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The Nine Circles of Hell! – all the news that gives you fits – for Monday, August, 30, 2010, are:

‘23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism’

Is anti-psychotic prescribed to US soldiers suffering from PTSD deadly?

US wasted billions on Iraq reconstruction projects

14 US troops killed in Afghanistan since Saturday

If Israeli settlements continue, there won’t be peace with Palestinians

Knesset member to testify on “criminal and pirate” flotilla raid

Palestinian activist’s arrest an attack on “legitimate right to protest”

Bush’s US-India nuke deal ressurrects ghosts of Bhopal

Japanese anti-foreign activists target Koreans, Chinese, Asian workers

‘23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism’
The Independent
(8/29/10)

Free market has turned us into ‘Matrix’ drones

A leading economist has likened the nation’s acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality. In a controversial new book, the Cambridge economist (past This is Hell! guest) Ha-Joon Chang debunks received wisdom on everything from the importance of the internet to the idea that people in the United States enjoy the highest standard of living in the world; an iconoclastic attitude that has won him fans such as Bob Geldof and Noam Chomsky.

Dr Chang’s 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism is one of a spate of tomes published in recent weeks that question the future of the current system, including Capitalism 4.0 by Anatole Kaletsky, and Ian Bremmer’s The End of the Free Market. Economists are keen to tap into the market for popular books on seemingly impenetrable subjects – highlighted by the runaway success of Freakonomics, which has sold more than four million copies since it was published in 2005 and is about to be made into a film.

South-Korean born Dr Chang aims to disprove what he sees as economic myths, including the idea that people are paid what they are worth, that the “trickle down” effect of increasing wealth among the rich helps the poor, and that education makes countries more prosperous.

One of the modern idols Dr Chang seeks to bring down is the internet. He claims that we overestimate the importance of new technologies compared to older inventions – such as the washing machine – and criticises the way in which internet access has been seen as key to countries’ development.

“If you had everything, then I’m in favour of it. But when children don’t have safe drinking water and free school meals, is it really important?” he said. “We have a fascination with the new, and we have to be careful not to project our own vision on to other people’s lives.”

A leading development economist, Dr Chang was much lauded for his 2007 book Bad Samaritans, which looked at the negative effects of globalisation on developing countries. He is now bringing his focus closer to home, considering problems in the UK. “It is like The Matrix. There is a reality where things could and should be better,” he said. “In order to wake people up to that alternative reality, you need to show them that it isn’t impossible. I’m not necessarily saying that I have a solution, but we have to recognise that some of the things we accept as inevitable aren’t.”

But while Dr Chang may not have the answer, he is sure of the problem – arguing that free-market capitalism has left the global economy more unstable, and people with less job security and greater feelings of insecurity, than ever before. His conviction that, post-recession, we should be rebuilding our country in a “moral” way – by acknowledging the social consequences of economic choices such as benefit cuts and job losses – will strike a chord with many.

“Another myth that needs to be busted is the idea that we can discuss economics without any moral implications,” he said. “What kind of economy we build changes us, so what we do in terms of monetary policy determines who we are.”

Dr Chang also highlights the way in which economics impacts not just on our wages and living standards, but also on our characters. He said: “In conventional economic theory, it is thought that we are born as perfectly formed, rational, self-serving agents. But where you work and what kind of work you do are important in determining your character.”

While Dr Chang may have many fans, his belief that the welfare state should be expanded has prompted criticism from some economists.

“It is a very unfashionable thing to say at the moment, but people have to realise that cuts have long-term implications on the fairness of the culture,” he said.

Dr Chang, who moved to the UK in 1986 as a 23-year-old graduate student, argues that an emphasis on equality of opportunity is futile – likening life to a race which everyone starts at the same time, but where some have weights strapped to their legs – and that we should instead work towards greater equality of outcome.

“People have been drilled into thinking that there is equality of opportunity and whatever comes out at the end should be accepted. But the effects of not having equality of outcome are felt by the next generation. It is not simply that you don’t have enough money; if your parents are from a certain background, you don’t even aspire to another background. You can ameliorate some of these things through the school system, but not all of them.”

Is anti-psychotic prescribed to US soldiers suffering from PTSD deadly?
The Associated Press
(8/30/10)

Traumatized vets take potent drug to help them sleep, but questions loom about potential risks

Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-pyschotic called Seroquel.

Thousands of soldiers suffering from PTSD have received the same medication over the last nine years, helping to make Seroquel one of the Veteran Affairs Department’s top drug expenditures and the No. 5 best-selling drug in the nation.

Several soldiers and veterans have died while taking the pills, raising concerns among some military families that the government is not being up front about the drug’s risks. They want Congress to investigate.

In White’s case, the nightmares persisted. So doctors recommended progressively larger doses of Seroquel. At one point, the 23-year-old Marine corporal was prescribed more than 1,600 milligrams per day — more than double the maximum dose recommended for schizophrenia patients.

A short time later, White died in his sleep …

It’s unclear how many soldiers have died while taking Seroquel, or if the drug definitely contributed to the deaths. White has confirmed at least a half-dozen deaths among soldiers on Seroquel, and he believes there may be many others.

US wasted billions on Iraq reconstruction projects
The Associated Press
(8/30/10)

US wasted billions in rebuilding Iraq

A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.

As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds has been wasted on these projects — more than 10 percent of the $53.7 billion the US has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.

That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.

There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deepwater port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.

But even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.

Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq this summer, said it has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more. Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons.

Christensen acknowledged that mistakes have been made. But he said steps have been taken to fix them, and the success of the program will depend ultimately on the Iraqis — who have complained that they were not consulted on projects to start with.

“There’s only so much we could do,” Christensen said. “A lot of it comes down to them taking ownership of it.”

The reconstruction program in Iraq has been troubled since its birth shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The U.S. was forced to scale back many projects even as they spiked in cost, sometimes to more than double or triple initial projections.

As part of the so-called surge strategy, the military in 2007 shifted its focus to protecting Iraqis and winning their trust. American soldiers found themselves hiring contractors to paint schools, refurbish pools and oversee neighborhood water distribution centers. The $3.6 billion Commander’s Emergency Response Program provided military units with ready cash for projects, and paid for Sunni fighters who agreed to turn against al-Qaida in Iraq for a monthly salary.

But sometimes civilian and military reconstruction efforts were poorly coordinated and overlapped.

14 US troops killed in Afghanistan since Saturday
The New York Times
(8/30/10)

Seven U.S. Soldiers Die in Afghan Attacks

Seven American service members were killed by two roadside bombs in southern Afghanistan on Monday, according to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The two bombings were unrelated, officials said, with one killing five service members and the other killing two. Fourteen American service members have been killed in Afghanistan, mostly in the south, since Saturday …

Earlier in the day, in the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad, a district governor was killed by a car bomb. The bomb had been planted in the vehicle of Said Ahmad Pahlawan, governor of Lalpor District in Nangarhar Province, and exploded just outside the Jalalabad office of the governor of the province, according to Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, the governor’s spokesman. The bomb also wounded four of the official’s security guards, he said.

If Israeli settlements continue, there won’t be peace with Palestinians
Xinhua
(8/30/10)

Palestinians: Settlements remain biggest obstacle for peace talks

Jewish settlement in occupied Palestinian territories is the biggest obstacle that will emerge in peace talks with Israel, Palestinian officials said Monday.

“Stopping the settlement is the real test to the success of the negotiations,” said Hannan Ashrawi, a member of the Executive Committee of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The negotiations will resume in Washington in September 2, the same month in which a 10-month Israeli freeze of constructions in the West Bank ends. The Palestinians expect that Israel is unlikely going to extend the moratorium.

“Peace and settlements are separate tracks that can never meet, ” Ashrawi told Voice of Palestine Radio. She noted that Israel stepped up settlement in East Jerusalem which the Palestinians see as a future capital. Israel excluded East Jerusalem from the moratorium.

On Sunday, President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of threatening the negotiations by showing no readiness to freeze all forms of Jewish settlement.

Meanwhile, (past This is Hell! guest) Mustafa Al-Barghouti, leader of the leftist National Initiative Party, warned that Israel was going to increase building or expanding settlements “and this means destroying the direct peace talks.”

“The Israeli government wants to use the negotiations to cover its settlement activities,” Al-Barghouti told reporters.

Knesset member to testify on “criminal and pirate” flotilla raid
Yedioth Ahronoth
(8/30/10)

Zoabi to UN: Try pirate Netanyahu in int’l court

Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi will testify on Tuesday before the UN Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry into Israel’s raid of the Mavi Marmara in May. Zoabi will appear before the UN body as part of a delegation of senior Arab figures who participated in the flotilla.

Zoabi announced on Monday that she is planning to demand that the UNHRC investigate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, all of whom she charges with bearing personal responsibility for the “criminal and pirate takeover” which claimed the lives of nine flotilla participants.

In addition, Zoabi is slated to ask the UN body to extend the jurisdiction of its commission of inquiry so that it can investigate what she deems “Israel’s violations of international law in imposing a blockade on Gaza, war crimes, and crimes against humanity being committed in the Gaza Strip for four years.”

Zoabi even demanded that Defense Minister Barak allow the UN probe to investigate IDF soldiers who took part in the raid. She also demanded that Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch allow Sheikh Raed Salah, who also participated in the flotilla, to testify from his cell in an Israeli jail.

Palestinian activist’s arrest an attack on “legitimate right to protest”
UPI
(8/30/10)

EU slams Israel over Palestinian’s case

A top EU official has rebuked Israel for convicting a Palestinian who has organized regular protests against the West Bank wall.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was “deeply concerned” about Abdallah Abu Rahmah, 39, who faces several years in an Israeli prison.

Ashton said she fears that the possible imprisonment of Rahmah “is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner,” her office said in a statement released last week.

The EU considers Rahmah a human rights activist and the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal, the statement added.

Israel denounced Ashton’s statement. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said that any “interference with a transparent legal procedure is highly improper,” the BBC reports.

Ramah, a teacher, has been jailed since his arrest in December. An Israeli military court convicted him Tuesday for charges of inciting protests in the West Bank village of Bilin and of participating in them illegally. Rahmah is to be sentenced shortly but his lawyer said he will appeal the conviction.

Palestinians have organized many demonstrations that remained largely peaceful but recently some of them turned violent, with police clashing with stone-throwing protesters.

Israeli police have cracked down hard on protesters; an American peace activist suffered brain damage after being hit by a tear gas canister.

Ashton has taken an active position regarding the Palestinian issue. In March, she became the first high-ranking Western official to visit Gaza since Hamas took over in 2007.

Bush’s US-India nuke deal ressurrects ghosts of Bhopal
The New York Times
(8/30/10)

India Passes Nuclear Deal

India’s Parliament approved a final, critical piece of a long-delayed landmark civil nuclear agreement on Monday, a pact regarded as a cornerstone of a Bush-era effort to transform the relationship between the United States and the world’s largest democracy.

But even as supporters praised a historic victory, the end result is probably not what the United States had hoped for, nor does it seem likely to signal a new era in relations between the United States and India. Indeed, some analysts say the compromises needed to move Monday’s legislation through India’s contentious Parliament could undermine the practical impact of a political, diplomatic and economic accord that took years to negotiate.

With President Obama scheduled to make his first visit to India in early November, the governments in both countries are trying to strengthen a relationship sometimes described as a natural and strategic alliance of democracies. But drawing closer has proved complicated as differences remain on issues like trade and climate change as well as how to effectively deal with Pakistan.

The nuclear issue, putatively about India’s future, has sparked weeks of bitter political debate in New Delhi, tapped into Indian nationalism and public suspicion of foreign corporate interests while also dredging up a very different chapter in the countries’ relations: the 1984 Union Carbide industrial disaster at Bhopal, which killed thousands. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accused of toadying to America, appeared before the lower house of Parliament to deny that his allegiance was anywhere but with India.

“We kind of assume that we will be the dominant partner in any partnership,” said Teresita C. Schaffer, a former ambassador to Sri Lanka who also served as an American diplomat in India. “India does not make that assumption.”

Mr. Singh, who announced the nuclear deal in a 2005 joint statement with former President George W. Bush, has an expansive vision of the role of nuclear energy as a power source for India’s future. For decades after its 1974 nuclear test, India had refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and was subjected to a three-decade American moratorium on nuclear trade. But the deal opened a controversial back door for India to join the nuclear club while also opening an Indian market estimated at $150 billion to foreign energy companies once blocked by the moratorium.

Now the question is whether foreign or even Indian energy companies will be willing to come in to provide the expertise India needs to expand, because of the liability guidelines codified in the legislation in case of a nuclear accident. Existing international conventions place liability solely with the operator of a nuclear reactor while immunizing suppliers. But the Indian law bucks international norms and makes suppliers potentially liable, too. Indian industrial groups have already expressed reservations, while analysts warn that many private foreign energy companies may now decide not to take part.

“This makes the fruits of the Indo-U.S. deal go to waste,” said G. Balachandaran, a security analyst in New Delhi with a specialty in nuclear issues. He added: “It may well be the end of civil nuclear growth in India” …

The government originally proposed legislation more palatable to suppliers, but opposition parties had demanded tougher provisions, particularly after the ghost of the Bhopal disaster inflamed the debate.

In Bhopal, thousands of people were killed after an explosion in December 1984 at the Union Carbide pesticide factory unleashed a poisonous cloud over the city. India sought $3.3 billion in damages from Union Carbide, since purchased by Dow Chemicals, but would later settle for $470 million. Much of the money has not been distributed, and many victims have gotten only nominal payments.

In June — 26 years after the accident — India’s court system announced light criminal sentences against eight former executives of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary, one of whom had since died. Meanwhile, Warren M. Anderson, the former chairman of Union Carbide, has never been prosecuted, having absconded to the United States, which has declined to extradite him. After the issue resurfaced, the public was outraged, and the Bhopal tragedy again dominated the Indian media.

Then on Aug. 19, an Indian news channel reported that a senior American official had cautioned a top Indian official in an e-mail that the “noise” over Dow Chemicals could hurt investment in India. The official, Mike Froman, a deputy national security adviser, issued a statement denying that he was making any sort of threat — but the episode further inflamed the nuclear debate.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition, insisted on language that left open the possibility that suppliers could be sued in the case of an accident.

Japanese anti-foreign activists target Koreans, Chinese, Asian workers
The New York Times
(8/25/10)

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign

The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies.

Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters’ entry.

The December episode was the first in a series of demonstrations at the Kyoto No. 1 Korean Elementary School that shocked conflict-averse Japan, where even political protesters on the radical fringes are expected to avoid embroiling regular citizens, much less children. Responding to public outrage, the police arrested four of the protesters this month on charges of damaging the school’s reputation.

More significantly, the protests also signaled the emergence here of a new type of ultranationalist group. The groups are openly anti-foreign in their message, and unafraid to win attention by holding unruly street demonstrations.

Since first appearing last year, their protests have been directed at not only Japan’s half million ethnic Koreans, but also Chinese and other Asian workers, Christian churchgoers and even Westerners in Halloween costumes. In the latter case, a few dozen angrily shouting demonstrators followed around revelers waving placards that said, “This is not a white country.”

Local news media have dubbed these groups the Net far right, because they are loosely organized via the Internet, and gather together only for demonstrations. At other times, they are a virtual community that maintains its own Web sites to announce the times and places of protests, swap information and post video recordings of their demonstrations.

While these groups remain a small if noisy fringe element here, they have won growing attention as an alarming side effect of Japan’s long economic and political decline. Most of their members appear to be young men, many of whom hold the low-paying part-time or contract jobs that have proliferated in Japan in recent years.

Though some here compare these groups to neo-Nazis, sociologists say that they are different because they lack an aggressive ideology of racial supremacy, and have so far been careful to draw the line at violence. There have been no reports of injuries, or violence beyond pushing and shouting. Rather, the Net right’s main purpose seems to be venting frustration, both about Japan’s diminished stature and in their own personal economic difficulties.