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These are not my notes and quotes, but they are dyn-O-mite, and worth reading.
Another faithful DUer posted these notes about a week ago, and I saved them -- alas, I neglected to save the posters name.
So -- whoever you are DU colleague -- thanks for this:
I hope these notes will interest you. They are from Kevin Philips new book "American Dynasty" which is about the Bush family.
As you probably know, Philips is a lifelong Republican himself and served in the Nixon administration before becoming a full time pundit.
Kevin Phillips-American Dynasty-notes/quotes
I would encourage everyone to read this book to have rational talking points, because this is all well substantiated. Here are some interesting quotes to note- I'm paraphrasing...life's too short...
Phillips notes that George Bush lost the election in 2000 and was, yes, it's true, like it or not, appointed. He had no mandate to push through his extremist agenda...and yet he did anyway.
Three Texans were responsible for three wars based upon dubious rationales (or outright lies...) Johnson-Vietnam-Tonkin. Bush-Iraq-April Gilespie-(Bush's arming of Saddam). Bush Jr.-Iraq-lies about WMD, imminent danger-mushroom cloud.
Two of those wars were central to the machinery which has propped up both Bushes: Oil, Covert Actions, Financial Paybacks, the Military-Industrial Complex.
What's so interesting is that Phillips sees in the Bush's the fruition of Eisenhower's warning about the "military-industrial complex." I once heard Chris Matthews try to say Eisenhower was warning about the Kennedys, which is bogus, since they were not the Standard Oil or Bechtel or Silesium consortium. The Bush family -- Poppy, George W., Jeb, Neil (Silverado), and the rest) are absolutely those things.
Here are Phillips' remarks about the Walker/Bush connections to the build up of Nazi Germany. (not all of them...Walker is, in fact, much more of a player than Prescott, his son-in-law, in building an empire on developing the Nazi war machine...
Phillips notes that Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker were both involved with Harriman in many various deals with Germany after ww1.
Many patrician young men were involving in financial schemes to make money off the rebuilding of Europe after the war, but some of them avoided Germany because of their role in WW1. (the Dulles brothers also looked to Germany to make money.) This money-making could also be seen as a "Marshall Plan" --privatized and for the profits of a few.
Phillips notes that American investments in Germany in the 1920s were controversial for various reasons, including aiding previous or potential enemies. p37
Brown Brothers Harriman was an active investor "in a Germany rapidly rearming under Adolf Hitler." (this at a time when Germany was not supposed to rearm, btw.)
Prescott Bush handled much of the German work at Brown Brothers Harriman p38
The Justice Dept. was probing German-connected investors in '41. In March '42 a special Senate Committee held public hearings on cartel agreements b/t U.S. and German firms.
William S. Farish (whose son is George H.W. Bush's money handler...among other financial services), pleaded no contest to criminal conspiracy b/c of dealings b/t his company, Standard Oil, and I.G. Farben.
Sec. of War Stimson (also a member of Skull and Bones, like Prescott, George W. and George H.W. Bush) requested that FDR stop the investigations...ostensibly to make sure those companies would not be distracted while dealing with the war effort.
But inquiries went on via the Trading with the Enemy Act of Dec. 1941.
In 1938, Prescott had been collaterally involved in shipping tetraethyl lead needed by the Luftwaffe via the Ethyl Corp., again with Farish as director (and half-owned by Standard).
1941 headline in NY Herald Trib read: "Hitler's Angel Has $3 Million in U.S. Bank." The article noted that Thyssen had channeled the money into the Union Banking Corporation.
UBC was "nominally owned by a Dutch intermediary that Brown Brothers Harriman ran for the German Thyssen steel family. Prescott Bush was a director.
In Aug. 1942, property of the Harriman, Herbert Walker controlled American Ship and Commerce Corporation was seized under the trading with the enemy act.
On Oct 20, the alien property custodian seized the assets of the Union Banking Corporation.
In Nov. the govt seized the assets of the last major entity connected to Harriman, Walker, and Bush--the Silesian-American Corporation." p39
Phillips says that the outcome of these dealings is that no one said anything about them, much.
Phillips says, "it's almost as if these various German embroilments, depsite their potential for scandal, were regarded as unfortunate but in essence business as usual...
A surprising number of the descendants of men who had dealt with Germany, William S. Farish III, William Draper III, Joseph Verner Reed Jr. (grandson of Remington chair) turned up as close personal advisors or high-level appointees in the George H.W. Bush administration." p40
The Merchants of Death hearings (special Senate Committee which investigated the Munitions industry) didn't get too far into the "major 1933-34 surge of U.S. military exports to Hitler's Germany." (and the state dept. leaned on the committee to make no reference to secret reports about German rearmament.)
U.S. investment (ITT, GM, Ford, Standard Oil, GE) in Germany increased by 48.5% b/t 1929 and 1940, while it declined everywhere else on the continent.
..in other words, Phillips seems to say that Prescott and Herbert Walker were both financially entangled in Nazi Germany--along with lots of other corporations whose manufacturing investments in Germany were bedrock for the German warmongering.
Rather than single out Prescott, it's important to see that globalization in that era had very negative consequences because of the greed of a few wealthy individuals, and at the eventual expense of thousands of American lives as our young soldiers of that era went off to fight a Nazi enemy that had been strengthened systematically over time by Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker, and their Skull and Bones compatriots.
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