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voter registration news from greg palast and martin luther king III (pres of the SCLC!)

http://www.sunspot.net/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=bal%2Dop%2Evoting08may08§ion=/printstory

Today, there is a new and real threat to minority voters, this time from cyberspace: computerized purges of voter rolls. The menace first appeared in Florida in the November 2000 presidential election... In the two years before the elections, the Florida secretary of state's office quietly ordered the removal of 94,000 voters from the registries. Supposedly, these were convicted felons who may not vote in Florida. Instead, the overwhelming majority were innocent of any crime, though just over half were black or Hispanic. We are not guessing about the race of the disenfranchised: A voter's color is listed next to his or her name in most Southern states. (Ironically, this racial ID is required by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a [martin luther] King legacy.)

...Voters whose name, birth date and gender loosely matched that of a felon anywhere in America were targeted for removal. And so one Thomas Butler (of several in Florida) was tagged because a "Thomas Butler Cooper Jr." of Ohio was convicted of a crime... Florida was the first state to create, computerize and purge lists of allegedly "ineligible" voters... (The fact that Mr. Cooper's conviction date is shown on state files as "1/30/2007" underscores other dangers of computerizing our democracy.)

You'd think that Congress and President Bush would run from imitating Florida's disastrous system. Astonishingly, Congress adopted the absurdly named "Help America Vote Act," which requires every state to replicate Florida's system of centralized, computerized voter files before the 2004 election. [mrs. henry would like to repeat this astonishing news: "Congress adopted the absurdly named "Help America Vote Act," which requires every state to replicate Florida's system of centralized, computerized voter files before the 2004 election."]

...Jim Crow has moved into cyberspace. [see the federal election comission's website for the text of the new law: http://www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm... on "Page 116 STAT. 1709" it says, "For purposes of removing names of ineligible voters from the official list of eligible voters... the State shall coordinate the computerized list with State agency records on felony status; and by reason of the death of the registrant... the State shall coordinate the computerized list with State agency records on death. Notwithstanding the preceding provisions of this subparagraph, if a State is described in section 4(b) of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993[the motor-voter act], that State shall remove the names of ineligible voters from the computerized list in accordance with State law."

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bush comments on 'helping america vote'

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021029-5.html

October 29, 2002

"Today I have signed into law H.R. 3295, the "Help America Vote Act of 2002." This Act comports with the basic principles set forth in the final report of the bipartisan National Commission on Federal Election Reform... Consequently, the Act appropriately respects the primacy of State and local governments in the administration of elections, while helping to ensure the integrity and efficiency of voting processes in Federal elections by providing Federal governmental support for that vital endeavor."

[mm-hmm, those are his exact words. "comports--" "consequently--" "primacy--" "endeavor--" ...yeah, he actually said those words.

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and now, the end of the world news.

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1429_W_862536,00.html

The Israeli army has banned foreign journalists und humanitarian workers from entering flashpoint areas in the Gaza Strip.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/09/1052280441486.html

Foreigners to the Gaza Strip are being obliged to sign a waiver absolving Israeli forces from responsibility if they shoot them. They also have to sign a declaration that they are not peace activists.

The new entry system came into operation on Thursday, hours before a post mortem examination on James Miller - the British cameraman killed in a Gaza refugee camp - confirmed that he was almost certainly killed by an Israeli soldier, despite army denials... A video of Mr Miller's shooting appears to undermine army claims that he was caught in crossfire and that soldiers shot in his direction in response to shots from a Palestinian gunman nearby.

The film shows three journalists in flak jackets and helmets, clearly marked with the letters TV. They are shouting "Is there anyone there? Is there anyone there? We are British journalists." A single shot is heard, then another, followed by the sound of Miller groaning after he was hit. There is no sound of crossfire.

...The military also now requires visitors to Gaza to declare that they have no affiliation to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which is close to becoming a banned organisation since it was revealed that members met two British suicide bombers days before the attack last week on a Tel Aviv bar in which three people died. The ISM acknowledges that the bombers... attended one of its meetings, but it says the two were not members and the organisation had no idea of their intentions.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/05/09/international1236EDT0559.DTL

The Israeli army raided the West Bank offices of a foreign pro-Palestinian group on Friday, confiscating computers and documents and arresting an American and an Australian, witnesses and a group spokeswoman said... About 22 Israeli army jeeps surrounded the offices of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement in the village of Beit Sahour, and soldiers entered and confiscated six computers... The Israelis arrested Christine Razowsky, 28, of Chicago, and an Australian woman who did not want her name released, as well as Palestinian Fida Gharib, 22, a secretary for the organization, police spokesman Gil Kleiman and other group officials said. The military said it arrested several people who "violated the law" in Beit Sahour, but refused to comment further.

...The International Solidarity Movement is a pro-Palestinian organization of volunteers who often act as "human shields," placing themselves between Palestinians and the Israeli army. In the past two months, an American member of the group, Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Wash., was killed and two other foreign activists, an American and a Briton, were seriously wounded in separate incidents. One of the wounded, Briton Tom Hurndall, 21, remains on life support in an Israeli hospital.

...Early Thursday, Israeli security forces arrested two British members of the group who were trying to enter the Gaza Strip, the group said in a statement. Alice Coy and Nick Durie were taken for questioning at the border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the statement said. The army declined to comment.

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http://www.mediamonitors.net/jenniferpeterson4.html

by Jennifer Peterson

"We're going to declare the establishment of our own state, the independent Republic of Baqa Al Sharqiyeh," joked the men lounging in the town's municipal headquarters... That was November 2002, and Baqa Al Sharqiyeh was in a bind. Snug up against the Israel-West Bank border... Israeli plans to build a "separation wall" in the region were to cut the town off from the rest of the West Bank, leaving residents unsure of how their future might unfold.

Now, five months later, that wall is almost complete. Based on observations of its construction, locals expect it to be finished within another two months. And, as the men's nonchalant laughter about founding a new state insinuated, no solution has been found to address the town's precarious existence... "We're going to be stuck in a sandwich," says Yousef Bawaqneh, a Baqa Al Sharqiyeh resident, as he describes the impending encirclement of his hometown. Here, the "wall" is 100 meters wide, he says, a series of roads, trenches, and electronic and barbed wire fences punctuated by military checkpoints. When this section of the wall is complete, Baqa Al Sharqiyeh's some 3,500 residents will be completely penned in.

...Further north, the village of Bart'a Al Sharqiyeh is already hemmed in on all sides... Only the gate is yet to be constructed, and here, on a shaved strip among olive orchards, Israeli soldiers determine who can leave and enter the village.

...Now, as the wall's course continues to veer, often cutting deeper into the West Bank, 15 Palestinian towns and villages fall on the wall's western side. Upwards of 15,000 Palestinians will be trapped within four narrow enclaves in this northern section of the West Bank. Barred from entering Israel and isolated from West Bank communities, whatever new social fabric they manage to weave is likely to be fragile indeed.

...The hamlet of Nizlat Issa is a case in point... Its entrance, marked by the quintessential metal archway, has been blocked off by the Israeli army with boulders and piles of earth... Nizlat Issa's market attracted upwards of 30,000 customers a day before the Intifada, and was a major buttress of the area's economy. However, after an Israeli was killed in the market and the Israeli military tightened its grip on West Bank areas during the Intifada, that number dwindled to around 3,000. Then, early this year, Israeli bulldozers leveled a wide swath of the market to the ground... At the edge of the ruin, a shopkeeper still sells ovens to bake traditional flat round bread. By May 15, however, he expects that the Israeli army will demolish his shop too. Like most people in the area, he is unsure what to do, paralyzed by a lack of viable options.

In a hamlet near Baqa Al Sharqiyeh, Abu Faisal reports... [a] surplus in water this year, due to the exceptionally heavy winter rains. His well is in tiptop condition, ready to serve the four villages dependent on it for drinking and irrigation water. But the Israeli separation wall now runs a mere 50 meters from his well and water pump, cutting off... fields that Abu Faisal's well used to irrigate... [and] during construction of the wall, many of the well's water pipes were destroyed.

Villagers have sold their hothouses trapped to the west of the wall, but those with cultivated land on the other side are simply at a loss. "We don't know what to do. What about the olive trees, should we sell them too?" Abu Faisal asks. With less land and broken pipes, Abu Faisal has cut the pump's operation from 24 hours a day to seven.What really infuriates him, however, is that there is more land to the south that could be cultivated if only he could get water to it... But the villagers don't have the funds for pipes, and Abu Faisal has yet to secure any outside assistance.

In Barta' Al Sharqiyeh too, water is aplenty, but for over a month now it has been polluted by sewage runoff from a nearby settlement. When water engineers traveled from Ramallah to evaluate the water, tells Kabha, Israeli soldiers barred them from crossing the wall's gate and entering the village. As the water is unfit for drinking or cooking, residents must now buy expensive water, or fill up at tanks provided by the village council. Lack of outside help forces the villagers to make do with what little resources they have.

...[A] lawyer, Fathi Shbeiteh... tells of another village he is working with, south of Tulkarem. Khirbit Al Jabara will be surrounded on all sides by the wall, and construction is currently underway. But even now, residents have been forbidden from leaving or entering the village except on foot. And in nearby Hable, Shbeiteh says, children can't reach their school even though it is only 100 meters away. Students have to finagle a travel permit, and papers in hand, must loop six kilometers around the wall's periphery to make it to class. [et cetera.]

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/08/1052280379857.html

The Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, has given a key aide broader powers to curb anti-Israel violence, loosening Yasser Arafat's security grip in line with demands by international peace mediators.

A memorandum circulated on Wednesday said Mr Abbas authorised Mohammed Dahlan, a cabinet minister who has clashed with Mr Arafat in the past, to restructure the Palestinian Authority's Interior Ministry. The decision made Mr Dahlan de facto interior minister with greater control over Palestinian security services intended to rein in militant groups under a United States-led "road map" to Middle East peace, Palestinian officials said.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=291453&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

On May 31, 2001, after Palestinians killed an Israel security guard at a settlement outpost near Itamar, the Israel Defense Forces presented then-Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer with a breakdown of the outposts in Judea and Samaria. The picture showed 66 outposts... 60 of the outposts were legally flawed from various points of view... Ben-Eliezer announced that 15 outposts had to be evacuated.

Some 18 months later, on October 16, 2002, a document submitted to the defense minister said that, in addition to 15 outposts evacuated in July 2001, a further 20 such sites named in the document were evacuated in July 2002. The document added that an order had been given to evacuate another 30 illegal outposts... This was the report given to the defense minister and this is how the issue was covered in official documents.

...65 outposts should have been evacuated but toward the end of October 2002, the office of the adviser on settlement affairs announced only 21 such sites had been dismantled. This, too, was a virtual report... The real picture bursts forth from the material released recently by the committee (an inter-ministerial one, this time) on the issue of the outposts set up by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.

The number of outposts in existence as of May 2003 ranges from 90 to 100. In other words, despite the repeated directives to evacuate outposts, and the alleged evacuations that took place in the field, the number of such sites has increased during the period... to 90-100. All of this means that, when it comes to outposts, the issue has involved the spreading of one of the State of Israel's biggest lies - not only a lie that was told to the Americans and conveyed in semi-official announcements, but also an ongoing lie that the Israeli public is being fed.

...This is another matter in which the government has failed recently in its dealings with the Americans. In talks in Washington on the road map, Israeli representatives said Israel would act in the matter in accordance with "the understanding" reached at the time between former foreign minister Shimon Peres and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

When an Israel representative was asked to elaborate on the understanding, he said: No more settlements will be established... and the final fate of the settlements will be determined in the final-status agreement. The U.S. administration and Powell himself denied that such an understanding exists. Which of Israel's ministers is aware of this?

...Israel, in fact, wants the settlers to deceive it; and when its policy is rudely breached, it does not enforce the law. If we have, indeed, entered a new period, the only viable conclusion is that, on this issue, Washington must apply pressure to Israel for its own sake.

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/637/re1.htm

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave a characteristically Israeli welcome to the new Palestinian government, headed by reformist Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen. Barely a few hours after Abu Mazen's government was sworn-in in Ramallah, Israeli occupation troops, backed by tanks, armoured personnel carriers and Apache helicopter gunships, stormed the Shujaiya neighbourhood in eastern Gaza... The victims included a two-year- old child, a young boy of 13 and several others, including three brothers from the same family. Some locals sought to defend themselves against the invading forces, using mainly light weapons. Facing overwhelming firepower, mainly Hamas fighters fought valiantly for several hours, in the end preferring to die as martyrs than be captured and humiliated by the Israeli army. Several homes were demolished or badly damaged, as were many cars and businesses. The scene was one of utter devastation...The Israeli government described the events in Gaza as, "a successful operation"... For Hamas, however, the unprovoked killing... proved that Palestinian resistance groups should never agree to give up their weapons, a demand made earlier by the new Palestinian premier.

...Abu Mazen himself had hoped that the formation of his government would make Israel refrain from its bloody incursions into Palestinian population centres. This, he thought, would place him in a better position to disarm relatively powerful resistance groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Abu Mazen, who critics say overestimates American backing of his government, realises that he can not do the job the Americans and the Israelis expect him to do without enjoying at least a semblance of public support at home. But that support will never be forthcoming as long as Palestinian civilians continue to be killed on a daily basis.

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the gods must be crazy

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters05-08-071900.asp?reg=MIDEAST

OSLO, May 8 — A Norwegian parliamentarian nominated U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, praising them for winning the war in Iraq... ''If nobody acted then Saddam Hussein could have produced weapons of mass destruction and, in five or 10 years, could have used them against Israel,'' he said.

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http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=ef39c512cad1a29e

The United States Friday formally presented the U.N. Security Council a comprehensive, but not quite omnibus, draft resolution to lift sanctions on Iraq and endorse coalition control of the country's oil wealth. The eight-page measure, co-sponsored by Britain and Spain and presented to the 15-member panel during closed-door consultations, acknowledged the U.S.-led coalition as an occupying power and, as in an accompanying letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, accepted the responsibilities the coalition faces as such under international law.

...Paragraph 18 of the draft dictates revenue from all export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas from Iraq, with the exception of 5 percent for the fund to compensate for the 1990 Baghdad invasion of neighboring Kuwait, shall be deposited into the Iraqi Assistance Fund, until such time as a new Iraqi government is properly constituted.

...There was no mention of inspections for weapons of mass destruction in the draft.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,952935,00.html

...The proposals provoked a vociferous response from the European Union's commissioner for aid and development, Poul Nielsen, who accused America of seeking to seize control of Iraq's vast oil wealth. Mr Nielson, a Dane who has just returned from a three-day fact-finding mission to Iraq said the US was "on its way to becoming a member of Opec", the Middle Eastern oil cartel.

"They will appropriate the oil," he told the Danish public service DR radio station. "It is very difficult to see how this would make sense in any other way."

...The commission headquarters issued a swift rebuttal, saying Mr Nielson's views did not "reflect the opinion of the commission as a whole".

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that's my bush

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-05-09-bush-mideast_x.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush linked Middle East peacemaking with a need for economic advancement on Friday, offering to extend U.S. free-trade benefits already enjoyed by Israel and Jordan to other nations in the region within a decade.

...The president told a graduating class of 1,200 students that economic prosperity is critical to a lasting peace accord and that unrestricted U.S. trade with the Middle East could help the entire region prosper... With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, Bush said it was now time "to seize the moment."

...To quality, nations would have to meet certain requirements, such as renouncing and combatting terrorism and agreeing to lower their own barriers to trade and investment by U.S. companies. They would also have to agree to drop boycotts of Israel.

...A senior administration official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said the ultimate goal was to see the entire area joined into a single free-trade zone. But the official cautioned that this process will take a number of years, in large part because few Arab countries belong to the World Trade Organization. The official said WTO membership, which can take years to complete, will be required.

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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030510-21315839.htm

President Bush yesterday named Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to lead a forum on judicial reforms in the Middle East as a way to foster free trade with the United States.

...Although it is unusual for a president to dispatch a Supreme Court justice on a geopolitical mission, Mr. Bush appears to be pulling out all the stops to achieve a U.S.-Mideast free-trade zone within a decade.

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a brief review from public citizen dot org

http://www.citizen.org/trade/wto/index.cfm

Established in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a powerful new global commerce agency, which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into an enforceable global commerce code. The WTO is one of the main mechanisms of corporate globalization.

Under the WTO's system of corporate-managed trade, economic efficiency, reflected in short-run corporate profits, dominates other values. Decisions affecting the economy are to be confined to the private sector, while social and environmental costs are borne by the public.

...The WTO and GATT Uruguay Round Agreements have functioned principally to pry open markets for the benefit of transnational corporations at the expense of national and local economies; workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, women and other social groups; health and safety; the environment; and animal welfare. In addition, the WTO system, rules and procedures are undemocratic, un-transparent and non-accountable and have operated to marginalize the majority of the world's people.

The 5th WTO Ministerial is scheduled to take place in Cancun, Mexico from September 10-14, 2003.

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more wto news. you've heard of GATT but have you heard of GATS?

http://www.citizen.org/trade/wto/gats/

At one time, trade rules were designed to enhance trade in goods and therefore focused on the lowering of tariff and quotas. But today's "trade" agreements also seek to encourage international competition in a vast range of service sectors. The new trade agreements encompass "everything that you cannot drop on your foot," and include banking, telecommunications, postal services, tourism, transportation, waste disposal, oil and gas production and electricity. They also cover those services universally considered to be essential to human health and development, like healthcare, education and drinking water.

...While we often don't think of essential services as primarily profit-making operations, many essential services such as health care and schools have proved highly profitable when privatized and freed from public interest regulation. For corporations, health care and education represent a combined $5,500,000,000,000.00 [units=trillions] market worldwide, and the new trade agreements like the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) would increase their access to that market, without building in protections for consumers, workers or the environment.

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http://www.citizen.org/trade/wto/gats/articles.cfm?ID=9233

WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) was first established in as one of the agreements to be enforced by the WTO in 1994. Rules about actual trade in services across borders is only a small element of GATS. The WTO called the GATS the world’s first multilateral investment agreement because its rules cover every conceivable way a service might be delivered, including granting foreign corporations the right to buy or establish new companies within other countries and sending people across borders to perform services.

GATS is known as a "bottom-up" agreement because most of its requirements only cover service sectors countries agree to open up for competition by foreign corporations... [but] some GATS constraints apply even if a country has not committed a sector [for example, even if a country has declared that its water supply 'sector' will not be subject to WTO oversight, its water supply may be affected anyway --mrs.h]. GATS also contains rules constraining how governments can regulate in the service sector.

The GATS contains a weasely clause excluding from its coverage government services that are "supplied neither on a commercial basis nor in competition with one or more service suppliers." However, most government services (like health care, education and utilities) involve some public/private mix or fee structure, fall outside of this exception and thus are covered by GATS. Public interest policies governing such services could be challenged for violating WTO rules in closed-door trade tribunals. A country would have to change the WTO-illegal rules or face trade sanctions.

...If a nation seeks to with draw a sector from GATS coverage, the government has to enter into negotiations to compensate trading partners for their lost business opportunities. In other words, under the GATS privatization is a one-way street—once you go there you can only get out with a massive ransom.

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may 8th

On May 7, the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body granted the European Union authorization to increase by the amount of $4,000,000,000.00 its import tariffs on US goods. Brussels presented a list of US products against which it may now impose punitive duties, complaining that Washington had failed to comply with a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against the tax breaks. The level of retaliation is the highest ever authorized by the Geneva-based trade body in its eight-year history, but the authorization does not mean the measures automatically take effect.

The EU has listed 95 categories of US products on which it could impose additional duties of up to 100 percent that range from dairy, cereal, meat and vegetables products, to wood, leather, fur and textiles. It also includes glass and ceramic products, iron and steel, cutlery, nuclear reactors, boilers and machinery, copper and aluminum, toys and games and sound recorders.

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may 8th

http://www.eubusiness.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=109742&d=101&h=240&f=56&dateformat=%25o%20%25B%20%25Y

The United States has decided to challenge the European Union's de facto moratorium on genetically modified foods in the World Trade Organization, senior administration sources said... Richard Mills, spokesman for US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, whose office would lodge the complaint, declined to comment on the decision to go ahead with the case, saying simply "the EU's moratorium is illegal under WTO rules and needs to be lifted."

A group of EU countries including France has placed a moratorium on approving GMO imports, effectively halting the trade. The United States contends that the ban, applied since 1999, harms its exports of maize, cotton and soya.

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why would anyone ban genetically-modified foods? here's one reason. from canada:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/background/percyschmeiser.html

In 2002, Canada's Federal Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that found Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser guilty of illegally planting genetically modified canola patented by the Monsanto agrochemical company. Schmeiser was ordered to pay $175,000 in damages and court costs.

Percy Schmeiser learned early in life that wind is often a farmer's worst enemy. Wind blows the seeds and pollen of weeds into farm fields, choking out crops. But now the farmer from Bruno, Sask., says the wind brought a new threat to his 1,000-acre canola farm - genetically modified canola seeds sold only by the world's largest agrochemical company, Monsanto. The company says he stole them. The seed is engineered to resist the Monsanto-created week-killer known as Roundup.

...Farmers traditionally plant their fields using seed saved from their previous year's crop. Just like in human beings, the DNA of seed is passed along from generation to generation. If there were no control mechanisms in place, a farmer could conceivably buy Monsanto's special seed once, and pass the seeds from year to year and never have to pay for it again. So the problem for Monsanto is protecting its investment.. . Farmers buying Monsanto's seed must sign a contract promising to buy fresh seed every year. Then they must let Monsanto inspect their fields for cheating.

...Schmeiser says he's never used Monsanto's seed. He saves the seeds from his own crops, then replants them in the spring... Monsanto first got a tip about Schmeiser on its toll-free snitch-line. Monsanto asks farmers to turn in neighbours they suspect of growing the seed without paying.

...Monsanto seems to be saying it's up to farmers to dig out any Monsanto crops blowing into their fields. But without a microscope, there's no way to tell regular crops from crops carrying the company's DNA. In 1998, Edward Zilinski of Micado, Sask., traded seeds with a farmer from Prince Albert. This is an old farming tradition. But the seeds he got in return had Monsanto's DNA. Monsanto told Zilinski that he and his wife owe the company more than $28,000 in penalties... The Kram family in Raymore say planes and a helicopter have buzzed their fields. The couple says agents dropped weed-killer on their canola field, to see if the crops had the Monsanto's gene.

..."As you move to adopt new technology, whether it was from the horse to the car, there was a great deal of controversy, questions being asked, on how to deal with certain issues," Monsanto's Christenson says... The answer could determine who controls the future of world farming.

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martial law coming soon to a ministerial meeting near you

http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2003/05/08/rtr966041.html

An international trade gathering in Miami later this year could be a replay of a protest-rocked December 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle unless the Bush administration beefs up preparations, the General Accounting Office said Thursday... The Miami meeting is intended to set the stage for the last phase of negotiations on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would include every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba.

...[The US Trade Representatives Office] USTR requires more expertise in the basic functions of hosting such a meeting, including working with the host city on planning, arranging financing and ensuring participants' security, the GAO said.

...In a letter responding to the GAO report, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier said federal, state and local preparations for hosting the meeting were well underway. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush "has publicly stated his commitment to a successful ministerial and his intention to remain personally involved in order to ensure that," Allgeier said.

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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030510/1/3awan.html

The US Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to lift a ban on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons in the United States. A provision repealing the 10-year-old ban was included in the 2004 national defense authorization bill, which the Senate committee passed Friday.

The bill must still pass through the US House Armed Services Committee, the full House and the Senate and can be amended at each stage. US President George W. Bush, whose administration had requested the repeal, would then have to sign the bill to enact it into law.

...The panel also approved 15 million dollars for development of Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, also known as a "bunker-buster" for its ability to penetrate and destroy underground bunkers. The new bunker-buster would be a redesign of an existing nuclear weapon, and would have yields six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, The Los Angeles Times said.

...The panel also backed a provision requiring the US Energy Department to "achieve and maintain the ability to conduct an underground nuclear test within 18 months, should it become necessary for the president to order such a test."

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http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story/34344

When 80-year-old grandmas go to jail, armed with little more than a plastic lawn chair and strong opinions, something seems askew in the world. The other day Judy Ross, a charming and articulate woman pushing 81 who lives on top of a mountain near Balsam, recalled in a raspy voice the recent day she was handcuffed, photographed, fingerprinted and locked up... Her desire to ban nukes landed her on a couple of thin mattresses in a chilly cell for 48 hours. She did her time in the Anderson County Jail in Clinton, Tenn., charged with obstructing a highway to a nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

...Ross, a professor of classical music, a composer and a devout Catholic, moved to the area four years ago from Florida where she taught at the Miami Conservatory...During the last few years, she's been arrested three or four times for her demonstrations, she said. On this occasion, the judge had had enough... "This is a battle of wills," the judge said from his bench. "It's your will against mine, and mine is going to prevail."

Ross, who carried a plastic chair in case she got tired during the roadblock, was joined by five other women, none of whom served time... In her statement to the judge, she said, "I simply believe, Your Honor, that we were put on this earth to help and care for each other - not to use our talents and energy to devise and build devastating weapons to kill each other ."

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http://www.sfnewmexican.com/main.asp?TypeID=1&ArticleID=27063&SectionID=2&SubSectionID=6&Page=1

Protesters planning to demonstrate during President Bush's visit to Santa Fe this weekend can make a reservation with Santa Fe police ahead of time for their arrest... By reserving arrest times, [Police Chief Beverly] Lennen believes people can avoid getting hurt because authorities won't be caught off guard.

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mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/05/09/TampaBay/MacDill_to_get_war_ce.shtml

As part of its expanded role in the war on terror, the Tampa-based Special Operations Command ['SoCom'] is expected to get $25,500,000.00 to build a new facility to help accomplish its mission, officials said Thursday. The two-story, 110,000-square-foot building... would be called the War Fighting Center of Excellence.

...Before the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. regional commanders called in Special Ops forces to perform specific missions. In January, however, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld proposed letting SoCom plan and execute its own operations and draw on the resources of the military.

...[The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. C.W. Bill Young, visiting the site, said,] "These guys are called special operators because they are very special."

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/05/08/national1929EDT0770.DTL

The Senate easily passed a measure Thursday expanding a powerful surveillance law, used in spy and terrorism investigations, to allow U.S. agents to wiretap lone foreigners who can't be linked to a terror organization or government.

Currently, U.S. law enforcement officers can get warrants authorizing intelligence-gathering wiretaps from a secret court, but only if they can establish a reasonable belief the target is an "agent of a foreign power " or group. The bill, which passed 90 to 4, would amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to remove that requirement... It still must be passed in the House.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-police-school,0,6785195.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnationworld%2Dheadlines

A uniformed police officer persuaded a custodian to open a school in the middle of the night so he could photograph class projects he found objectionable as an American and as a military veteran. The projects that Barre Town Police Officer John Mott photographed included a poster of President Bush with duct tape over his mouth and a large papier-mache combat boot with the American flag stuffed inside stepping on a doll.

"I wanted everybody else to see what was in that room," said Mott, who convinced a custodian to unlock the classroom door last month.

Superintendent Dorothy Anderson says she's concerned that Mott used his uniform to gain access to a locked classroom after hours without supervision. "I find this behavior, at the very least, in violation of our policy for visitors at the school," she wrote in a letter to the police chief. "I also find it disturbing that a police officer would wear his uniform under such circumstances thereby intimidating our employee into letting him in the building at a very unusual hour."

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and now, a word from liz phair: "it's nice to be liked-- but it's better by far to get paid."

http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/money.html

The New York Times reported on May 6 that "In the hours before American bombs began falling on the Iraqi capital, one of President Saddam Hussein's sons and a close adviser carried off nearly $1,000,000,000.00 in cash from the country's Central Bank, according to American and Iraqi officials here."

Later in the article, the immense volume of this amount of money is emphasized: "The sheer volume of the cash was so great -- some $900,000,000.00 in American $100 bills and as much as $100,000,000.00 worth of euros -- that three tractor-trailers were needed to cart it off, the Iraqi official said." ...Intelligence information at the time indicated that a group of tractor-trailers crossed the Iraqi border into Syria."

...In fact, $900,000,000.00 in $100 bills would fit into a single cargo van. An American bill is 6.125 inches long, 2.625 inches high, and about 0.004 inches thick. A little multiplication, and the total volume of 9,000,000 $100 bills is about 570,000 cubic inches. This is a volume of about 5 by 7 by 9.5 feet, which would look rather silly if spread over three tractor-trailers.

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faux news in iraq

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32796-2003May8?language=printer

A television station in Mosul... [carries] content [that] ranges from Arab-language al-Jazeera news reports, talks and speeches by local personalities and interviews with the newly elected mayor to U.S. military announcements about avoiding unexploded shells or arranging plans for the wheat harvest... The 101st [airbourne] commander, Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, said yesterday in a telephone interview from his Mosul headquarters that he is considering putting a U.S. Army officer and a translator in the station to monitor what goes on the air... "Yes, what we are looking at is censorship," he said, "but you can censor something that is intended to inflame passions."

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why not broadcast those anti-inflammatory, dispassionate american shows? start with 'cops'

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=43942

By now, everyone is aware that America has become a two-tier society in which CEOs make 200 times more than their workers (it was only 40-to-1 in 1980)... What makes the Bush administration distinctive is its embrace of a philosophy we might dub Populist Social Darwinism. It boasts of returning power to ordinary people... then pursues policies that will produce a few highly visible winners and unravel the social safety net, leaving the majority of people to fend for themselves.

Naturally, such political values don’t flourish in a vacuum, and it’s no surprise that today’s most memorable TV shows are reality programs such as... the aptly named Survivor, all of which are essentially Darwinian games of selection, extinction and survival.

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'indian country' is dubbed 'the nation's leading american indian news source." here's an editorial comment from them:

http://indiancountry.com/?1052229174

At this time when good information is crucial, in the United States in mass media reporting on international affairs and the Iraq War in particular, there is very little objective range. The actual pain and misery of events, even the numbers of enemy killed, are not properly explored. The complexities of tribal Iraq, how the various groups are likely to obstruct and disagree with American objectives, also receives little coverage. Coverage of potential financial motivations or current conflicts of interests is highly circumscribed.

We submit that good, objective information is crucial to a democratically informed citizenry. A deformed public truth, such as those manipulated by dictatorial cultures, is a horrible monster to contemplate on the American scene.

Today, it would be helpful for Americans to question whether they are self-restricting their speech, their own views, out of fear of intimidation and being publicly ridiculed... Woe to the man or woman in public life who dares disagree with the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Ann Coulter, Shawn Hannity or Laura Ingraham, among quite a few others... The intimidation factor has grown fangs in American public life, particularly through the phenomenon of talk radio and yell TV. It is a whole way of being in media... Patriotism becomes label and sword.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-moore7may07,0,462828.story

Karl Rove led the nation to war to improve the political prospects of George W. Bush. I know how surreal that sounds. But I also know it is true.

...[Rove] is co-president of the United States, just as he was co-candidate for that office and co-governor of Texas. His relationship with the president is the most profound and complex of all of the White House advisors. And his role creates questions not addressed by our Constitution. Rove is probably the most powerful unelected person in American history.

...He looked around and saw that the economy was anemic and people were complaining about the president's inability to find Osama bin Laden. In another corner, the neoconservatives in the Cabinet were itching to launch ships and planes to the Mideast and take control of Iraq. Rove converged the dynamics of the times. He convinced the president to connect Hussein to Bin Laden, even if the CIA could not. And now, Rove needs the conflict to continue so his client — the president — can retain wartime stature during next year's election.

...I first encountered Rove more than 20 years ago in Texas. I reported on him and the future president as a TV correspondent there, traveling with them extensively during their race to the governor's mansion in Austin. Once there, Rove was involved in every important decision the governor made and, according to Bush staffers, vetted each critical choice for political implications.

Nothing is different today in the White House. The same old reliable sources from his days in Texas are in Washington with him. And they say Rove is intimately involved in the Cabinet and that he sat in on all the big meetings leading up to the Iraq war and signed off on all major decisions.

Rove fancies himself an expert in both policy and politics because he sees no distinction between the two. This matters for a number of reasons. There is always a time during any president's administration when what is best for the future of the country diverges from what best serves that president's political future. If Rove is standing with George W. Bush at that moment, he will push the president in the direction of reelection rather than the country's best interests.

...For instance, when the U.S. was notified, through formal diplomatic channels, that North Korea had nuclear technology, Congress was in the midst of discussing the Iraqi war resolution. Rove counseled the president to keep that information from Congress for 12 days, until the debate was finished, so it would not affect the vote. He was also reported to be present at a war strategy meeting concerning whether to attack Syria after Iraq. Rove said the timing was not right. Yet.

Having the political advisor involved in that decision is wrong. War, after all, is not a campaign event.

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http://www.nypress.com/16/19/news&columns/cage.cfm

I had not planned on watching George Bush’s "Top Gun" speech last Thursday night. I didn’t think that I could handle it. My mental health has not been so good lately. I hadn’t watched television since the second week of the war, because I was beginning to experience painful headaches and hallucinations.

...[But I] made the mistake of turning on the television. A half hour later, I was watching a shot of George Bush waving goodbye to a throng of adoring sailors dissolve into a black screen, leading to the chilling voice-over that I did not imagine: "We now return to Friends, already in progress." It was at that moment that my headaches went away, and I realized that I had woken up in the Soviet Union.

It has become fashionable on the left and in Western Europe to compare the Bush administration to the Nazis. The comparison is not without some superficial merit. In both cases the government is run by a small gang of snickering, stupid thugs whose vision of paradise is full of explosions and beautifully designed prisons. Toss in the desert fatigues motif and the "self-defense" invasion tactic, and there does seem to be a good case.

But it’s way off. It’s wishful thinking.

The Reich only lasted 12 years. The Soviets reigned for 75. They were better at it than the Nazis, and we’re better at it than the Russians. Ask anyone who’s lived in a communist country, and he’ll tell you: Modern America is deja vu all over again. And if ever there was a Soviet spectacle, it was Bush’s speech last week.

Think about it. Huge weapons on display, in foreground and background. The leader who has never fought dressed in full military regalia. Crowds of adoring soldiers and "shock worker" types dressed in colorful costumes, carefully arranged for the cameras. A terrible, excruciatingly dull speech, 20 minutes of incoherent, redundant patriotism (Bush used the words "free" or "freedom" 19 times in an 1800-word speech) and chimpanzoid chest-pounding.

On May Day.

That was Red Square every year for about 70 straight years. And now it is a most natural fit in our society. The genius of the Soviet system–and now the genius of ours–was that it appealed not to the hatreds and passions of its people, but to other, more dependable qualities: laziness, banality, drunkenness, cowardice... After a while did not need to be imposed from above. The drunken slob collapsed in a Siberian train station was the same person as the ruler of the country. As if through one mouth it spent 70 years babbling voluminously in every direction about nothing, while behind the scenes it quietly lived off slave labor and human flesh... The mechanism is a little different here–but the monolithic, irresistible instinct toward mediocrity is the same.

So is the fawning sentimentality, and the preposterous fake idealism. In Soviet times, a man who was afraid to speak frankly on any topic in front of his own children and whose neighbor had disappeared two days before was capable of shedding real tears over the plight of the American Negro, a popular Soviet cause for decades. You see the same thing here in the States: no job, no health insurance, fucked for life by the credit bureaus, but swelling with pride over the sight of an Iraqi child with a candy bar.

Modern observers look back at the early Soviet days and wonder how it is that people could possibly have believed those fantastic tales they read about in the state papers–the lurid descriptions of fascist terrorists and wreckers who conspired to poison reservoirs and turn up rails and put broken glass in sausage in the most faraway, seemingly irrelevant places... It wasn’t a lie that was being put over on them. It came from them.

...The problem isn’t removing George Bush. It’s the rest of it. This whole thing, all around us, is a package deal. From war all the way back to "Friends, already in progress." A monster that mighty doesn’t need a führer.

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