As readers of this week's Schnews will have seen, Juan Carlos Pinzon, Colombian Vice Minister of Defence for Strategy and Planning, is due to speak at a "counter-insurgency" conference in Sussex this week.

SEPTIC THINK TANK

Enjoy a taste of the elite life - spend a couple of years’ salary and take advantage of the superb facilities at Wilton Park, a sixteenth century grade 1 listed mansion, handily located (for us!) close to Brighton. Set in sumptuous grounds backing on to the beautiful South Downs near Steyning, it is now taking bookings for private meetings and weddings - although you’ll have to work around their busy conference schedule, when the place is buzzing with secret service goons, chauffeur driven Bentleys and Chinook helicopters.

Since 1951, the building has been owned by the Foreign Office who fly in ‘luminaries’ from around the World for wine, dine and divine sessions – hoping to figure out how to keep their thin grasp on the reigns of power for just a while longer. Less ‘think tanks’ than ‘think armoured limos ‘.

While the centre tries to keep a low profile, it's up front about its role – at least until it comes under any unwelcome spotlight, such as when details of talks on how to push globalisation and unfold the War on Terror™ swiftly disappeared from the website within a day of it being publicised by activists (see SchNEWS 471).

Let’s hope flagging up some of their forthcoming attractions will not inconvenience their web-monkeys too much... March (13-16th) sees the dark artists of the defence sector emerge for “Meeting the Challenges of Counter-Insurgency and Stabilisation Operations: Strategic Issues and Options”.

Among the speakers is Juan Carlos Pinzon, Vice Minister of Defence for Stratgey and Planning in the right-wing Colombian government, well known for its use of death squads to crush opposition groups. He will be giving a few handy tips on how to brutally stamp out dissent in a talk on “Colombia and Counter-Insurgency: Strategy, Accomplishments and Way Forward.” *

Other highlights include a fascinating section on National Security Interests and “Irregular Operations”, to be addressed by Thomas Mahnken, the US’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. Later the “Creating Civilian Expeditionary Capability” session will ask, “Are there any lessons to be drawn from British and French imperial experience or from the US CORDS programme in Vietnam? How far can the “contracting out” model work for hot stabilisation and COIN [Counter-Insurgency] operations?” All pressing questions indeed.

Once the dust has settled from that, April 9-11th will be a shot in the arm for those wanting to privatise global healthcare. Supported and sponsored by such progressive do-gooders as the Global Health Group, BUPA, Crown Agents, Eversheds, Ovations Health and the Rockefeller Foundation, it goes under the snappy title of “Public-Private Investment Partnerships in Health Systems Strengthening”.

Apparently, “The conference will develop the concept of what we are calling public-private investment partnerships (PPIPs) that go beyond private investment in hospital buildings and maintenance, such as that characterised by Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs)...” With PFI already such a success, they're now brainstorming the next stage of the grand corporate masterplan...

For more on the cheery programme of upcoming events see, www.wiltonpark.org.uk. In case you’re a capitalist robber baron looking for a venue, or a society belle looking for the ultimate reception, for bookings tel: 01903 815020 or email:  dutymanager@wiltonpark.org.uk

*‘ Accomplishments’ aren't what folk on this Friday’s March for victims of paramilitaries in Colombia would call them. After a call out by the Colombia Support Network, people are gathering in Parliament Square at 11am in solidarity with the millions of Colombians who have had their basic human rights abused by the the army or paramilitary death squads - Four million have disappeared, been displaced, massacred and executed. See www.justiceforcolombia.org