Been a while, I see.

Mostly that's down to having downloaded Championship Manager 4 and losing hours here and there. Strange.

In the news today, though...

I see that USAID has awarded the Bechtel Corporation the bumper contract for rebuilding Iraq. The what corporation, asks you...

Bechtel. You might know them as the company that built the US nuclear energy program, or maybe the company that New Labour hired to get the tube out to the Milennium Dome in time for it's opening.

Of course, you might know them as the company that privatised Bolivia's water and sewage services, causing civil unrest in Cocachamba.

Or maybe as the company which, when given the task of managing the Dome Rail Link, threatened to blacklist striking engineers. Or as the comapnt which through the 80s routinely fired whistleblowers who threatened to reveal bad business and safety practices in Bechtel's plants.

Or as the company which, when given the opportunity to manage the Eurotunnel Rail Link, loused it up so badly that Chancellor Gordon Brown had to use million of pounds of public money to get the project on track.

Or as the company which supplied many of the "innocent" pieces of machinery Iraq miuraculously fashined into super guns in the late 80s.

Or as the company which was a stepping stone to the government for George Schultz (Reagan's Secretary of State, responsible for weakening environmental protection laws and loosening corporate responsibilites in areas you and I might consider just having good business ethics), Casper Weinberger (Reagan's Secretary of Defense, ably aided by Senior Military Assistant General Colin Powell, both of whom testified to Congress about a covert shipment of US arms to Iran), Philip Habib (Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East who brokered a peace - of sorts - in the Beiruit sige of 1982. Which held until peace-keeping troops left the region and then Ariel Sharon went and did exactly as he had said he would from the outset.) , Richard Helms (former Director of the CIA who led plots to kill Castro, spy on Anti-War protestors during Vietnam and to overthrow Salvador Allende's government in Chile. Which had been democratically elected by Chileans. And then he lied about the CIA's involvement in those very same things - he came clean in 1977) and William Casey (who ran Reagan's campaign, ran covert ops and was the CIA's leader in the Iran arms deal). Some of those are, even now, executives on the board of Bechtel.

Oh, and in the first nuclear expansion since Three Mile Island (which, naturally, Bechtel were fined for avoiding safety controls when clearing *that* mess up) it's likely that as the US's premier provider of Nuclear Power, President Bush will likely award the contract for building and maintaining new installations to...yep.

And one more thing...the Bechtel Corporation was responsible for the building of nuclear power plants in North Korea in the 80s (with a little bribing of Korean Electric Company officials, of course).

So, I'm glad that the "Post-Saddam Iraq" is in good hands.

Sweet dreams, everyone.