Global briefs

USA: Bush's Pentagon has announced a new privatisation 
scheme for military physicians and other health personnel, part 
of its Iraq strategy of having private contractors perform what 
were up to now routine US military functions. The delivery of 
medical and health care to military personnel is a major program. 
Medical and dental professionals provide care to over 8.9 million 
active military personnel, their dependents and retirees. Turning 
these health-related activities over to private contractors would 
be a major financial boon to many Bush supporters. For example, 
take Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD, a key Bush ally. 
Frist runs the largest chain of for-profit hospitals in the US, 
Columbia/HCA, which is a major player in the recently enacted 
Bush Medicare drug fiasco. A number of Columbia/HCA officials are 
serving time in prison for Medicare fraud. But with the Iraqi war 
being used to test the use of private contractors as overseers of 
prisons and other purposes, the White House sees the complete 
privatisation of medical services advancing the Bush agenda and 
at the same time paying back his biggest corporate contributors.

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SOUTHERN CAUCASUS: Breakaway autonomous regions in the 
former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan are creating a 
headache for the Bush administration's geopolitical planners. The 
instability of this region  the Southern Caucasus  was thrown 
into bold relief by the hostage-taking of school children in the 
nearby North Ossetia town of Beslan. Azerbaijan is rich in oil 
and natural gas, particularly around its capital, Baku, on the 
Caspian Sea. The country's estimated oil reserves range from 3.7 
billion to 40 billion barrels. Western oil companies, led by 
British Petroleum, have launched an ambitious pipeline project to 
transport this oil westward, through Azerbaijan and Georgia, to 
the Turkish town of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. Its ultimate 
destination is Europe. A parallel natural gas pipeline will send 
Caspian gas through Turkey to the "new" and old Europe, breaking 
what Western energy interests refer to as Europe's "strategic 
dependence on Russian gas".

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AFGHANISTAN: Three Americans have been sentenced to eight 
to ten years in prison for running a private jail and torturing 
prisoners, after a panel of three Afghan judges rejected their 
claim that they were working for a Pentagon counter-terrorist 
group led by Lt Gen William G Boykin, the deputy Under-Secretary 
of Defense for Intelligence. Jonathan K Idema, a former member of 
the Special Forces, and Brent Bennett, an Army-trained forward 
air controller, were sentenced to ten years, and Edward 
Caraballo, a journalist filming a documentary about them, was 
given eight years. The Americans immediately said that they had 
had been abandoned by their American masters because they had 
become a political liability. "This can only have been staged by 
the US Government — we were an embarrassment", said Caraballo, 
an award-winning cameraman who says he was filming Idema's 
counter-terrorist operations.