6 America first
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,960202,00.html
Larry Elliott May 21, 2003 The Guardian
In the second of our series on global institutions, we see how the Iraq
conflict accelerated the crisis in the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO
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14 U.S. makes digital log of Iraq prisoners
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030520.gtiraqmay20/BNStory


NEW YORK — U.S. interrogators in Iraq are building a digital catalogue of
prisoners of war and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, scanning
and saving their fingerprints and other body characteristics in databases.
The data banks, controlled by the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security
and other federal agencies, are being used to investigate suspicious
foreigners entering the United States, as well as to trace suspects in
future terrorist attacks. The move also reflects the U.S. government's
desire to keep tabs on Iraqi fighters after releasing them when the Iraq
war is declared ended. "We do this passive collection when we go in,
because these guys will scatter over time," said Thomas Barnett, a
professor at the Naval War College who advises the Office of the Secretary
of Defense. "When you have the opportunity to tag them, you tag them before
you release them to the wild."
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15 Bush savages Castro on his big day
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=1911072
<http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=1911072>
May 21, 2003 6:45 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush has marked Cuban
Independence Day by denouncing Cuban President Fidel Castro and expressing
hope his rule will soon end. "My hope is for the Cuban people to soon enjoy
the same freedoms and rights as we do. Dictatorships have no place in the
Americas. May God bless the Cuban people who are struggling for freedom,"
Bush said in a message played on U.S.-backed Radio Marti, which is beamed
into Cuba. Bush also marked the 101st anniversary of the former Spanish
colony becoming an independent republic -- a rallying date for anti-Castro
Cuban-Americans -- by meeting former Cuban political prisoners and
relatives of current prisoners at the White House. Washington has condemned
Cuba's imprisonment of about 75 dissidents in recent weeks, Havana's
harshest crackdown in decades. Havana called the crackdown and prison
sentences of six to 28 years a defence against U.S. "mercenaries." Last
week the United States expelled 14 Cuban diplomats, accusing them of
"unacceptable activities -- a diplomatic euphemism for spying.
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20 Federal deficit tops $200 billion; record projected
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=54&u_sid=747773
<http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=54&u_sid=747773>
May 21, 2003

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government ran up a deficit of $201.6 billion in the
first seven months of the 2003 budget year, more than three times the total
for the corresponding period a year earlier... Record deficits are forecast
for this year and next... Revenues were down by 5.4
percent to $1.06 trillion for the seven months of the 2003 budget year in
comparison to that period a year earlier. A big part of the drop stemmed
from lower tax payments flowing into the Treasury, a byproduct of tax cuts
and the weak economy.

Individual income tax payments totaled $493.8 billion, representing a
decline of almost 8 percent from the previous year. *Corporate tax payments
dropped by 28.7 percent to $62.8 billion*... For the 2002 budget year, which
ended Sept. 30, the government ran up a deficit of $157.8 billion, ending
four consecutive years of surpluses.
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21 Big Dig Official Oversees Iraq Contracts
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-big-dig-iraq,0,290
132.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dworld%2Dheadlines
May 20, 2003, 3:12 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration official whose agency approves most
of the Iraq rebuilding contracts previously tried to rein in costs for
Massachusetts' "Big Dig," the expensive highway project that has become a
symbol of government contracting run amok. Under Andrew Natsios' leadership
as administrator, the U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded
the largest Iraq contract to Bechtel Corp., the company that helped manage
the two-decade-old Boston project that has cost more than five times its
original price tag.
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26 Intelligence agency: dissent = terrorism, Intelligence agency does
not distinguish between terrorism and peace activism
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,82%257E1865%257E14000
12,00.html
Oakland Tribune Sunday, May 18, 2003

Days before firing wooden slugs at anti-war protesters, Oakland police were
warned of potential violence at the Port of Oakland by California's
anti-terrorism intelligence center, which admits blurring the line between
terrorism and political dissent. The April 2 bulletin from the California
Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) arguably offered more innuendo
than actual evidence of protesters' intent to "shut down" the port and
possibly act violently. CATIC spokesman Mike Van Winkle said such evidence
wasn't needed to issue warnings on war protesters.

"You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group
protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is
international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest)," said
Van Winkle, of the state Justice Department. "You can almost argue that a
protest against that is a terrorist act." In fact, CATIC -- touted as a
national model for intelligence sharing and a centerpiece of Gov. Gray
Davis and Attorney General Bill Lockyer's 2002 re-election bids -- has
quietly gathered and analyzed information on activists of various stripes
almost since its creation.
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35 The big dry
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=699&journa
<http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=699&journa>
lID=68

Drought has hit hard this season in Africa. Pastures in South Africa are
withering and turning brown. Farmers in the Port Elizabeth area are
trucking in loads of feed they can normally grow on their own lands.
Alexandria Farmers' Association Chairman Morrice Lavin told the East Cape
News that there was very little food left in the pastures, and nearby farms
are going on the auction block. "Liquidations are coming," he said. South
African farmers are saying the drought is the worst in 80 years. Farther
north, UNICEF says that Ethiopian women and girls are suffering sexual
abuse after being forced from their homes by the drought currently gripping
the Horn of Africa. The Ethiopian government says the drought there has
affected 11 million people. Thousands are forced from their homes in search
of food or employment. UNICEF warns that as women or young girls have few
options under such circumstances, they are often taken advantage of in
return for support.
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37 U.S. Eyes Oil for Immigrants
http://www.americas.org/news/nir/20030511_u_s_eyes_oil_for_immigrants.asp

On May 9 Republicans in the International Relations Committee of the U.S.
House of Representatives pushed through an amendment that would condition
any immigration pact with Mexico on Mexico’s willingness to open up its
State-owned oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), to investment by
U.S. firms. The amendment was substituted for an amendment proposed by
Robert Menéndez (D-NJ) that would have called on the government of U.S.
President George W. Bush to negotiate an immigration agreement with Mexico.
People in Washington have already nicknamed the Republican version the
“Halliburton amendment,” referring to an oil services company formerly
headed by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney which is now managing oil
operations in U.S.-occupied Iraq. (Hoy (NY) 5/11/03 from EFE)

Mexicans have been resistant to U.S. efforts for the partial privatization
of their oil company, but they are eager to get the U.S. to regularize the
status of the millions of undocumented Mexicans living and working in the
United States. The idea of making a “grand migration bargain” was
pushed by the United States-Mexico Migration Panel think tank as early as
February 2001.
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39 MEXICO SOLIDARITY NETWORK
WEEKLY NEWS AND ANALYSIS FROM MEXICO
APRIL 28 – MAY 4, 2003
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/news_current.html

1. AGREEMENT ON RURAL CRISIS FALLS SHORT
2. THREATS INCREASING IN MONTES AZULES
3. PEMEX OFFERS LONG TERM CONTRACTS TO TRANSNATIONALS
4. CHOICEPOINT INVESTIGATION CONTINUES
5. CHINA DISPLACES MEXICO AS SECOND EXPORTER TO US
6. CHANGING EVIDENCE IN OCHOA ASSASSINATION CASTS DOUBTS
7. AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY IN MEXICO
8. US LABOR DELEGATION INVESTIGATES MAQUILAS, NEW UNIONS, AND MEXICAN LABOR
LAW
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40 Foreign Policy Mafia Wants EU To Give U.S. Right To Sit In On Its
Meetings
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/laughland16.html

- Last week, a group of influential politicians who inhabit the rarefied
but influential world of Washington DC think-tanks, proposed that US
government officials be given the right to sit in on the European Union's
inter-governmental conference, and on meetings of its other executive
bodies, so that the USA can keep an eye on the direction Europe is taking.
The cat, therefore, is finally out of the bag: American politicians are now
so seriously worried that the European Union might be emerging as some kind
of independent force, that they are trying to work out a way of preventing
this from ever happening. . .
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42 Only One-Third Of NYC Middle Schoolers Passed Reading Test
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/85390p-78019c.html

ALISON GENDAR, NY DAILY NEWS - Only 32.6% of city eighth-graders passed the
state reading exams this year, according to scores released yesterday by
the state Education Department. While that's three percentage points better
than last year, the percentage of middle school students able to pass the
English language arts exam is lower than in 1999, when the test was
introduced. . .
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43 How The Grand Jury Was Captured By Government
http://cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-476es.html

CATO INSTITUTE - The grand jury is perhaps the most mysterious institution
in the American criminal justice system. While most people are generally
familiar with the function of the police officer, the prosecutor, the
defense lawyer, the judge, and the trial jury, few have any idea about what
the grand jury is supposed to do and its day-to-day operation. That
ignorance largely explains how some over-reaching prosecutors have been
able to pervert the grand jury, whose original purpose was to check
prosecutorial power, into an inquisitorial bulldozer that enhances the
power of government and now runs roughshod over the constitutional rights
of citizens.
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46 For Three Nuns, A Prairie Protest And a Price to Pay, Sisters
Reconciled to Prison For Actions at Missile Site
Wednesday, May 21, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17346-2003May20.html

GREELEY, Colo. -- After seven months in a dank basement jail, the three
nuns, now convicted felons awaiting sentencing, were taking in the
welcoming sun of the prairie for the first time. At the same time, there
they were, during this precious stint of freedom before their July
sentencing date, visiting the nuclear missile site in northeastern Colorado
where they got into trouble in the first place. "Here's where we cut the
link," said Sister Ardeth Platte, holding the chain that had been locked
onto the first of two fences surrounding a Minuteman III missile silo
buried in the dry, brittle ground. "Then we did the same thing to the other
fence." Then, on the morning of Oct. 6, 2002 -- in an act that the federal
government, and the Denver jury that convicted them last month, called a
crime worthy of as much as 30 years in prison -- the Roman Catholic nuns
entered the inner enclosure around the missile silo and stayed a while.
Using ball-peen hammers, they tapped on the silo's 110-ton concrete lid and
on the rusty tracks on which the lid would slide open for a launch. They
poured their blood in the shape of crosses from plastic baby bottles onto
the silo walls and the tracks. They sang a song ("Sacred our land, sacred
our water, sacred the sky, holy and true . . ."). And they prayed for world
peace.

The Dominican sisters call what they did a symbolic act of disarmament
against a weapon of mass extinction. The government called it injury to,
interference with and obstruction of the national defense, along with
damage of more than $1,000 to government property. Prosecutors said they
will ask U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn to sentence the nuns to five
to eight years in federal prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines.
Although not the maximum, those sentences, the nuns' lawyers say, would
constitute one of the harshest punishments ever handed down for what
amounts to a trespassing case in which the gravest damage done
was to a piece of chain-link fence.
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49 French journalists sent back to France - treated like terrorists by
airport security
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=6909 - Reporters without
Borders

Press rights group Reporters Without Borders today protested against the
detention of six French journalists on arrival a week ago at Los Angeles
international airport. The journalists were covering a video games trade
show and were repatriated after being held at the airport for more than 24
hours. "These journalists were treated like criminals - subjected to
several body searches, handcuffed, locked up and fingerprinted," the
group's secretary-general Robert Ménard said in a letter to US ambassador
to Paris, Howard Leach. He urged the ambassador to press for an
investigation and to ensure that the journalists will have no problems the
next time they travel to the United States. He also suggested that it
should be clarified whether or not journalists travelling to the United
States need a specific press visa. "As things stand, the decisions taken by
airport security officials appear to have been arbitrary if not
discriminatory," Mr Ménard added. The six journalists arrived at Los
Angeles airport in two groups a day apart. They were then detained and held
for a total of 26 hours, which included a night in the cells of a US
immigration detention centre.
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