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It's a Small World and Shrinking. !-)
World News
Archive
2008 World History
2007 World History
2006 World History
2005 World History
2004 World History
2003 World History
2002 World History
2001 World History
Bali
bombings.
A-Z
Top
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
WORLD News:
20081218
 Dick
Cheney -  Criminal
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Prisons
-  Law
-  Military
-  Intelligence
-  Politics
-  Corporate
-  Media
- US
- Iraq
"If
Bush and Cheney Commit War Crimes and Everyone Knows It, But Does Nothing,
Are They Still Crimes?" ... "As Jon Ponder noted
here on Tuesday, a bi-partisan U.S. [United States] Senate panel has
found
[PDF] that [Republican President] George W. Bush was responsible for
approving War Crimes (torture and abuse) at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq,
[Republican Vice President] Dick Cheney admitted
in a recent interview to helping to approve War Crimes (torture and abuse)
in interrogations, and the corporate media --- with the lone exception
of MSNBC --- have been virtually as silent on what may be the most offensive
crimes ever committed by an Executive Branch in the U.S. as they were during
the lead-up to and follow-through on the War on Iraq, when those same officials
sent our nation into war on the basis of demonstrable lies." ... "George
Washington University's highly-respected constitutional law professor Jonathon
Turley, noting the War Crimes now known and admitted to by Bush and Cheney,
asked Keith Olbermann Tuesday night, "If someone commits a crime and everyone's
around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?"" ... "During the
discussion, Turley mentioned --- no less than three different times ---
that it'll be up to the citizens whether or not any action is actually
taken to prosecute those who committed these crimes." ... ""It will ultimately
depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of
a crime that's been committed in plain view," Turley suggested. "It is
equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing,
and that is what the citizens are doing."" ... "He went on to argue: "There's
this gigantic yawn as we hear about a war crime on national television
being discussed matter-of-factly by the Vice President."" -By
Brad
Friedman -BradBlog.com
 WATCH
"Countdown: Jonathan Turley and Bush Admin War Crimes."
-Keith Olbermann via -FireDogLake'sYouTube
 Barack
Obama - Gay
- Politics
- Religion
-  Book
-  People
-  Children
-  Girls
-  Schools
- US
- Pakistan
- Palestine
- British
- Soviet
- Military
-  History
"Three
Cups of Tea for Rick Warren." ... "Rick Warren is
providing the invocation for the [Democratic President Elect Barack Obama's]
presidential inauguration. As a pastor whose books have been read by tens
of millions of Americans and whose voice is respected by an equal or larger
number, he has tremendous influence and power. And as an open homophobe
who aggressively works to wound gay people in this country (as well as
pretty much anybody else who doesn’t believe with his own particular and
peculiar recently-invented version of Christian theology) he should be
the guy with the bull’s-eye on his back for the progressive movement."
... "But consider that metaphor for a moment. In Pakistan there are entire
regions filled with people who not only hate gays but hate Americans as
well, regardless of religion. We've tried bombing them (as the Soviets
did, and the British before them). Three consecutive Western empires have
tried threatening them, starving them, poisoning them, infiltrating them,
and overpowering them - all without success." ... "And then Greg Mortenson
came to one of their villages, had three cups of tea with them (a metaphor
for hospitality - they nursed him back to health after a mountain climbing
injury - and the title of his best-selling book), and now in dozens of
these formerly Taliban-controlled villages the people are rejecting the
Taliban, embracing modernity, and openly proclaiming themselves as our
friends." ... "His "weapon" for this conversion? He built schools for their
children, particularly their previously-banned-from-school girls." ...
"We pushed the Palestinians on the West Bank to have open and democratic
elections, assuming that because they were using the tool of our culture
(the secret ballot) they’d vote in people reflecting the values of our
culture. Instead, they voted in Hamas, a group that is openly hostile to
us and our allies. Hamas’ “weapon” for winning the hearts and minds of
the Palestinians? They supported schools, hospitals, and fed and clothed
people." ... "You’d think that we’d have learned from these experiences
- particularly those of us who call ourselves “progressives” - that you
get your desired results faster when you embrace, engage, and nurture your
“enemies” than when you physically or rhetorically bomb them." ... "Barack
Obama has learned that lesson, and is applying it in inviting Rick Warren
to perform the invocation for his inauguration. In doing so, he is reaching
out a hand to those who today are - out of fear and ignorance - pushing
away gays the same way their intellectual ancestors pushed away African
Americans when anti-miscegenation laws were supported by most of these
same “fundamentalist” Christian churches in the 1950s and 1960s." -By Thom
Hartmann -ThomHartmann.com
20081217
Russia
- Human
- Rights
- Politics
- History
"Rights
activists denounce Russian treason bill: They say
legislation backed by Putin is 'in the spirit of Stalin and Hitler'." ...
"Rights activists Wednesday denounced new legislation backed by Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin that would allow Russian authorities to label any government
critic a traitor, calling it a chilling throwback to times of Soviet dictator
Josef Stalin." ... "The bill, which is expected to become law, would expand
the definition of treason to include damaging Russia's constitutional order,
sovereignty or territorial integrity. That, activists said, would essentially
let authorities interpret any act against the state as treason — a crime
punishable by up to 20 years in prison." ... ""It returns the Russian justice
to the times of 1920-1950s," the activists, which included Moscow Helsinki
Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Civic Assistance director Svetlana Gannushkina,
said in a joint statement." ... "Alexeyeva said a person who reports government
abuses to an NGO — for example Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch
— could be deemed to have harmed Russia's interests." ... "During Putin's
eight-year presidency, the government has systematically rolled back Russia's
post-Soviet political freedoms and that has shown no signs of stopping
under Putin's successor and protege, Dmitry Medvedev."
-AP via -MSNBC
20081216
Dick
Cheney - Torture
- War
Crimes - Criminal
-  Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Military
- Prison
- Law
- US
- Guantanamo_Bay
- Cuba
"Cheney
was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics: The
vice president [Republican Dick Cheney] says that the use of waterboarding
was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay
open until 'the end of the war on terror.'" ... "[Republican] Vice President
Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe
interrogation methods used by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and
that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely."
... "Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged
playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial
interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding."
... ""I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get
the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News." ... "Asked
whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method
on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."" ... "His comments come on
the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level
officials in the [Republican President] Bush administration were intimately
involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since
been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as
torture." -By Greg Miller
-LAtimes
 Jim
DeMint -  Bob
Corker -  Richard
Shelby -  Mitch
McConnell - Foreign
- Money
-Politics
-  Construction
-  Auto
-  Makers
-  Government
- Emergency
- Legislation
-  Labor
-  Michigan
-  California
-  South
Carolina -  Alabama
-  Tennessee
-  Kentucky
- German
- Japanese
- South
Korean
"Foreign
Auto Makers Won Billions in Government Subsidies:
Southern States Gave [Foreign] Auto Companies Tax-breaks and Cash for Training."
... "To hear Southern Republicans tell the story, the financial burdens
facing Detroit’s automakers are self-made troubles to be settled by the
laws of Adam-Smith capitalism." ... "“We don’t think it is the role of
government to intervene,” [South Carolina Republican Senator] Sen. Jim
DeMint (R-S.C. [Republican-South Carolina]) told the Fox Business Network
last week. “We need to let the market and the laws work the way they are
already in place.”" ... "Yet this argument — that the government has no
business interfering in free markets — ignores an increasingly frequent
tradition among Southern states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer
dollars in the past two decades to attract foreign auto plants. Those incentives,
arriving in the form of tax breaks, training for new employees and even
land, have enticed [German automaker Bayerische Motoren Werke] BMW to South
Carolina, [German automaker] Mercedes to Alabama and [Japanese automaker]
Nissan to Tennessee. The result of the government subsidies has been the
steady emergence of the South as an auto-manufacturing powerhouse. Some
are dubbing it the “New Detroit” – a region where real estate is
cheap and the labor’s not unionized." ... "Not coincidentally, these Southern
states are represented by the same coalition of GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican]
senators who led the fight against the recent Detroit [Michigan] bailout
proposal. That legislation would have provided $14 billion in emergency
bridge loans to General Motors and Chrysler, both of which say they lack
the finances to survive the month. Rallying behind the animated opposition
of GOP [Republican Senators] Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.[Tennessee]), Richard
Shelby (Ala.[Alabama]), Mitch McConnell (Ky.[Kentucky) and South Carolina’s
DeMint, Senate Republicans killed the legislation." ... "On Friday, the
day following the Senate vote, Shelby told CNBC that if the Big Three had
only managed their business operations as well as the foreign companies,
known as transplants, they wouldn’t be scrambling now for a taxpayer-funded
bailout." ... "“You look at the South,” Shelby said. “You take — not just
Mercedes in my hometown — but BMW, Honda and all of them. These companies
are flourishing with American workers made in America.”" ... "But the flourishing
of the transplants didn’t come without significant taxpayer help. Shelby’s
Alabama, for example, secured construction of a [German automaker] Mercedes-Benz
plant in 1993 by
offering $253 million in state and local tax breaks, worker training
and land improvement. For [Japanese automaker] Honda, the state’s sweetener
surrounding a 1999 deal to build a mini-van plant was $158 million in similar
perks, adding
$90 million in enticements when the company expanded the plant
three years later. A 2001 deal with [Japanese automaker] Toyota left the
company with $29 million in taxpayer gifts." ... "Alabama is hardly alone.
Corker’s Tennessee recently lured [German automaker] Volkswagen to build
a manufacturing plant in Chattanooga [Tennessee], offering the German automaker
tax breaks, training and land preparation that could total
$577 million. In 2005, the state inspired Nissan to relocate its
headquarters from southern California by offering $197
million in incentives, including $20 million in utility savings."
... "In 1992, South Carolina snagged a BMW plant for $150
million in giveaways. In Mississippi in 2003, Nissan was lured
with $363
million. In Georgia, a still-under-construction [South Korean automaker]
Kia plant received breaks estimated to be $415
million. The list goes on." -By Mike
Lillis -WashingtonIndependent.com
Mitch
McConnell - Bob
Corker - Richard
Shelby - Foreign
- Money
- Government
- Politics
- Auto
- Makers
- Working
- People
- Kentucky
- Tennessee
- Alabama
- Michigan
- US
"Do
Southern Senators Really Want to Start a New War Between the States?"
... "When my Southern pals used to say "The South is gonna rise again,"
I doubt this is what they had in mind: A cadre
of Southern [Republican] Senators, heavily financed by foreign automakers
and special interests, declaring war on the American Dream of good wages
and decent benefits. When did they decide that hard-working people trying
to make a better life for themselves are the enemy?" ... "These Senators
may want to think twice. Southern states have been benefiting from Northern
taxes for years. If they start another War Between the States, the Federal
gravy train might suddenly stop at the Mason-Dixon line." ... "Studies
by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation have consistently shown that these Senators'
states receive far more from the Federal government than they pay back
in taxes. That's an irony that could lead to some Blue State bitterness:
They love to preach about fiscal responsibility and lower taxes, but they
keep dipping their beak into the Federal trough." ... "I believe the applicable
Southern phrase is "a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged.""
... "The numbers in [PDF]
the Foundation's most recent study (warning: pdf) speak for themselves:
[Kentucky Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell's Kentucky took in $1.45
from the Feds for every dollar it paid in taxes. That's a 45 cent free
ride. [Tennessee Republican Senator] Bob Corker's Tennessee received at
30-cent Federal giveaway. And [Alabama Republican Senator] Richard Shelby's
Alabama extracted a whopping 71-cent subsidy from Northern taxpayers."
... "What about Michigan? They lost 31 cents for every dollar they paid.
In other words, McConnell, Shelby, and Corker have been skimming a percentage
off these autoworkers' taxes for years on behalf of their constituents.
Now, when the same Michigan taxpayers need help, these Senators are telling
them to get lost." -By RJ
Eskow -HuffingtonPost.com
Global
-  Climate
- History
-  Earth
-  Fossil
Fuel -  Gases
- Antarctic
-  Pacific
Ocean - US
- Britain
"NASA
reports 2008 is ninth warmest year since 1880." ...
"The year 2008 was the ninth warmest year since instrumental temperature
measurements began in 1880, and all of the nine warmest years have occurred
in the past 11 years, NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration]
reported on Tuesday." ... "The new data from NASA's Goddard Institute for
Space Studies and other government agencies on Tuesday adds to the evidence
scientists have been observing about a warming Earth as fossil fuel burning
emits heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere." ... "NASA also reported
that the January to November global temperature was 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit
above the average for the 20th Century." ... "NASA also noted that the
past year was cooler than any since 2000. Scientists note that global warming
is a steady trend, but within it there are natural variations." ... "The
NASA report noted that "Eurasia, the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula
were exceptionally warm, while much of the Pacific Ocean was cooler than
the long-term average." It said the relatively cooler temperature in the
tropical Pacific was due to a La Nina, the cool phase of a natural temperature
variation." ... "Britain's Met Office on Tuesday also said that La Nina
was part of the reason 2008 was slightly cooler than earlier years this
decade. By Britain's accounting, 2008 was the 10th warmest year on record
dating back to 1850, and all 10 of the warmest years occurred since 1997."
-By
Renee
Schoof -McClatchyDC.com
Corporate
- Employees
-  New
York -  Texas
- US
- Worldwide
"Goldman
Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million (Update1) ."
... "Goldman
Sachs Group Inc. [Incorporated], which got $10 billion and debt
guarantees from the U.S. [United States] government in October, expects
to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion
in 2007." ... "The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent
from 34.1 percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement.
The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9
billion in employee compensation and benefits." ... "U.S. [Texas Democratic]
Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing
House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks
shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern." ...
"“This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs,” Doggett said. “With the right
hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.”" -By
Christine Harper -Bloomberg
China
- US
- British
- Hong
Kong - Taiwan
- Foreign
- Language
-  Websites
- Police
- Law
- Journalists
-  Radio
-  Sports
"China
'bans BBC Chinese website': China appears to have
banned a number of foreign websites, including the [United Kingdom's British
Broadcasting Corporation] BBC's Chinese language news site and Voice of
America in Chinese." ... "The sites had been unblocked after journalists
attending the Beijing [China's capital] Olympics complained that the government
was censoring sites deemed sensitive." ... "The BBC expressed disappointment
at the apparent reinstatement of the ban." ... "But a Chinese government
spokesman told journalists that some sites contained content that violated
Chinese law." ... "Among the other sites blocked are Asiaweek, Reporters
Without Borders and some Hong Kong and Taiwan sites." ... "China imposes
strict controls on the dissemination of information through the web, employing
teams of people to remove sensitive content, police bloggers and remove
access to certain sites." ... "In a statement, the BBC said it was disappointed
that Chinese-speaking audiences in China were denied access to BBCChinese.com."
... "It said that except during the 2008 Games, the website had been blocked
since its inception nearly a decade ago, and Mandarin radio broadcasts
had been "subject to persistent frequency interference for decades"."
-BBC/News
BBCChinese.com
20081215
US
- Iraq
- Religious
-  Fashion
"Bush
shoe-ing worst Arab insult: Around the Arab world,
if you want to escalate a situation, by saying for example "I'm going to
thump you", add the words "with a shoe" and you're adding serious insult
to the threat of possible injury." ... "It's that cultural significance
that has added real sting to the assault by an Iraqi journalist against
US [United States Republican] President George W Bush at a Baghdad [Iraq's
capital] news conference." ... "In Arab culture it's considered rude even
to display the sole of one's shoe to a fellow human being." ... "Certainly,
crossing one's legs ankle-on-knee style should never be done in a public
place for fear of offending the person next to you." ... "The sensitivity
is related to the fact shoes are considered ritually unclean in the Muslim
faith." ... "In addition to ritual ablutions before prayer, Muslims must
take off their shoes to pray, and wearing shoes inside a mosque is forbidden."
... "Shoes should either be left at the door of the mosque, or carried
(preferably in the left hand with the soles pressed together)." ... "But
beyond the Islamic significance, the dirty and degrading implication of
the sole of a shoe crosses all religious boundaries in the Middle East.
" -By Martin Asser -BBC/News
20081213
US
- Iraq
- Reconstruction
- Money
- Politics
- Foreign
- Production
-  Accounting
- Investigations
- Federal
- History
- Military
- Law
"Official
History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders." ...
"An unpublished, 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction
of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners
who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then
molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling
violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure."
... "The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating
in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical
reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that
when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area
of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated
measures of progress to cover up the failures." ... "In one passage, for
example, [Republican President Bush's] former Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion,
the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces
— the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have
100,000, we now have 120,000.'"" ... "Mr. Powell's assertion that the Pentagon
inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by
[Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander
of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator
until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004." ... "Among the overarching
conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest
foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after
World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies
and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed
to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale." ... "The
bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way
the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production
compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises
made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed
during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed." ... "By
mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction
of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money." ...
"Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, "the government
as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework
for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy,
development and military action all figure."" ... "Titled "Hard Lessons:
The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," the new history was compiled by the
Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by
Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq
and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here." ... "The manuscript
is based on approximately 500 new interviews, as well as more than 600
audits, inspections and investigations on which Mr. Bowen's office has
reported individually over the years. Laid out for the first time in a
connected history, the material forms the basis for broad judgments on
the entire rebuilding program." ... "In the preface, Mr. Bowen gives a
searing critique of what he calls the "blinkered and disjointed prewar
planning for Iraq's reconstruction" and the botched expansion of the program
from a modest initiative to improve Iraqi services to a multibillion-dollar
enterprise." -By T.
Christian Miller and James
Glanz -ProPublica.org
-NYTimes
""Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience."" ... "The draft of
a federal report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction. Annotations are based on the review's findings." [(PDF)
Original Document] via -NYTimes
Bob
Corker - Richard
Shelby - Jim
DeMint - Mitch
McConnell - Foreign
- Money
- Politicians
- Auto
- Makers
- Michigan
- US
- Workers
- Emergency
- Law
- Tennessee
- Alabama
- Kentucky
- South
Carolina -  Georgia
- Japanese
- German
- South
Korean
"Meet
the GOP's [Republican's] wrecking crew: Why did a
small group of Southern Republicans turn the auto bailout into a demolition
derby? Introducing the senators who hate unions and love foreign cars."
... "On July 15, [Tennessee Republican Senator] Bob Corker was a happy
man." ... ""I cannot think of a more exciting day, even more so than Election
Night, for me," the Republican senator from Tennessee said in a conference
call that day. The reason for his elation was the announcement that
[German automaker] Volkswagen, lured by up to $500 million worth of incentives
from the state government, had agreed to build a $1 billion plant near
Chattanooga, Tenn. [Tennessee.] That is, not just in his home state, but
in the suburbs of the city he once served as mayor." ... "Add VW [Volkwagen]
to [Japan automaker] Nissan, which already has two plants and its North
American headquarters in Tennessee, and you begin to see why Corker was
so aggressive this month about trying to block -- or at least dramatically
rewrite -- a proposal to float billions of dollars in
emergency
loans to domestic automakers. Most of the focus during this debate
has been on lawmakers who represent Michigan, the home of the Big Three
-- Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. But Corker represents the other side
of the coin: Tennessee and other Southern states have recently come to
depend on foreign automakers and their non-union factories. If you're from
those parts, what's good for American car companies may no longer be what's
good for the country -- because your economy now depends on their foreign
competitors instead." ... "Expect to hear more not just from the very vocal
Bob Corker, but from the rest of a core group of Southern senators whose
bread is buttered by the Japanese, Germans and Koreans. Here's a guide
to the major players."
"[Alabama
Republican Senator] Richard Shelby, R-Ala. [Republican-Alabama]"
"Foreign
auto plants: [German automaker] Mercedes-Benz, [South Korean automaker]
Hyundai, [Japanese automaker] Honda"
"[South
Carolina Republican Senator] Jim DeMint, R-S.C. [Republican-South Carolina]"
"Foreign
auto plants: [German automaker] BMW [Bayerische Motoren Werke]"
"[Kentucky
Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. [Republican-Kentucky]"
"Foreign
auto plants: [Japanese automaker] Toyota"
"[Tennessee
Republican Senator] Bob Corker, R-Tenn. [Republican-Tennessee]"
"Foreign
auto plants: Two [Japanese automaker] Nissan plants, as well as the
company's U.S. [United States] headquarters; [German automaker] Volkswagen
will open near Chattanooga [Tennessee] in 2011"
"As
mayor of Chattanooga, he [Corker] reportedly conceived the idea for the
site that will soon become home to the [German automaker] Volkswagen plant,
and was instrumental in its development. He organized efforts to lure [Japanese
automaker] Toyota to the area, and when that failed, he had VW execs [executives]
and other top state politicians over to his house for dinner." ... "Georgia's
two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isaakson, both voted
against the plan as well. Their state has a big [South Korean automaker]
Kia factory coming in soon." (1, 2)
-By Alex Koppelman and Mike Madden with contributions
by Vincent Rossmeier and Gabriel Winant -Salon
Bob
Corker - Richard
Shelby - Foreign
- Money
- Auto
- Makers
- Michigan
- Workers
- US
- Japan
- Germany
- Alabama
- Tennessee
"Anger
Grips Auto Workers: Critic of a Rescue, [Tennessee
Republican Senator] Sen. Corker Faces Backlash at Home." ... "As the workers
and residents of this small town [Spring Hill, Tennessee] that launched
the Saturn automobile see it, there are several villains in the collapse
of the automakers' rescue plan." ... "But what stuns many in this place
defined by the General Motors auto plant and its 4,200 workers is that
no person played a larger role in the demise of autoworker hopes than their
own Sen. Bob Corker (R[Republican]), who is now regarded by some here with
the kind of disdain reserved for traitors." ... "Corker emerged as one
of the leading critics of the rescue plan passed by the House. He lashed
into the carmaker chief executives when they came to Washington looking
for help. And it was Corker's alternative proposal, which was a plan that
would have been tougher on union workers, that ultimately failed." ...
"In a dozen interviews with workers here, many suspected that he only feigned
interest in rescuing Detroit's Big Three. Instead, they say, he wants to
crush GM [General Motors] and its union to benefit foreign automakers,
such [Japan's] Nissan and [Germany's] Volkswagen, who have opened or are
opening nonunionized plants in the state." ... ""We're deeply disappointed
in Senator Corker -- that's the official statement," said Mike Herron,
union chief at the GM plant here. "But actually my members want to choke
him."" ... "The anger of the workers and the harshness of their words reflect
the larger tension between the old [Michigan] Detroit-based domestic auto
industry, with its unionized workforce, and the new [foreign] transplant
industry in the nonunion South. Emotions were stoked by the fact that GM,
citing the economic downturn, had just announced that it will halt production
at the plant for January and the first week of February." ... "Corker "has
somehow ignored the fact that there's a major GM plant in his own state,"
said Ben McFarlane, who retired from the plant this summer and opened a
local bar where many workers go. "And if this plant goes, then my business
goes, this whole |
