Mood:  on fire

'One peep away from getting shot'

By Steve Duin, The Oregonian

September 23, 2009, 6:51PM

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:58 PM PDT

Updated: Thursday, 24 September 2009 5:23 PM PDT

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Mood:  chatty

Hey my friendly Z3 Readers... this was an email from Greg Pallast...he is spot on ...and reporting what isn't in your local Corporate News.... read on my friends, this is sickening!

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.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:21 PM PDT

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Mood:  accident prone

For Donald Vance, a 29-year-old veteran and an American citizen, the desire to play a small part in a big event would lead to the scariest experience of his life. While in Iraq, he was neither a victim of a roadside bomb nor taken prisoner by insurgents. Instead, he was held captive by the U.S. government — detained in a secret military prison.

"It's probably the worst thing I've ever lived through," says Vance, who along with another American is now suing his own government, which he says "treated me like a terrorist."

It all started in the summer of 2005 when Vance went to Baghdad. Born in Chicago, Vance had joined the Navy after high school and later worked in security.

He took a job with an Iraqi company, Shield Group Security, or SGS, which provides protection for businesses and organizations. Vance supervised security and logistics operations. Before long, he says he started noticing troubling things at the company — explosives and huge stockpiles of ammunition and weapons, including anti-aircraft guns. He worried they were going to militias involved in sectarian violence.

There was "more ammunition than we could ever, ever need," says Vance. "We employed somewhere between 600 and 800 Iraqis. We had thousands of rifles."

Vance became so alarmed by what he saw that when he returned to Chicago in October 2005 for his father's funeral, he called the FBI office there and volunteered his services. He says he became an informant because, "It's just the right thing to do."

Once back in Baghdad, Vance says he began almost daily secret contact with the FBI in Chicago, often through e-mails and with officials at the U.S. embassy, alleging illegal gun-running and corruption by the Iraqis who owned and ran the company.

"I really couldn't tell you how many days I thought about, 'What if I get caught?'" says Vance.

In April 2006, he thought that day had come. His co-worker, Nathan Ertel, also an American, tendered his resignation. And with that, Vance says, the atmosphere turned hostile.

"We were constantly watched," Vance says, "We were not allowed to go anywhere from outside the compound or with the compound under the supervision of an Iraqi, an armed Iraqi guard."

Vance says an Iraqi SGS manager then took their identification cards, which allowed them access to American facilities, such as the Green Zone. They felt trapped.

"We began making phone calls," Vance recalls. "I called the FBI. The experts over at the embassy let it be known that you're about to be kidnapped. We barricaded ourselves with as many guns as we can get our hands on. We just did an old-fashioned Alamo."

The U.S. military did come to rescue them. Vance says he then led soldiers to the secret cache of rifles, ammunition, explosives, even land mines.

The two men say they — and other employees who were Westerners — were taken to the U.S. embassy and debriefed. But their ordeal was just beginning.

"[We saw] soldiers with shackles in their hands and goggles and zip-ties. And we just knew something was terribly wrong," says Vance.

Vance and Ertel were eventually taken to Camp Cropper, a secret U.S. military prison near the Baghdad airport. It once held Saddam Hussein and now houses some of the most dangerous insurgents in all of Iraq.

Here's what Vance and Ertel say happened in that prison: They were strip-searched and each put in solitary confinement in tiny, cold cells. They were deliberately deprived of sleep with blaring music and bright lights. They were hooded and cuffed whenever moved. And although they were never physically tortured, there was always that threat.

"The guards employ what I would like to call as verbal Kung-Fu," says Vance. "It's 'do as we say or we will use excessive violence on you.'"

Their families back home had no idea what was happening. Until they were detained, Vance had called or e-mailed his fiancée, Diane Schwarz, every day while in Iraq — and now he was not allowed to do either.

"I am thinking, you know, he's dead, he's kidnapped," recalls Schwarz.

After a week of intense interrogations for hours at a time, Vance learned why he was detained. He was given a document stating the military had found large caches of weapons at Vance's company and suspected he "may be involved in the possible distribution of these weapons to insurgent/terrorist groups."

He was a security detainee, just like an insurgent. And he says he was treated that way.

"The guards peeking in my cell see a Caucasian male, instantly they think he's a foreign fighter," says Vance. He recounts guards yelling at him, "You are Taliban. You are al-Qaida."

Vance says the charges against him were false and mirror exactly the allegations he had been making against his own company to the FBI.

"I'm basically saying to them: 'What are you talking about? I've been telling you for seven months now that this stuff is going on. You're detaining me but not the actual people that are doing it!'"

A military panel, which reviews charges against detainees, eventually questioned Vance and Ertel. Both men were given a document that said, "You do not have the right to legal counsel." The men say they could not see all the evidence used against them and did not have the legal protections typically afforded Americans.

But they were eventually allowed very infrequent phone calls, which were very frustrating for Vance and his fiancée.

"He's crying, you know, he's not getting any answers and I'm not able to help him," says Schwarz. "And he's not able to help himself."

The military cleared Ertel and released him after more than a month in prison. But Vance stayed locked up.

At that point, prohibited from keeping notes, he began secretly scribbling diary entries and storing them in his military-issued Bible, whenever he had access to a pen.

The military now acknowledges that it took three weeks just to contact the FBI and confirm Vance was an informant. But even after that, Vance was held for another two months. In all, he was imprisoned for 97 days before being cleared of any wrongdoing and released.

"I looked like hell, completely emaciated, you know — beard, shaggy, dirty," remembers Vance. "They showered me, shaved me, cleaned me up and dumped me at Baghdad International Airport like it never happened.

Throughout the ordeal, the U.S. military said it thought Vance was helping the insurgents. Wasn't that a reasonable basis to hold and interrogate him?

"They could have investigated the true facts, found out exactly what was happening," says Vance. "What doesn't need to happen is throw people in a cell, we'll figure out the answers later. That's not the way to do things."

Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel have now filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government and Donald Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense when they were detained. It is generally very difficult to sue the government, but experts say this case may be different because Vance and Ertel are American citizens; they were civilians held by the U.S. military; and they were detained for such a long time.

Military officials would not comment, but a spokeswoman previously has said the men were treated fairly and humanely. The FBI also declined to comment, as did officials at SGS. The company’s name has changed, but it's still doing business in Iraq. Neither the company, nor its executives, has been charged with any wrongdoing.

Vance says he hopes the lawsuit will reveal why the military held him so long, and why he was denied the legal protections guaranteed American citizens.

"This is just another step of our Constitution slowly being whittled away," says Vance when asked why with all the tragedies and injustice in Iraq anyone should care about his story. "It's basic fundamental rights of our founding fathers."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19226700/

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PDT

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Mood:  blue

So whats going on here Z3 Readers?

This is a smear / spin / boondoggle by the USA

We are playing shell games, finger pointing, protecting Israel, and trumpeting our great concern for Human Rights and Racism, all the while shit talking Iran and crying that we dont get our own way. How shameful to boycott a Racism Conference.

 U.S. will boycott U.N. conference on racism

By Laura MacInnis and Sue Pleming

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE53H1M120090419?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&sp=true

GENEVA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will boycott a United Nations conference on racism next week, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday, citing objectionable language in the meeting's draft declaration.

The United Nations organized the forum in Geneva to help heal the wounds from the last such meeting, in Durban, South Africa. The United States and Israel walked out of that 2001 conference when Arab states tried to define Zionism as racist.

The Obama administration, which kept its distance from preparations for the "Durban II" meeting, has come under strong pressure from Israel not to attend.

"With regret, the United States will not join the review conference," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood, ending weeks of deliberations inside the Obama administration over whether to attend.

Wood said significant improvements were made to the conference document, but the text still reaffirmed "in toto" a declaration that emerged from the Durban conference which the United States had opposed.

"The United States also has serious concerns with relatively new additions to the text regarding "incitement," that run counter to the U.S. commitment to unfettered free speech," he added.

The announced boycott came about three months after President Barack Obama became the first African-American to lead the United States.

Canada also has said it will not go next week because of fears of a repeat of the "Israel-bashing" that occurred at the last conference. The European Union is still deliberating.

The Czech Republic, which holds the rotating EU presidency, has called a meeting for Sunday evening to evaluate the bloc's stance on attending.

"There are still several member states of the EU that are not decided yet," Czech foreign ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova said. "We are in touch with them and there will be a decision on a common position before the conference starts."

Britain, however, confirmed that it would send a delegation to the conference, albeit without a high-level official.

RIGHTS GROUPS CONCERNED

Juliette de Rivero of Human Rights Watch said the meeting in Geneva would lack needed diplomatic gravitas without Washington's presence.

"For us it's extremely disappointing and it's a missed opportunity, really, for the United States," she said.

A draft declaration prepared for the conference removed all references to Israel, the Middle East conflict and a call to bar "defamation of religion" -- an Arab-backed response to a 2006 controversy over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that Western states see as a way to quash free expression.

Wood conceded there had been improvements to the document, but he said it was not enough.

"The United States will work with all people and nations to build greater resolve and enduring political will to halt racism and discrimination wherever it occurs," he said.

Diplomats said the high-profile presence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the forum made it probable that touchy subjects would still dominate the proceedings.

Ahmadinejad, who has previously said Israel should be "wiped off the map" and questioned whether the Nazi Holocaust happened, will address the plenary and hold a news conference on Monday -- coinciding with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Iran's sentencing of U.S.-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi to eight years in prison on Saturday may also have dampened White House enthusiasm about the chance of direct diplomatic contact with Tehran at the conference.

Ahmadinejad is one of only a handful of heads of state who have confirmed they will attend the conference at the U.N.'s Palais des Nations.

Iranian dissidents on Saturday expressed dismay about his taking center stage, saying his participation "would only serve to discredit the conference."

Western officials have said they are preparing for a response if Ahmadinejad were to make "unacceptable" comments in his Monday remarks. Some said they would respond with rebuttals on the spot, and others signaled they could leave the forum.

One diplomat said: "We don't normally walk out of conferences run by the United Nations and we'd rather avoid doing it. But that doesn't mean that there aren't red lines that if breached would prompt us to take action."

(Writing by Sue Pleming and Laura MacInnis; editing by Paul Simao)

(Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London, Holger Hansen in Berlin, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels; editing by Robert Woodward)

Posted by Joe Anybody at 8:00 PM PDT

Updated: Monday, 20 April 2009 8:47 PM PDT

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Mood:  sad

Z3 Readers this is a sad true story of how the "war on drugs" fucks a mans life up by shooting him for nothing more than being suspect in a drug witch hunt....

http://www.katu.com/news/national/42801327.html

By Associated Press

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:40 PM PDT

Updated: Monday, 20 April 2009 8:50 PM PDT

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Mood:  hug me

Swords or Ploughshares: 

 Empowering Smart Decisions

in Difficult Times

After World War Two there was a dramatic shift in our national economy.  That war was, and continues to be, trumpeted as the way out of the Great Depression.  Since then our country has maintained an ever increasing level of military spending as a means of ‘stimulating our economy.’  After a generation of considering illogical and unnecessary military spending essential to our economic growth, it is no wonder in 2009 the Pentagon budget dwarfs the budgets of many small industrialized countries. 

Seymour Melman, an economist, writer, peace activist, and gadfly of the military-industrial complex was the first to question the legitimacy of this economic model.  His book The Permanent War Economy and Pentagon Capitalism set the stage for the first of many Peace Action campaigns to reduce the military budget.

Under the leadership of then Peace Action board co-chair and International Association of Machinists leader William Winpisinger, Peace Action mounted a campaign to support Congressman Ted Weiss’ “economic conversion” legislation.  The basic premise was:  if we can ramp up our economy by spending money for war during war-time, then we can do the same during peace-time by investing in domestic and human needs. 

After suffering under the neo-conservative yoke of the Reaganites many at Peace Action were hopeful when President William Clinton promised to reduce the military budget.  We launched our Peace Economy Campaign to reinvest money wasted on Star Wars and Cold War weapons into rebuilding our economy from the bottom-up.  We endorsed the Congressional Black Caucuses’ Alternative Budget and waited for Clinton to present his budget. 

Clinton did cut the budget, but not in a way that promoted a peace economy.  He cut military personnel and none of the Reagan administration weapons.  He fully funded Star Wars and refused to reduce our nuclear arsenal.  The types of cuts he made and did not make set our peace economy campaign back.  Conservatives pointed to it as naiveté and progressives were compelled to condemn it for being ineffective.  In reality, the cuts Clinton made to the personnel in the military were just reinvested into the Pentagon and its weapons systems.

President Obama has made many promises about the military budget.  He has said he wants to “stop waste and cost overruns”; he wants to phase down our occupation in Iraq and call it a reduction in military spending.  Are these smart cuts?  They may reduce the balance of the Pentagon budget; but, they do nothing to promote a peace economy.  Even eliminating all the costs associated with our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan the U.S. military budget is still larger than that of all other nations combined. 

Peace Action is ramping up a campaign to make sure that the Obama Administration does not go the way of its Republican and Democratic predecessors.  Our second Peace Economy Campaign will officially kick off in April with protests in cities and towns all over the country.  We’ll use the 6th anniversary of the Iraq occupation to draw attention to the wasteful spending and Tax Day actions to ask the people of this country, “where do you want your tax dollars spent.” 

In the long term, our goal is to reduce the military budget by making smart cuts in our military spending and greatly decreasing our military presence around the world.  To this end we co-sponsored the Security Without Empire Conference on Military Bases last week.  In the coming months our political team will make lobby visits around the nuclear non-proliferation treaty talks and the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. 

Peace Action will continue to oppose any U.S. military occupation both on moral and fiscal grounds.  This summer we’ll take that message to millions of American homes; knocking on doors with our message.  We believe that change comes from people, not presidents.  Together, we can deliver change to the country one dollar at a time.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 8:08 PM PST

Updated: Saturday, 7 March 2009 8:36 PM PST

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Mood:  don't ask

Hey Now Z3 Readers this email alert is to tell us how the Bush Crime Family screwed the worker some more. Its called H-2B 

It allows "the worker" (in this case the foreign worker) to legally get screwed over and to allow the abuse by taking advantage of their lack of work law knowledge. But believe me the outfits (companies) that do know about this law (H-2B)

.....ohhh they know all about it.!!!

Thanks Bush... from another working stiff that appreciates your your back room policies to fuck over the working man (not!)

Action Alert - Stop Worker Abuse

In its final days, the Bush administration gave a gift to U.S. corporations by rewriting little-known rules that allow them to "import" foreign workers to fill jobs here.

Bush's changes make it even more attractive for businesses to hire foreign guestworkers — undercutting wages, opportunities and working conditions for all workers. This is especially troubling in today's economy.

These changes shred the few protections for H-2B guestworkers. And they're already taking a toll. Just last week, an appellate court in New Orleans cited the new regulations when ruling that an employer did not have to reimburse guestworkers for thousands of dollars in fees they paid to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs.

Foreign guestworkers don't have the same protections as U.S. workers, so they are vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers. In fact, they are routinely cheated out of their wages, and some are treated as modern-day slaves.

This abuse must stop!

We're working through the courts to stop the exploitation of guestworkers. But we need broader reforms that can only come from the federal government.

Please contact President Obama today and urge him to overturn the Bush rules and reform this program from top to bottom.

White House website

Suggested message:
President Obama, please rewrite the rules for the H-2B guestworker program. This fundamentally flawed program results in the systematic exploitation of workers and gives incentives to U.S. businesses to bring in vulnerable foreign workers, undercutting wages, opportunities and working conditions for all workers.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 6:49 PM PST

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Mood:  d'oh

Z3 Readers I received this email on Wednesday (today)

Let us stand in solidarity for accountability … afterall it is “our money”!

Please send a comment to congress – just click the link in below

Last week, when President Obama heard that some Wall Street banks that have been propped up with taxpayer funds might be using the bailout money to pay executive bonuses, he called it "shameful."

Shameful is right, but most of these executives have no shame. So while being called out by the president might make them uncomfortable, it's not going to stop them.

That's why, next week, our staff and members from across the country will be meeting with dozens of members of Congress to ask them to hold banks and their regulators accountable and to pass measures to prevent the need for future bailouts.

So Where did the money go?

Last year Congress and President Bush gave Wall Street an unprecedented $700 billion taxpayer bailout to stabilize the economy. The first $350 billion has been spent with nothing to show for it. Not only is the economy getting worse, but the government has no idea what the banks did with the money.

Please sign our petition urging your Representative to help us Secure America’s Financial Future.

PETITION TEXT

http://www.ospirg.org/action/financial-security/petition?id4=ES

http://www.ospirg.org/action/financial-security/petition?id4=ES

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:02 PM PST

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Mood:  loud

Z3-ers here is an email I got

Posted by: "TAHOEJIMBO420"

tahoe420jimbo@yahoo.com  

Fri Jan 23, 2009 10:05 am (PST)

Posted by Joe Anybody at 10:35 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 27 January 2009 5:49 PM PST

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