THE 9/10 PROJECT LAUNCHES

THE 9/10 PROJECT LAUNCHES

In a public rebuke of the Glenn Beck 9/12 Project, popular pundit and left wing video blogger (“one of the most prominent voices in YouTube politics“- Steve Grove, YouTube News & Politics chief) launches the 9/10 Project

CONTACT: Davis Fleetwood, Political Action Entertainer/ www.OperationItch.com
thedavisfleetwood910project@gmail.com

CAMBRIDGE, MA. – Davis Fleetwood, former spokesperson and media advisor to the Dennis Kucinich 2008 Presidential campaign, today launched the 9/10 Project with a video posted to the Operation Itch website (see the video:)

The 9/10 project asserts that the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the coordinated terror tactics of the U.S. Federal government in the months and years following have had the intended effect of turning the populace of the United States into a herd of servile, submissive, stooges. According to Fleetwood: “The election of Barack Obama has only made things worse. People have their Obama goggles on. What they fail to understand is that the words of Martin Luther King, Jr still hold true; The U.S.A. is still the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

The 9/10 project is for citizens of the world who have born witness to the growing imperial reach of the United States in the post 9/11 era and have reached the only logical conclusion one came come to: the long-term survival of the human species requires the United States of America to dismantle peacefully and immediately.

Like Glenn Beck’s 9/12 project, the Davis Fleetwood 9/10 project is built on 9 Principles & 10 Values (see them here: http://operationitch.wordpress.com/the-9-10-project/9-principles-10-values/ )

The 9/10 project acknowledges that the founding fathers were certainly “on to something” but it is time to hit the reset button.

Small is the new big.

The goal of the 9/10 project is to harness the viral power of the Internet to brainstorm a new path, one that would lead to the peaceful dissolution of the United States. In other words, we seek to increase demand for the cartographers of the world, and for the first time in history, put those cartographers to work without first waging war.

This bears repeating: The aim of the 9/10 Project is nothing less that the peaceful break-up of the United States of America into four smaller countries.

Really.

Like-minded citizens of the world are encouraged to visit Operation Itch, where they can begin the work of brainstorming a path towards the peaceful dismantling of the American Empire.

For more on the 9/10 project & Davis Fleetwood, visit: http://operationitch.wordpress.com/the-9-10-project/

David Axelrod Wrote Me About Messiah Obama’s Pleasing Muslim Speech

I wonder if he will appreciate my response?

His Letter:

Hello -

As a Senior Advisor to the President, I’m here in Cairo, Egypt where I watched President Obama deliver an unprecedented speech calling for a new beginning for the United States and Muslim communities around the world.

We all know that there has been tension between the United States and some Muslim communities. But, as the President said this morning, if all sides face the sources of tension squarely and focus on mutual interests, we can find a new way forward.

The President outlined some big goals for this new beginning in his speech — including disrupting, dismantling, and defeating violent extremism. It was a historic speech, and since many Americans were asleep at the time it was given we wanted to make sure you had a chance to see it:

Majority-Muslim countries around the world are filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives, just as in America. Indeed, part of what makes America great is having nearly seven million Muslim Americans living here today and enriching our culture and communities.

We can extend that kind of relationship abroad. It won’t always be easy, but if we make an effort to bridge our differences rather than resigning ourselves to animosity, we can move toward a more peaceful world over time.

Thank you,
David Axelrod
Senior Advisor to the President

My Response:

Mr Axelrod,

Perhaps you can convince your boss that explaining to the Muslim world that Iraq is better off now than under Saddam Hussein, no matter the fact that we are there under the lies, deceit and murderous activities of his predecessor, is akin to a arsonist’s family apologizing for their family member burning down someone’s home and explaining to them that they are better off that the house is gone. It is disgusting and it appears that he seems totally committed to protecting those criminals from the war crimes (which now makes him complicit).

Maybe your boss would want to STOP bombing innocent Muslim families with unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, if he really wants Muslims to believe him (good luck with that).

Maybe explaining to Israel that we will not give them another nickel or another weapon until they stop their advances on Muslims on Muslim land will help him gain favor in the Muslim world’s eye.

But alas, I am sorry, Mr Axelrod, but your boss lost all credibility with the world, me and many Americans with all his flip-flopping and lies that convinced the ignorant Progressive Movement that he was something he is not.

We are not all fooled by the propaganda and lies. Muslims aren’t either.

Personally, I see very little difference between your boss and the previous occupant of that position. He is a shade darker in color, but The Empire lives on.

A liar is a liar.

Period.

America Does NOT Torture: Except When We Torture

The Prison Industrial Complex can be the sole or largest employer in a small community, so they provide jobs to guards. The local population complains little because the prison is the mainstay of the community (it is true of this community).

$40Billion per year budget + 2,000,000 prisoners = BIG MONEY

The fact is that torture is used within the walls of our jails and prisons daily. Not only that, but I have witnessed young men transform from rambunctious teenagers who were found with pot, into hardened criminals, even though they never did anything to harm a soul. I know one man a couple of years younger than me that had a problem with prescription pills. His dependency caused him to spend many years in jails and prison, and he is the meekest, nicest guy in the world who never hurt anyone and couldn’t get help with his addiction.

He is a three time loser who the local sheriff says is a waste of humanity. He wasn’t until the prisons got ahold of him.

h/t AfterDowningStreet

WTF Thursday: I Double Dog Dare You

I am not sure what it is about those of us who invite the challenge of a dare, but I have been one of those that would accept most anything, as long as the challenger was willing to do the same or similar thing upon my dare. A dare for a dare, as it were.

After being dared to pick mushrooms out of cow shit to eat them, in response, I dared a guy to jump from a structure that was about 5 feet away from some giant pine trees, except that we were at least 30 or 40 feet above the ground. He was to jump from a railing and grab the tree (and climb down).

He apparently didn’t understand the gravity of gravity, because when he made it to the ground in only about 3 seconds of flesh tearing descent (and almost lost a nipple to the pine’s hard bark), he had to go to the hospital. He didn’t have a shirt on (and I was tripping and laughing so hard). It could have killed him, of course (but so could have the mushrooms killed me).

My youngest brother made a killing off of eating spiders alive ($10 or $20 per spider). I remember sitting in my living room one day while he was visiting and I saw a spider run across the carpet and all I had to do was say, “$10″. He jumped down, grabbed the spider and ate it. Simple as that.

But I bet even he wouldn’t eat a pig ball…

Plano teen eats fetal pig parts on classmates’ dare

By MATTHEW HAAG / The Dallas Morning News
mhaag@dallasnews.com Some kids will do anything for money.

Last week at Shepton High School in Plano, a ninth-grader agreed to eat parts of a fetal pig – and not just any parts – for $50.

The second-period biology class was wrapping up a third session on dissection when a couple of students proposed the dare.

“What was I eating?” the boy recalled asking.

Testicles, the students replied.

He gulped them down one at a time, he said, trying not to bite down.

“It was just like swallowing a pill,” said the 15-year-old, who is not being identified because of his age. “It wasn’t that bad.”

School officials, who declined to comment, apparently took a different view, especially because the pigs are soaked in formaldehyde, a toxic chemical used to preserve the tissue.

They called the boy’s mother, who couldn’t be reached for comment, and a trip to the hospital followed.

“She said, ‘How could you be so stupid?’ ” the boy said.

After the hospital, he said, he went home and brushed his teeth – three times.

He said he collected $40 but owes his mom $100 for the hospital visit.

“It wasn’t very smart,” the boy said.

h/t Daily Rotten

They Tuk ‘R Jobs

Ever wonder where your nice manufacturing job went over the past 20 or 30 years? I have been catering to manufacturing as a engineer and salesman since 1989. I lived in the PC Board industry as it died in the early 90′s and was resurrected in Asia (leaving Americans high and dry). I have watched American automotive fall apart slowly and surely. I have seen so many products leave the United States for China (and other countries with less labor costs and with Single Payer Universal healthcare) that I have been suggesting for years that something must be done before it is too late. I am afraid that “too late” is here.

We simply cannot make it as a nation unless we manufacture and produce here. Sorry, that is a fact.

Richard McCormack of Manufacturing & Technology News can explain it far better than I:

China’s Manufacturing Jobs Surged As American Jobs Disappeared

By Richard A. McCormack
richard@manufacturingnews.com

While the United States was losing 1.4 million manufacturing jobs from 2002 to 2006, China was substantially increasing the number of workers in its manufacturing sector, according to a new report on Chinese manufacturing employment and compensation costs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manufacturing employment in China during those five years increased by 10 percent to 112 million, about 100 million more than the number of manufacturing workers in the United States.

Manufacturing employment in China bottomed out in 2002 at 100.7 million, down from a high of 126 million in 1996. In the late 1990s, privatization of China’s manufacturing establishments and intense global competition brought increases in labor productivity accompanied by a drop in manufacturing employment, says the new BLS study. But things started to turn around in 2002, with foreign demand for Chinese-manufactured goods growing by 25 percent per year. By the end of 2006, China’s manufacturing employment had increased once again to 112.63 million, nearly eight times the level of manufacturing employment in the United States (14.16 million).

Average compensation for Chinese manufacturing workers increased by more than 40 percent from 2002 to 2006 to $0.81 per hour, or $162 per month (and $1,939 per year). Total compensation cost for a manufacturing worker in China is only 2.7 percent of the average hourly compensation cost of a manufacturing employee in the United States. Because hourly compensation costs in China have grown at an annual rate three times that of the United States during the five years covered in this series (9 percent and 3 percent, respectively), this percentage has edged higher, starting from 2.1 percent of U.S. compensation costs in 2002 and increasing slightly each year, notes the study.

But Chinese manufacturing employees located in rural areas make far less than the average. Total compensation for a rural manufacturing employee is only 53 cents per hour. In urban areas, the average is $1.47 per hour. Total compensation costs include wages, employer payments for social benefits such as workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, health insurance and pension funds. It includes sick leave, income guarantee insurance, life and accident insurance, illness compensation and family allowances.

Not only are there a lot more manufacturing employees in China, but the amount of hours they are working also increased substantially during the 2002 to 2006 period. The published data on weekly hours worked in urban China showed a sharp increase from the 2003 to 2004 period to the 2005 to 2006 period, not only in manufacturing, which exhibited a sudden 9 percent increase but in most other economic sectors as well, says the study. This big increase in hours worked is unusual from an international perspective, says the BLS report. The report, China’s Manufacturing Employment and Compensations Costs: 2002 – 2006, is located at http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/04/art3full.pdf.

Lab Rat- Waterboarding

And no, I ain’t talking about having your friends come over with cookies and pouring water over your face (without the rag and tying oneself to an inclined board). Conservative09 thinks that by allowing his 5 year old daughter to pour water on his face, he has experienced water boarding…Clueless chump.

The Lab Rat was prepped… training in Yoga and was ready to go 15 seconds. But the reality is that this IS torture (no matter what the man in the hood or any fool like Conservative09 says).

What these people don’t seem to understand is that torture can be nothing more than a mind game. It does not have to be physical pain or bringing blood, etc. But, in this case, I believe that it is, in fact, torture. Any rational person without a protectorate plan for the torturers would have to agree.

Let me ask a simple question regarding torture: If a person showed you a movie of your torturer (or anyone else for that matter) inflicting pain or killing your 5 year old daughter, would that be torture? It didn’t bring blood or pain to you, so it can’t be torture, right?

“Invoking an Existing Fear Of Drowning” is torture, you idiots, whether or not it “hurts”.

more about “Lab Rat- Waterboarding“, posted with vodpod

See: God Does Answer Prayers

When being arrested, does it matter what they are charging you with? Should anyone just give in when even the police are being evasive as to the reason for their arresting you?

This dude may be “out there”, but I was cheering for him at the end. Notice the fat ass cop give up after 5 steps of chase (equivalent to me trying to chase down someone).

Man Is Tazed, Mocks Cops And Still Gets Away

more about “Man Is Tazed, Mocks Cops And Still Ge…“, posted with vodpod

Grace: Love Undying

more about “Grace: Love Undying“, posted with vodpod

Eminem Munches Ass

In more ways than one. But this one takes the cake.

LOL Funny!

more about “Eminem Munches Ass“, posted with vodpod

Would We Or Wouldn’t We?

They Never Bomb Women And Kids

Are Americans blind? Do we consciously filter out the information about our bombs that kill little innocent children… innocent families just trying to make it in their world (a world so much harder than most of us are likely to understand or imagine)?

“Casualties of War”, they say, as if it is only a chalk mark on the blackboard (at least when referencing adults and “insurgents”). But let children be killed mercilessly and you would think that we would be outraged: screaming from the top of our lungs to stop. I mean just look at the crazyassed religious nuts and/or “newsources” who are taking advantage of the latest killing of an “abortion Doctor”, as pointed out by Redeye at Left in Alabama (yes, still a fav of mine, even though I drop a pile in on them every now and then).

Think about the outrageous things these people do to protect the children, yet when we are bombing the little dirty brown kids with no shoes on, then its just a mistake or casualty. A “my bad” “we’ll do better next time” sorta response.

Certainly no outrage.

h/t AfterDowningStreet

Mikey and GM

Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM’s birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with — dare I say it — joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know — who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let’s be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we’ve allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is “reorganized” by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made “Roger & Me,” I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war — a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call “cars” may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn’t give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true — that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don’t put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce — and most of those who have been laid off — employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades — and we don’t even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven’t used it, is criminal. Let’s hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we’re going to have automobiles, let’s have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories — that simply isn’t true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that’s a start. Please, please, please don’t save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don’t throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front — and the back — seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it’s over. It’s a new day and a new century. The President — and the UAW — must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Only An Idiot Would “Hope” Now

“One would have hoped that the Obama administration would have taken a different stance than the Bush administration“, said Kristen Breitweiser when discussing why the Obama Justice Department is now agreeing with the Bush Administration on covering up the Saudi Royal family connection to the 911 attacks.

Most rednecks don’t realize that 15 of the 19 “hijackers” were Saudi (not Afghani or Iraqi) no matter that we have been at “war” with these two countries on the auspices of this government conspiracy.

Just like the abuses and illegal activities Obama has protected Bush on up to this point, this is just another in a LONG LINE of lies and coverups the Messiah has conducted.

You Sheople make me sick with your undying dedication to lies. I am surrounded by a bunch of fools who can’t tell that there is little difference between the Bushies and the Obamaites. Nothing has changed except the fools are now blue as opposed to red.

The lawsuit in question was filed in 2002 and originally asked for $116 trillion. Later documents adjusted that figure to just $1 trillion.

Under the banner of “Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism,” they targeted numerous organizations, nations, individuals and institutions.

“[The] plaintiffs are suing seven international banks; eight Islamic foundations, charities and their subsidiaries; individual terrorist financiers; the Saudi bin Laden Group; three Saudi princes; and the government of Sudan for allegedly bankrolling the terrorist al Qaeda network, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban,” reported CNN.

The bin Laden Group is a wealthy Saudi company operated and owned by Osama’s siblings.

Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), in his book “Intelligence Matters,” published in 2004, writes that revealing the 9/11 terrorists’ funding would have drawn “a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and [triggered] an attempted coverup by the Bush administration.”

He added that the Bush administration blocked the release of a 27-page Congressional inquiry into the attackers’ financing.

A list of secret contributors to a Saudi bank which the Bush administration said helped finance terrorism was leaked on Nov. 26, 2002. The list, according to Slate, “has shareholders that include prominent Arab figures from numerous countries in the Middle East. Among the shareholders are the grand mufti of the United Arab Emirates and prominent families in the UAE and Kuwait. Two sisters of Osama bin Laden are also on the list, undermining the bin Laden family’s claim that it separated itself from his terrorist pursuits after he was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994.”

h/t Raw Story and AfterDowningStreet

Obama’s “Profound Differences”

Kelso added the following to another post and I thought it was worth repeating on its own. Notice how Mr Obama (the Law Professor) doesn’t say outright that murder of an abortion doctor is illegal and against the Constitution, but is just a difference in opinion (he pussed out to cater to the right, as usual):

Yet another “Profile In Courage” from the preening narcissist in the White House: The White House issued a statement Sunday evening from President Obama on the murder of George Tiller. Here’s what the president said:

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

(Posted by Kathy Kiely)

Umm, not exactly, Your Majesty.  ”Profound differences” are quite beside the point.  The law is the law.  A woman has a right to sovereignty over her own body and the right to have a private professional relationship with the doctor of her choice. That bond carries the full force of law.  Your Beltway chat-show ratings are irrelevant, sir.

“…Heinous acts of violence”? Umm, not exactly, Your Majesty.  This is also quite beside the point.  This is an assassantion and an act of domestic terrorism.

The Barack Obama Banking Cartel: Taking The American Worker Down To Build The Bankers Up

Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM

by Greg Palast
Monday, June 1, 2009

Screw the autoworkers.

They may be crying about General Motors’ bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won’t spoil Jamie Dimon’s day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama’s ‘Car Czar’ – the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what’s left. That’s the law. What workers don’t lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

Here’s the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM’s stock – or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well … just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada – $6 billion right now and in cash – from a company that can’t pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

Preventive Detention for Pensions

So what’s wrong with seizing workers’ pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it’s illegal.

In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can’t seize workers’ pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that’s because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as “fiduciaries.” Here’s the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government’s own web site under the heading, “Health Plans and Benefits.”

“The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.”

Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it’s not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank’s a little short. A plan’s assets are for the plan’s members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker’s spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another “Guantanamo” moment for the Obama Administration – channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

Filching GM’s pension assets doesn’t become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

“…act prudently and must diversify the plan’s investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.”

By “diversify” for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company’s stock.

This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

House of Rubin

Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don’t even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren’t asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who’ve already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama’s point-man in winning banks’ endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

With GM’s last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan’s Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank’s “finest year ever.”

Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

And it’s been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner’s youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. “Owning” is a loose term. Cerberus “owned” Chrysler the way a cannibal “hosts” you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler – indeed, they were paid billions by Germany’s Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler’s bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

(“Cerberus,” by the way, named itself after the Roman’s mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner’s personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama’s working class hero.

If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers’ funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat’s plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

It doesn’t make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

******

Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981.

Palast’s latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD, “Palast Investigates: from 8-Mile to the Amazon – on the trail of the financial marauders.” Watch the trailer here.

The Truth About Israel: Racists For Democracy

“Racists for Democracy”

Uri Avnery
30/05/09

HOW LUCKY we are to have the extreme Right standing guard over our democracy.

This week, the Knesset voted by a large majority (47 to 34) for a law that threatens imprisonment for anyone who dares to deny that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State.
The private member’s bill, proposed by MK Zevulun Orlev of the “Jewish Home” party, which sailed through its preliminary hearing, promises one year in prison to anyone who publishes “a call that negates the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State”, if the contents of the call might cause “actions of hate, contempt or disloyalty against the state or the institutions of government or the courts”.

One can foresee the next steps. A million and a half Arab citizens cannot be expected to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State. They want it to be “a state of all its citizens” – Jews, Arabs and others. They also claim with reason that Israel discriminates against them, and therefore is not really democratic. And, in addition, there are also Jews who do not want Israel to be defined as a Jewish State in which non-Jews have the status, at best, of tolerated outsiders.

The consequences are inevitable. The prisons will not be able to hold all those convicted of this crime. There will be a need for concentration camps all over the country to house all the deniers of Israeli democracy.

The police will be unable to deal with so many criminals. It will be necessary to set up a new unit. This may be called “Special Security”, or, in short, SS.

Hopefully, these measures will suffice to preserve our democracy. If not, more stringent steps will have to be taken, such as revoking the citizenship of the democracy-deniers and deporting them from the country, together with the Jewish leftists and all the other enemies of the Jewish democracy.

After the preliminary reading of the bill, it now goes to the Legal Committee of the Knesset, which will prepare it for the first, and soon thereafter for the second and third readings. Within a few weeks or months, it will be the law of the land.

By the way, the bill does not single out Arabs explicitly – even if this is its clear intention, and all those who voted for it understood this. It also prohibits Jews from advocating a change in the state’s definition, or the creation of a bi-national state in all of historic Palestine or spreading any other such unconventional ideas. One can only imagine what would happen in the US if a senator proposed a law to imprison anyone who suggests an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

THE BILL does not stand out at all in our new political landscape.

This government has already adopted a bill to imprison for three years anyone who mourns the Palestinian Naqba – the 1948 uprooting of more than half the Palestinian people from their homes and lands.

The sponsors expect Arab citizens to be happy about that event. True, the Palestinians were caused a certain unpleasantness, but that was only a by-product of the foundation of our state. The Independence Day of the Jewish and Democratic State must fill us all with joy. Anyone who does not express this joy should be locked up, and three years may not be enough.

This bill has been confirmed by the Ministerial Commission for Legal Matters, prior to being submitted to the Knesset. Since the rightist government commands a majority in the Knesset, it will be adopted almost automatically. (In the meantime, a slight delay has been caused by one minister, who appealed the decision, so the Ministerial Commission will have to confirm it again.)

The sponsors of the law hope, perhaps, that on Naqba Day the Arabs will dance in the streets, plant Israeli flags on the ruins of some 600 Arab villages that were wiped off the map and offer up their thanks to Allah in the mosques for the miraculous good fortune that was bestowed on them.

THIS TAKES me back to the 60s, when the weekly magazine I edited, Haolam Hazeh, published an Arabic edition. One of its employees was a young man called Rashed Hussein from the village of Musmus. Already as a youth he was a gifted poet with a promising future.

He told me that some years earlier the military governor of his area had summoned him to his office. At the time, all the Arabs in Israel were subject to a military government which controlled their lives in all matters big and small. Without a permit, an Arab citizen could not leave his village or town even for a few hours, nor get a job as a teacher, nor acquire a tractor or dig a well.

The governor received Rashed cordially, offered him coffee and paid lavish compliments to his poetry. Then he came to the point: in a month’s time, Independence Day was due, and the governor was going to hold a big reception for the Arab “notables”; he asked Rashed to write a special poem for the occasion.

Rashed was a proud youngster, nationalist to the core, and not lacking in courage. He explained to the governor that Independence Day was no joyful day for him, since his relatives had been driven from their homes and most of the Musmus village’s land had also been expropriated.

When Rashed arrived back at his village some hours later, he could not help noticing that his neighbors were looking at him in a peculiar way. When he entered his home, he was shocked. All the members of his family were sitting on the floor, the women lamenting at the top of their voices, the children huddling fearfully in a corner. His first thought was that somebody had died.

“What have you done to us!” one of the women cried, “What did we do to you?”

“You have destroyed the family,” another shouted, “You have finished us!”

It appeared that the governor had called the family and told them that Rashed

had refused to fulfill his duty to the state. The threat was clear: from now on, the extended family, one of the largest in the village, would be on the black list of the military government. The consequences were clear to everyone.

Rashed could not stand up against the lamentation of his family. He gave in and wrote the poem, as requested. But something inside him was broken. Some years later he emigrated to the US, got a job there at the PLO office and died tragically: he was burned alive in his bed after going to sleep, it appears, while smoking a cigarette.

THESE DAYS are gone forever. We took part in many stormy demonstrations against the military government until it was finally abolished in 1966. As a newly elected Member of Parliament, I had the privilege of voting for its abolition.

The fearful and subservient Arab minority, then amounting to some 200 thousand souls, has recovered its self-esteem. A second and third generation has grown up, its downtrodden national pride has raised its head again, and today they are a large and self-confident community of 1.5 million. But the attitude of the Jewish Right has not changed for the better. On the contrary.

In the Knesset bakery (the Hebrew word for bakery is Mafia) some new pastries are being baked. One of them is a bill that stipulates that anyone applying for Israeli citizenship must declare their loyalty to “the Jewish, Zionist and Democratic State”, and also undertake to serve in the army or its civilian alternative. Its sponsor is MK David Rotem of the “Israel is Our Home” party, who also happens to be the chairman of the Knesset Law Committee.

A declaration of loyalty to the state and its laws – a framework designed to safeguard the wellbeing and the rights of its citizens – is reasonable. But loyalty to the “Zionist” state? Zionism is an ideology, and in a democratic state the ideology can change from time to time. It would be like declaring loyalty to a “capitalist” USA, a “rightist Italy”, a “leftist” Spain, a “Catholic Poland” or a “nationalist” Russia.

This would not be a problem for the tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews in Israel who reject Zionism, since Jews will not be touched by this law. They obtain citizenship automatically the moment they arrive in Israel.

Another bill waiting for its turn before the Ministerial Committee proposes changing the declaration that every new Knesset Member has to make before assuming office. Instead of loyalty “to the State of Israel and its laws”, as now, he or she will be required to declare their loyalty “to the Jewish, Zionist and Democratic State of Israel, its symbols and its values”. That would exclude almost automatically all the elected Arabs, since declaring loyalty to the “Zionist” state would mean that no Arab would ever vote for them again.

It would also be a problem for the Orthodox members of the Knesset, who cannot declare loyalty to Zionism. According to Orthodox doctrine, the Zionists are depraved sinners and the Zionist flag is unclean. God exiled the Jews from this country because of their wickedness, and only God can permit them to return. Zionism, by preempting the job of the Messiah, has committed an unpardonable sin, and many Orthodox Rabbis chose to remain in Europe and be murdered by the Nazis rather than committing the Zionist sin of going to Palestine.

THE FACTORY of racist laws with a distinct fascist odor is now working at full steam. That is built into the new coalition.

At its center is the Likud party, a good part of which is pure racist (sorry for the oxymoron). To its right there is the ultra-racist Shas party, to the right of which is Lieberman’s ultra-ultra racist “Israel is our Home” party, the ultra-ultra-ultra racist “Jewish Home” party, and to its right the even more racist “National Union” party, which includes outright Kahanists and stands with one foot in the coalition and the other on the moon.

All these factions are trying to outdo each other. When one proposes a crazy bill, the next is compelled to propose an even crazier one, and so on.

All this is possible because Israel has no constitution. The ability of the Supreme Court to annul laws that contradict the “basic laws” is not anchored anywhere, and the Rightist parties are trying to abolish it. Not for nothing did Avigdor Lieberman demand – and get – the Justice and Police ministries.

Just now, when the governments of the US and Israel are clearly on a collision course over the settlements, this racist fever may infect all parts of the coalition.

If one goes to sleep with a dog, one should not be surprised to wake up with fleas (may the dogs among my readers pardon me). Those who elected such a government, and even more so those who joined it, should not be surprised by its laws, which ostensibly safeguard Jewish democracy.

The most appropriate name for these holy warriors would be “Racists for Democracy”.