Know your BFEE: Killer Businessmen who Put Power & Profit Before Country.

[Octafish]

Members of the Bush Family Evil Empire always put profit and power before country, let alone people. It’s disgusting, but that’s the way they “work.”



BUSHCO does whatever is needed to make a buck. They’ll climb in bed with fascist dictators, as in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and El Salvador; they’ll roll in the hay with communist totalitarian states like Red China and the former Soviet Union. Think the Saudi “Roils” believe in democracy?



On the other hand, the Bushes won’t lift a finger to help little poor Cuba, let alone the democratically elected Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti. He was twice deposed by that nation’s ruling elite – with the assistance of Bush 41 and 43 state departments. What was Aristide’s crime? He wanted more for the 99-percent of his nation forced to live off of 1-percent of the income and property. Now that’s criminal.

Which brings us back to the point: The BFEE will do whatever to make a buck. Take Prescott Bush Jr., please. Among other people, this Bush family sales rep was in bed with the Red Chinese. How? The United States of America – China Chamber of Commerce (USCCC). Wal-mart and the Tong must thank him, most profusely.

Editorial

Yakusa - Mean Magazine - Date: September 2001

By Craig Stephens

EXCERPT…

Yet not all Yakusa activity is blood and guts streetcrime, with political activity still high on the yak agenda.Fast forward to 1987, Noboru Takeshita was elected prime minister in Japan.

Fuelled by suspicions of his gangster ties in the election, Takeshita was finally questioned on the accusations in 1992, he subsequently denied knowing me that the yakuza were involved, yet the Liberal Democratic Party kingmaker forcibly resigned from politics in October 1992 after he admitted to receiving Y500m (US$4M) from a delivery firm, Sagawa Kyubin.

Hiroyasu Watanabe, the owner of the firm had paid the kingmaker for trying to help save his business. Watanabe admitted to asking Ishii Susumu, the late head of the Inagawa-kai, to silence the group. In another incident closer to home, West Tsusho, a Tokyo-based real estate firm, bought two American companies with help from none other than Prescott Bush, Jr, President Bush's elder brother. What wasn't known at the time was that West Tsusho is an arm of the a company run by the Inagawa-kai's leader, Ishii Susumu.

Tsusho purchased Quantum Access, a Houston-based software firm and Asset Management International Financing & Settlement, a New York City-based company. Bush received a $250,000 finder's fee for Asset Manangement, as was promised another $250,000 per year for three years in consulting fees. Bush was apparently unaware at the time that he was being a middleman for mob activity.

SOURCE:

http://www.craig-stephens.com/doc_yakusa.html

Even Smirko's little brudder Neil gets in on the spirit of the BFEE deal. Below here he's helping sell computer chips to Red China. Gee. Do you think they'll use them for toasters? TVs? Cruise Missiles?

US: Bush's Brother Has Contract to Help Chinese Chip Maker

by Warren Vieth and Lianne Hart, Los Angeles Times
November 27th, 2003

WASHINGTON - Neil Bush, a younger brother of President Bush, has a $400,000-a-year contract to provide business advice to a Chinese computer chip manufacturer, according to court documents.

At the same time the Bush administration is promising to crack down on alleged trade abuses by the Chinese, Neil Bush has agreed to strategize with China's Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the documents show.

SNIP…

The China contract is not Neil Bush's first brush with controversy. In the 1980s, he was a director of Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan, a Colorado thrift whose failure cost U.S. taxpayers $1 billion. He was one of 12 defendants who agreed to pay $49 million to settle a negligence lawsuit brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

SNIP…

Grace Semiconductor, based in Shanghai, was founded in 2000 by Winston Wong, the son of Taiwanese business magnate Wang Yung-ching, and Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Wong co-signed the contract with Bush.

The company has said its goal is to become a leading manufacturer of integrated circuits and other semiconductor products. It has invested $1.6 billion to build two fabrication plants in Shanghai. Production from the first plant began in September.

CONTINUED…

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=9231

It must be a genetic Aryan thing:

The True Cause of Hitler's Evil: Wall Street Bankers

If one is to believe the (CBS) film, Hitler came to power in Germany with the financial help of some German capitalists. As depicted in the film, it was the enigmatic "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, a German- American, the one who promoted Hitler among the wealthy in Germany. At the end of the film it is mentioned, without further explanation, that eventually Hanfstaengl became disenchanted with the Nazis and moved back to the US, where he became a counselor on Nazi things for president Roosevelt.

What is missing in the picture is that Hanfstaengl, a shady figure who had a strange role in the Reichstag fire --the event which most helped Hitler in his grab for power-- was not only a friend and protegé of Roosevelt, but had strong connections among Wall Street bankers. The best study of the role of Wall Street bankers in financing Hitler's Nazi party is Antony Sutton's Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, and I am going to borrow most of the information for this section from his book. I suggest readers interested in the subject to buy a copy of professor Sutton's book and read it carefully.

In his book, Sutton provides ample information proving that some American companies associated with Wall Street bankers, mainly the Morgan-Rockefeller investment bankers, were closely linked to the growth of Nazi industry in the late thirties. The main companies participating in this exchange were Ford, General Electric, General Motors, and Dupont, all of them, with the exception of Ford, controlled by Wall Street bankers. Among U.S. millionaires helping the Nazis were the Rockefellers, William Randolph Hearst Sr., Andrew Mellon, Irenee du Pont, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan, just to name a few of the most conspicuous ones.

It is know that Hitler, who at the end of WWI was living in precarious economic conditions, by the early 1920s suddenly began living like a wealthy man, with plush apartments, mansions, expensive suits, luxury cars, servants and body guards. It is known that some American Wall Street bankers, and the companies they controlled had been pouring money into Hitler's big pockets.

Instrumental in making the connections between American bankers and Nazi leaders were Allen and John Foster Dulles, then corporate lawyers at Sullivan and Cromwell. Another important firm who heavily collaborated with the Nazis was W.A. Harriman & Company. In 1931 Harriman & Company merged with another company and became Brown Brothers, Harriman. One of the senior partners of the new company was Prescott Bush, president W. Bush's grandfather. In 1942 the U.S. government charged Prescott Bush with running Nazi fronts in the U.S. During the investigation, it was found that Prescott Bush's companies had been covertly working for Nazi Germany.

The collaboration of Wall Street and the Nazis did not end when Hitler, like Frankenstein's monster, turned against the ones who had created him. After the U.S. declared war on Germany, the ubiquitous Allen Dulles, now acting as an Office of Strategic Services' senior intelligence officer in Bern, began dealing under the table with the Nazis. Dulles was instrumental in helping to escape and bringing to America many defeated Nazi leaders.

CONTINUED…

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagsg016.php

Details here (Thanks, DrDebug! Thanks, gandalf!):

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Know_your_BFEE

[wli]

1. yep, we're dealing with Nazis n/t

[sintax]

3. When someone says "We're dealing with Nazis"

others will repond in disbelief or say the comparison isn't quite accurate or.....

However the Nazi analogy isn't actually a simple comparison it is a matter of flesh and bllod.

General Reinhard Gehlen for example, and many more not just the well-publicized Operation Paperclip but also more than 1,500 Nazi intelligence Ops and bureaucrats came over to the US to "help" establish our various alphabet soup intelligence agencies.

[seemslikeadream]

Bush Property Seized--Trading with the Enemy

http://www.hermes-press.com.nyud.net:8090/Bush_Morph3.gif

http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm
Chapter - II - The Hitler Project

Bush Property Seized--Trading with the Enemy

In October 1942, ten months after entering World War II, America was preparing its first assault against Nazi military forces. Prescott Bush was managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son George, the future U.S. President, had just begun training to become a naval pilot. On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush.

Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland `` Bunny '' Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Bush.@s1

The order seizing the bank `` vests '' (seizes) `` all of the capital stock of Union Banking Corporation, a New York corporation, '' and names the holders of its shares as:

`` E. Roland Harriman--3991 shares ''


`` Cornelis Lievense--4 shares ''


`` Harold D. Pennington--1 share ''


`` Ray Morris--1 share ''




`` Prescott S. Bush--1 share ''


`` H.J. Kouwenhoven--1 share ''


`` Johann G. Groeninger--1 share ''


`` all of which shares are held for the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, is property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country.... ''

By Oct. 26, 1942, U.S. troops were under way for North Africa. On Oct. 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.@s2
(snip)

Or little on Fritz Thyssen

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERthyssen.htm
(snip)
Fritz Thyssen, the son of the successful industrialist, August Thyssen (1842-1926), was born on the 9th November, 1873. He joined the German Army in 1896 and reached the rank of second lieutenant.

In 1898 Thyssen joined Thyssen & Co a company owned by his father in the Ruhr. By the outbreak of the First World War the company employed 50,000 workers and produced 1,000,000 tons of steel and iron a year.

In 1923 took part in the resistance against the Ruhr Occupation by Belgian and French troops. He was arrested and received a large fine for his activities.

At a meeting with General Eric Ludendorff in October 1923, Thyssen was advised to go and hear Adolf Hitler speak. He did this and was so impressed he began to finance the Nazi Party.
(snip)

[sattahipdeep]

11. McLennan County tight-knit community. This is a German community.

seemslikeadream :hi:

[seemslikeadream]

14. "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer, ein Volk"

One People, one Empire, one Leader, one People


One Hope, One people, One country, One leader.
One Hope, One people, One country, One destiny.

Stand up be brave my people we're here to stay, for a thousand years.
An oath you've spoken, can never be broken, you'll pay, in blood and tears
Never tire, never doubt, never falter, never slacken, Just believe in me.
Stand up, shout loud, stand proud, in what we will we will achieve.

One Hope, One people, One country, One leader will set you free
One Hope, One people, One country, One destiny for a thousand years

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk.

It's not enough just to say you love your country, its not enough.
It's not enough to get down on your knees and pray, it's just not enough.

The price is high, the price you have to pay is your freedom, surrender yourselves.
Mothers send me your blue-eyed blonde-haired boys and let me see them, blue-eyed blonde-haired boys.

One Hope, One people, One country, One leader will set you free.
One Hope, One people, One country, One destiny for a thousand years.

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk,
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher, Ein Volk.

One Hope, One people, One country, One leader will set you free
One Hope, One people, One country, One destiny for a thousand years.


sattahipdeep

[wli]

4. absolutely. I was arguing on the grounds of direct heritage also. n/t

[Karenina]

28. The dots are the size of manholes!

And not at all difficult to connect...

[Just Me]

13. Yep. We're not dealing with "Nazis". We're dealing with fascist tyrants.

Corporacrats seeking power and profit via amoral exploitation of any vulnerable human "asset". They are barbarians willing to sacrifice any and everyone to FEED their black hole.

[wli]

24. There's direct and demonstrable heritage from Nazi Germany

Hence, we are dealing with real, full-blooded Nazis.

[Octafish]

7. Weird how so few see it and how so many mock those who do.

Few are those who seek the Truth...

I'n'I

Investigating the New Imperialism

http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0143.html

[Just Me]

20. We are pulling folks out of a "belief-system" that NEVER existed.

That "shock-n-awe" is far more impactful than a TV infotainment, dismembered, brain-fucked, "fireworks" that mass murdered human beings.

*sigh*

[wli]

25. "shock and awe" is a euphemism for "blitzkrieg" n/t

[blm]

37. It's so simple, too. Bush1 made his deals with Chinese industrialists in

the 70s when he was living there. And then WalMart begins its huge push all over the US capitalizing on its behind the scenes dealings with the Chinese industrialists.

Then Bush gets in the WH, while his brother stays in China, wheeling and dealing and WalMart gets HUGE off their profits from cheap Chinese product. Then his brother heads up the US-China Chamber of Commerce, WalMart is HUGER, Bush2 takes office and China is growing richer while America goes deeper into debt, China BUYING our debt, and WalMart and China and those American financiers and fascists are reaping the profits while American workers are suffering and our children and grandchildren are paying debts for decades.

[Karenina]

55. The pyramid scheme...

[blm]

56. It's actually FASCISM. Capitalism is healthiest balanced with socialism.

Fascism is capitalism with ZERO input by the people.

[Karenina]

57. Indeed, you are quite correct.

Balanced with socialism and STRINGENTLY regulated!
(I just liked the picture and wanted to :kick:) :hug:

[G_j]

2. mention of Hanfstaengl

http://guerrillanews.com/blogs/1420/Report_Assails_Harvard_s_Links_with_Nazis_Reuters


Report Assails Harvard's Links with Nazis(Reuters)

B01420 / Sun, 14 Nov 2004 16:55:45 / Miscellaneous

BOSTON (Reuters) – Collegial relations between Harvard University and the Nazis in the 1930s were a “shameful” episode that helped give a favorable picture of the regime in the United States, according to a report released on Sunday.

“As the Nazi menace steadily increased … Conant’s administration at Harvard was complicit in increasing the prestige of Nazi regime by seeking and maintaining friendly and respectful relations with Nazi universities and officials,” the report said.

<snip>

According to Norwood, Hitler’s foreign press secretary, Ernst Hanfstaengl, was given a warm welcome at his 25th Harvard reunion in 1934. Hanfstaengl led the Nazi efforts to win over world opinion, and is reported to have introduced their trademark stiff-armed salute and “Zeig Heil” chant, basing both on Harvard football cheers, Norwood said.

Hanfstaengl attended a tea at the home of Conant, then Harvard’s president, who went on to become U.S. ambassador to Germany in the 1950s.

..more..

[Octafish]

32. Interesting article. Same volk run both Ivy League and Society.

These are the inheritors of great wealth. They think they're entitled to positions of power and prestige because of their family ties. Gee. These people believe they are blue bloods, like royalty. And thanks to the modern mass propaganda machinery and ideas from "The Da Vinci Code," many are deluded to think they are the Good Lord's offspring. In fact, they do the opposite of what the New Testament was about -- they make war on the "Untermenschen."

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race

It began on Long Island and Ended at Auschwitz.. and yet it never really stopped.

By Edwin Black

How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."

In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with prestigious academic fraud to create the pseudoscience eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy. The goal: create a superior, white, Nordic race and obliterate the viability of everyone else.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics.

SOURCE w/ articles and links:

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

Yale's where Skull and Bones operates...

[wli]

47. it gets better, check the class action lawsuits of the victims

They were all quashed via document-shredding.

[asthmaticeog]

5. Point of information?

Who the fuck says "Red China" anymore? :shrug:

[moof]

8. Not that your lack of civility deserves a reply

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Red+China%22+conservative+quotes+&btnG=Google+Search

Keep up the great work octafish & seems like a dream

[H2O Man]

10. Sometimes

members of the older generation -- and I include myself -- make little tongue-in-cheek comments like that, most often as little jokes aimed at humoring others within our loose-knit group who have had similar experiences. Exposing the administration is .... well, hard work. And sometimes we say things that others might not think are funny, or make any sense.

"Red China" was the term that was used for a long, long time to scare the heck out of us. We were taught that, much like "red Indians," these Chinese were very dangerous. They would do things like shoot a totally innocent Brazilian who was trying to catch a subway car, just like the red Indians would massacre innocent Christians at Wounded Knee.

So when we find that a member of the BFEE is selling technology that could be used in a number of ways, including to commit aggressive military actions, we may slip in a little editorial comment like "Red China."

[Gay Green]

16. Curious that color "Red"

THroughout the 60s 70s 80s and even 90s the TV news networks would on each election night color the states "Blue" when they voted Republican and "Red" when they voted Democratic. This of course was when the Red Communist "threat" was alive or still fresh in people's memories.

Then in 2000 something changed: the Republican-voting states on election night were colored "Red" and the Democratic-voting states were colored "Blue." My speculation is that "Red" stood for good ole boy red-blooded Americans and "Blue" stood for the "effete" blue-bloods of long family lines. (Actually who could be more effete blue-blooded than Bush? :shrug: )

Ands it is very, very, VERY interesting that "Red" China is pursuing the same kind of pro-corporate, cheap-labor capitalism that the "Red" Republicans are SOOOOooooooo enamored of. Maybe in BOTH instances "Red" means fascist, pure and simple.

[Mnemosyne]

18. Hello GG, do you have a link on the change in 2000? Thanks. eom

[Just Me]

15. More poignant,...WHO attacks any one challenging the ideological,...

,...EXTREMELY PROFITABLE, "polically-possessed" leadership forcing its will upon the direction of this country.

So, "they" learned to be more savvy, more "marketable" and MORE MANIPULATIVE than the McCarthy bile that imposed precisely the same division for power and profit. EVERY dictator must be extremely envious of this regime's success in manipulating and exploiting people. I'm sure they are "adapting" according to "example".

[Octafish]

35. Red China is where BushCo does business. Remember Tiananmen?

The BFEE doesn't want Americans to rememgber the Red Chinese massacre of pro-democracy protesters. They don't want people to know who they really front for -- authoritarianism.



In the days immediately after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, to make sure the commies knew there were no hard feelings in Washington, Poppy sent Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger over to clink a champagne toast or two to business as usual.

Perhaps if the US Government had shown some support for the pro-democracy demonstrators, the Red Chinese government would have collapsed. Wouldn't that be nice? Kapisch?

A hand held out to Beijing: US policy after Tiananmen Square

By James Conachy
15 July 1999

Censored US State Department documents from 1985-1989, obtained under Freedom of Information legislation and now published on the Internet, provide a damning indictment of the conduct of the Republican administration of President George Bush in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The documents prove that the US government was not concerned with the suppression of the Chinese working class, but the possibility that it may cause disruptions to the political, military and economic relations developed with the Beijing regime since 1971.

In the days immediately following the military assault on the capital, with virtually every urban centre of China convulsed with protests and demonstrations, US officials were preoccupied with trying to assess whether Deng Xiaoping would get away with the military crackdown or whether it had aggravated the social and political tensions in China to the point of civil war.

Cables and summaries on June 6 itself are dominated by reports, later to be downplayed, that fighting was breaking out between the 27th Army deployed by Deng Xiaoping into Beijing and other military units sympathetic to the students and workers. A summary prepared for the US Secretary of State refers to the Chinese government and military heads as feeling like “they are fighting for their lives” and surrounding their residences with armoured vehicles and troops.

From June 9, following the first public appearance and a speech by Deng Xiaoping, the US officials became convinced that the regime would survive and Washington responded accordingly.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jul1999/usch-j15.shtml

The BFEE does business with commies and fascists. It doesn't make an effing diff.

[LibertyorDeath]

42. "A hand held out to Beijing: US policy after Tiananmen Square"

I remember it well business as usual.

It was sickening.

[Cleita]

6. I was just thinking today about why we are here at this time.

We no longer have a country but a company, run by the board of directors and and CEO. The board of directors are the PNAC members of the administration. Bush as an MBA was tapped as CEO, just as Schwarzenegger, another MBA (diploma mill, but what the hay, gives him a sort of legitimacy) in California. They will try to head all the states as branches of the company with other MBAs as CEOs.

They don't see themselves as criminals like we do but as employing sound business principles as they see them. We are all their unpaid employees. As a matter-of-fact we are paying them, with our taxes, with our assets and with our military.

I really wish our military joint chiefs of staff see it for what it is and that they are no longer protecting a nation but a company and its narrow agenda.

We no longer have a nation.

[Mnemosyne]

19. And our young and poor are paying the most, so sad. eom

[sintax]

21. It isn't unique to our time

america never was "the good old days", it has always been a fascistic-imperialistic-racist-ecocidal nation-state. Sure the BFEE represent the worst and things are more consolidated now but going back just a few years to War is a Racket-Smedley Butler or a little further back to Carnegie and the Pinkertons or going further back to....

"We" never had a nation, which is in itself quite impossible as nations are patriarchal concoctions which exclude the possibility of a 'WE' but always provide the illusion of such through the use of symbols and stories (lies, false history, heroes, etc..).

America has been a colonial conquest and a mercantile enterprise from day one.

It's a fabrication, all of it.


"I have never needed the hope of victory to spur me on to fight!"

[Just Me]

23. We are here to PROVE that human spirit/potentail is stronger than,...

,...human weakness. We believe and know and invest in the capacity of humanity,...rather than hate and exploit and profit off human weakness.

We reject the "profiteers" vision of humanity.

[Octafish]

73. Precisely.

If that's a word that can be used to describe the indescribable essence of why we're here.



One work I've found useful is Jane English and Gia Fu Feng's translation of The Tao:

Twenty-Seven

A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no slips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.
A good door needs no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it.

Therefore the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called "following the light."

What is a good man?
A teacher of a bad man.
What is a bad man?
A good man's charge.
If the teacher is not respected,
And the student not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.

SOURCE:

http://www.daily-tao.com

The hard copy of what English and Gia published is amazing. The work is illustrated with amazing photography and the original text in Chinese. I've bought and given away about half a dozen copies... :^)

[Octafish]

38. Jack Brooks Warned Us.

Too few listened to what the former U.S. Representative of the Great State of Texas had to say. Here's the traitor Oliver North asking his attorney, Brendan Sullivan, his thoughts upon being asked the following...



First, about Iran-Contra and the Secret Government and its plans to suspend the Constitution of the United States and implement martial law:

During joint House-Senate Iran-Contra hearings... George Bush and Oliver North worked on FEMA early 80s, created to deal with domestic terrorism Federal Emergency Management Agency

Representative Jack Brooks (Texas) - Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Senator Daniel Inouye - I believe that touches upon highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that please.

Representative Jack Brooks (Texas) - I was particularly concerned because I have read in the Miami papers and several others that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of an emergency that would suspend the American Constitution.

Senator Daniel Inouye - May I request that that matter not be touched upon.

SOURCE:

http://www.welfarestate.com/irancontra/

Second, about Inslaw-PROMIS and the Secret Government's stolen software used by repressive regimes around the world:

U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary

Jack Brooks, Texas, Chairman

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE REPORT CALLS FOR INDEPENDENT COUNSEL TO INVESTIGATE THE INSLAW CONTROVERSY

The ("INSLAW Affair") report concludes that there appears to be strong evidence, as indicated by the findings of two Federal court proceedings, as well as by the Committee investigation, that the Department of Justice "acted willfully and fraudulently," and "took, converted and stole," INSLAW's Enhanced PROMIS by "trickery, fraud and deceit." The report finds that these actions against INSLAW were implemented through the Project Manager from the beginning of the contract and under the direction of high-level Justice Department officials. The evidence presented in the report demonstrates that high-level Department officials deliberately ignored INSLAW's proprietary rights and misappropriated its PROMIS software for use at locations not covered under contract with the company. Justice then proceeded to challenge INSLAW's claims in court even though its own internal deliberations had concluded that these claims were valid and that the Department would most likely lose in court on this issue.

According to the report, the second phase of the Committee's investigation concentrated on the allegations that high-level officials at the Department of Justice conspired to drive INSLAW into insolvency and steal PROMIS. In this regard, the report states that several individuals testified under oath that INSLAW's PROMIS software was stolen and distributed internationally in order to provide financial gain to associates of Justice Department officials and to further intelligence and foreign policy objectives of the United States. Additional corroborating evidence was uncovered by the Committee which substantiated to varying degrees the information provided by these individuals.

(Chairman) Brooks stated, "Although (the Department of Justice was) faced with a growing body of evidence that serious wrongdoing had occurred which reached to the highest levels of the Department, both Attorney General Meese and Thornburgh ignored these findings of two Federal courts and refused to seek the appointment of an Independent Counsel."

SOURCE w/ many other articles of interest (A Primer on INSLAW)...

http://www.copi.com/articles/inslaw_primer.htm

Lots of treasonous stuff there. All BFEE. All the Time.

Thanks for giving a damn, Cleita. Thanks to you and all who care, we'll always have a nation.

[Just Me]

39. They abuse their positions to exploit and profit off the American people.

They are domestic enemies.

[Cleita]

46. I will go so far as to say they are the real domestic

terrorists. We really have to extricate them out of our government.

[sattahipdeep]

9. Vansau Property Marilyn Vansau Larry Mattlage

Landowners want the protestors to leave immediately. Marilyn
Vansau clashed with the protestors earlier this week and forced
them to get off a small, triangle-shaped piece of land in front
of Sheehan's tent.

"My children need a quiet place to live," she said.


Her next-door neighbor, Larry Mattlage, spent part of Wednesday
afternoon on his four-wheeler trying to prevent protestors from
parking cars on the grassy easement in front of his goat farm.


http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/shared/news/nation/stories/08/12SHEEHAN.html






WHO OWNS WHAT LAND?This map showing who owns the land around Camp Casey is
displayed on a No Trespassing sign on a triangular piece of land there.
Iconoclast Photo By Nathan Diebenow

[Octafish]

40. Texas is a strange place.

Lots of good people there --including many from my wife's family.

Too bad so many Bush supporters live there.

I bet if they knew the truth about the BFEE, they'd be the first to haul out the torches and pitchforks.

Here's one instance of what I mean about truth regarding Gov. Bush and Texas:

Edifice Complex

By Rick Henderson
Reason Magazine

EXCERPT...

The cost of obtaining professional sports franchises (or keeping them in place) is skyrocketing. Before the Ballpark in Arlington was constructed, for instance, the estimated value of the Rangers franchise was $101 million, the 16th most valuable Major League Baseball team. After the new stadium opened in 1994--even though the Rangers had never played a postseason game--the team's value had jumped to $157 million, making it even more valuable than the storied Los Angeles Dodgers.

CONTINUED...

http://reason.com/9708/bk.rick.shtml

Gee. That's not all Gov. Bush did for his sugar daddies...

How George W. Bush made his millions

By Joseph Kay
1 August 2002

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

Much has been written over the past month about President George W. Bush’s actions while at Harken Energy. This is, indeed, a significant history: in the early 1990s Bush made hundreds of thousands of dollars in a deal that reeks of the same insider trading and accounting fraud the president now claims to oppose. (See “On eve of Wall Street speech: Bush’s past business dealings come back to haunt him,” 9 July, 2002).

However, the media has paid far less attention to what Bush did with the $850,000 he made through the sale of Harken stock options and the manner in which he transformed that windfall into the $15 million that now constitutes the larger part of his personal fortune. If anything, this story is even more revealing.

SNIP...

A free stadium, and some choice land on the side

The same factors that propelled Bush virtually overnight from failed oil man to wealthy corporate executive—family connections and the desire of rich Texas businessmen to exploit the Bush name—opened the way for him to buy a stake in the professional baseball team. Bill DeWitt, part owner of Spectrum 7, which had bought Bush’s own company several years earlier and then later sold out to Harken, offered the son of the then-US president a chance to join in a bid for the Rangers. In 1989 a deal was reached in which Richard Rainwater, a wealthy Texas financier, joined Bush and several other investors in buying the team.

Bush himself did not have a large fortune at the time, and only bought a two percent share, financed with a $500,000 loan from a bank on whose board of directors he had once served. Bush used the proceeds from his questionable sale of Harken stock to repay this loan.

Bush’s formal title was “managing partner.” He served essentially as a public face, whose main responsibility was to attend the home baseball games. Edward Rose, another wealthy Texas investor and Rainwater’s associate, was responsible for the actual business operations of the team.

The top priority for the new Rangers owners in increasing the value of their holdings was to acquire a new stadium. They had no intention of paying for the stadium themselves, so they threatened to move the team if the city of Arlington did not foot the bill. The city government readily agreed to a generous deal. Reached in the fall of 1990, it guaranteed that the city would pay $135 million of an estimated cost of $190 million. The remainder was raised through a ticket surcharge. Thus, local taxpayers and baseball fans financed the entire cost of the stadium.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/aug2002/bush-a01.shtml

Nothin' unusual. It's just good ol' Caligula Jr.

[Raster]

44. well researched and presented. that pretty much is the straight

version. i lived in texas at the time. bush* was raygun--the improved version. I guess the texas, white-boy, petroleum mafia thought if they could score with a B movie actor with Alzheimer's, they could do it with the village idiot.

[Just Me]

12. As usual, my fellow truth-warrior and friend,...you lift the fog,...

,...of those who exploit our people, all people.

:hug:

Democracy spoils all forms of exploitation.

[Octafish]

41. Thanks to you and all who fight in the Infowar. Remember UTIMCO? HARKEN?

The University Texas Investment Management Company was raided by Bush's rich American friends.

HARKEN Energy was another company Bush ran into the dirt, bailed out by Bush's rich foreign friends.

Notes on a Native Son: The George W. Bush Story

A heartwarming tale about baseball, $1.7 billion, and a lot of swell friends.

By Joe Conason
Harper's Magazine
February 2000

EXCERPT...

To acquire the Rangers and thus keep the franchise in Texas would be to do something of profound significance to Texans. Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth was eager to help the son of the new president, but he was not so eager when George W. said the biggest investors in the proposed Rangers syndicate were his old Yale frat brother Roland Betts and Tom Bernstein, Betts's partner in a film-investment concern. Betts and Bernstein were from New York, not Texas. The indispensable local money came from Richard Rainwater, formerly the chief financial adviser to the Bass brothers of Fort Worth. Little known to the general public, Rainwater was famous on Wall Street for growing the Bass inheritance from around $50 million in 1970 to more than $4 billion by the time he left in 1986 to manage his own investments.

SNIP...

Bush's stake in the team, just under 2 percent, was among the smallest. He purchased his shares with a $500,000 loan from a Midland bank of which he had been a director and eventually scraped together another $106,000 to buy out two other limited partners. Rainwater, Rose, and their associates put up $14.2 million, while Betts and Bernstein invested about $6 million; the balance came from smaller investors, loans, and the equity of minority partners in the old Chiles partnership.

SNIP...

Meanwhile, George W. maintained a financial interest in Harken Energy. He had been granted enough additional stock options, at a generous discount, to increase his holdings by more than half. By 1989, however, those shares were falling in value. A series of questionable decisions by chairman Alan Quasha had jeopardized the company's future, and its losses reached $40 million in 1990. Even the company's CEO admitted that its financial statements were "a mess." Once more, however, the Bush name seems to have provided sudden deliverance-- this time in the form of a contract with the emirate of Bahrain.

Until 1989 the Bahraini oil minister had been negotiating an agreement for offshore drilling with Amoco, a huge energy conglomerate with decades of worldwide experience. Those talks were abruptly broken off, supposedly because the Bahrainis had decided that a smaller firm would give their project more attention. The Bahraini officials were put in touch with Harken through a former Mobil Oil executive named Michael Ameen. At the same time, Ameen also happened to be working as a consultant to the U.S. State Department, which had assigned him to brief Charles Hostler, the newly confirmed American ambassador to Bahrain (a San Diego real estate investor who had given $100,000 to the Republican Party for the 1988 election).

These several events culminated in a January 1990 announcement that astonished oil-industry analysts: the government of Bahrain had awarded exclusive offshore drilling rights to Harken. "It was a surprise," one top analyst told Time magazine with dry understatement. Quite apart from Harken's shaky financial condition, the company had never drilled a well anywhere but Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and had never drilled undersea at all. So depleted of cash and so deeply in debt was Harken that the company was forced to bring in the more experienced and solvent Bass brothers as equity partners, so that construction on the $25 million project could begin. Only the presence of President Bush's oldest son could explain Bahrain's extraordinary decision.

There was no question that the rulers of Bahrain were aware of his role. In addition to his Harken directorship, George W. sat on the company's "exploration advisory board," which meant that his name had been mentioned at least twice during initial discussions with Bahraini officials. "They were clearly aware he was the president's son," said Monte Swetnam, a former Harken executive who conducted the talks with the emirate's oil ministry. George W. flatly denied any part in Harken's bid. "Ask the Bahrainis," he replied flippantly when journalists asked whether they had been enticed by his name. Harken has said that Bush was not involved in the Bahrain deal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.utwatch.org/utimco/nativeson.html

Foreign. Domestic. Either way, Bush is a crook.

[Gabi Hayes]

17. I wuz telling a bunch of people about Vesting Order #248

several people refused to believe it, so I told them to google it

btw, Octa, did you see that Salon article about the media refusing to axe B* directly about his role in the Plame outing?

here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4402634

[hannah]

22. I love Octafish ane

seems like a dream. Best information ever. Please keep it coming out.

[seemslikeadream]

30. Thanks to Octafish bobthedrummer and 9215

Thanks hannah but everything I know is from following them. They've taught me so much

Where are you bobthedrummer, 9215 I miss you both very much

More history of how real Nazis found a political home in the Republican Party- don't forget, there have always been Third Reich admirers in the USA. And the RW attempted a coup against FDR.

The 1930's: Nazis Parading on Main Street
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/1930s.html

WWII: Corporate Traitors
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/waryearsp5.html

President Clinton's administration prosecuted Nazis
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/hr071498/holtzman.html

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/hr071498/maloney.html

Operation LAST CHANCE: Simon Wiesenthal is 95, he's called a last push to catch Nazis in hiding before they die of old age

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1218337,00.html

[barbaraann]

49. One of bobthedrummer's last posts is worrisome:

As a pertinent sidebar to this latest development in the State and now Federal investigations at Brown County Mental Health Center, I remind all readers of the threads in which I stated that I have a major civil rights case.

The Director of Brown County Mental Health Center is Dr. Koti Mannem.
He should be prosecuted for what he did to me on and off Unit 7. I've contacted many civil rights attorney's licensed by the State Bar of Wisconsin about this.

I've written to County Supervisor Allen Parks, who wouldn't back down in his investigation of BCMHC.

Anyone in Wisconsin have any legal advice, PM me.

(It's from May, 2005)

[seemslikeadream]

75. I am concerned also barbaraann

I wish he would check in

[Octafish]

43. Thank you, Gabi Hayes! I'll viddy. Regarding VO 248...

Your friends who are interested in learning more about the NAZIfication of American intelligence should read Joseph Trento's "Secret History of the CIA." The guy interviewed CIA Counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton and the people who should know just what Allen Dulles and Co. were really doing...

Paranoid shift

By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer

January 10, 2004—Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power."

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because something similar happened to me.

Although I don't remember ever meeting James Jesus Angleton, I worked at the CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a teenager in the '60s. This was at the same time I was beginning to question the government's actions in Vietnam. In fact, my personal "paranoid shift" probably began with the disillusionment I felt when I realized that the story of American foreign policy was, at the very least, more complicated and darker than I had hitherto been led to believe.

But for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I nevertheless held faith in the basic integrity of a system where power ultimately resided in the people, and whereby if enough people got together and voted, real and fundamental change could happen.

What constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer believe this to be necessarily true.

In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," William Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of "conspiracy theory" an immediate "object of ridicule." This prevents the media from ever having to investigate the many strange interconnections among the ruling class—for example, the relationship between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective tool—silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all you have to do is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation instantly becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention.

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

BTW: Love your terrific Hieronymous Bosch inspired figurines. Would they'd do my portrait...

[sintax]

26. Dulles Brothers-Reinhard Gehlen-Schroeder Bank-CIA in Atsugi, Japan

Allen Dulles

Categories: U.S. Official | Spook | John F. Kennedy assassination

Allen Welsh Dulles (April 23, 1893 – January 29, 1969), Knight of Malta. Dulles was the younger brother of John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's Secretary of State and main United Fruit Company shareholder. Later Dulles was the first civilian Director (1953-1961) of the Central Intelligence Agency and a member of the Warren Commission.

From 1927 to 1941, Allen Dulles worked as lawyer and international finance specialist for Sullivan & Cromwell, a Wall Street law firm in New York. Dulles performed work for Bush, Harriman, and Rockefeller in setting up business relationships with the Nazis and with top Nazi industrialists, and served as legal counsel for Standard Oil and the Nazi’s IG Farben.

In 1938, oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. The king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud. Dulles played a major role in negotiating and gaining major concessions from Ibn Saud for Standard Oil which lead to the creation of Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO).

<snip>

Dulles was fired from the CIA by Kennedy in 1961 over Operation Northwoods. Another cover CIA operation aimed at gaining popular support for a war against Cuba by framing Cuba for stage real or simulated attacks on American citizens. Dulles was replaced by John McCone.

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Allen_Dulles


1933: On January 4, 1933, Hitler was invited to the Schroeder Bank by a group of industrialists. The industrialists gave Hitler the money to overcome his financial problems in turn for a pledge to break the trade unions. Present at this meeting were two Americans John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles.

(...)

1940: Allen Dulles served on the board of the Schroeder bank. John Foster Dulles served as the legal counsel for Schroeder Bank. Schroeder Bank acted as a financial arm of the Nazis.

http://www.country-liberal-party.com/pages/Bush-Nazi-links.htm


Allen Dulles may not have invited such a man to his club, but he did the next best thing: he funneled an aggregate of $200 million in CIA funds to the Gehlen Organization as it became known. Directing operations from a fortress-like nerve center in Bavaria, Gehlen reactivated his network inside Russia. Soon, news of the first Russian jet fighter, the MiG-15, was channeled back to the West. In 1949 the general scored an espionage coup when he turned up Soviet plans for the remilitarization of East Germany.

When Dulles spoke, Gehlen listened. The CIA chief was convinced, along with his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, that the "captive nations" of the Soviet bloc would rise up if given sufficient encouragement. At his behest, Gehlen recruited and trained an exile mercenary force ready to rush in without involving American units. Also at Dulles' direction, Gehlen tapped the ranks of his wartime Russian collaborators for a cadre of spies to be parachuted into the Soviet Union. Some of these spies were schooled at the CIA's clandestine base at Atsugi, Japan, where, in 1957, a young Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald was posted to the U-2 spy plane operation there.

(...)

http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Nazi%20Connection%20to%20JFK%20Assass.html

[Octafish]

51. Mapping the BFEE Connections can be Maddening.

The multiple layers, myriad events and nefarious players can make things so very confusing -- that, on the face of the crime, the uninformed will reject the connections. That's why posts like yours are so important, sintax. It spells out the ties between Allen Dulles, the NAZIs and the Bush Organized Crime Family. What "mainstream" Democrats can't fathom is how the Dulles Brothers were in business (bed) together with Prescott's former boss, Averell Harriman, keeper of the New Deal flame. A little research on that angle explains November 22, 1963, Vietnam, the Cold War, BCCI and our current, eh, predicament at the hands of the War Party.

Zum beispiehl:

 W. Averell Harriman

Harriman was born in  (The largest city in New York State and in the United States; located in southeastern New York at the mouth of the Hudson river; a major financial and cultural center) New York City, son of  (United States railway tycoon (1848-1909)) Edward Henry Harriman and  (Click link for more info and facts about Mary Williamson Averell) Mary Williamson Averell, brother of  (Click link for more info and facts about E. Roland Harriman) E. Roland Harriman. He first married Kitty Lanier Lawrence, she died in 1936 and he married again to  (Click link for more info and facts about Pamela Beryl Digby) Pamela Beryl Digby. Harriman served  (32nd President of the United States; elected four times; instituted New Deal to counter the great depression and led country during World War II (1882-1945)) President Franklin Roosevelt as special envoy to Europe, and was present at the meeting between  (British statesman and leader during World War II; received Nobel Prize for literature in 1953 (1874-1965)) Winston Churchill and the US president at  (Click link for more info and facts about Placentia Bay) Placentia Bay in August of 1941. The outcome of this 5 day meeting became known as the  (Click link for more info and facts about Atlantic Charter) Atlantic Charter, a common declaration of principles of the US and Great Britain. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to  (A former communist country in eastern Europe and northern Asia; established in 1922; included Russia and 14 other soviet socialist republics (Ukraine and Byelorussia an others); officially dissolved 31 December 1991) Soviet Union between 1943 and 1946 and the Ambassador to  (A monarchy in northwestern Europe occupying most of the British Isles; divided into England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland) Britain in 1946. He was later appointed the  (Click link for more info and facts about U.S. Secretary of Commerce) U.S. Secretary of Commerce under  (The chief executive of a republic) President  (Elected Vice President in Roosevelt's 4th term; became 33rd President of the United States on Roosevelt's death in 1945 and was elected President in 1948; authorized the use of atomic bombs against Japan (1884-1972)) Harry Truman to replace  (Click link for more info and facts about Henry A. Wallace) Henry A. Wallace, a critic of Truman's foreign policies. Harriman served between 1946 and 1948. He was sent to Tehran in July 1951 to mediate between Persia and Britain in the wake of the Persian nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company

(http://www.bibliothecapersica.com/articles/v12f1/v12f1011.html).

He was a  (A member of the Democratic Party) Democrat, and served as the  (Click link for more info and facts about Governor of New York) Governor of New York from 1955-59. In the 1954 race to succeed Republican  (Click link for more info and facts about Thomas Dewey) Thomas Dewey for the governorship, Harriman defeated Dewey's protege,  (Click link for more info and facts about Irving M. Ives) Irving M. Ives. He served as governor for one term until  (Click link for more info and facts about Nelson Rockefeller) Nelson Rockefeller, who was a  (A tributary of the Kansas River that flows from eastern Colorado eastward through Nebraska and Kansas) Republican, defeated him in 1958. He was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1952 and 1956, was endorsed by  (Click link for more info and facts about Harry S. Truman) Harry S. Truman in 1956, but lost the fight to  (United States politician and diplomat (1900-1968)) Adlai Stevenson.

He was appointed Ambassador at Large in the  (A large airport on Long Island east of New York City) Kennedy administration, a position he held until November 1961. He was then appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. He remained in that position until April 1963, when he became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He continued in that position in the  (36th President of the United States; was elected Vice President and succeeded Kennedy when Kennedy was assassinated (1908-1973)) Lyndon Johnson administration, until March 1965 when he again became Ambassador at Large, a position he would hold for the remainder of Johnson's presidency. Harriman was the chief U.S. negotiator at the Paris peace talks on  (A communist state in Indochina on the South China Sea; achieved independence from France in 1945) Vietnam.

Harriman was initiated into the  (Click link for more info and facts about Skull and Bones Society) Skull and Bones Society, along with his friend  (Click link for more info and facts about Prescott Bush) Prescott Bush. He also served as a member of the  (Click link for more info and facts about Council on Foreign Relations) Council on Foreign Relations.

W.A. Harriman employed brother E.R. Harriman through a company gifted him by his father the railroad baron E.H. Harriman, W.A. Harriman & Co, where other notable employees were  (Click link for more info and facts about George Herbert Walker) George Herbert Walker, and  (Click link for more info and facts about Prescott Bush) Prescott Bush, who were likewise employed alongside E.R. Harriman, at  (Click link for more info and facts about Union Banking Corporation (UBC)) Union Banking Corporation (UBC), a company which was closed in 1943 by the U.S. Government for  (Click link for more info and facts about Trading with the Enemy) Trading with the Enemy.

SOURCE w/ LINKS galore...

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/w/w/w._averell_harriman.htm

Harriman appears to have taken things into his own, most capable hands in Vietnam, changing what JFK thought was a bloodless coup into the assassination of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest...

From The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph Trento:

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? (...) Kennedy immediately ordered William R. Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: "On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge, jr.’s own military assistant."

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate "with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy." By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running "Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

SOURCE:

“The Secret History of the CIA.” Joseph Trento. 2001, Prima Publishing. pp. 334-335.

More evidence: When John Kenneth Galbraith came up with a pull-out plan...

Papers reveal JFK efforts on Vietnam

By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe Staff
June 6, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Newly uncovered documents from both American and Polish archives show that President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union secretly sought ways to find a diplomatic settlement to the war in Vietnam, starting three years before the United States sent combat troops.

Kennedy, relying on his ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, planned to reach out to the North Vietnamese in April 1962 through a senior Indian diplomat, according to a secret State Department cable that was never dispatched.

SNIP…

A draft cable dated the same day instructed Galbraith to use Desai as a ''channel discreetly communicating to responsible leaders North Vietnamese regime . . . the president's position as he indicated it."

But a week later, Harriman met with Kennedy and apparently persuaded him to delay, according to other documents, and the overture was never revived.

SNIP…

At the urging of Nehru, Galbraith met with the Polish foreign minister, Adam Rapacki, in New Delhi on Jan. 21, 1963, where Galbraith expressed Kennedy's likely interest in a Polish proposal for a cease-fire and new elections in South Vietnam. There is no evidence of further discussions between the two diplomats. Rapacki returned to Warsaw a day later. Galbraith wrote in his memoirs that it was not followed up.

CONTINUED…

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/06/papers_reveal_jfk_efforts_on_vietnam/?page=1

[lonestarnot]

27. a bushitler is a bushitler is a bushitler and will never be anything else!

As always, thanks octafish!

[Octafish]

52. Remember "Covert Action Information Bulletin"? They pegged BFEE in '92.

Now hard-to-find, CAIB was an anti-Imperialistic screed co-founded by Phillip Agee, the rogue CIA guy who got tired of the treason perpetrated by the Agency's leadership. Prime beneficiaries of which are the Bushes, the family that "preys" together.



Writer Jack Colhoun's must-read goes on to talk about what was known in 1992. Gee. So much Bush family criminality, let alone treason, has gone down since then...

The Family That Preys Together -

the Bush Family

by Jack Colhoun
CovertAction Quarterly, 1992
excerpted from the book
Covert Action
edited by Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap

George Jr.'s BCCI Connection

"This is an incredible deal, unbelievable for this small company," analyst Charles Strain told Forbes magazine, describing the oil production sharing agreement the Harken Energy Corporation signed in January 1990 with Bahrain.

Under the terms of the deal, Harken was given the exclusive right to explore for gas and oil off the shores of the Gulf island nation. If gas or oil were found in waters near two of the world's largest gas and oil fields Harken wouldhave exclusive marketing and transportation rights for the energy resources. Truly an "incredible deal" for a company that had never drilled an offshore well.

Strain failed to point out, however, the one fact that puts the Harken deal in focus: George W. Bush, the eldest son of George and Barbara Bush of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., is a member of Harken's board of directors, a consultant and a stockholder in the Texas-based company. In light of this connection, the deal makes more sense.

The involvement of Junior - George Walker Bush's childhood nickname-with Harken is a walking conflict of interest. His relationship to President Bush, rather than any business acumen, made him a valuable asset for Harken, the Republican Party benefactors, Middle East oil sheikhs and covert operators who played a part in Harken's Bahrain deal. In fact Junior's track record as an oilman is pretty dismal. He began his career in Midland, Texas, in the mid-1970s when he founded Arbusto Energy, Inc. When oil prices dropped in the early 1980s, Arbusto fell upon hard times. Junior was only rescued from business failure when his company was

purchased by Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, a small oil firm owned by William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. As part of the September 1984 deal, Bush became Spectrum 7's president and was given a 13.6 percent share in the company's stock. Oil prices stayed low and within two years, Spectrum 7 was in trouble.

In the six months before Spectrum 7 was acquired by Harken in 1986, it had lost $400,000. In the buy out deal, George "Jr." and his partners were given more than $2 million worth of Harken stock for the 180-well operation. Made a director and hired as a "consultant" to Harken, Junior received another $600,000 of Harken stock and has been paid between $42,000 and $120,000 a year since 1986.


CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Bush_Family_Preys_Together.html

Article also available online here:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3352.htm

Most important: You're welcome, lonestarnot! Thanks for giving a damn and thanks also for caring about all of us.

[sintax]

29. kick n/t

[Octafish]

53. Thanks, sintax! Sorry so slow in replying...Network Problems...

Freaking Comcast is on the shorts for some reason. It takes five minutes to download what had taken about five seconds. Frustrating when we have so little time...

[oasis]

31. Kick

[Octafish]

54. Thanks, oasis! Remember ENRON?

You haven't forgotten, oasis. Much of America, I'm afraid, has. A helpful reminder comes from Mr. Corn. Odd how HE always seems to get credit for "breaking" big stories.

W.'s First Enron Connection:
Update on the Bush-Enron Oil Deal

by David Corn

Editor's note: Below is David Corn's article, posted on March 4, 2002, that first broke news of the Bush-Enron oil deal. An update follows.

Did George W. Bush once have a financial relationship with Enron? In 1986, according to a publicly available record, the two drilled for oil together--at a time when Bush was a not-too-successful oil man in Texas and his oil venture was in dire need of help. Bush's business association with Enron, it seems, has not previously been reported.

In 1986, Spectrum 7, a privately owned oil company chaired by Bush faced serious trouble. Two years earlier, Bush had merged his failing Bush Exploration Company (previously known as Arbusto--the Spanish word for shrub) with the profitable Spectrum 7, and he was named chief executive and director of the company. Bush was paid $75,000 a year and handed 1.1 million shares, according to "First Son," Bill Minutaglio's biography of Bush. Under this deal, Bush ended up owning about 15 percent of Spectrum 7. By the end of 1985, Spectrum's fortunes had reversed. With oil prices falling, the company was losing money and on the verge of collapse. To save the firm, Bush began negotiations to sell Spectrum 7 to Harken Energy, a large Dallas-based energy firm owned mostly by billionaire George Soros, Saudi businessman Abdullah Taha Baksh and the Harvard Management Corporation.

The deal took months to work out. In September of 1986, Spectrum 7 and Harken announced they had reached an agreement. Spectrum 7 shareholders, under the plan, would receive Harken stock. Bush publicly said that Spectrum 7 would continue to operate in Midland, Texas, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harken and that he would become an active member of Harken's board of directors. As Minutaglio noted, the deal would give Bush about $600,000 in Harken shares and $50,000 to $120,000 a year in consultant's fees. It also would provide $2.25 million in Harken stock for a company with a net value close to $1.8 million.

As the details of the Spectrum-Harken acquisition--which Bush badly needed--were being finalized, Enron Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of Enron Corporation, announced on October 16, 1986, that it had completed a well producing both oil and natural gas in Martin County, Texas. An Enron Oil and Gas press release reported the well was producing 24,000 cubic feet of natural gas and 411 barrels of oil per day in the Belspec Fusselman Field, 15 miles northeast of Midland. Enron held 52 percent interest in the well. According to the company's announcement, 10 percent belonged to Spectrum 7. At that point, Spectrum 7 was still Bush's company. Harken's completion of the Spectrum 7 acquisition was announced in early November.

To spell it out: George W. Bush and Enron Oil and Gas were in business together in 1986--when Ken Lay was head of Enron. (Lay was named Enron chairman in February of that year.) How did this deal come about? Was this the only project in which Bush and Enron were partners? A call placed to the White House produced no response. Karen Denne, an Enron spokeswoman, says "I can't tell you anything about" that project, explaining Enron "sold all its domestic exploration and production assets about two years ago to EOG Reources" and probably did not retain records regarding that well. As for the possibility Spectrum 7 invested in other Enron ventures, she notes, "You're referencing something that happened in 1986. I can check, but we're pretty short-staffed now." Elizabeth Ivers, a spokeswoman for EOG Resources (formerly Enron Oil and Gas), says, "If we did have any records on that well, it would be nothing that we would share with the public. We do not disclose the details or specifics of who we have well interests with."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0308-03.htm

Corn should give credit where credit is due. Jack Colhoun pegged these turds in Covert Action Information Bulletin. Others, like Barbara Trent and David MacMichael did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to exposing the Bush Crime Family's biggest business -- Treason.

[oasis]

66. Nope, can't forget Enron or Sen. Phil Gramm who slipped away quietly

and unnoticed by the corporate media. His wife, Wendy was on the Enron board of directors.

He announced that he wouldn't run for re-election a few months before the Enron scandal broke.

Made a clean get away with no media posse chasing him.

[oasis]

33. kick

[Octafish]

58. Madsen: Bushes and bin Ladens do Big Business together.

The BFEE and Saudi Roils arelikethis from waaaaay back.
Seems Fluor Corp gets in on the action,
as do Halliburton, ENRON
and the rest of the beasts...



Wayne Madsen reports:

SPECIAL REPORT -- U.S. BUSINESS AND BUSH FAMILY TIES TO OSAMA BIN LADEN REVEALED.

August 21, 2005 -- One of the top U.S. contractors in Iraq was also intimately involved in the Bin Laden global financial empire. The U.S. construction and engineering firm Fluor Corp. has raked in handsome profits from reconstruction contracts awarded by the Pentagon in Iraq. Fluor, which received the lucrative contracts because it was included by the Pentagon on an "invitation only" short list of eligible contractors, has contributed over $500,000 to Republican candidates since 2000. Kenneth Oscar, a Fluor Vice President, was the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement and was conveniently in charge of a $60 billion budget. One of Fluor's board members is retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a former deputy director of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) director.

What is not known about Fluor is its long standing ties to the Bin Laden family's worldwide financial interests. WMR has recently obtained the copy of a French intelligence report on the Saudi Investment Company Organization (SICO), an operation controlled by the Bin Ladens. The report reveals that Fluor was an integral part of the Bin Laden financial empire through a network of interlocking off-shore companies and directorships registered in such locations as Curacao, the Cayman Islands, London, the Netherlands, and Virginia.

SNIP...

There is a stinking air of treason and involvement with terrorism surrounding the Bush family. Additional European intelligence provided to WMR confirms that Osama bin Laden has been a major kingpin in drug shipments to Europe and North America since 1991, when he established a major drug smuggling network in Sudan and Saudi Arabia. When Bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996, he re-established the drug smuggling networks initially set up by the CIA during the Mujaheddin war against the Soviets. The drug baron who headed up the Afghan heroin supply network for Bin Laden was code named "Kandahar." The drug smuggling operations were based alongside Bin Laden's terrorist training and weapons of mass destruction procurement activities in Osama Bin Laden's "Arab enclave" located at Khalden in Paktia province. According to a French intelligence report marked "CONFIDENTIEL DEFENSE/USAGE STRICTEMENT NATIONAL" (Defense confidential, "French Eyes Only"), U.S. and British intelligence elements continued to control Osama Bin Laden and his Khalden-based terrorist corps as of 1995, fully two years after "Al Qaeda" was found to be involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and one year prior to the Khobar Tower bombings in Saudi Arabia, the point at which the late FBI counter-terrorism agent John O'Neill began linking Al Qaeda to the Saudi royal family and certain American "interests."



The Al Qaeda drug supply network remains in operation and continues to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Bin Laden's global operations. All during the rule of the Taliban, Afghan drug mules hauling heroin abroad received a standard request for assistance letter from Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed Taliban leader. Mullah Omar dispatched a number of envoys to Washington, DC to have talks with senior Bush administration officials prior to 911. They all carried the same assistance request letter. The Mullah Omar assistance request letter is below:



The Bin Laden drug network also intersects with Geneva-based financial entities established by George H. W. Bush while he was CIA director and Vice President and President of the United States. Bin Laden and Bush money are held in some of the same financial tranches in Switzerland, the Isle of Man, and the Bahamas (see following story). The Bush family off-shore money tranches originated with gold bars and jewels spirited out of the Philippines upon the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. The Marcos fortune was the price exacted by Vice President Bush for his being granted asylum in Hawaii. The gold bars were transported from the Philippines to the International Diamond Exchange Vaults near Rockefeller Center. A CIA proprietary firm called Oceaneering International of Houston procured barges to move some of the gold from secured warehouses to a specially-configured Boeing 747 which then flew the cargo to New York. Oceaneering sealifted the remaining gold to Oregon. After George W. Bush’s victory in 2000, the last of the gold and jewels stored in New York was moved to UBS Bank in Zurich. Marcos and Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi set about to create Five Star Trust in 1983 as a means to create a vehicle to use the Philippine wealth to create and funnel fungible assets abroad. In 1989, Five Star Trust was officially established in the Isle of Man by a Houston-based attorney who was a close friend of the Bush family.

WMR is now in possession of a UBS letter to the Swiss Federal Police, dated October 30, 2001, which was in response to an October 2, 2001 request by the police to look for Bin Laden family "terrorist funds" (Terroristengeldern).The UBS letter states that two terrorist-related financial activities were detected with regard to the movement by Osama Bin Laden of suspicious funds in 1990 and 1991. . On 20/08/90, there was a $450,000 transfer of funds into Osama Bin Laden's account. The deposit included "jewels." On 28/10/91, there was a $482,000 transfer of funds into Osama Bin Laden's account from the Saudi American Bank in Jeddah, the same bank Israeli intelligence directly tied into Saudi terrorist funding in the West Bank. (See "Intelligence Whispers").

CONTINUED...

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com

[oasis]

34. Kick to keep America informed.

[Octafish]

59. Bush - bin Laden Money Connection

A good overview from Wayne Madsen, courtesy of BushWatch.com:

The Bush-Bin Laden Money Connection

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.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bushwatch.com/bushmoney.htm

Well. There's a reason.

[Just Me]

36. They never did give a damn about democracy or improving Americans',...

,...lives. The have HATED the New Deal that helped grow a middle class, and fought to tear it down for decades. Why? Because the "American Dream" is a pain in the arse to these folks who are obsessed with their own greed and power.

[Octafish]

60. The New Feudalism

The Bushes and their sub-stooges are mere fronts for the world's big money. Most of them want to maintain their priviledged positions and are quite willing to make war, penure populations and destroy nations to do so.



Here's a great overview from the late Steve Kangas (found "suicided" in Richard Mellon "Arkansas Project" Scaife's</a> offices):

The Origins of the Overclass

By Steve Kangas

The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.

During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America’s wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent — the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.

How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation’s elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"

Another early elite was Allen Dulles, who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Dulles was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other mammoth trusts, corporations and cartels. He was also a board member of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, with offices in Wall Street, London, Zurich and Hamburg. His financial interests across the world would become a conflict of interest when he became head of the CIA. Like Donavan, he would recruit exclusively from society’s elite.

CONTINUED...

http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-overclass.html

The monied class tried to destroy the New Deal by overthrowing FDR and the U.S. Government. Thank goodness they picked as their figurehead a patriot, retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler.

DU's DEMOPEDIA does a bang up job on the details:

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Attempted_Coup_Against_Franklin_D._Roosevelt

[AuntPatsy]

45. Kick, it needs repeating over and over again, until all are aware.

[Octafish]

61. Thanks, AuntPatsy! Remember CARLYLE Group?

Our nation has been hijacked by global gangsters.

The facts showw they are eligible for prosecution under the Federal RICO statute.

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 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

SOURCE:

http://www.bushwatch.com/bushmoney.htm

Much appreciate your caring about what this means, AuntPatsy. Working together, we have a chance of beating this global Octopus.

[Karenina]

79. Poodle poised to join them?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4433269

[Swamp Rat]

48. The enemy is within.

[Octafish]

62. Baker Botts means Bush Business with Petrodollar-flush bin Ladens

Absolutely pegged them, Raticito! For all his service to the reptilian class, Baker doesn't somehow seem so shady as the Bushlers. Guess it shows you can't buy class.

Speaking of money...

The secret relationship of
George Bush, Big Oil and Osama bin Laden

NEW YORK TIMES PLAYING CATCH-UP
WITH TENNTIMES - the NEWS
MARCH 17, 2002

Today's Silk Road Might Carry Black Gold

The New York Times has finally mentioned the fact that Unocal (formerly Union 76) stands to make millions on a pipeline it has publicly said it has no connections to - 10 days after TennTimes - the News carried the worldwide exclusive.

If you were to tell the average American that George H. W. Bush (that's Bush the Elder) was in a business partnership with Osama bin Laden, they would probably look at you like you were crazy - or had been watching too many re-runs of "The X-Files."

At first, George the Bigger denied having any sort of relationship with the bin Laden clan, but when his spokeswoman was confronted in early 2000 with a note that the former president had sent to the bin Ladens, thanking them for their hospitality, he furiously began to backpedal. And this was long before that infamous September morning in New York.

Much later, when Melanie Warner was writing her article "The Big Guys WOrk for the Carlyle Group" for Fortune (March 18, 2002), she smugly thought any link between the two was strictly hogwash. In fact, she begins her article with the words:

"Are you the sort of person who believes in conspiracies--the Trilateral Commission secretly runs the world, that sort of thing? Well, then, here's a company for you. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.

"The firm also has about a dozen investors from Saudi Arabia, including, until recently, the bin Laden family. Yes, those bin Ladens. Is it any wonder that Internet sites with names like paranoiamagazine.com are rife with stories about Carlyle's shadowy, corrupt global network?"

SNIP...

Ten years ago, then-President George H. W. Bush launched that famous Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, claiming Hussein had launched a surprise attack on Kuwait. Once our own counter-invasion started, for some strange reason we got almost within sight of the walls of Baghdad - and stopped, leaving Saddam in power. It made General "Stormin'" Norman Schwartzkopf so angry he quit in disgust.

It wasn't until later that the world discovered Saddam had actually consulted with the United States' Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, complaining that Kuwait was stealing Iraqi oil by drilling in sideways from the Kuwaiti side of the border and tapping into the Iraqi oil reserves across the border.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tenntimes.org/SECTIONS/Big-Oil/bigoil-02.html

Small world, huh? And very, very bad.

[oasis]

50. kick

[Octafish]

63. Thanks for everything, oasis! A crazy monkey...

... can't run a country.

Mondo Washington

George Bush, Failed Corporate Crook
Nitwit Scion Turns Avenger

by James Ridgeway
July 10 - 16, 2002


Bush the blue-blood rails against the corporate practices that made him rich. Photo: Eric Draper

President George Bush says he's outraged at the scams that have sent big-name companies crashing, and he's not going to take it anymore. Feeding the polls, Bush tells the nation he wants new laws to bring criminal charges against dirty-dealing CEOs who fake company books and destroy not only the public's trust but its savings as well.

In common parlance, what these execs are doing is called fraud, and common knowledge says Bush already has the power to do something about it. Yet again, the president is ducking a tough issue in favor of a PR operation. The problem for Bush is how to seem to be attacking corporate scoundrels while keeping their campaign contributions coming. This is, after all, an election year, and the GOP badly wants to recapture control of the Senate and widen its margin in the House.

If Bush really wanted to address the situation, all he'd have to do is to pick up the phone, call Attorney General John Ashcroft, and ask him to launch an investigation of any one of these CEOs for fraud, conspiracy, theft, obstruction of justice, or perjury. The president could also turn to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can refer a civil case for criminal prosecution. Bush doesn't need additional legislation to do this. All he has to do is call. He refused to do that in the Enron case, even though his administration knew about the scandal months before the company went public with its bankruptcy. And he hasn't done it with any of the subsequent double-dealings.

Perhaps Bush's inaction stems from his own history of stumbling in the corporate back alleys. Last week, the media revived a case from the early '90s, where it looks like Bush was involved in insider trading with the stock of an oil company of which he was an official. He dumped the shares shortly before the firm tanked, then failed to report his activity to the Securities and Exchange Commission for months. The ensuing investigation, handled by an agency whose director was a Bush appointee and whose general counsel was Bush the younger's own former attorney, was dropped.

Though Bush has shown he can play the game, too, he's not quite ready for the majors. The big difference between him and a guy like Kenneth Lay is that Lay at least was successful. Before he left the world of commerce for a life in politics, Bush lost money time and again. "It was dreadful," one investor told The Wall Street Journal. "I think we got maybe 20 cents on the dollar," said another.



CONTINUED...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0228,ridgeway,36385,6.html

And to think 38-percent of the American people approve of this crook...

[LibertyorDeath]

64. kick

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Know_your_BFEE

Posts

* A Crime Line of Treason (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315)
* A Planet Full of Hitlers (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3648867)
* A Short History of “Conspiracy Theory” (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4086438&mesg_id=4086438)
* American Children Used in Radiation Experiments (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3312956)
* BFEE Busted! Masden reports Spooks Ratted Out Carlyle Group! (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3984069)
* BFEE Frightens DEM Leadership (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2720808)
* BFEE is more than capable of bombing their own countrymen (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=125&topic_id=46709)
* Bush Lied America into War (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3601654#3604685)
* Corrupt Craftsmen Hoover and Dulles (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3908104)
* Dead Men Tell No Tales (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3389867)
* Dope Dealers & Money Launderers (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3783153)
* Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2511192)
* George W Bush did "community service" at Project P.U.L.L. (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2956067)
* George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING! (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2404049)
* Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3832033)
* Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2788428)
* How Smirko Got Rich (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2529964)
* Merchants of Death (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3743890)
* Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to NUKE Vietnam (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3953519)
* Oliver North, Drug Dealer (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2396787)
* Pat Robertson Incorporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2397004)
* Poppy Bush Involved in JFK Assassination (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3274455)
* Poppy’s CIA Made Saddam Into the Butcher of Baghdad (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3853409)
* R. James Woolsey, Turd of War (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3699042)
* Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3355939)
* Sneering Dick Cheney, Superturd-Superrich-Supercrook (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3601654#3604685)
* The Barreling Bushes (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2472759)
* Vote Suppressor Supreme, the Turd Bill Rehnquist (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2414083)
* War Profiteers (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3493251)


External

* http://knowyourbfee.blogspot.com/
* http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

[Octafish]

69. Wow! Thank you, LibertyorDeath! CHINA Loves BFEE

Very much obliged and I really appreciate the work posting them represents.

Hey! Did you hear about Smirko and his overseas friends?

Why Beijing Bets on Bush?
By Ben Calmes

"I'm the one who committed the state of Texas to defend Taiwan."
— George W. Bush

CALIFORNIA, Oct. 31, 2004 —Is a vote for George W. Bush a vote for Beijing? Certainly when it comes to USA-China relations the Bush family and its supporters have close connections to the Beijing government. According to Secretary of State Colin Powell (a personal friend of George Bush Senior) relations between the USA and China are the strongest they've been in a generation.

Under W cooperation with China's military has increased, the trade deficit with China has swelled to well over 100 billion dollars, and the USA has softened its criticism of human rights in China. And for nearly a year W and Colin Powell have issued the strongest statements ever made by an American government against Taiwan independence.

SNIP...

Before W was even inaugurated both the outgoing and incoming Chinese ambassadors visited George Bush Senior in Texas. Colin Powell's first meeting was with the current Chinese ambassador, Yang Jiechi, a Bush family friend.

SNIP...

Intriguingly, W's uncle Prescott Bush flew to China immediately after the spy plane collision and remained in China until after the crew was released. Prescott Bush claims his visit with the USA ambassador in Beijing was merely social.

SNIP...

The close interaction between the Bush administration and China is in sharp contrast to the more hands-off policy under Clinton.

Yet the Republican party continues to play a "Taiwan Card" politically. At the Republican National Convention in New York City the Texas Republican Party approved a plank for the party platform that calls for the "recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign and independent country."

CONTINUED...

http://www.sinomania.com/CHINANEWS/manchurian_candidate.htm

And to think there are shills of the Mighty Whorelitzer who propagandize that is Clinton's fault the Chinese spies made off with America's secrets. They couldn't be more wrong:

Bush's SEC Choice Hyped 'Chinagate'

By Robert Parry
June 9, 2005

George W. Bush’s nominee to oversee Wall Street produced a congressional report in 1999 that laid the principal blame for China’s alleged theft of nuclear secrets on the Clinton administration when the primary rupture of secrets actually could be traced to the Reagan-Bush administration of the 1980s.

Last week, Bush picked the report’s author, Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates stock trading in the United States. Bush’s choice of Cox, a self-described “free market” advocate, is seen as a possible retreat from a period of aggressive SEC enforcement that followed scandals at Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and other major companies.

During his 16 years in Congress, Cox’s best-known investigation examined the politically sensitive issue of Chinese nuclear spying. In May 1999, Cox released an 872-page report in three glossy volumes accusing the Clinton administration of failing to protect the nation against China’s theft of top-secret nuclear designs and other sensitive data.

The Cox report dovetailed with allegations that a Chinese government front had funneled $30,000 in illegal “soft money” donations to the Democrats in 1996. Some conservative operatives even accused President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore of treason for supposedly trading nuclear secrets for campaign cash.

In 2000, George W. Bush’s campaign exploited these suspicions by running ads showing Gore meeting with saffron-robed monks at a Buddhist temple in California. Millions of Americans surely went to the polls thinking that Gore’s temple appearance and the Chinese nuclear spying were somehow linked.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/060805.html

Really appreciate what you did, LibertyorDeath!
And I thought I'd never see some of those again.



Infinite thanks, DU Friend!

[LibertyorDeath]

77. Thank You Octafish!

The info you post is consistently eye opening & thought
provoking.

The intricacies & interconnectedness of the Bush Family Evil Empire
to the power elite is made accessible by your posts & it is very
much appreciated.

:toast: Liberty

[beetbox]

65. Plenty of meat on these bones

The history of Western man has been a progressive peeling back of the psyche, as if the earliest agriculture may have addressed itself to extenuation of adolescent concerns while the most modern era seeks to evoke in society at large some of the fixations of early natality rationalized, symbolized, and disguised as need be. The individual growth curve, as described by Bruno Bettelheim, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and others, is a biological heritage of the deep past. It is everyman's tree of life, now pruned by civic gardeners as the outer branches and twigs become incompatible with the landscaped order. The reader may extend that metaphor as he wishes, but I shall move to an animal image to suggest that the only society more frightful than one run by children, as in Golding's Lord of the Flies, might be one run by childish adults. 
Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
– James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

[oasis]

67. Great post Beetbox, welcome to DU.

:hi:

[beetbox]

68. Thanks

I can sort of already tell where I fit in, not that I have ever been into 'fitting in'. I see this particular thread goes into great detail to explain the 'deep politics' that drive the power mongers and places it into context.

Electoral politics is a game of false differentiations to put up a show of participation and empowerment. It's not the Real Game which is below the skin.

Thanks again for your welcome and thanks to Octafish for his truth telling.
How many DUers will look at this kind of detail and consider it at length?

[Octafish]

71. Thanks for the great reminders, beetbox!

From the Tao:

Eight

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.

No fight: No blame.

Translated by Jane English and Gia Fu Feng.

Source:

http://www.daily-tao.com

A most hearty welcome to DU, beetbox!
Thanks for understanding.
Thanks for giving a damn.

[seemslikeadream]

70. Poppy Strikes Gold

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat—and formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system. Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997–2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation.

The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush–era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka!

Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.

Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.<1> There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bush—and a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.

I was curious: What does one do with a used president? Barrick vehemently denies that it appointed Bush "in order to procure him to make contact with other world leaders whom he knows, or who could be of considerable assistance" to the company. Yet, in September 1996, Bush wrote a letter to help convince Indonesian dictator Suharto to give Barrick a new, hot gold-mining concession.

more
http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=207

[Octafish]

72. Thanks, 'dreamie! BFEE also likes Financial Fraud. Remember AIG?

Thanks for bringing up Greg Palast's great work on the Barrick story. As always, you're ten steps ahead of me.



So, as a bonus for DU Readers, the following -- to demonstrate a few more "connections"...

Conspiracy: AIG, Enron, Kroll & Bush Family Fraud

by WAYNE MADSEN (WAYNEMADSENREPORT.COM)

Two criminal investigations based in New York are getting close to exposing a major Bush family and associates' international money laundering operation that has spanned more than a generation and has been used to illegally fund U.S. elections since the Nixon era.

According to CIA sources, most Bush family assets are tied up in offshore accounts that are masked from investigators through the use of pass through companies and secretive interlocking board directorships.

The investigations of the secret Bush money tranches are coming to the fore as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer focuses in on the scandal involving Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and the inflation of the worth of American Insurance Group (AIG) through shady affiliates, including AIG reinsurer Coral Re of Barbados.

SNIP...

AIG was founded from Asia Life/CV Starr, a Shanghai-based international import/export and insurance firm founded in 1919 by Cornelius V. Starr, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative in Southeast Asia during World War II.

AIG's largest shareholder is Starr International Company (SICO), an off-shore corporation incorporated in Panama with headquarters in Bermuda.

Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who prosecuted President Clinton, is the nephew of Cornelius Starr.

CONTINUED...

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=39&contentid=2336

[MetaTrope]

74. History of one Barrick gold mine

Ebola-Like Virus Kills 73 In Congo Gold Mine

An ebola-like virus festering in a Congolese gold mine has killed 73 people, health officials said Friday.

"There are dead rats, bats and even human bodies decomposing in these mines," Floribond Tshoko, an epidemiologist of the World Health Organization (WHO), told Reuters.

The 73 have died from hemorrhagic fever -- which causes massive internal bleeding -- believed to have been caused by the Marburg Virus.

...
The gold mines in Durba are jointly owned by the state Office des Mines de Kilomoto and the Canadian gold mining company Barrick Gold Corp.

Barrick pulled out of the operations in Durba when a war between Tutsi-led rebels and the government broke out in August 1998.

Ultimately, there were over 120 deaths from the epidemic, until recently the worst on record. Despite extensive investigation by expert teams from many countries, the source of the epidemic was never found.

As an interesting coincidence, the named suspect in the anthrax mailings, Steven Hatfill, was conducting bioweapons research on Marburg and Ebola at Fort Detrick from 1997 to 1999.

[seemslikeadream]

81. And then there's the miners that were buried alive

by Barrick, I had the link, still looking for it.


:hi:

[Mika]

76. "..the Bushes won’t lift a finger to help little poor Cuba.."

On the other hand, the Bushes won’t lift a finger to help little poor Cuba.."


WTF is that supposed to mean?

How on earth could Bush "help poor Cuba"?





Before the 1959 revolution (with "help" from the USA)

75% of rural dwellings were huts made from palm trees.

More than 50% had no toilets of any kind.

85% had no inside running water.

91% had no electricity.

There was only 1 doctor per 2,000 people in rural areas.

More than one-third of the rural population had intestinal parasites.

Only 4% of Cuban peasants ate meat regularly; only 1% ate fish, less than 2% eggs, 3% bread, 11% milk; none ate green vegetables.

The average annual income among peasants was $91 (1956), less than 1/3 of the national income per person.

45% of the rural population was illiterate; 44% had never attended a school.

25% of the labor force was chronically unemployed.

1 million people were illiterate ( in a population of about 5.5 million).

27% of urban children, not to speak of 61% of rural children, were not attending school.

Racial discrimination was widespread.

The public school system had deteriorated badly.

Corruption was endemic; anyone could be bought, from a Supreme Court judge to a cop.

Police brutality and torture were common.

___



After the 1959 revolution (with nothing but interference from the USA)

“It is in some sense almost an anti-model,” according to Eric Swanson, the programme manager for the Bank’s Development Data Group, which compiled the WDI, a tome of almost 400 pages covering scores of economic, social, and environmental indicators.

Indeed, Cuba is living proof in many ways that the Bank’s dictum that economic growth is a pre-condition for improving the lives of the poor is over-stated, if not, downright wrong.

-

It has reduced its infant mortality rate from 11 per 1,000 births in 1990 to seven in 1999, which places it firmly in the ranks of the western industrialised nations. It now stands at six, according to Jo Ritzen, the Bank’s Vice President for Development Policy, who visited Cuba privately several months ago to see for himself.

By comparison, the infant mortality rate for Argentina stood at 18 in 1999;

Chile’s was down to ten; and Costa Rica, at 12. For the entire Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole, the average was 30 in 1999.

Similarly, the mortality rate for children under the age of five in Cuba has fallen from 13 to eight per thousand over the decade. That figure is 50% lower than the rate in Chile, the Latin American country closest to Cuba’s achievement. For the region as a whole, the average was 38 in 1999.

“Six for every 1,000 in infant mortality - the same level as Spain - is just unbelievable,” according to Ritzen, a former education minister in the Netherlands. “You observe it, and so you see that Cuba has done exceedingly well in the human development area.”

Indeed, in Ritzen’s own field, the figures tell much the same story. Net primary enrolment for both girls and boys reached 100% in 1997, up from 92% in 1990. That was as high as most developed nations - higher even than the US rate and well above 80-90% rates achieved by the most advanced Latin American countries.

“Even in education performance, Cuba’s is very much in tune with the developed world, and much higher than schools in, say, Argentina, Brazil, or Chile.”

It is no wonder, in some ways. Public spending on education in Cuba amounts to about 6.7% of gross national income, twice the proportion in other Latin American and Caribbean countries and even Singapore.

There were 12 primary school pupils for every Cuban teacher in 1997, a ratio that ranked with Sweden, rather than any other developing country. The Latin American and East Asian average was twice as high at 25 to one.

The average youth (age 15-24) illiteracy rate in Latin America and the Caribbean stands at 7%. In Cuba, the rate is zero. In Latin America, where the average is 7%, only Uruguay approaches that achievement, with one percent youth illiteracy.

“Cuba managed to reduce illiteracy from 40% to zero within ten years,” said Ritzen. “If Cuba shows that it is possible, it shifts the burden of proof to those who say it’s not possible.”

Similarly, Cuba devoted 9.1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) during the 1990s to health care, roughly equivalent to Canada’s rate. Its ratio of 5.3 doctors per 1,000 people was the highest in the world.

The question that these statistics pose, of course, is whether the Cuban experience can be replicated. The answer given here is probably not.

“What does it, is the incredible dedication,” according to Wayne Smith, who was head of the US Interests Section in Havana in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has travelled to the island many times since.

No one can say with any credibility that universal education and universal health care is forced on Cubans. Castro didn't give it to them. They worked hard to create the infrastructure and systems that they felt were essential for any progressive system.

Cubans wanted universal health care for all Cubans, and they have it. They pushed for government that represented their ideals, and organized and formed infrastructure that enabled Cubans to create a fair and complete h-c system. Cubans wanted universal education for all Cubans, and they have it. They pushed for government that represented their ideals, organized and formed infrastructure that enabled Cubans to create a complete and world class ed system, and they have it. Cubans want to assist the world's poor with doctors and educators, instead of gun ship diplomacy.. and that is what they have done WITH their government, not at odds with their government.

Can Americans make this claim about their own country? I'm afraid not.


FYI, The Cuban government was reorganized (approved by popular vote) into a variant parliamentary system in 1976.

You can read a short version of the Cuban system here,
http://members.allstream.net/~dchris/CubaFAQDemocracy.html

Or a long and detailed version here,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0968508405/qid=1053879619/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-8821757-1670550?v=glance&s=books



I am so sick of hearing the reichwing crap about the US "helping" Cuba. How about Americans cleaning up their own garbage strewn back yard before "helping' others do so.


Viva Cuba!

[Octafish]

78. Gee. Don't get mad at me. The pendejo Bush is the one for sanctions.

Here's what I fucking meant: I don't like Castro. I do love los Cubanos.

Sorry if I didn't make it clear that what Bush is doing be enforcing sanctions only works to penure the people of Cuba.

Another thing I wanted to point out is the hypocrisy of doing business with Red China and not doing business with Cuba.

Most important: Thanks for all the information.

[Mika]

80. So were all Dem candidates except Dennis Kucinich

From the Miami Herald after Kerry's nomination
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8848574.htm

He said Friday, though, that he would lift only the ban on Cuba travel that is not ''pure tourism,''

Kerry still proposed maintaining a ban, just not as restrictive as Bush's.

Kerry said this,

Kerry said he would also lift the restriction on remittances to allow gifts to ''households and humanitarian institutions.'' Bush has restricted gifts to only ''immediate family members,'' but Kerry said the money can be a ''powerful tool'' to help Cubans on the island start small businesses ``and thereby gain a measure of autonomy.''

Then he said this...

`I think you want to begin a process that engages on a principled, measurable goal rather than just going to the Hemingway bar somewhere and spending some money.''

Does this make any sense? I thought that he wanted to encourage small businesses.. like the Hemmingway bars and such on the island. Tourism business is Cuba's #1 product, like the rest of the Caribbean.


Kerry policy on Cuba during his campaign:

Cuba would remain under US sanctions.

We would still be travel banned unless our travel is deemed worthy by US gov jackboots.

:crazy:


If Kerry really wanted to help Cubans in Cuba he would espouse the lifting of the unconstitutional US gov travel ban placed on American's travel to Cuba. Cuban small business would florish, and the American eyes would open up to the fact that Cuba isn't a gulag.

But.. Pandering to the Miamicuban intransigent exiles is a campaign cash cow for both parties.

charts from opensecrets.org




If you read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins then you would learn that anti Cuba-ism is not just a repuke trait.