some prison for petty theft…or get caught in some pedophile ring, or see their life story written in some brothel at the hands of some perverted adult… What will they tell you?

What Tree will they sketch ?

Do you ever think of them ? Do they ever cross your mind ? Or are you just sadistically pleased with your great Iraqi production ?

I really have to say it – You are a VILE lot. Every single one of you. And that includes you too, impotent, treacherous Arab shits. And that includes you too perverted, sly Iranians you and your supporters. And that includes you too, sectarian heinous, repulsive Iraqis.

There are also hundreds of other Iraqi children rotting away in local prisons, under the pretext of helping the “insurgents.”

Prisons run by the sectarian militias from Iran. Militias, that you, anti-war, another category of shits, support.
Militias run by the bastard driller Muqtada al Sadr and the Al Hakeem clan and the Maliki puppet whom you welcomed with flowers in Washington D.C.

And you wonder why I call you VILE? And you wonder why I call you a DISGRACE?

An article appeared yesterday, and it states that these child prisoners show signs of severe torture. Read on.

“The five children showed signs of torture all over their bodies. Three had marks of cigarettes burns over their legs and one couldn’t speak as the shock sessions affected his conversation…” (full article here)

It is believed that there are about 220 child prisoners in Iraqi governmental run prisons. I say bullshit to that. Multiply this number by 3 at least, if not more.

It is also common to witness an armed militia man walking into some hospital with some sick child prisoner (sometimes not older than 12) and the doctors have to treat and ask no questions whatsoever. Some of these children are diagnosed with STD.

Would you like to see your own children in a similar state ?

So you have the orphans, the child prisoners and you also have another category, the traumatized for life, beyond help category.

Take this one for instance;

“Salah Hashimy, 14, has lost his parents, sisters and many friends since the US-led invasion in 2003; finally there was no one to look after him. He lacks education, love and support, a combination that, according to doctors, caused his mental health problems. My memory is very weak but I cannot forget when I saw my sister being raped by militants until she died,” Hashimy said.” (full article here)

And we all know, all of us Iraqis know, who does the “professional” raping in Baghdad.
None but the sectarian militias from Iran and IN PARTICULAR Jaysh Al-Mahdi of your “patriotic” Muqtada al Sadr. And they are ALL “rogue elements.”
And this is a FACT.
Congratulations to you, anti-war shits, supporters of Genocide.

So tell me, o’civilized ones, how will these children draw a Family Tree?

What will they say ? Our family tree was bombed, raped, tortured, murdered, imprisoned, broken, exiled in the name of Democracy ?

Or will they just stare at you and point their fingers at your eyes ?

Or having lost it all, will they later join the Resistance, and clean us from your filth…and find a sense of belonging ?

If the US wants to keep using a drug war air base in Ecuador, it must let Ecuador open a military base in Miami, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told Reuters in an interview in Italy Monday. Correa, a popular leftist leader, promised during the 2006 election campaign that he would never renew the 10-year lease for the air base at Manta, in northern Ecuador.

“We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorian base,” Correa said in Italy. “If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadorian base in the United States.”

US officials consider Manta critical to anti-drug surveillance on Pacific drug-smuggling routes. The lease on the base, negotiated with a previous government, is set to run out in 2009. Correa said earlier that he would chop his arm off before he renewed the lease.

According to a US embassy in Quito fact sheet, over 60% of illegal drug seizures in the eastern Pacific in recent years resulted from intelligence gathered thanks to the air base. The fact sheet said that 15 permanent and up to 150 rotating US military personnel involved in anti-drug activities are stationed at the base at any given time.

The fact sheet sought to portray the base in the best possible light, even resorting to noting that the base’s “full-time Ecuadorian employees include persons with physical challenges whom the [base] is helping to integrate into the workforce through an innovative program” and that the base “provides financial support to multiple local charities in an effort to be good citizens and guests in Manta. US personnel help tutor English in a local community center and support charities including orphanages and a school for children with disabilities.”

But embassy PR wheedling notwithstanding, Correa is tapping into broad public resentment of the base, much of which is rooted in dislike for Plan Colombia and suspicion about what other uses the US could put the base to. Correa campaigned strongly against Plan Colombia in the 2006 election, as tensions between the neighbors heightened over US-backed aerial fumigation of Colombian coca groups and its impact on adjacent Ecuadorian territory.

“The nationwide position not to involve Ecuador in Plan Colombia is the first reason why Ecuadorians do not want the US military to remain in Manta,” Fredy Rivera, professor and researcher with the Ecuadorian branch of the Latin American University for Social Sciences, told ISN Security Watch during a recent interview. A second reason for Ecuadorian opposition to the base was suspicion over US plans, he said. “The surveillance equipment can be used to watch activity in Colombia, Peru, parts of Venezuela and Bolivia, and of course Ecuador,” Rivera said, adding, “this is official discourse.”

An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are “enemy combatants”.

The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as “unconscionable”.

His critique will be the centrepiece of a hearing on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when another attempt is made to shut the prison down. So nervous is the Bush administration of the latest attack – and another Supreme Court ruling against it – that it is preparing a whole new system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.

The whistleblower’s testimony is the most serious attack to date on the military panels, which were meant to give a fig-leaf of legitimacy to the interrogation and detention policies at Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels.

“It’s a kangaroo court system and completely corrupt,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is co-ordinating investigations and appeals lawsuits against the government by some 1,000 lawyers. “Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret.”

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held for 558 detainees at the Guantanamo in 2004 and 2005. All but 38 detainees were determined to be “enemy combatants” who could be held indefinitely without charges. Detainees were not represented by a lawyer and had no access to evidence. The only witnesses they could call were other so-called “enemy combatants”.

The army major has said that in the rare circumstances in which it was decided that the detainees were no longer enemy combatants, senior commanders ordered another panel to reverse the decision. The major also described “acrimony” during a “heated conference” call from Admiral McGarragh, who reports to the Secretary of the US Navy, when a the panel refused to describe several Uighur detainees as enemy combatants. Senior military commanders wanted to know why some panels considering the same evidence would come to different findings on the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in China.

When the whistleblower suggested over the phone that inconsistent results were “good for the system … and would show that the system was working correctly”, Admiral McGarragh, he said, had no response. The latest criticism emerged when lawyers investigating the case of a Sudanese hospital administrator, Adel Hamad, who has been held for five years, came across a “stunning” sworn statement from a member of the military panel. The officer they interviewed was so frightened of retaliation from the military that they would not allow their name to be used in the statement, nor to reveal whether the person was a man or woman.

Two other military lawyers have also gone public. In June, Army Lt-Col Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran in US military intelligence, became the first insider to publicly fault the proceedings. In May last year, Lt-Com Matthew Diaz was sentenced to six months in prison and dismissed from the military after he sent the names of all 551 men at the prison to a human rights group.

MoD begins study amid fears that up to 20,000 soldiers may be affected

The Ministry of Defence is conducting a major study into brain injury in troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan amid fears that thousands of soldiers may have suffered damage after being exposed to high-velocity explosions.

The US army says as many as 20% of its soldiers and marines have suffered “mild traumatic brain injury” (mTBI) from blows to the head or shockwaves caused by explosions. The condition, which can lead to memory loss, depression and anxiety, has been designated as one of four “signature injuries” of the Iraq conflict by the US department of defence, which is introducing a large-scale screening programme for troops returning from the frontline.

Defence officials were reluctant to extrapolate directly from the US experience, arguing that the science is still inconclusive and that the US and UK experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has been different. But the Guardian has learned that the government has put in place a series of measures – including a comprehensive screening process – to deal with what could be a 20-fold increase in troops with mTBI. If the most alarming US predictions are accurate, as many as 20,000 UK troops could be at risk.

Kit Malia, a cognitive rehabilitation therapist who will oversee the programme to treat TBI at Headley Court military rehabilitation centre in Surrey, said: “I think the issue is that we don’t know whether the Americans are correct. But if the American figures are correct, this is massive. Absolutely massive.”

Surgeon commodore Lionel Jarvis, director of medical policy at the MoD, said the UK is doing all it can to improve diagnosis and treatment of the condition and is “running very, very much in parallel” with the US. He added: “The only significant difference is that there is a much higher political profile on this in the US.”

He said the MoD had drawn up a list of measures to help deal with mTBI that included circulating information to all ranks in the field on what symptoms to look out for; plans to screen all service personnel when they return from combat; a four-stage treatment programme at Headley Court; and research into body armour to improve protection for the brain.

Liam Fox, the Conservative defence spokesman, said: “It is a dereliction of duty, a failure of duty of care. They are already well behind the US in terms of identifying this disease. We have to ask again why should US troops be getting better care than British troops?”

The mTBI injury can occur when a soldier gets a blow on the head or is in close proximity to an explosion. The increased use of improvised explosive devices (IEDS) – roadside bombs – in Iraq and Afghanistan means more troops are at risk than in previous conflicts, and experts say that even the most advanced helmets cannot protect the brain from the shock waves.

A US neurologist and former doctor at the US department of veterans affairs, P Steven Macedo, said: “The enemy combatants are not trying to put missiles or bullets into our troops – they are trying to blow up their vehicles with IEDs. But the vehicles and the men wear heavy armour so what goes through them in many cases is the blast wave and we are beginning to see the impact this is having on the neurological make-up of our troops. This is the first war since the first world war where the major cause of injuries is blasts.”

Advances in brain scanning have revealed that soldiers can sustain bruising and blood clots on the brain, even if there is no visible injury. If the condition is not diagnosed it can lead to long-term problems – from depression and anxiety to violence and relationship break-up.

Tens of thousands of people have taken part in demonstrations against the war in Iraq in cities across the US.

Rallies took place in a dozen cities, with the biggest crowds gathering in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

They were timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of a vote by the US Senate to authorise the Iraq invasion.

Those taking part, who included relatives of servicemen fighting in Iraq, urged the US congress to cut off funding for the war.

The ‘national day of action’ was called by the United for Peace and Justice coalition.

Silence for dead

Mike Carano, who organised a march in Ohio, told Reuters news agency: “This is across-the-country sentiment about ending the occupation, redirecting funds for needs in this country, our attempt to get Congress to stand up and have its prerogative to cut funding, to take charge.”

One of the national co-ordinators of the protests, Leslie Kielsen, told Reuters that the “half a trillion” dollars spent on the war was money that could have been used for education, social housing and to feed the hungry.

In New York participants gathered in Union Square, before marching on to Foley Square, which is close to many of the city’s largest courthouses and government offices.

A two minute silence was held to honour those killed in the violence which has blighted Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.

WASHINGTON — The Kuwaiti contractor that’s building the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — behind schedule and plagued by allegations of shoddy construction and safety flaws — is still winning lucrative new contracts to build U.S. diplomatic installations overseas.

Late last month, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co. was part of a team that won a $122 million State Department contract to build a U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, according to contract documents.

That’s one of at least three State Department jobs, in addition to the Baghdad project, that First Kuwaiti won in association with a U.S. firm, Grunley Walsh LLC of Rockville, Md.

Since 2006, by operating as a subcontractor to Grunley Walsh, First Kuwaiti has won contracts for work on a new U.S. Embassy in Libreville, Gabon; on a consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia; and on the Jeddah project.

Such partnerships are increasingly common as foreign companies try to win shares of embassy construction contracts that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year under the State Department’s aggressive building program. Under a 1986 law, only U.S. firms can bid on embassy construction.

But industry analysts said that First Kuwaiti appears to be the financial muscle behind the partnership with Grunley Walsh. Lebanese businessman Wadih al Absi founded the company in 1996. News reports and Middle East experts say that Absi is a supporter of Lebanese Christian politician Michel Aoun, an ally of Syria and the Iranian-backed Islamic militant group Hezbollah.

First Kuwaiti, which has hired a public relations firm, Saylor Co., declined to comment. Bassem Soueidan, Grunley Walsh’s operations manager, didn’t return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

“There’s always a concern about a foreign firm trying to use an allegiance with a U.S. firm to get a foothold in,” said Marco Giamberardino of the Associated General Contractors of America.

The awards to Grunley Walsh and First Kuwaiti over the past 13 months have sparked criticism from State Department officials and First Kuwaiti’s competitors in light of the problems that have delayed the opening of the $740 million Baghdad embassy complex.

The problems include a fire sprinkler system that failed when it was tested in August, electrical problems in a camp intended to house embassy guards and allegations of abuse of foreign workers. First Kuwaiti has denied the abuse allegations, but the Justice Department is investigating.

McClatchy Newspapers reported last week that some aspects of the embassy’s construction are now the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that “some flaws in construction” had delayed the Baghdad embassy’s opening. “We are going to open as soon as possible,” she said, without offering a firm date.

The head of the State Department building program, retired Army Maj. Gen. Charles E. Williams, assured Congress in late July that the Baghdad embassy would be ready “in September as planned at the budget.”

Williams’ sympathizers say he’s overhauled a lethargic building program that built an average of one embassy a year and has delivered more than a dozen annually. Critics say his zeal for on-time and on-budget projects has created new problems.

Rice is expected to be grilled Thursday by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the embassy construction, oversight of Blackwater and other private security contractors in Iraq, and Iraqi government corruption.

James F. Archibald III, an attorney who represented Alabama-based Caddell Construction Co. in challenging the award of the contract for the U.S. Embassy in Djibouti to a subsidiary of a Dutch firm, said other foreign companies are using American partners to bid on State Department contracts.

The Government Accountability Office ruled for Caddell, but a federal claims court judge overturned the ruling in August.

After the ruling, Grunley Walsh and First Kuwaiti continued to bid on the Jeddah contract and others.

According to documents posted on the Internet, the former head of U.S. operations for First Kuwaiti, Robert Farah, has been negotiating to purchase Grunley Walsh’s international operations, including the embassy construction work.

In a letter dated Dec. 22, 2006, an attorney for Farah said that Farah intended to purchase a renamed firm called Grunley Walsh International LLC, including its contracts in Indonesia, Gabon and at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. The letter, to an official of the Defense Security Service, which oversees security clearances for contractors, was first posted on the Web site of independent journalist David Phinney.

BAGHDAD, 25 October 2007 (IRIN) – Iraqi NGOs have raised concerns about the condition of children in local prisons, saying they are abused and tortured during interrogation.

“Children are being treated as adults in Iraqi prisons and our investigations have shown that they are being abused and tortured,” said Khalid Rabia’a, a spokesman for the Prisoners’ Association for Justice (PAJ).

“Our investigation started after families brought their five sons to our organisation looking for psychological help for their children who were recently released from prison, and what we found out was shocking,” Rabia’a added.

According to Rabia’a, child prisoners between 13 and 17 are being accused of supporting insurgents and militias. Most were detained during Iraqi army military operations in the Baghdad neighbourhoods of Adhamiya, Latifiya, Alawi, Doura and Hay al-Adel.

“The five children showed signs of torture all over their bodies. Three had marks of cigarettes burns over their legs and one couldn’t speak as the shock sessions affected his conversation,” Rabia’a said. “It is against international law that protects children and we call for interventions in all Iraqi prisons to save the lives of these children.”

The Ministry of Interior denied the accusations, saying children and youth taken for interrogation are released after a maximum of 48 hours without being abused or tortured. A campaign against child abuse is being launched in Baghdad with the support of Iraq’s Vice-President Tarek al-Hashimy.

“Iraq respects human rights conduct for children and adults and our prisons aren’t used for torture. Earlier scandals were reported and those responsible were punished. The accusations are wrong and they cannot prove it,” Lt Col Ali Khalid Hussein, senior official at the Ministry of Interior, told IRIN.

However, another senior official from the ministry, who requested anonymity and who has been supplying the NGO with daily updates, told IRIN that every Iraqi prison is holding at least 20 children and they are all suffering abuse.

Rabia’a said the NGO had informants in many Iraqi prisons but since they did not want to be named, they could not go to court and prove the abuses were taking place.