An Abrupt Departure

This beta version of PriorityWire has really been more successful than I had ever hoped. Unfortunately, I've got to shut it down, for now at least.

I've finished up college and, unwilling to submit to the soft bigotry of low self-expectations, will spend the next few months giving my all to The Cause, while also seeking out a graduate school (at which I can promptly and wistfully place myself in massive financial debt).

I'm committed to restarting this project though, and have begun applying for some grant money so I can get PriorityWire v.2.0 off the ground sometime soon with the resources it needs.

Until then, cheers!

Cheney's Office Approved Secret Halliburton Contract

The New York Times reports:

In the fall of 2002, in the preparations for possible war with Iraq, the Pentagon sought and received the assent of senior Bush administration officials, including the vice president's chief of staff, before hiring the Halliburton Company to develop secret plans for restoring Iraq's oil facilities, Pentagon officials have told Congressional investigators.

The Times claims the "newly disclosed details ... do not suggest improper political pressures to direct business to Halliburton," but do "raise questions about" -- or, rather, reveal as lies -- "assertions by Mr. Cheney and other administration officials that he knew nothing in advance of the Halliburton contracts and that the decisions were made by career procurement specialists, without involvement by senior political appointees."

Plus: Congress refuses to hear testimony of new Halliburton contracting problems

corporate power | more: Halliburton Watch

Trade Just One Arm of US-Mid East Offensive

Aziz Choudry has written an essential primer on US economic strategy vis-a-vis the Mid East, detailing the extensive set of Trade and Investment Framework Agreements (TIFAs), Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) the U.S. is negotiating with states in the region en route to its end goal -- the regional Middle East Free Trade Agreement (MEFTA) that George W. Bush announced in June 2003.

Choudry details the substantial corporate collaboration (with high-level officials from US multinationals like Citigroup, ALCOA, CMS Energy, and Time Warner Inc. acting as trade pact co-chairs), geopolitical pressuring (Egypt, for example, is praised one week and slandered the next by US trade rep Robert Zoellick after deciding not to support a US-led WTO compaint), and all-around anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-public health bent that typify the trade offensive. A great read.

globalization | MakeTradeFair.org

Quote of the Day

"I get a call last week from Intel, I get a call from Microsoft, I get calls from places we never used to get calls from. People are realizing that labor unions are the best-kept secret in America. You have no employment rights at work unless you have a collective bargaining agreement."

-- Andy Banks, organizing director for the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers in Silver Spring, Md., on the fevered new interest in unions among white-collar workers whose jobs are being shipped overseas

globalization | more: United for a Fair Economy

UNCTAD Kicks Off

Annan - Inquality Worsening: The UN Conference on Trade and Development informally began with a G77 ('group of 77' -- now 132 -- underdeveloped nations) forum celebrating the organization's 40th anniversary. "The sad truth," Kofi Annan told them, "is that the world today is a much more unequal place than it was 40 years ago." Nice words, as usual, from Annan, who nevertheless has overseen the largest expansion of this global income divide in history.

Rising Tide Drowns the Weak: Oxfam International issued a comprehensive new report that also addressed global inquality while pointing out that six of the world's 10 poorest countries are actually less prosperous than they were two decades ago.

U.S vs. Oxfam: Notably, Oxfam called for UNCTAD's role in global trade talks to be strengthened in the future, and for the conference to increasingly become a forum "for developing country governments to share ideas on 'pro-poor' economic development strategies, and to enforce political consensus and pro-development policies in other international institutions." As we reported here on Friday, the U.S. is leaning hard against these very reforms.

Trade Amongst Ya'selves: AP reports that G77 representatives are working hard to reduce barriers to trade amongst poor nations, a move that "would help them penetrate the markets of the powerful Group of Eight top industrialized nations," one official said. Still, some of the larger underdeveloped nations, like India and Brazil, are nervous -- India fears, for example, that Brazil's advanced agriculture would wipe out millions of Indian farmers.

globalization |

Corporations Sued for Complicity in Abu Ghraib Torture

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed suit on behalf of several Iraqi prisoners against two of the corporate contractors -- CACI International Inc. and Titan Corp. -- employed by the U.S. government at Abu Ghraib prison. The suit "charges them with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and alleges that the companies engaged in a wide range of heinous and illegal acts in order to demonstrate their abilities to obtain intelligence from detainees, and thereby obtain more contracts from the government."

The Washington Post notes that the suit "relies on the Alien Tort Claims Act, which has been increasingly used by groups or individuals seeking to hold U.S. corporations responsible for conduct in foreign countries that lack adequate court systems."

corporate power | more: Alien Tort Claims Act Under Attack

Room 347

Beginning in 2001, when the Republican Party briefly lost control of the Senate, six top lobbyists have met "nearly every Thursday morning with the Senate's top Republican aides in Room 347 of the Russell Office Building." Taeggan Goddard calls it "perhaps the most exclusive lobbyist meeting in Washington":

Participants include:

-- Dirk Van Dongen of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors
-- Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
-- Dan Danner of the National Federation of Independent Business
-- Lee Culpepper of the National Restaurant Association
-- Mike Baroody of the National Association of Manufacturers
-- John Castellani of the Business Roundtable.

The Thursday Group was initially formed in 1994 and was critical in drafting the "Contract with America." But it disbanded once the Republicans consolidated their control on Capitol Hill. ... "The meeting has never been publicized" and participants have refused to comment.

corporate power |

Enron CFO's Wife Not Sent to the Cushy Prison She Wanted

"The brewing irritation between a judge and the lawyer for the wife of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow flared up Wednesday," the Associated Press reports, "after Lea Fastow was assigned to serve time at an urban high-rise (left) rather than the minimum-security women's prison camp she wanted."

The judge was already peeved with Lea Fastow's lawyer. Last month, the lawyer sent a confidential court report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons with a letter that noted her family hoped she would serve her year in prison at the camp in Bryan.

Plus: An Oregon state judge has ordered a regulatory hearing into whether Portland General Electric, a unit of Enron, fraudulently collected more than $665 million from ratepayers to cover corporate income taxes that Enron never paid.

corporate power |

Photo of the Day

...And Starring Tony Blair as Mr. Pink.



The G8's 'Reservoir Running Dog Capitalists,' in Wonkette's words.

globalization |

US Pressure Seen in UNCTAD's New "Free-Market"-Friendly Approach

This year's U.N. Conference on Trade and Development will see a "shift in focus from the anti-establishment rhetoric of yesteryear to pragmatic, free-market economics," the Financial Times reports. This year, it seems, UNCTAD will be "preaching supply-side economics" and export diversification rather than focusing on the collapse of commodity prices, which development groups say is one of the biggest causes of world poverty today.

"The US in particular leaned on Unctad not to use the São Paulo conference as a podium for developing nations seeking concessions in the WTO trade talks. Member nations also came under pressure to limit Unctad's future role in trade policymaking, observers said."

globalization | more: IATP's UNCTAD XI Resource Center

Labor Board Ruling Threatens Union Recruiting

The National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, led by a 3-2 Republican majority, announced this week that it will take a "critical look" at the techniques currently used by unions (known as "card check" and "neutrality" agreements) to represent workers.

The other process that workers can use to unionize -- an election run through the NLRB -- "allows employers to delay or challenge the outcome of votes for years through litigation and to use intimidating tactics against workers," an AFL-CIO representative said. Most of the 400,000 to 550,000 new members the AFL-CIO has recruited annually in recent years has been due to the use of "card check" and "neutrality" agreements.

corporate power | more: Labour Start

They Get Letters

From the New York Daily News...

Bad Coke
Manhattan: It is disappointing and deeply shameful that the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York is honoring Coca-Cola CEO Steven Heyer. Multiple investigations and fact-finding missions have documented evidence of Coca-Cola's complicity or direct involvement in gross human rights violations at its contracted bottling plants in Colombia.

Nico Pitney

I'll be interviewing Ray Rogers, a long-time labor movement veteran and lead organizer of the Killer Coke campaign, on Monday. He was a guest on Democracy Now! in April after he confronted Coca-Cola's CEO at a shareholders' meeting and was eventually dragged off by security guards.

corporate power |

G8 Update: Plans for 100% Debt Relief Dropped

Reports on Tuesday that the Bush administration was planning to support an initiative that would cancel 100% of the debt owed by the world's poorest countries have proven unfounded. Instead, the current program for assisting heavily-indebted countries -- what's known as HIPC -- will be extended for 2 years and provided additional funding.

The Jubilee Network, which advocates for 100% debt relief, called Bush's piecemeal plan "wholly insufficient," though they also noted that the serious, high-level discussions of 100% debt relief among the G8 nations was unprecedented and a serious step forward.

globalization | more: Bipartisan Debt Relief Bill Introduced to Congress

Updates

I won't be able to update again until later this evening, though I'll be writing up a major summary of the G8 summit. Lots of important developments.

Action Alerts: Halliburton Ad, Garment Workers

MoveOn wants to raise $1.1 million to air a new ad in swing states that calls the Bush White House on its cronyism with Halliburton. "We know from polling that for many people the Halliburton debacle illustrates a core weakness in the Bush program, and helps convince independent voters to vote against Bush."

Garment industry watchdog Behind the Label wants folks to email the owner of San Francisco-based clothing producer Ben Davis, Inc., who is using S.F.'s new minimum wage law to ask for concessions in health care, vacations, holidays and sick days. Ben Davis, Inc. workers joined UNITE last November and are currently negotiating their first contract with the company.

action alerts |

Latest G8 Updates

Military Pullout: IndyMedia reports that Georgia Homeland Security has ordered the military to withdraw from coastal residential neighborhoods.

Parade of the G8 Bodybags: "The body bags have been shipped in, locals are running scared, and foreigners are being arrested and deported. Organizers of this week's G8 Summit are taking no chances with security ... 2,000 body bags have been delivered to the clapboard Chamber of Commerce across the road from the bookstore ... Five minutes later, one of the island's fire chiefs drops by, fresh from a briefing. It's not a rumor. The body bags are here, together with a refrigerated lorry to take away the corpses ... A State of Emergency granting extra powers to local law enforcement was announced by the State Governor on 7 May, and while nowhere has yet been 'set aside' for the protesters to protest (a quaint notion in itself), a playing-field over on the mainland has been fenced for use as a detention centre." Hat tip to News Dissector...

G8 Expansion: Questions about whether and how to expand the G8 are being "sparked by the rise of China - still ranked as a poor, developing nation but coming on strong," the Christian Science Monitor reports. "At last year's summit in Évian, France, French President Jacques Chirac invited China's president, Hu Jintao, as a guest. The Bush administration did not invite Mr. Hu to this year's G-8 summit, which winds up Thursday on Sea Island, a coastal resort off Georgia. But possibly as a first step toward full membership, the United States is considering asking China's finance minister and chief central banker to the fall session of the Group of Seven (G-7)."

Iraq Debt to Be Repaid, But Details Sketchy: US calls for a vast reduction in Iraq's $120 billion debt to "ensure the country's stability," but France and Russia, Iraq's biggest creditors, want a smaller reduction because "they want to be repaid and because Iraq's oil resources are seen by some as substantial enough to warrant it paying a larger portion."

EU Swings Back at Bush: Yesterday, George Bush attacked Europe's economy and tried to "twist the arms" of European leaders to make "difficult" and "politically unpopular" structural economic reforms. Today, France and few other G8 states returned the favor, with harsh comments about U.S. trade and budget deficits. "There were some concern and reflections, that was my case, and I was not alone ... on the eventual consequences of the strong U.S. budget and trade deficits on the future, and notably on currency and interest rates," Chirac told reporters.

AFP - 'G8 Harmony Shattered': The United States and France are clashing again over Iraq and NATO's role in the occupation. George Bush called for greater NATO involvement in the occupation, seeking to ease the burden on American forces. "But French President Jacques Chirac ... erected an immediate rhetorical roadblock on the highly secured private island hosting the summit. 'I do not think that it is NATO's job to intervene in Iraq,' Chirac said. 'Moreover, I do not have the feeling that it would be either timely or necessarily well understood,' said Chirac."

globalization | more: NoG8.org

NAFTA vs. the Environment: The Battle Heats Up

Two recent cases provide frightening evidence of NAFTA's ability to undermine domestic environmental protections and basic state sovereignty, and demonstrate in gritty detail how public goods (like the air we all breathe) are being sacrificed to protect the rights of profit-worshipping multinationals.

The Supreme Court ruled this week that Mexican freight trucks can travel across the U.S. border and onto U.S. highways despite the fact that they "are older and not subject to the Clean Air Act and other U.S. clean air laws" and so "emit more dangerous particulate matter and nitrogen oxides than U.S. trucks." The Sierra Club blasted the decision, which was supported by the Bush administration, as "NAFTA's latest blow to environmental protections."

Similarly, in a first-of-its-kind case held under NAFTA rules "meant to secure the rights of foreign investors," petrochemical producer Methanex is seeking $970 million in compensation for profits it claims to have lost as a result of California's 1999 ban on the harmful gasoline additive, MTBE. The decision will be a landmark and could set off a flood of new cases that target federal or state health and safety regulations. Interestingly, John Kerry led a 2002 legislative effort to weaken these NAFTA investment rules, singling out the Methanex compaint as the "most notorious."

globalization | more: Support Earthjustice, which is arguing the case against Methanex

Fair Trade Retailers Charging 'Huge Mark-Ups'

European retailers of fair-trade goods "sometimes charge huge mark-ups on fair-trade goods," the Wall Street Journal reports. "They get away with it as consumers usually are given little or no information about how much of a product's price goes to farmers." One UK supermarket chain cited in the article "has sold fair-trade bananas at more than quadruple the price of conventional bananas - and more than 16 times what growers get."

The retailers say they're not exploiting fair-trade products, though the lucrative sales in Europe "have caught the attention of US companies, including Starbucks, Procter & Gamble and Dunkin' Donuts, which have all begun offering fair-trade coffee." Some nonprofits that support fair trade have protested the mark-ups, though many groups reportedly "worry that if they criticise retailers over pricing they will stop selling fair-trade goods - a charge the groups deny."

globalization | more: Global Exchange's Fair Trade Store

G8 Update: Bush to EU - Gut Your Social Market System

The Bush administration has used international media focus on the G8 summit as an opportunity to criticize the E.U.'s economy and to "twist the arms" of European leaders to make "difficult" and "politically unpopular" structural economic reforms. According to this euphemism-laden UPI piece, the U.S. is pushing the EU to "make labor markets more efficient, thereby making it easier for firms to hire and fire, reform its expensive pension plans, undertake healthcare reform and reduce inefficient regulations." The report said it was unclear how France, Germany, and Italy - three G8 members - would respond to the comments.

U.S. desires to see Western Europe's social market system undermined have been documented for some time, and the recent EU enlargement was seen as a particularly important step towards that goal. Noam Chomsky offers this helpful overview of U.S.-Europe policy in a recent interview with David Barsamian:

The U.S. has always had an ambivalent attitude towards Europe. It wanted Europe to be unified, as a more efficient market for U.S. corporations, great advantages of scale. On the other hand, it was always concerned about the threat that Europe might move off in another direction. A lot of the issues about the accession of the East European countries to the European Union have a lot to do with that. The U.S. is strongly in favor of it, because it’s hoping that these countries will be more susceptible to U.S. influence and will be able to undermine the core of Europe, which is France and Germany, the big industrial countries, which might move in a somewhat more independent direction.

Also in the background is a long-standing U.S. hatred of the European social market system, which provides decent wages and working conditions and benefits. It’s very different from the U.S. system. And they don’t want that model to exist, because it’s a dangerous one. People get funny ideas. And it’s very explicitly stated that with the accession of Eastern European countries, with low wages and repression of labor and so on, it may help undermine the social and worker standards in Western Europe, and that would be a big benefit for the U.S.

globalization | more: Chomsky's homepage

Evening G8 Updates

Nothing But Trouble: Georgia's First Coast News - "There was also quiet protest again this evening as people attended a candlelight vigil in memory of what protestors called, 'the victims of globalization.' But attendence was light. Some locals, like librarian Carey Knapp came to see what was happening. She brought her teenage daughter to give her an education on the exercise of free speech rights. Things have not been as difficult as many people feel they were led to believe. 'They made us feel like it was going to be nothing but trouble. I suddenly thought after a few days that it was important to start coming to some of these things and I wanted to bring my daughter.'"

Sudan on the Agenda: Earlier, we noted that the LA Times had called on Summit participants to address the mass killings in Sudan that have already taken some 30,000 lives. News now comes from the Guardian (UK) that "oil prices and the ethnic strife in Sudan" will be on the Summit agenda, as well as "a global HIV vaccine enterprise, a ... consortium to collaborate and share information in the hope of finding a vaccine as quickly as possible."

globalization | more: NoG8.org

Latest G8 Updates

Ghost Town Lock Down: "Outnumbered and intimidated by armored Humvees and attack helicopters, demonstrators who have been the main event at other world summits failed to show up in numbers on the first day of the Group of Eight meeting on Tuesday. ... Much of Savannah was locked down tight and parts were closed off to the public. Most downtown residents have taken the week off and headed to the beach, locals said. Coast Guard speedboats with heavy machine guns patrol the river separating the town from a convention center on an island where most media have been based. ... Helicopters hovered overhead and military vehicles rumbled through the normally sleepy town."

The Actual State of Emergency: Jeff Taylor, writing for Reason.com: "Georgia officials have tried to compare the legal declarations and security prep in Glynn County and surrounding areas to the ones undertaken for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, with simple public order at issue. But there is one glaring difference that is perhaps too obvious to belabor. The Olympics or a golf tourneys are not primarily political events. G8 summits, in contrast, function primarily as political events, and every leader in attendance will come with a detailed political agenda. ... That is the actual state of emergency unfolding in Georgia, where massive state and institutional power will be used to secure political, personal, and very petty gain."

CNN - 'G-8 protest draws small crowd': "...several dozen protesters gathered Tuesday in Savannah's Forsyth Park, flanked by almost as many members of the media..." One can only wonder why. Perhaps Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue's rejection of the march permits, or his preemptive declaration of a state of emergency? Maybe the fact that the Forsyth Park meeting began at 8 a.m., or that the actual G8 summit is 80 miles away from the protests? Or might it have something to do with the 20,000 security personnel (in a town of 15,000) in riot gear surrounding the festivities?

Huge alert to protect G8 summit: A bioterrorism early-warning system has been set up around the summit, "scanning data to find any abnormal patterns of calls to emergency services to automatically alert authorities of possible outbreaks, including exposure to anthrax, SARS and other epidemics."

globalization | more: NoG8.org

G8 updates continue in the post below. I did want to mention briefly that an article of mine describing the strange scenes at last weekend's Wal-Mart shareholders' meeting was just posted over at Common Dreams (though I'd suggest checking out the version found on this site, only because I included a few amusing photos from the event).

Also, since I'm expecting a number of new visitors today, I thought I'd say a short word about our little corner of the net here. My hope is that you find Priority Wire to be a daily source for interesting and accessible coverage of the most critical issues we face in the world today -- trade, sustainable development, global poverty/disease, and the like. These issues, as we all know, are far too often ignored or reported marginally (and usually in a manner that pleases policy wonks and manic depressives while boring the shit out of everyone else).

There's simply no reason for it. These are fascinating topics with the potential to inspire the same level of creative thought and activity, citizen engagement, critical debate, and tactical strategizing as any other cause. Saying that, I certainly don't mean to discount the important work that so many, including those protesting at Sea Island, are doing. Rather, as someone who spent the last year interacting mostly with folks involved in the electoral sphere of political activism (where these issues are rarely discussed), I sense that there are throngs of folks who would be transformed into active members of the Global Justice movement if they were only offered an 'in'. Hopefully, for a few, this site will be such a catalyst.

Thanks again for visiting, hope you'll come back tomorrow.

Latest G8 Updates (Update 6)

Torture Advice Clouds Leaders' Meeting: Sigh. Just as G8 leaders were expected to agree to a reform plan "to promote freedom, democracy and prosperity in the broader Middle East," a leaked classified report revealed that U.S. lawyers had prepared advice last year saying that domestic and international laws against torture could sometimes be ignored while waging the "war on terror." The text of the report: "Because nothing is more important than 'obtaining information vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens', normal strictures on torture might not apply."

'G8 Must Address Sudan's Ethnic Cleansing': The LA Times called on G8 leaders to address the mass killings in Sudan, where more than 30,000 are thought dead and where ten times that number are expected to die of starvation and disease "even if relief efforts [are] accelerated," according to US AID. There has been little talk of Sudan in reports from Georgia, though truth be told, the Bush administration did pay some attention to Sudan recently. The U.S. removed the war-torn African nation from a list of terror-supporting states, thereby ending the arms embargo that prevented Sudan from importing American-made weapons.

Bush Now Supports British Debt Relief Plan: In what the Guardian (UK) calls a "last minute softening of his stance," George Bush has decided to back "an ambitious British-designed plan for more generous debt relief for the world's poorest countries." The late shift, which was likely planned in advance, is meant to persuade several hesitant G8 nations to forgive nearly $90 billion worth of debts owed by Iraq. The debt initiative will "make the world's 41 highly indebted poor countries (HIPC) eligible for 100% debt write-offs from their multilateral creditors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, at a cost to rich countries of $1bn-plus per year."

Bragging Rights: Deputy Assistant Jim Wilkinson called the United States "the world's leader in food aid" at a press conference this morning, noting that over the years it has provided "more than $1.4 billion in emergency aid." Is that really a fact to highlight? Here are a few other things with a $1.4 billion price tag: the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab; one year of federal subsidies to ethanol producers; a single U.S. aircraft carrier; PayPal (sold to E-Bay); the new terminal at JFK Airport. One other consideration: 160 million people around the globe today - more than half the population of the United States - are malnourished.

Blair Pushes Further Relief: Tony Blair will also propose to abolish the "sunset clause" that blocks several war-ravaged countries from entering HIPC and receiving debt relief. Moreover, Blair's plans include a $1 billion increase to the HIPC trust fund, though the development group Oxfam says the fund "needs $2.3 billion to meet existing commitments," as Priority Wire reported yesterday.

globalization | more: NoG8.org