Comp...the World War II perspective on this
is indeed important. People in America, in
general did support our efforts (even though
we put Japanese-Americans in camps, and took
away their lands and property while they
were in there).
But, since we have thrown WW II in the mix,
and Bush in the mix (and interestingly, the
last time we have a movie made of the Alamo,
we were in Vietname)...here's some info on
the Bush family and links to others...
first, the Bush Nazi linkage....This first
piece is from the Draheim report, from
Richard Draheim, policy analyst and
speaker...
http://www.lpdallas.org/features/draheim/dr991216.htm
"THE BUSH NAZI CONNECTION
(750 words)
by Richard N. Draheim, Jr.
Richard Draheim is a policy analyst and
speaker. He appears on the Dallas political
affairs TV magazine America Outside the
Beltway as a panelist and is a featured
columnist for The Dallas Libertarian Post.
---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Copyright
Richard N. Draheim
all rights reserved
See release for news organizations and fair
use.
Richard N. Draheim, Jr.
339 Henry M. Chandler
Rockwall, Texas 75087
972-771-9203 Why has Presidential candidate
George W. Bush been able to raise uncounted
tens of millions of dollars? It can't be
because of his positions on the issues; he
has scrupulously avoided taking many. It
can't be because of his knowledge of world
events; he thinks being asked such questions
is a trick." (He will embarrassingly lie,
saying that he knows the answer to a
question, and half a sentence later admit
that he doesn't.)
No, George "I'm No Longer Drunk" Bush's
support is because the Bush family fortune
is old, and it's big, and comes from a
century old alliance with the most powerful
interests on Wall Street and in industry.
Worse, part of Dub-a-Ya's money comes from
grandfather Prescott Bush's financial
alliance with the Nazis.
On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property
Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy
Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking
Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush
was a director and shareholder. The largest
shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. (Bush
was also the managing partner of Brown
Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street
investment firm.)
The UBC was established to send American
capital to Germany to finance the
reorganization of its industry under the
Nazis. Their leading German partner was the
notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen,
who wrote a book admitting much of this
called "I Paid Hitler."
Among the companies financed was the
Silesian-American Corporation, which was
also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his
father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who
supplied Dub-a-Ya with his name. The company
was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war
industry. It too was seized as a Nazi-front
on November 17, 1942. The largest company
Bush's UBC helped finance was the German
Steel Trust, responsible for between
one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and
explosives.
Prescott Bush was also a director of the
Harriman Fifteen Corporation, (this one
owned largely by Roland's brother, Averell
Harriman), which owned about a third of the
Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the
rest owned by Friedrich Flick, (a member of
Himmler's "Circle of Friends" who donated to
the S.S.).
Republican Presidential candidate Bush's
great-grandfather, Bert Walker, helped
organize the Harriman investment in the
Hamburg-America Line of ships, of which
grandfather Prescott became a director. It
was seized on August 28, 1942 because it was
used to give free passage to Nazi propaganda
and propagandists, and had earlier shipped
guns to the Nazi's private armies to assist
their takeover of Germany.
Further examples would be more tedious than
shocking. But, given these evil financial
dealings, how did Prescott later become a
Republican Senator, and George H.W. become
President? Well,the two leading attorneys
for these Bush-Harriman-Nazi deals were John
Foster Dulles, later Secretary of State
under Eisenhower, and Allen Dulles, future
head of the CIA.
Prescott's father, Samuel P. Bush, owned
Buckeye Steel Castings Co. which made parts
for the Harriman brothers' father's (E.H.
Harriman) railroads. Harriman's financing
for the railroads came largely from William
Rockefeller. These shipped the oil of his
brother John D. Rockefeller, the founder of
Standard Oil. (This was the origin of the
two Georges' involvement in the oil
business.)
Samuel Bush became a leader in President
Woodrow Wilson's "War Socialism" as director
of small armaments and ammunition on the War
Industries Board (which set up coercive
price-fixing cartels over American industry
during World War I). There, Bush assisted
Percy Rockefeller (son of William) in his
takeover of small arms manufacturers.
The elder George Bush continued the family
tradition of support for totalitarian
governments by supporting the Communist
Chinese in the UN, and by directly aiding
its military as President.
Will the younger George Bush continue to
support big government, or will he support
free markets? His first political act was a
tax increase to subsidize his baseball
stadium. When libertarians and conservative
Republicans were opposing the bailout of
American banks that loaned money to the
Mexican government, the Texas Governor
supported it, because of his connections to
those Wall Street Banks.
This is in keeping with the actual history
of the Republican Party. It was founded in
the 1850's explicitly as the party of high
taxes to subsidize politically connected
businesses, (then known as "internal
improvements"). All Republican Presidents in
the last fifty years have continued to
increase the size of the government, and
claims of support for free markets and
lowered taxes are mere rhetorical cover.
Texas Governor George Bush will continue
that tradition."
And, more from Clamor magazine...
"
Download a printable
version of this article!
Click here.
Want more articles like this?
While the Enron scandal currently unfolds,
another Bush family business scandal lurks
beneath the shadows of history that may
dwarf it.
On April 19, 2001, President George W. Bush
spent some of Holocaust Remembrance Day in
the Capital Rotunda with holocaust
survivors, allied veterans, and their
families. In a ceremony that included Jewish
prayers and songs sung by holocaust victims
in the camps, Benjamin Meed, a survivor of
the Warsaw ghetto uprising, movingly
described to the gathering what he
experienced on April 19, 1943.
"I stood outside a Catholic church, which
faced the ghetto," Mr. Meed said, "a young
Jewish boy posing as a gentile. As I watched
the ghetto being bombarded by the German
artillery, I could see many of the Jews of
my community jumping out of windows of
burning buildings. I stood long and mute."
The survivor concluded his reminiscence
saying, "We tremble to think what could
happen if we allow a new generation to arise
ignorant of the tragedy which is still
shaping the future."
President Bush, appearing almost
uncomfortable, read a statement that said
that humanity was "bound by conscience to
remember what happened" and that "the record
has been kept and preserved." The record,
Mr. Bush stated, was that one of the worst
acts of genocide in human history "came not
from crude and uneducated men, but from men
who regarded themselves as cultured and well
schooled, modern men, forward looking. Their
crime showed the world that evil can slip in
and blend in amid the most civilized
surroundings. In the end only conscience can
stop it."
But while President Bush publicly embraced
the community of holocaust survivors in
Washington last spring, he and his family
have been keeping a secret from them for
over 50 years about Prescott Bush, the
president's grandfather. According to
classified documents from Dutch intelligence
and US government archives, President George
W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made
considerable profits off Auschwitz slave
labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an
heir to these profits from the holocaust
which were placed in a blind trust in 1980
by his father, former president George
Herbert Walker Bush.
Throughout the Bush family's decades of
public life, the American press has gone out
of its way to overlook one historical fact –
that through Union Banking Corporation
(UBC), Prescott Bush, and his father-in-law,
George Herbert Walker, along with German
industrialist Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf
Hitler before and during World War II. It
was first reported in 1994 by John Loftus
and Mark Aarons in The Secret War Against
the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the
Jewish People.
The US government had known that many
American companies were aiding Hitler, like
Standard Oil, General Motors and Chase Bank,
all of which was sanctioned after Pearl
Harbor. But as The New York Times reporter
Charles Higham later discovered, and
published in his 1983 groundbreaking book,
Trading With The Enemy; The Nazi American
Money Plot 1933-1949, "the government
smothered everything during and even after
the war." Why?
According to Higham, the US government
believed "a public scandal ... would have
drastically affected public morale, caused
widespread strikes and perhaps provoked
mutinies in the armed services." Higham
claims the government thought "their trial
and imprisonment would have made it
impossible for the corporate boards to help
the American war effort."
However, Prescott Bush's banks were not just
financing Hitler as previously reported. In
fact, there was a distinct business link
much deeper than Mr. Higham or Mr. Loftus
knew at the time their books were published.
A classified Dutch intelligence file which
was leaked by a courageous Dutch
intelligence officer, along with newly
surfaced information from U.S. government
archives, "confirms absolutely," John Loftus
says, the direct links between Bush, Thyssen
and genocide profits from Auschwitz.
The business connections between Prescott
Bush and Fritz Thyssen were more direct than
what has been previously written. This new
information reveals how Prescott Bush and
UBC, which he managed directly, profited
from the Holocaust. A case can be made that
the inheritors of the Prescott Bush estate
could be sued by survivors of the Holocaust
and slave labor communities. To understand
the complete picture of how Prescott Bush
profited from the Holocaust, it is necessary
to return to the year 1916, where it all
began.
Post World War I: Thyssen Empire On The Ropes
By 1916, August Thyssen could see the
writing on the wall. The "Great War" was
spinning out of control, grinding away at
Germany's resources and economy. The
government was broke and his company,
Thyssen & Co., with 50,000 German workers
and annual production of 1,000,000 tons of
steel and iron, was buckling under the war's
pressure. As the main supplier of the German
military, August Thyssen knew Germany would
be defeated once the US entered the war.
At 74, "King" August Thyssen knew he was
also running out of time. His first born
"prince" Friedrich (Fritz) Thyssen, had been
groomed at the finest technical business
schools in Europe and was destined to
inherit his father's estimated $100,000,000
fortune and an industrial empire located at
Muehhlheim on the Ruhr.
In addition to Fritz, plans were also made
for the second son Heinrich. At the outbreak
of the war, Heinrich Thyssen discreetly
changed his citizenship from German to
Hungarian and married the Hungarian
aristocrat Baroness Margrit Bornemisza de
Kaszon. Soon Heinrich Thyssen switched his
name to Baron Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon.
Near the end of World War I, August Thyssen
opened the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart
in Rotterdam. The neutral Holland was the
perfect location outside of Germany to
launder assets from the August Thyssen Bank
in Berlin when the financial demands of the
Allied forces surfaced. But the war ended
much sooner than even Thyssen calculated and
what developed caught the "Rockefeller of
the Ruhr" off guard.
On November 10, 1918, German socialists took
over Berlin. The following morning at 5
a.m., what was left of Germany surrendered
to the Allies, officially ending World War
I. "At the time of the Armistice and the
signing of the Treaty of Versailles, my
Father and I were deeply saddened by the
spectacle of Germany's abject humiliation,"
Thyssen recalled later in his autobiography,
I Paid Hitler.
After the war, chaos descended on Germany as
food ran short. Winter was looming over a
starving nation when on Dec. 7, 1918, the
socialist Spartacists League came knocking
on the Thyssen Villa with armed militia.
August and Fritz were arrested and dragged
from jail to jail across Germany for four
days. Along the way, they were lined up in
staged executions designed to terrorize them.
It worked. When released, the two Thyssens
were horrified at the new political climate
in their beloved Germany. They could not
accept that Germany was responsible for its
own demise. All Germany's problems, the
Thyssens felt, "have almost always been due
to foreigners." It was the Jews, he and many
others believed, who were secretly behind
the socialist movement across the globe.
Meanwhile Fritz's younger brother Baron
Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon moved to
Rotterdam and became the principal owner of
the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. All the
Thyssens needed now was an American branch."
Another of MANY links on this topic is
http://www.infowars.com/print_prescott.htm
I won't go into the history of the Bush
family and their associations with Bohemian
grove and Skull and Bones, though both are
well documented.
I do think we need to look at the Bin Laden
family association with the Bush family.
From
http://www.rense.com/general14/WSJbushsenior.htm
You'll notice this article is from
9-28-01...just 17 days after 9/11.
"WSJ - Bush Sr. In Business
With bin Ladin Family
Via Carlyle Group
Judicial Watch.org
9-28-1
WASHINGTON, DC -Judicial Watch, the public
interest law firm that investigates and
prosecutes government corruption and abuse,
reacted with disbelief to The Wall Street
Journal report of yesterday that George H.W.
Bush, the father of President Bush, works
for the bin Laden family business in Saudi
Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an
international consulting firm. The senior
Bush had met with the bin Laden family at
least twice. (Other top Republicans are also
associated with the Carlyle group, such as
former Secretary of State James A. Baker.)
The terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had
supposedly been "disowned" by his family,
which runs a multi-billion dollar business
in Saudi Arabia and is a major investor in
the senior Bush's firm. Other reports have
questioned, though, whether members of his
Saudi family have truly cut off Osama bin
Laden. Indeed, the Journal also reported
yesterday that the FBI has subpoenaed the
bin Laden family business's bank records.
Judicial Watch earlier this year had
strongly criticized President Bush's
father's association with the Carlyle Group,
pointing out in a March 5 statement that it
was a "conflict of interest (which) could
cause problems for America's foreign policy
in Middle East and Asia." Judicial Watch
called for the senior Bush to resign from
the firm then.
"This conflict of interest has now turned
into a scandal. The idea of the President's
father, an ex-president himself, doing
business with a company under investigation
by the FBI in the terror attacks of
September 11 is horrible. President Bush
should not ask, but demand, that his father
pull out of the Carlyle Group," stated
Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel
Larry Klayman.
"This has the potential of making
'Billygate' (Jimmy Carter's brother's
dealings with Libya) look like small
potatoes," added Judicial Watch President
Tom Fitton."
Another link is
http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2001/RRE.Summary.Carlyle.Grou.html
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030505ta_talk_mayer
http://www.bushwatch.com/bushmoney.htm
"The Bush-Bin Laden Money Connection
"Former President George Bush met with King
Fahd, right, on a trip to Saudi Arabia last
year as part of his work for the Carlyle
Group." (NYT, 3/5/01)
---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
A Second Bush Oil Deal To Come With Murky
Ties To Saudi Financiers And Osama Bin Laden
"On September 24, President George W. Bush
appeared at a press conference in the White
House Rose Garden to announce a crackdown on
the financial networks of terrorists and
those who support them. “U.S. banks that
have assets of these groups or individuals
must freeze their accounts,” Bush declared.
“And U.S. citizens or businesses are
prohibited from doing business with them.”
"But the president, who is now enjoying an
astounding 92 percent approval rating,
hasn’t always practiced what he is now
preaching: Bush’s own businesses were once
tied to financial figures in Saudi Arabia
who currently support bin Laden.
"In 1979, Bush’s first business, Arbusto
Energy, obtained financing from James Bath,
a Houstonian and close family friend. One of
many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a
5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time,
Bath was the sole U.S. business
representative for Salem bin Laden, head of
the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a
brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It
has long been suspected, but never proven,
that the Arbusto money came directly from
Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued
shortly after the September 11 attacks, the
White House vehemently denied the
connection, insisting that Bath invested his
own money, not Salem bin Laden’s, in Arbusto.
"In conflicting statements, Bush at first
denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged
his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware
Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact,
Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin
Laden family and major players in the
scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit
International (BCCI) who have gone on to
fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded
depositors of $10 billion in the ’80s in
what has been called the “largest bank fraud
in world financial history” by former
Manhattan District Attorney Robert
Morgenthau. During the ’80s, BCCI also acted
as a main conduit for laundering money
intended for clandestine CIA activities,
ranging from financial support to the Afghan
mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the
Iran-Contra affair.
"When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful
Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal
Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests
in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin
Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership
with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s
frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.
"The Arbusto deal wasn’t the last time Bush
looked to highly questionable sources to
invest in his oil dealings. After several
incarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as
Harken Energy Corporation. When Harken ran
into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik
Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6
percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a
business partner with Pharaon in Saudi
Arabia; his banker there just happened to be
bin Mahfouz.
"Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he
had “no idea” BCCI was involved in Harken’s
financial dealings, the network of
connections between Bush and BCCI is so
extensive that the Journal concluded their
investigation of the matter in 1991 by
stating: “The number of BCCI-connected
people who had dealings with Harken—all
since George W. Bush came on board—raises
the question of whether they mask an effort
to cozy up to a presidential son.” Or even
the president: Bath finally came under
investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his
Saudi business relationships, accused of
funneling Saudi money through Houston in
order to influence the foreign policies of
the Reagan and first Bush administrations.
"Worst of all, bin Mahfouz allegedly has
been financing the bin Laden terrorist
network—making Bush a U.S. citizen who has
done business with those who finance and
support terrorists. According to USA Today,
bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to
transfer $3 million to various bin Laden
front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999.
ABC News reported the same year that Saudi
officials stopped bin Mahfouz from
contributing money directly to bin Laden.
(Bin Mahfouz’s sister is also a wife of
Osama bin Laden, a fact that former CIA
Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998
Senate testimony.)
"When President Bush announced he is hot on
the trail of the money used over the years
to finance terrorism, he must realize that
trail ultimately leads not only to Saudi
Arabia, but to some of the same financiers
who originally helped propel him into the
oil business and later the White House. The
ties between bin Laden and the White House
may be much closer than he is willing to
acknowledge." --Wayne Madsen, 10/22/01
Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist
based in Washington, is the author of
Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa
1993-1999.
---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Part One: "Hike in US defence spending to
benefit Osama's family": Bin Laden-Bush
business connection seen through Carlyle
Group
"If the United States boosts defence
spending in its quest to stop Saudi
dissident Osama bin Laden's alleged
terrorist activities, his family may be the
unexpected beneficiary of that, media
reports said. "Among its far-flung business
interests, the well-heeled Saudi Arabian
clan, which says it is estranged from Laden,
is an investor in a fund established by
Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington
merchant bank specialising in buyouts of
defence and aerospace companies," The Wall
Street Journal said in an investigative
dispatch. It said "through this investment
and its ties to Saudi royalty, the bin Laden
family has become acquainted with some of
the biggest names in the Republican Party."
"In recent years, former president George H
W Bush, ex-secretary of state James Baker
and ex-secretary of defence Frank Carlucci
have made the pilgrimage to the bin Laden
family's headquarters in Jeddah (Saudi
Arabia). "Ex-president Bush makes speeches
on behalf of Carlyle Group and is senior
adviser to its Asian Partners Fund, while
Baker is its senior counsellor and Carlucci
is the group's chairman," the journal said."
--Hindustani Times, 9/28/01
---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Part Two : Inside The Carlyle Group
With former US Defense Secretary Frank
Carlucci as its chairman, it's no surprise
that The Carlyle Group is drawn to defense.
Defense and aerospace firms such as United
Defense Industries make up a significant
share of the world's largest private equity
firm's portfolio. Also represented are
information technology (Federal Data),
health care, real estate, and bottling
companies. Since Carlucci joined in 1989, a
host of staffers from the Reagan and first
Bush administrations have stinted at the
company, including ex-Secretary of State
James Baker and ex-budget chief Richard
Darman. Former President Bush and former UK
Prime Minister John Major have also made
appearances. --Hoovers Online
***
...Traveling with the fanfare of
dignitaries, Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker [use] their
extensive government contacts to further
their business interests as representatives
of the Carlyle Group, a $12 billion private
equity firm based in Washington that has
parlayed a roster of former top-level
government officials, largely from the Bush
and Reagan administrations, into a
moneymaking machine. In a new spin on
Washington's revolving door between business
and government, where lobbying by former
officials is restricted but soliciting
investments is not, Carlyle has upped the
ante and taken the practice global. Mr. Bush
and Mr. Baker were accompanied on their
trips by former Prime Minister John Major of
Britain, another of Carlyle's political
stars. With door-openers of this caliber,
along with shrewd investment skills, Carlyle
has gone from an unknown in the world of
private equity to one of its biggest
players. Private equity, which involves
buying up companies in private deals and
reselling them, is a high-end business open
only to the very rich. Over the last decade,
the Carlyle empire has grown to span three
continents and include investments in most
corners of the world. It owns so many
companies that it is now in effect one of
the nation's biggest defense contractors and
a force in global telecommunications. Its
blue-chip investors include major banks and
insurance companies, billion-dollar pension
funds and wealthy investors from Abu Dhabi
to Singapore. In getting business for
Carlyle, Mr. Bush has been impressive. His
meeting with the crown prince was followed
by a yacht cruise and private dinners with
Saudi businessmen. And Mr. Bush led
Carlyle's successful entry into South Korea,
the fastest-growing economy in Asia. After
his meetings with the prime minister and
other government and business leaders,
Carlyle won a tough competition for control
of KorAm, one of Korea's few healthy banks.
The steady flow of politicians to lucrative
private-sector jobs based on their
government contacts is a familiar Washington
tale. But in this case, it is being played
out for more dollars, on a global stage, and
in the world of private finance, where the
minimal government rules prohibiting
lobbying by former officials for a given
period are not a factor. These rules say
nothing about potential conflicts when
former government officials use their
connections and insights for financial gain,
and they may attract more notice now that
George W. Bush is president. Many of those
involved with Carlyle, which invests largely
in companies that do business with the
government or are affected by government
regulations, have ties to the Oval Office.
For instance, Frank C. Carlucci, a Reagan
secretary of defense who as much as anyone
is responsible for Carlyle's success, said
he met in February with his old college
classmate Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary
of defense, and Vice President Dick Cheney,
himself a defense secretary under former
President Bush, to talk about military
matters — at a time when Carlyle has several
billion-dollar defense projects under
consideration.... "Carlyle is as deeply
wired into the current administration as
they can possibly be," said Charles Lewis,
executive director of the Center for Public
Integrity, a nonprofit public interest group
based in Washington. "George Bush is getting
money from private interests that have
business before the government, while his
son is president. And, in a really peculiar
way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit
financially from his own administration's
decisions, through his father's investments.
The average American doesn't know that and,
to me, that's a jaw-dropper."
It is difficult to determine exactly how
much money the senior Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker
have made. Mr. Baker is a Carlyle partner,
and Mr. Bush has the title senior adviser to
its Asian activities. With a current market
value of about $3.5 billion on Carlyle's
equity and with the firm owned by 18
partners and one outside investor, Mr.
Baker's Carlyle stake would be worth about
$180 million if each partner held an equal
stake. It is not known whether he has more
or less than the other partners. Unlike Mr.
Baker, Mr. Bush has no ownership stake in
Carlyle; he is an adviser and an investor
and is compensated by obtaining stakes in
Carlyle investments. Carlyle executives
cited, for example, Mr. Bush's being allowed
to put money he earns giving speeches for
Carlyle into its investment funds. Mr. Bush
generally receives $80,000 to $100,000 for a
speech. He sits on no corporate boards other
than Carlyle's. Carlyle also gave the Bush
family a hand in 1990 by putting George W.
Bush, who was then struggling to find a
career, on the board of a Carlyle
subsidiary, Caterair, an airline-catering
company....
With $12 billion from investors, Carlyle
claims to be the nation's largest private
equity fund and makes money by investing in
undervalued companies and reselling at a
profit.... The California state pension fund
invested $305 million with Carlyle, and the
Texas teachers pension fund — whose board
was appointed when George W. Bush was
governor — gave Carlyle $100 million to
invest in November. Carlyle also works as a
financial adviser to the Saudi
government....Carlyle has done well for its
investors, returning an average of 34
percent a year over the last decade, in line
with other private equity funds. It has done
this by buying what it knows best —
companies that are regulated by the
government. Nearly two-thirds of its
investments are in defense and
telecommunications companies, which are
affected by shifts in government spending
and policy. ...Carlyle has become the
nation's 11th largest defense contractor,
owning companies that make tanks, aircraft
wings and a broad array of other military
equipment. It also owns health care
companies, real estate, Internet companies,
a bottling company and even Le Figaro, the
French newspaper.... And its access extends
well beyond American shores. In Europe,
Carlyle has assembled an advisory board that
besides Mr. Major includes Karl Otto Pöhl,
former president of German's Bundesbank, and
the past or present chairmen of B.M.W.,
Hoffman-LaRoche, Nestlé, LVMH-Moët Hennessy,
Louis Vuitton and Aerospatiale, the French
Airbus partner. Carlyle's Asia advisory
board, which helps raise money and finds and
reviews deals, includes former President
Fidel V. Ramos of the Philippines, the
former prime minister of Thailand and the
executive director of the Abu Dhabi
Investment Authority. The former South
Korean prime minister Park Tae Joon was also
an adviser to Carlyle.... In an office
adorned with photographs of Mr. Carlucci and
the politically mighty — he sits beneath an
Oval Office picture of himself and Mr.
Reagan — Mr. Carlucci makes it clear that
his extensive government and global ties are
as fresh as ever. "I know Rumsfeld extremely
well," Mr. Carlucci said in an interview.
"We've been close friends throughout the
years. We were college classmates."...NYT,
3/5/01
---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
***
Part Three : Ex-Prez Bush's Financial Ties
With Defense Contractors Leads To Call For
Resignation
Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm
that investigates and prosecutes government
corruption and abuse, reacted with disbelief
to The Wall Street Journal report of
yesterday that George H.W. Bush, the father
of President Bush, works for the bin Laden
family business in Saudi Arabia through the
Carlyle Group, an international consulting
firm. The senior Bush had met with the bin
Laden family at least twice. (Other top
Republicans are also associated with the
Carlyle group, such as former Secretary of
State James A. Baker.) The terrorist leader
Osama bin Laden had supposedly been
“disowned” by his family, which runs a
multi-billion dollar business in Saudi
Arabia and is a major investor in the senior
Bush’s firm. Other reports have questioned,
though, whether members of his Saudi family
have truly cut off Osama bin Laden. Indeed,
the Journal also reported yesterday that the
FBI has subpoenaed the bin Laden family
business’s bank records. Judicial Watch
earlier this year had strongly criticized
President Bush’s father’s association with
the Carlyle Group, pointing out in a March 5
statement that it was a “conflict of
interest (which) could cause problems for
America’s foreign policy in Middle East and
Asia.” Judicial Watch called for the senior
Bush to resign from the firm then. “This
conflict of interest has now turned into a
scandal. The idea of the President’s father,
an ex-president himself, doing business with
a company under investigation by the FBI in
the terror attacks of September 11 is
horrible. President Bush should not ask, but
demand, that his father pull out of the
Carlyle Group,” stated Judicial Watch
Chairman and General Counsel Larry
Klayman.... --Judicial Watch, 9/28/01
---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Part Four : Why Did Bush Withdraw From
Treaty Talks On Cleaning Up Money Laundering?
"Just a few weeks ago, the Bush
administration -- another group well-watered
by the murky flow of offshore capital --
announced its withdrawal from international
treaty talks on cleaning up the
money-laundering swamp. Why on earth did
they oppose this strike against terrorism
and organized crime? Let's ask Joseph
Stiglitz, former chief economist of the
World Bank -- no "left-wing fifth columnist"
he: "The answer is, it's in the interests of
some of the monied interests to allow this
to occur," he told The Nation in June. "It's
not an accident; it could have been shut
down at any time."
"And this week, the Bush administration
finally reversed the long-standing
conservative appeasement of wealthy
murderers, at least in part, by freezing the
financial assets of Bin Laden and his
associates and threatening to, er, bar any
foreign countries and banks from U.S.
financial markets if they didn't cooperate
with investigators. Of course, it took them
13 days to get around to blocking the cash
flow of their "prime suspect" -- but maybe
some of their comfortably entwined High
Finance pals needed time to get untangled
before the freeze. Oh well, better late than
never, right?" --Chris Floyd, 9/28/01
---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Part Five : Daddy Bush's Campaign Manager
(Nixon's "Jew-Counter") Has Carlyle
Connections
"Fred Malek received his 15 minutes of fame
in the 1970s as deputy director of CREEP
(Committee to Re-elect the President), the
Nixon White House operation behind
Watergate. Unlike many of his former
associates, Malek walked--but not out of
Washington. After lying low for a time, he
made his political comeback as a leader in
the Republican Party in the late 1980s, only
to resign as deputy chairman of the
Republican National Committee in 1988 when
an ugly incident from his past came to
light: At Nixon's behest, he had drawn up a
list of Jews in the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, where Nixon thought a "Jewish
cabal" was out to get him. Nonetheless,
Malek rebounded yet again in 1992 as
campaign manager for the Bush/Quayle ticket.
--MOJO.
A Continuation Of Part Two..."Can it be true
that Bush and Major hire themselves out as
props, without realizing what Carlyle deals
they might be abetting? To schmooze without
being aware of the end results? In any
event, they did not have to explain their
presence in Saudi Arabia, for both had been
invited to speak at an economic forum in
Jeddah. Bush and Major were also received by
King Fahd. "But for part of the time they
were just with us," says the Carlyle source.
According to two sources familar with the
mission, Carlyle executives were focusing on
the telephone system deal. In 1998 the Saudi
government announced it was privatizing the
kingdom's phone service, and the Saudis have
been seeking foreign investors. Several
companies from around the world have
expressed interest. SBC has been looking at
this potential deal for about a year and
brought in well-wired Carlyle as a partner.
"It might not trouble the (supposedly)
unknowing Bush that he is aiding SBC, a
Texas-based company run by executives who
have contributed nearly $50,000 to George W.
Bush's gubernatorial and presidential
campaigns. Governor Bush's administration
has also been supportive of SBC, which
spends more on lobbying in Texas than any
other corporation (at least $5 million in
1999). In December the Texas Public
Utilities Commission, comprising three Bush
appointees, approved SBC's highly
controversial request to enter the
long-distance market in that state. Critics
of SBC complained that the company had not
opened up the local market as it had
promised, and after the PUC granted its OK,
the Justice Department, citing SBC's
anticompetitive ways, urged the Federal
Communications Commission to reject the
company's long-distance application. (By the
way, SBC once donated $400,000 to a reading
initiative promoted by Govenor Bush.)...
"It's pretty obvious," says one person with
knowledge of the trip. "Carlyle wanted to
open up doors, and they bring in Bush and
Major, who saved the Saudis' ass in the Gulf
War. If you got these guys coming in for SBC
or any other company, those companies are
going to have a pretty good chance." The
Carlyle connection runs in the family. In
1990, a year after Carlyle acquired
Caterair, a large airline-catering firm,
Fred Malek, a longtime Bush associate [and elsewhere described as an advisor to Carlyle],
helped place George W. on the board of
Caterair. And this past fall the Bush
campaign received a scare when one of its
lead fundraisers, GOP lobbyist Wayne Berman,
was implicated in a scandal involving
Carlyle. On September 23 former Connecticut
State Treasurer Paul Silvester pleaded
guilty to federal racketeering charges
regarding his handling of state pension
funds. Berman pocketed about $1 million from
Carlyle for helping the firm win $100
million in pension investments from
Silvester. Shortly before Silvester left
office in early 1999, Berman allegedly
promised him a job while angling for another
$50 million investment in a Carlyle fund.
Berman then hired Silvester for a position
in the consulting firm he operates with
former Senator Alfonse D'Amato. After
Berman's role in the affair became public,
the Bush campaign announced that Berman, who
had worked in the Bush Administration, was
no longer fundraising for George W. Carlyle
has been good to the Bushes. But if the
Berman-Carlyle scandal spreads, it may draw
more attention to the back-scratching,
deal-making financial-political world in
which the Bush family and their friends have
flourished. That won't be good for the son
of Carlyle's most famous meet-and-greeter."
--David Corn, The Nation, 3/27/00"
=============================================
==========================
And, who's to say we are NOT in some ways
goose stepping today, or at least the
increased militarization of the police would
seem like they are turning them into a cross
between the Nazi SS and the SA.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n995.a11.html
"POLICE DEVELOP MILITARY MIND SET"
"With Aid Of Pentagon, Civilian Forces
Acquiring Army-Style Look, Approach
ON FEB. 28, 1993, 76 agents from the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ( BATF )
assaulted Mount Carmel, the Branch Davidian
compound in Waco, Texas, firing MP-5 machine
guns continuously and throwing percussion
grenades -- just to execute an
arrest-and-search warrant.
The agents had been trained in military
assault tactics by Green Berets at Fort
Hood, Texas. Although the BATF's lengthy
search warrant had not mentioned drugs, the
agency nevertheless reported a drug
connection -- a methamphetamine lab -- so it
could receive free advice, training and
equipment from the Pentagon. No proof of a
drug lab was found after the attack.
Moreover, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, which took control of what
was to become a 51-day siege at Mount
Carmel, received advice, training and
equipment from the military. Delta Force
advisers played a key role in the FBI's tank
and chemical warfare attack on the Davidian
residence April 19, 1993, and federal agents
acquired military training to drive the M-60
tanks that inserted CS gas into the compound
and the Bradley Fighting Vehicles that shot
nearly 400 40-mm canisters of CS gas through
the walls of the structure. The FBI now
admits to firing pyrotechnic devices into
portion of the compound.
The military's role in the Waco episode was
perfectly legal. A report by the General
Accounting Office, Congress' investigative
arm, says the standard for justifying the
military's role in drug investigations has
not been clearly established. Consequently,
military officials have "considerable
discretion" in deciding to assist civilian
police agencies.
Since 1981, when Congress passed the
Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement
Official Act, the military has become
increasingly involved in civilian law
enforcement, and has been encouraged to
share equipment, training, facilities and
technology with civilian enforcement
agencies.
During the past 20 years, under the direct
political sponsorship of elected
representatives in Congress and under
successive presidents, the Posse Comitatus
Act of 1878 -- a law designed to keep the
military out of civilian affairs -- has been
diluted by exceptions tied to the war on
drugs. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan
officially designated drug trafficking as a
"national security" threat. A year later,
Congress set up an administrative apparatus,
with a toll-free number, to encourage local
civilian agencies to take advantage of
military assistance.
In 1989, President George Bush created six
regional joint task forces in the Department
of Defense to act as liaisons between police
and the military. ( The BATF and FBI relied
on Joint Task Force 6 for help in the Waco
assaults ).
Wartime arms in peacetime
A few years later, Congress ordered the
Pentagon to make military surplus hardware
available
to state and local police for enforcement of
drug laws -- which the military has done,
free of charge. And in 1994, the Department
of Defense and the Department of Justice
signed an agreement enabling the military to
transfer wartime technology to local police
departments for peacetime use in American
neighborhoods, against American citizens.
This sharing of military resources with
civilian agencies has not only gone to
federal agencies but also to police bureaus
across the nation, from the huge Los Angeles
Police Department to the seven-member
department in Jasper, Fla. ( population
2,000 ). The result has been an alarming
militarization of local law enforcement.
Most hardware has been funneled to special
paramilitary units in departments known as
Special Weapons and Tactics ( SWAT ) teams,
contributing to what criminal justice
scholar Peter Kraska has called the
"militarization of Mayberry."
Since the early 1980s, SWAT teams have
proliferated. A 1997 study by Kraska showed
that 90 percent of cities with populations
of more than 50,000 had paramilitary units,
as did three-quarters of those with
populations under 50,000. The Pentagon has
been equipping those units with everything
from M-16 automatic rifles to grenade
launchers. Jasper's seven-member force, for
example, has been the beneficiary of seven
M-16s, 23 helicopters, an armored personnel
carrier, two C-12 aircraft and a bomb robot.
Los Angeles asked for, and got, 600 M-16s
after a February 1997 shootout with bank
robbers carrying automatic weapons and
wearing body armor.
Between 1995 and 1997, the military handed
over 1.2 million pieces of surplus military
hardware to police SWAT teams. But more
important, about half of SWAT members get
their training from active-duty military
personnel, some of them from the Navy SEALS
or Army Rangers. Like those special
operations units, the SWAT team is
structured as a combat unit, with a
commander, a tactical leader, a scout, a
sniper and so on.
This, in combination with full battle dress
of lace-up combat boots, full-body armor in
black or camouflage, Kevlar helmets and --
for a touch of impersonality -- "Ninja"
hoods, has produced a military mind set in
many police departments.
In the military mind set, the "drug war" has
moved from metaphor to real life, with
American streets as the "front," American
citizens as the "enemy" and law enforcement
officers as the warriors.
This mind set has been fed by the Department
of Justice. "So let me welcome you to the
kind of war our police fight every day,"
Attorney General Janet F. Reno told a group
of defense and intelligence experts in 1994,
in preparation for a technology transfer
agreement. "And let me challenge you to
turn your skills that served us so well in
the Cold War to helping us with the war
we're now fighting daily in the streets of
our towns and cities across the nation."
SWAT units, originally created in the 1960s
to deal with special situations such as
snipings, hijackings and hostage takings,
have become an everyday part of American
policing.
As crime rates have plummeted, these
paramilitary units have expanded their
original mission and are deployed for
routine police functions such as "warrant
work" -- i.e., no-knock entries to serve
arrest or search warrants. Other teams,
such as the 34-member SWAT unit in Fresno,
Calif., are used -- in full battle dress,
armed with machine guns -- to patrol the
inner-city "war zone."
What's wrong with this picture? Plenty. A
soldier and a law enforcement officer serve
completely different functions, and fusing
their identities presents a serious,
long-term danger to a free society. A
soldier does not think; he initiates
violence on command and doesn't worry about
Miranda rights. Being a killing machine is
necessary to the survival of the warrior,
and to the survival of the nation at war.
A law enforcement officer, however, is a
citizen like the rest of us, subject to the
same laws. The job of the police is to
react to the violence of others, to
apprehend criminal suspects and deliver them
over to a court of law. This defines a
nation under the rule of law -- as opposed
to a nation under martial law -- and the
distinction goes as far back as 13th-century
common law.
When police act like soldiers, bad things
happen, not only to the nation's social
health but to innocent individuals. Until a
few years ago, for example, killings by
Albuquerque's SWAT unit were "just off the
charts," said an outside investigator, Sam
Walker, a criminal justice professor at the
University of Nebraska.
The team's final killing -- before it was
disbanded and a new police chief was
installed -- was of 33-year-old Larry
Harper, a sad, desperate man with no
criminal record, intent on committing
suicide.
When the frightened family called local
police, SWAT snipers showed up, followed
Harper to the edge of a park and, from 43
feet away, shot and killed the cowering man.
According to Walker, the Albuquerque SWAT
team "had an organizational culture … that
led them to escalate situations upward
rather than de-escalating."
Excessive force
The 10-member La Plata County, Colo., SWAT
team stormed Samuel Heflin's 46-acre ranch
in Bayfield in April 1996, searching for
evidence related to a barroom brawl: a
cowboy hat, a shirt and a cigarette pack.
In the process, an 8-year-old boy playing
basketball was forced down at gunpoint, as
was a 14-year-old boy.
Sheriff's deputies then followed screaming
Shelby Heflin, 4, into the house with a
laser-sighted weapon pointed at her back.
The SWAT team ordered everyone to lie face
down, and when Heflin asked to see a search
warrant, he was told to "shut the f--- up."
The family has filed an excessive force suit
against the county's SWAT team.
In 1997, the SWAT team of Dinuba, Calif. (
population 15,000 ), broke into the home of
Ramon Gallardo, looking for his son, and
shot the unarmed Gallardo 15 times. A jury
awarded the family $12.5 million, which
exceeded the town's insurance coverage. The
town has disbanded its SWAT unit.
There have been other victims of wrongful
deaths, including the Rev. Accelyne
Williams, who died from a heart attack when
Boston's SWAT unit raided the wrong
apartment, and 64-year-old Mario Paz, shot
twice in the back when the El Monte, Calif.,
SWAT team blew the locks off his doors with
a shotgun, looking for someone who had used
that address.
Doubtless the will be more such cases, and
citizens will grow warier of the law
enforcement establishment. The military
mentality, along with machine guns and
grenade launchers, have no place in a free
society.
When police think and act like soldiers,
they generate mistrust among their
constituents, which in turn pushes law
enforcement agencies further into an
elitist, impersonal enclave.
Luckily, our democratic process has
remedies. Congress can, and should,
eliminate exceptions to the Posse Comitatus
Act and redefine the military's mission to
defend the nation against foreign
aggressors. Joint Task Forces in the
Department of Defense should be abolished,
and police agencies -- federal, state and
local -- should be forced to return military
hardware, especially automatic weapons, or
destroy it.
Americans have to ask themselves whether the
"drug war" is really worth altering our
society beyond recognition. Defining our
nation's drug woes as a public health
problem, and not as a crime problem, might
be a start.
Diane Cecilia Weber is a Virginia writer on
criminal justice and the Second Amendment.
This article has been adapted from a longer
paper published by the Cato Institute,
"WarriorCops: The Ominous Growth of
Paramilitarism in American Police
Departments."
From the above, it is clear that the Bush
family has been closely tied with both Nazi
interests and with the Bin Laden family.
Good cop/bad cop and the Hegellian dialectic
are not strangers to this bunch.
Now, should we all follow in lockstep with
Arbustocito (Spanish for "little bush") and
this cabinent, members of the Project for a
New Amercian Century?
I think not. When a government is corrupt,
that is the time a "true" patriot must
oppose it. But, let's look at what people
more famous than I have said about
patriotism, liberty, and the like.
--------------------------QUOTES-------------
-----------------------------
George Washington:
I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea
of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know
it has done much in the present contest. But
I will venture to assert, that a great and
lasting war can never be supported on this
principle alone. It must be aided by a
prospect of interest, or some reward.
H. L. Mencken:
The notion that a radical is one who hates
his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He
is, more likely, one who likes his country
more than the rest of us, and is thus more
disturbed than the rest of us when he sees
it debauched. He is not a bad citizen
turning to crime; he is a good citizen
driven to despair.
Henry Steele Commager:
Men in authority will always think that
criticism of their policies is dangerous.
They will always equate their policies with
patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
From one of the highest Nazi leaders we read
this:
"Hermann Goering:
Naturally the common people don't want war;
neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in
America, nor in Germany. That is understood.
But after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine policy, and it is
always a simple matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy, or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a
communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice,
the people can always be brought to the
bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All
you have to do is to tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists
for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any
country."
-Hermann Goering
"It behooves every man who values liberty of
conscience for himself, to resist invasions
of it in the case of others." - Thomas
Jefferson, 1803.
"Law enforcement, however, in defeating the
criminal, must maintain inviolate the
historic liberties of the individual." -
Ibid.
"Liberty's chief foe is theology." - Charles
Bradlaugh.
"No man should be in politics unless he
would honestly rather not be there." - Henry
Brook Adams, The Education of Henry Adams,
1907.
"The truth is that all men having power
ought to be mistrusted." - James Madison:
Tribune, London.
"The greater the power, the more dangerous
the abuse." - Speech, House of Commons,
February 7, 1771.
"Power gradually extirpates from the mind
every humane and gentle virtue." - Edmund
Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society.
David Hume:
The heights of popularity and patriotism are
still the beaten road to power and tyranny;
flattery to treachery; standing armies to
arbitrary government; and the glory of God
to the temporal interest of the clergy.
Edward R. Murrow:
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
When the loyal opposition dies, I think the
soul of America dies with it.
Mark Twain:
The government is merely a servant -- merely
a temporary servant; it cannot be its
prerogative to determine what is right and
what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot
and who isn't. Its function is to obey
orders, not originate them.
Mark Twain:
Each man must for himself alone decide what
is right and what is wrong, which course is
patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk
this and be a man. To decide against your
conviction is to be an unqualified and
excusable traitor, both to yourself and to
your country, let me label you as they may.
Rabbi Sherwin Wine:
There are two visions of America. One
precedes our founding fathers and finds its
roots in the harshness of our puritan past.
It is very suspicious of freedom,
uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to
science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous
of personal autonomy. It sees America as a
religious nation. It views patriotism as
allegiance to God. It secretly adores
coercion and conformity. Despite our
constitution, despite the legacy of the
Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of
Americans and threatens our freedom.
The other vision finds its roots in the
spirit of our founding revolution and in the
leaders of this nation who embraced the age
of reason. It loves freedom, encourages
diversity, embraces science and affirms the
dignity and rights of every individual. It
sees America as a moral nation, neither
completely religious nor completely secular.
It defines patriotism as love of country and
of the people who make it strong. It defends
all citizens against unjust coercion and
irrational conformity.
This second vision is our vision. It is the
vision of a free society. We must be bold
enough to proclaim it and strong enough to
defend it against all its enemies.
Samuel Johnson:
Patriotism is the last refuge of the
scoundrel.
and , one of my faves from a past president
and military man involved in the Spanish
American War...the Rough Rider himself...
"Theodore Roosevelt:
To announce that there must be no criticism
of the president, or that we are to stand by
the president, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally
treasonable to the American public. (191
"
I agree Teddy, I agree...and could not have
said it better, and is more true in the 21st
century than the 20th.
~Code
CodeWarrior
TheSherminator
hbkfan
gdZiemann
] 
Indierockgal
kyodylee
Dreddsnik
I'll read it all 
