Out Of The Ashes Of GM: The Phoenix Of Renewable Energy by Dr. Ellen Brown

by Dr. Ellen Hodgson Brown
Featured Writer
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webofdebt.com
June 10, 2009

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It may be prophetic that among the brands GM chose to kill was the Pontiac Firebird, a classic hot car of the 1960s sporting the fabled Phoenix on its hood. In mythology, the Phoenix was a colorful bird that incinerated itself in its nest, then rose from the ashes as its own offspring. GM too, says Michael Moore, could be reborn as something else. In a June 1 eulogy of sorts, he wrote:

“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 … 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!”

What would we want with a car company? Moore suggests that the bankrupt mega-builder of obsolete gas guzzlers can be transformed into a mega-builder of things we need more—mass transit vehicles, including bullet trains, light rail mass transit lines, energy efficient clean buses, hybrid or all-electric cars, and alternative energy devices such as batteries, windmills, and solar panels. The factories that built the cars that helped destroy the environment can become the tools for cleaning it up. This would, of course, take some investment; but Moore suggests that to pay for it all, the government could impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline.

It sounds good right up to the gas tax, a regressive tax that would hit hardest in the wallets of the poor and would raise alarm bells for politicians, the oil lobby, and voters. Isn’t there some way to fund the plan without driving up the tax burden or the national debt? In fact, there is.

Two shot at Holocaust museum + video report

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JTA
June 10, 2009

WASHINGTON– Two men, including a security guard, were shot Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

A man with a shotgun entered the museum shortly before 1 p.m. and opened fire on a security guard near the metal detectors at the facility’s entrance, according to the museum and to a District of Columbia police spokesman. Other security guards returned fire and the gunman was wounded.

Chiquita: Between life and law

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Warning

This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

AlJazeeraEnglish

Fined $25m by the US federal court for funding a terrorist organisation, Chiquita, the US-based banana distribution company, is now facing a number of new lawsuits.

Let’s Be…Frank By Vi Ransel

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Crossposted at Thomas Paine’s Corner thanks, Jason.

By Vi Ransel
June 10, 2009

“This is exactly what Obama’s idol, Ronald Reagan, did with his starter’s pistol in the race to the bottom 30 years ago with the destruction of PATCO, which accelerated the financial warfare against the working class in America.”

Picture this. A man who owns a Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan, a private plane and a horse farm, a man who profited from investments in Chrysler and GMAC, a private equity manager worth over $600 million, who had a million dollars in shares of both Chrysler and GMAC… That man is telling US auto workers – no, he’s demanding – that they take a permanent, and HUGE, reduction in their living standard, which includes the immediate elimination of dental and optical care for hundreds of thousands of retirees and their dependents. That care was in their contract, and contracts are so, dontcha know, sacrosanct that CEOs of “underwater” financial institutions could not be asked politely to take smaller, multimillion dollar bonuses – because those bonuses were part of their contracts. And these were very same CEOs who had overseen the “drowning” of those financial institutions, but, no, they got to keep their obscene bonuses while retired auto workers must give up their teeth and their eyes. How’s THAT for a classless society? Yep. In America we have ——- no class. You betcha.

Eradicate Capitalism and All Forms of Oppression by Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet

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by Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet
Global Research, June 8, 2009

The partisans of capitalism, and among them, prominently, the EU leaders, have lost all credibility. For years now they have trampled on the rights of peoples while not wavering when it came to making decisions directly opposed to their advertised principles in order to bail out major banks.

European government parties could have acted differently and nationalised the banks, thus retrieving the cost of the bailout on the patrimony of major shareholders and CEOs. The public credit instrument that would have resulted could finance socially useful and environment-friendly projects while guaranteeing individual savings. The crisis has brought back onto the agenda proposals that had been swept aside during the long neoliberal night such as a radical reduction of working time (with creation of jobs and no loss of pay) or indexation of wages and social benefits on the cost of living. Europe needs new financial discipline: company ledgers have to be opened to external and internal auditing (through the trade unions among others), all financial products must be regulated, and it must be forbidden for companies to have assets in any tax haven. Major means of production, trade, finance, communication and other services must be transferred to the public sphere and taken away from capitalists’ control. Access to public goods must be systematically promoted.

From Guantánamo To The South Pacific: Is This A Joke? by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
10 June 2009

Let’s face it, when it comes to Guantánamo, there’s little to laugh about, unless you’re an Islamophobic sadist — in which case, there’s still nothing for the rest of us to laugh about.

The Associated Press reports that, in a desperate effort to rid itself of the toxic human debris of Guantánamo, the Obama administration is eyeing up the tiny Republic of Palau, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles (800 km) east of the Philippines, to dispose of some, or all of the 17 Uighurs in Guantánamo.

The Uighurs are Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, who were swept up in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, and sold to US forces by Pakistani villagers after fleeing from a run-down hamlet in which they had sought solace from their Chinese oppressors, or, in many cases, because they had found themselves unable to make their way to Turkey or Europe, to look for work, as they had originally intended.