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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:05 AM
Original message
The Bush Organized Crime Family
... A/K/A...

Bush, Inc.
The Bush Crime Syndicate.
The Bush Family Evil Empire.
The Secret Team.
The Shadow Government.
The Octopus.
The Zeroes with a Thousand Aliases.

Whatever name it uses, the BFEE operates to:

• Command the world's mightiest military for personal gain.
• Control the physical and intellectual property of the United States.
• Manipulate the American public through fear and intimidation.
• Penure the nation's middle class to the benefit of the wealthiest individuals and powerful corporations.
• Rob the mineral resources of the world's nations.
• Enslave the world's free peoples.
• Kill those who oppose them.
• Destroy the Constitution of the United States of America.

Anyone doubt me? Post why and prepare to be informed.

Those with me? Feel free to add and discuss.
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frank frankly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:08 AM
Response to Original message
1. correct you are
could you please add their heroin/cocaine traficking?

great post!
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:17 AM
Response to Reply #1
5. Of CURSE. That'd be OLLIE NORTH, when he was Poppy's nutty 007.
One of our own US Government's DEA country supervisors testified seeing cocaine loaded aboard North's Air Force planes. What memory hole did that disappear into? Anyone got that photo of Poppy smiling at Manny on the sofa ca. 1975? It's a beaut, sort of a preview of things to come.

OLLIE NORTH, SUPERFLY

This is Your Goverment On Drugs


Excerpted from Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes

by Jonathan Vankin

SNIP...

The CIA-contra-cocaine connection is a complicated conundrum. One of the biggest names in the business was Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama. To comprehend the government's role in cocaine traffic, Noriega is useful as a kind of focal point. He was on the payroll of the CIA at the same time he worked for the Medellin Cartel for four million dollars per month. The Medellin Cartel is the Colombian cocaine syndicate, responsible for most of the cocaine that enters the U.S.A. Noriega was also connected to George Bush, and through Bush to Oliver North. They used Noriega as a conduit for getting arms to the contras. Bush, North, and other government insiders at the CIA and the National Security Council (which under Reagan got heavily into covert operations) most likely knew about Noriega's involvement with drugs.

Revelations about Noriega, and about direct contra and CIA involvement with cocaine smuggling, found their way into the public record via a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by John Kerry. In 1986, Senator Kerry received information that the Costa Rican branch of a Miami-based shrimp company Ocean Hunter, widely regarded as a drug-running front, had received checks for more than $200,000 dollars from the U.S. government. The money was part of the "humanitarian aid" allocated for the contras by Congress.

Wondering why the cash was channeled to this shrimp-and-dope outfit, Kerry went to the FBI asking for an inquiry. Instead, the FBI investigated Kerry himself. According to FBI reports, North asked the FBI to investigate Kerry, to find links between the Massachusetts senator and th Nicaraguan Sandinista government. The investigation was reportedly initiated by a crack FBI counterintelligence group usually employed to track foreign agents in the United States. To North's distress, the agents did not find evidence to follow through with a full-scale investigation.

North may have had reason to worry. The Drug Enforcement Administration had knowledge in the fall of 1986 that the flight crews making clandestine arm deliveries to the contras were flying cocaine into the U.S. on thei. return trips. When DEA agents confronted one of the pilots, he told them he had White House protection. He dropped North' name. The agents didn't pursue the North connection, dismissing the pilot's statement as "a bluff." Accounts of secret testimony before Kerry's committee revealed that Felix Rodriguez, CIA agent and friend of George Bush, arranged a 10-million dollar donation to the contras direct from the Medellin cartel. The cartel's chief accountant and money launderer (at least until he was arrested), Ramon Milian Rodriguez, testifiedto the donation. Milian Rodriguez is said to have conveye~ $180, 000 in campaign contributions from the cartel to Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign, and was invited to Reagan's inauguration as a gesture of thanks from the grateful candidate.

CONTINUED TREASON...

http://www.conspire.com/drugscia2.html
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Aunt Eunice Donating Member (55 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 03:02 PM
Response to Reply #1
82. Didn't the Bushs have something to do with..
..the Waco, David Koresh, tragedy?

I seem to recall that three former Clinton bodyguards were the first to die. Surely the Bush family was behind that.

Seems like I heard that some Repug General provided the tanks also, in violation of the Posse Comitatus act.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 07:11 PM
Response to Reply #82
86. The Little Turd from Crawford hails from that part of Texas...
...You may know the story about the village missing its idiot? That Bush. His dad appointed Louis Freeh to head the FBI, which obviously does such a bang-up job of stopping criminals like what I'm talking about...

Chapter -XVIII- Iran- Contra

``What pleases the prince has the force of law.''
--Roman law

``As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally.''
-- Gestapo officer 1

We cannot provide here a complete overview of the Iran-Contra affair. We shall attempt, rather, to give an account of George Bush's decisive, central role in those events, which occurred during his vice-presidency and spilled over into his presidency. The principal elements of scandal in Iran-Contra may be reduced to the following points:


1) the secret arming of the Khomeini regime in Iran by the U.S. government, during an official U.S.-decreed arms embargo against Iran, while the U.S. publicly denounced the recipients of its secret deliveries as terrorists and kidnappers--a policy initiated under the Jimmy Carter presidency and accelerated by the Reagan-Bush administration;

2) the Reagan-Bush administration's secret arming of its `` Contras '' for war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, while such aid was explicitly prohibited under U.S. law;

3) the use of communist and terrorist enemies--often armed directly by the Anglo-Americans--to justify a police state and covert, oligarchical rule at home;

4) paying for and protecting the gun-running projects with drug- smuggling, embezzlement, theft by diversion from authorized U.S. programs, and the `` silencing '' of both opponents and knowledgeable participants in the schemes; and

5) the continual, routine perjury and deception of the public by government officials pretending to have no knowledge of these activities; and the routine acquiescence in that deception by Congressmen too frightened to oppose it.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tarpley.net/bush18.htm

BTW: Welcome to Du, Aunt Eunice! Any relation to the Hinckleys of Houston?
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newyawker99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Dec-14-03 06:52 AM
Response to Reply #82
120. Hi Aunt Eunice!!
Welcome to DU!! :toast:
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XanaDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:09 AM
Response to Original message
2. Didn't a Bushie
have some Nazi connection as well?
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Cleita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:14 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. Try this link.
Edited on Thu Dec-11-03 12:15 AM by Cleita
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:41 AM
Response to Reply #4
11. The nation's oldest newspaper.
They know what our nation is all about.

They know what freedom is all about.

They know what truth is all about.

They also know a NAZI when they see one.

The brave reporter who wrote those, I believe, is now running for President as a Republican. This shows there really are many good Republicans left in America who put their nation ahead of their numbered Swiss bank account.
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BlueEyedSon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:34 AM
Response to Reply #4
34. Quite an under-reported story (another link)
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 11:52 AM
Response to Reply #34
40. Hey, BlueEyedSon! Yeh, they scrub GOOGLE 24/7.
They're despicable. But they can't silence everybody.

From your link to Guerilla News (em-FASS-shists in original):

EXCERPT...

George Herbert (Bert) Walker’s relationship with Averell Harriman went back to 1919, reported Buchanan, when both went to Paris to set up “the German branch of their banking and investment operations, which were largely based on critical war resources such as steel and coal.” Other corporate entities, all with ties to similar German interests, were then created by UBC, which had Prescott Bush on its board – most notably, the Hamburg-American Line, the Holland-American Trading Corporation, and the Seamless Steel Corporation. On October 12, 1920, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat headlined “Ex-St. Louisan Forms Giant Ship Merger,” explaining that Bert Walker was the “moving power” behind the “merger of two big financial houses in New York, which will place practically unlimited capital at the disposal of the new American-German shipping combine.” In the summer and fall of 1942, Congress, under the authority of the Trading With the Enemy Act, seized the first group of entities, the UBC, the Holland-American Trading Corporation, and the Hamburg-American Line. Buchanan’s diligence has discovered that the latter “reportedly smuggled Nazi spies into the U.S. before the war and encouraged U.S. ‘Patriots’ to travel to Germany and proselytize for Hitler in the early 1930s.”

Much of this is confirmed by the new documentation. The UBC was not a “bank” at all but “in reality a clearing house” for many assets and enterprises held by Fritz Thyssen, a German steel magnate who has written about his role in helping to finance the Third Reich. Located close to Bush’s 59 Wall Street office, it was “founded in 1924 by W. Averell Harriman on behalf of Thyssen and his Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N. V. of Holland.” The UBC was seized by the United States under Vesting Order 248 on October 20, 1942, and, according to Buchanan, Bush and Harriman later received $1.5 million in compensation. Similar vesting orders leading to the divestiture of “enemy national” assets continued until well after the war. (A total of ten such vesting orders that indicate the firm’s investments are in the files in my possession.) Other holdings, associated with Bush, are more problematical, such as the relationship with the Silesian Holding Corporation and Consolidated Silesian Steel, which was bought from Thyssen in 1931.

In 1943, after press reports that the Polish mining interest was employing forced labor by using prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp, we are informed that “Prescott Bush distanced himself from UBC and had even engaged in the collection of funds for the victims of the war in his role as president of the National War Fund.” He had, in fact, taken over as head of the United Service Organizations soon after Pearl Harbor, raising “millions for the National War Fund,” according to Mickey Herskowitz, Prescott’s recent biographer.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guerrillanews.com/corporate_crime/doc3469.html
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Cleita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:23 PM
Response to Reply #40
43. bump
:kick:
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tom_paine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-15-03 05:10 PM
Response to Reply #40
127. I noticed the scrubbing, too. Try finding a bio of Roger Ailes...
Can't allow such information to be readily accessible to the Imperial Subjects. They might get the idea that Mr. Ailes isn't "fehrunbalinst" (it sounds so much more appropriate with a German accent...)
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lfairban Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 11:30 PM
Response to Reply #34
68. Google Web does much better on this than Google News.
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lfairban Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 09:30 PM
Response to Reply #4
65. More, please tell us more.
I think the first I heard of it was from Webster G. Tarpley:
http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm

The Page Info says it was last modified on Saturday, August 26, 2000. I read it during the Bush II campaign, but the book was written to try to prevent the re-election of Bush I in 1992. This story has been out a while.

I have been collecting links on the Bush/Nazi subject:
http://home.columbus.rr.com/lfairban/Pages/History.htm
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:39 PM
Response to Reply #65
66. You want NAZIs? BFEE has got NAZIs. Have they got NAZIs?
They got NAZIs. Lots and lots of NAZIs.

Check out bobthedrummer's excellent post and thread:

"It's time for another Bush/Nazis thread

Drummer Bob started things off by posting:

Know the enemy, and never forget.

http://falloutshelternews.com/BushHitlerLinks.html

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/waryearsp5.html

Then Bob asked:

Please add to this thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=199853

PS: Great archive you've got there, lfairban! Most informative. And Bob linked to you on Post #29.
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lfairban Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 11:06 PM
Response to Reply #66
67. Thank you for the vote of confidence.
I just wish that Bob had linked to the right page.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:37 AM
Response to Reply #2
10. From waaay back, LibertyChick! "Bush-NAZI Connections"
We could go to John-Loftus.com or ConsortiumNews.com for a lot of the best information available on the subject and should. However, this prescient article details how Bushler's NAZI connections crept into 9-11 America...

Bush-Nazi Connections

Revelations Of Foreknowledge: Beware The Cornered Rat


By Joseph P. Diaferia
June 21, 2002. Posted On Ottawa Indymedia… http://ottawa.indymedia.org/2002/06/117.shtml


In the period of national mourning following the September 11 attacks, public suggestion of U.S. government negligence or complicity in the attacks would have been an apostasy to most Americans. The blind trust and faith in the American “leadership” was such that only a resident of the Vatican might be attributed the degree of inerrancy that Mr. Bush has enjoyed.

However, to many progressive critics of U.S. policy there seemed a frightening inevitability to recent revelations that the Bush administration had foreknowledge of the worst disaster in U.S. history. What made such a prospect frightening? A man who seized the presidency via voter suppression and fraud, who as governor of Texas executed more people than any other governor in U.S. history, who once quipped: “it would be a lot easier if I were dictator”, and whose grandparents were major benefactors of Hitler’s Third Reich, would soon have to resort to desperate damage control and subterfuge to conceal his own criminal negligence—or quite possibly, an act of treason.

The inauguration of the “war on terrorism” has brought many ominous statements from highly placed government officials including presidential spokesman Ari Fleisher, who warned that journalists “had better watch what they say and what they write”. Roughly, a month after the attacks, in a public statement the president himself warned against “outrageous” conspiracy theories. Would such warnings have been necessary from an administration that had nothing to hide? When Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle proposed an inquiry into the massive failure of U.S. military intelligence on the morning September 11, 2001, the vice-president responded with the absurdity that such an endeavor would siphon energy and resources from the war, thereby aiding the enemy. Manystatements from administration officials should have evoked some suspicion among Americans of a cover-up of some form. The sudden intensive reportage among corporate media that began in early May, should not have been the only means through which the public would begin to suspect U.S. government mendacity. Nevertheless, it is helpful that members of Congress and some mainstream media have finally begun to raise serious questions about the secretive nature of government activity in the weeks prior to the attacks.

While the vindication of analyses made by certain dissident critics may provide a respite from scornful accusations of conspiracy paranoia, one takes little solace in having to speculate as to what such an exposé in mainstream journalism might bring. The USA Patriot Act, as codified law, is intended merely to provide a veneer of legislative inclusion and oversight. For the Bush administration’s purposes, the repressive provisions of the Act could have been effectuated more easily by executive ukase. Under Article I, Section IX of the U.S. Constitution, the president may suspend the writ of habeas corpus—intended to protect Americans from arbitrary arrest—and declare martial law. No congressional ratification is necessary for such an undertaking (Most surprising to this writer is that there was no immediate constitutional revocation on the day of the attack. Perhaps the president’s comical state hopping expedition aboard Air Force One is something to be thankful for!). Indeed there was such a plan devised during the Reagan Administration. Code-named Rex Alpha 84, the National Security Council developed a plan to suspend the American Constitution in the event of a “national emergency” which would have allowed the president of the United States to rule by decree. In this instance, the “national emergency” would likely have been a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua and the public protests that were sure to follow.

CONTINUED …

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0206/S00131.htm



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Must_B_Free Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:13 AM
Response to Original message
3. you know, though
Edited on Thu Dec-11-03 12:21 AM by Must_B_Free
what REALLY makes you wonder about the veracity of the entire thing is when even Poppy starts knocking Jr's tragic mistakes.

If Poppy is the big boogey man at the center of it all, then how come he appears to not have control of Jr. to keep him from these disasters he has created?

And then he has to come back and say - I don;t agree with that... Essentially an embarassment.

Maybe he wants to distance himself from the whole thing and let Jr do Hague.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:23 AM
Response to Reply #3
8. Good point, Must_B_Free! The thing is the BFEE are ALL stooges...
... for the nation's wealthy elite. In doing their job of protecting the interests of these slugs, the Bush family becomes richer themselves. Really, can you imagine Cheney taking orders from the Little Turd from Crawford? "Ain't gonna happen."

And true: While Poppy is no saint, the same can be said about his male relations.

THE FAMILY THAT PREYS TOGETHER

By Jack Calhoun
Covert Action Information Bulletin (Covert Action Quarterly)

GEORGE JR.'S BCCI CONNECTION "This is an incredible deal, unbelievable for this small company," energy 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 would have 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 Bush, Jr., the eldest son of George and Barbara Bush of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, 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.

CONTINUED "MA-FEE-ANCE"...

http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html
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dajabr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:19 AM
Response to Original message
6. I'm with ya! I'll just add this...
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:48 AM
Response to Reply #6
13. That is one great Scorecard of Evil, dajabr!
I've admired that website since first viddy. It's one of those things I wished I had invented. But, hey, that's what the Internet is for, isn't it? Spreading the Truth about these evil GOP bastards!

http://www.evilgopbastards.com/

And the links there? It's like a haven...
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ironflange Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:21 AM
Response to Original message
7. You forgot to mention. . .
. . .they tend to marry fat-assed women with really really weak fashion sense.



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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:45 AM
Response to Reply #7
12. That's a dead give-away. Didja hear 'bout the "Other Jennifer?"
WHY THE BUSHES WILL NEVER HIRE LINDA TRIPP

If you’re hoping that President George W. Bush will hire Linda Tripp and bring her back to the White House, don’t hold your breath.

You do not understand the fundamental nature of the Bushes.

Nor do you – or Matt Drudge, Tripp’s biggest booster in the media – want to recall the first time Tripp, the now-infamous whistle-blower, burst on the national scene.

Back in the first Bush presidency Linda Tripp was stationed down the hall from the Oval Office. She somehow caught wind on a long known but well-kept Washington secret: President George Bush had a "special" relationship with a staffer named Jennifer Fitzgerald.

CONTINUED...

http://www.srmaxclass.org/JenniferFitzgerald_Bush.htm
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Blade Donating Member (624 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:32 AM
Response to Original message
9. I totally agree.
No need for doubt.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:04 AM
Response to Reply #9
16. Be careful who you tell it to, DU Friend Blade! Ashcroft is on the loose.
These BFEE bed-wetting bastids definitely are not trigger-happy folk. People kill themselves all the time, but I don't think these would. Their problem was they knew too much and trusted someone they shouldn't have trusted...


Remember Danny Casolaro? The self-taught investigative journalist looked into Inslaw/PROMIS and uncovered "The Octopus," a conspiracy so vast that it stretched from 22 Nov 1963 through the Reagan White House. A suicide.

http://www.cjr.org/archives.asp?url=/91/6/octopus.asp


Abbie Hoffman? The 60s icon developed as a decent wordsmith and wrote about the "October Surprise" for Playboy. A suicide.

http://www.sumeria.net/politics/oct-sur.html


Jim Hatfield? The ex-con and associate of Karl Rove wrote "Fortunate Son" about Smirk, the drunken coke-whore. A suicide.

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


Steve Kangas? He wrote about the BFEE and the great American tightwad Richard Mellon Scaife. A suicide.

http://msnoh.tripod.com/kang.html

PS: Don't mean to sound like Mr. Doom and Gloom. Just want to remind people of just a few of those who've gone on record regarding the business of the BFEE.


PPS: Here's where one can get the official count:

http://www.bushbodycount.com/
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interupt Donating Member (164 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:03 AM
Response to Original message
14. Someone posted GWs Resume on an Aussie political site
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:34 AM
Response to Reply #14
21. The Little Turd from Crawford can boast some accomplishments.
Bushler's CV tells it all. And the sad part is, it's all true — much to my great shame. To show the turd doesn't fall far from the elephant, here's a link to Poppy's Big Story.

http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm

BTW: I don't know if you're in Oz, interupt, but Australia has been one of my favorite nations in the world for as long as I can remember. It's not just Ayers Rock or the New SOH, it's a great place with great people, some of whom have lived there for 50,000 years and others just a few days. So this is meant with all DU respect, I'd like to apply to the adjunct faculty of the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaroo.

"Australia! Australia! Australia!
"I love you!
"Amen.
"Sit down. Crack tubes!"



Bruce's philosophers song

lyrics by monty python


Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy begger
Who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume,
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say could stick it away,
Half a crate of whiskey everyday.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René DesCartes was a drunken fart
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.

PS: Sorry if I used this as an opportunity for a bit of levity. Tarpley and Chaitkin's book has a way of creating some societal tension in today's America. These bastids are easier to fight with a bit of levity.
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newyawker99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 07:41 AM
Response to Reply #14
23. Hi interupt!!
Welcome to DU!! :toast:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:36 PM
Response to Reply #23
45. Hi, newyawker99! Thanks for helping ink the Octopus!
How many posts you up to? Gotta be about 120,000, counting DU1.

Two things run through them all: 1. Your kindness to newbie and old-timers alike! 2. Your steadfastness opposition to the BFEE. Thank YOU!

I'm sure you know this, but this might be news to new DUers...

UNTANGLING THE OCTOPUS

by Steve Mizrach

October Surprise, Iran-Contra, Noriega, Iraqgate, and BCCI

Before he died in an ineptly performed 'suicide,' the young journalist Danny Casolaro was working on a book that he claimed tied together many of the 'gates' and 'miniscandals' surrounding the Bush presidency. The book identified the web which tied all the scandals together as the "Octopus," a mythical creature with tentacles stretching everywhere. Perhaps the birth of the Octopus lies in the 1980 Presidential election; and its growth occurred under the eight years of the Reagan presidency. Casolaro soon found that the Octopus may have consisted of a 'shadow government' apparatus that went back even further than Bush and Reagan. But what's left of his notes seem primarily to focus on events in the 80s and 90s.

It is very possible that in 1980, Bill Casey and other members of the Reagan team may have conspired with the Iranians to delay the release of the American hostages: they were afraid of an "October Surprise" which might damage Reagan's chances of defeating Carter. Sure enough, the hostages were released right as Reagan was being inaugurated, and in 1981, the first shipment of arms to Iran began. Gunther Rossbacher, an ex-Navy pilot, and two other foreign sources, insist that on October 21st and 22nd, Bush met with Iranian delegates in Paris. The "October Surprise" may have been how Bush and other Reagan team members located the Iranian 'moderates' that played a role in the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1984, the Boland amendment forbade any more military assistance to the Contras. So, in 1985, the underground "Enterprise" - Operation Yellowfruit - began selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to furnish weapons to the Contras. George Bush claims Iran-Contra has nothing to do with him, but other administration figures' records show he was at the secret meetings - Poindexter, in particular. Amiram Nir, an Israeli terrorism expert, insists he discussed Iranian arms deals with Bush, but that can't be confirmed... he died in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico in 1988.

It turns out the Iran-Contra scandal may have been part of a larger arms-for-hostages deal. The Iranians needed weapons in their war against Iraq, and the Reagan administration felt that the Iranians might have been able to convince the Shiite terrorists in Lebanon to release the American hostages held there. Reagan claimed no "quid pro quo," but then he also claimed he really didn't remember much, either. In any case, additional hostages were seized after the 'non-deal', and many may remain in captivity today, including the Lebanon CIA station head. One man who may have known a great deal about the Iran-Contra business was Manuel Noriega, whose name came up in the 1988 Dukakis-Bush debates. Noriega knew about the Contra drug pipeline, because he was a pusher, himself, while on the CIA payroll throughout the 1980s, and during his trial in Miami in 1989, some testimony emerged which suggested he knew something about the Central American end of the Iran-Contra affair and where some on the missing money may have 'disappeared' into.

On the Middle Eastern end, another man who was a delighted beneficiary of American generosity throughout the 1980s was Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The Agriculture Department and other agencies gave Saddam agricultural credits worth millions of dollars which he used to purchase American attack helicopters, chemical weapons for using on the Kurds, and the components of a nuclear weapons program. It is suspected that the CIA and Justice Department overlooked, or aided, the Banco Nazionale Lavoro (BNL) of Italy while it funneled billions in military aid to Iraq. This recently burgeoning scandal, "Iraqgate," suggests we were playing both sides against the middle during the Iran-Iraq war. We were selling arms to both the Iranians and the Iraqis, and the CIA at various points double-crossed both sides. It is no wonder that America is so distrusted in that part of the world. In any case, there were two men that knew too much, and when Bush became president, he had to clean them up, and he would wage two "cleanup wars" to do it.

CONTINUED TREASON...

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/octopus.html
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 02:11 PM
Response to Reply #45
50. The trial starts in January
Edited on Thu Dec-11-03 02:19 PM by seemslikeadream
unless georgie and the Queen made some plans to stop it.

War is Golden for the Bush Administration

The opening of a long-delayed civil suit in a London courtroom; a brief, buried article on a judical nomination; a fluctuation in the commodities market: three mundane, seemingly-unrelated items in the news last week that combined to give a fleeting glimpse of the ugly relity behind the frantic, diversionary facade of the "civilized world."
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 05:43 PM
Response to Reply #50
55. I'm looking forward to it!
As are everyone interested in seeing the BFEE brought to Justice. First comes discovery, then comes knowledge, then come the indictments. While it is a civil trial, if memory serves, there is the possibility it will open many doors the Poodle and Bushler prefer remain shut. Our resident expert is emad aisats ana, a UK journo big on the subject BFEE.

Ah, it's so nice to look ahead on occassion... After the trial and conviction, come Smirk, Sneer and the rest of their henchmen in stylish prison jumpsuit orange. In that they can work for the first time in their lives in the prison laundrey, or making license plates, or busting small rocks out of big rocks.

Remember these nice threads on the subject from DU1? WARNING: The first is a mighty file, filled to the brim with BFEE hooliganism...

"Spies hide as Bank Faces BCCI Charges"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=11956&forum=DCForumID61&archive=yes

"BCCI redux? bank failure in CA"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=35668&forum=DCForumID60&archive=

Nice stuff, chock full o' info and links BFEE.
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newyawker99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Dec-14-03 06:55 AM
Response to Reply #45
121. Hi Octafish!
We carried over our post totals from DU1 to DU2. I don't know how high the counter goes. This might be a good question for Ask The Administrators. Only they know the secret.

:-)
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frank frankly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:04 AM
Response to Original message
15. back to the top with ya
keep this going
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 11:38 AM
Response to Reply #15
37. Much obliged, Frank! Remember Bush wanting to "hang" MLK?
Living next door to Motown, I know Rosa Parks is a saint.

Not all the Bushes feel the same way. A BuzzFlash reader reminds us to take the Pretzeldunce, please...

EXCERPT...

Further, why not remind people of what Bushitler said to Mrs. Coretta Scott King while accepting a portrait of MLK Jr.:

"Mrs. King, thanks for this beautiful portrait..." (Pause for effect) "I can't wait to hang it." (Bush grins like a Cheshire and gets an audible laugh.)

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/MLKDay.htm>

Please don't waste these golden opportunities.

A BuzzFlash Reader

SOURCE:

http://www.buzzflash.com/mailbag/2002/12/18.html
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cliss Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:06 AM
Response to Original message
17. Wow, Octafish. You hit pay dirt tonight.
All these awesome posts. I gotta read 'em all.

Ever since I ended up here at the DU, I've found out what a truly corrupt and evil family the Bush family really is.

I'm quite interested in the kids, though. I'm planning to do a study on how having massively corrupt parents makes the kids go bonkers.

I'll show their substance abuse (drugs & alcohol), documented criminal history and so on. Now, from what I understand George & Barbara Bush have 4 sons. I'm going to focus on those kids, and possibly check other relatives. Should be very interesting, and I'll post it as soon as I have something juicy.

GREAT CLAN we have there.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:17 AM
Response to Reply #17
18. Thanks, cliss! DU needed a reminder of what this is all about...
... defeating the BFEE. And I don't care how we do it. We must defeat this monster. The Bush boys seem to specialize in the "bust out," where they muscle into a company or operation, strip it of all assets that can be converted to cash, rip off all the shareholders in the process, and leave others holding the bag. Today they are doing this on a global scale. Not even Ian Fleming could imagine such an evolved criminal empire. But, once, they were young...

Whitewashing the Bush boys

By Stephen Pizzo
March/April 1994 Issue

If Robert Fiske finds that Bill and Hillary have committed crimes in the so-called Whitewater-gate matter, they should pay the price. But according to our Special Prosecute-o-Meter (to come), it would seem that the Clintons' behavior is being measured differently from alleged banking misdeeds by the Bush family--Neil (Silverado Savings), $1 billion; Jeb (Broward Savings), $221.8 million; and George (BNL-Iraqgate), $5 billion. All proved a good deal more costly than the up-to-$50 million involved in the Madison Savings-Whitewater mess.

But while the national media--and specifically the New York Times--has focused its high-caliber lens on the Clintons, they apparently have forgiven and forgotten the Bushes' banking practices.

SNIP...

Had Dowd done her background work she would have found no shortage of decidedly unwacky Bush stories. Among others: a 1987 front-page article in the Wall Street Journal chronicling how Jeb helped a Cuban con man bilk Medicare out of millions of dollars; MoJo's Sept./Oct. 1992 cover story ("My Three Sons") on the Bush sons' long list of dubious business transactions (including George Jr.'s alleged violation of security laws governing insider stock sales when he sold his shares of Harken Oil on the eve of the Gulf War); and a recent New Yorker article detailing sleazy activities by Neil and number-four son Marvin Bush. The Times even ran an April 1992 story listing some of the Bushes' questionable deals (perhaps all motivated by the "Bush creed of competition" that Dowd notes approvingly).

SNIP...

But there may be a silver lining: If our meter is used as a gauge, then Gonzalez's demand for a special prosecutor in the BNL-Iraqgate affair should get serious consideration. Republicans ought to meditate on the old adage, "Beware what you wish for. You may just get it."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/1994/03/pizzo.html
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BringEmOn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:25 AM
Response to Original message
19. The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
Bush Crime Family
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:48 AM
Response to Reply #19
22. ROFLMAO... Quick someone call 9-1-1. Er, oops.
These aren't just the folks to call. They're the ones to indict.

May we see the day when we can call on them in Leavenworth. There're so many, we may need to federalize Manhattan, like Snake Plissken in the "Escape from New York" film series.



Certainly, Donald Pleasance was a better President than what we've got.




Thank you for the wonderful images. I busted a gut laughing. Can I buy a poster? The Cowardly Smirk is perfect. Sneer for the Heartless Tinpot Despot.
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:27 AM
Response to Original message
20. the nexus of the arms and drugs trade/money laundering/black ops:
Edited on Thu Dec-11-03 01:28 AM by Minstrel Boy
that's where you find the Bush family.

It's tragically comic how often the Bush name reappears in the annals of American scandal.

GHWB's disarming awkwardness masked a ruthless bastard and a multitude of sins: The Bay of Pigs, assassinations, Chile, Watergate, October Surprise, Iran/Contra/crack cocaine and the protection of favoured drug cartels, S&L money laundering and massive failures (windfalls, really, for the likes of Neal and Jeb), the Bank of Lavoro, the P-2 Lodge connection, BCCI, Inslaw and Wackenhut's crimes on the Carbazon reservation, the Franklin scandal and the White House call boy ring of Craig Spence.... No tinfoil required here, thank you. There's plenty to document it all, and more. It sickens me just to type.

As though one Bush wasn't bad enough. And don't kid yourself: Jeb's in the on-deck circle.

For any who dare look, the criminality of this family is out of the closet. Myself, I don't see it as the head of the Octopus; rather, as its most faithful and richly rewarded servant. But whatever you call the Bush family, they mean the ruin of America.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 09:15 AM
Response to Reply #20
27. Excellent summation and analysis of the BFEE.
With your permission, your words should be cut and clipped and carried for distribution to all who do not know or understand the criminality of the Octopus. The bosses, henchmen and stooges of the BFEE pile up criminal conspiracies so fast, the mind reels. Even in the age of computers, it's hard to input data as fast as they break the law, meaning the records are hard to keep straight.

As you observed, the Bushes are not the animal's brain — They are but servants to power. Once I liked to describe the BFEE as mere stooges for a Secret Fascistic and Satanic Ruling Elite. Those familiar with the death of Spence and his young son know they may be much, much worse. Airliners hijacked in the "non-traditional sense" and used as WMDs comes to mind...

For those who may not know: Jebthro seems to be the one smart enough to be trusted with the Bay of Pigs Thing division. Here's a decent overview of whom John E Bush likes to associate with:

The Bush Dynasty and the Cuban Criminals
New book reveals links of two presidents and the governor of Florida with exiled hardliners


by Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Published on Monday, December 2, 2002 by the Guardian/UK
 
The brother of President George Bush, the Florida governor, Jeb Bush, has been instrumental in securing the release from prison of militant Cuban exiles convicted of terrorist offences, according to a new book. The Bush family has also accommodated the demands of Cuban exile hardliners in exchange for electoral and financial support, the book suggests.

Last year, after September 11, while the justice department announced a sweep of terrorist suspects, Cubans convicted of terrorist offences were being released from US jails with the consent of the Bush administration, according to the book, Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, by Ann Louise Bardach, the award-winning investigative journalist who has covered Cuban and Miami politics for the New York Times and Vanity Fair.

The Bush family connections go back to 1984 when Jeb Bush began a close association with Camilo Padreda, a former intelligence officer with the Batista dictatorship overthrown by Fidel Castro.

Jeb Bush was then the chairman of the Dade county Republican party and Padreda its finance chairman. Padreda had earlier been indicted on a $500,000 (£320,000) embezzlement charge along with a fellow exile, Hernandez Cartaya, but the charges were dropped, reportedly after the CIA stated that Cartaya had worked for them.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1202-05.htm

BTW: Would that I could write like you, Minstrel Boy! You distilled a half-century's criminality into one paragraph and warned us of what lies — and treason — lies ahead. Thank you and all who helped bring you up!

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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:38 AM
Response to Reply #27
35. thanks Octafish!
If only there were a million more of you. If Americans only knew the crimes of this family, they would be astonished, and then mad as hell.
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Karenina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 08:27 AM
Response to Original message
24. Back to one!
:kick:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:09 AM
Response to Reply #24
30. Thanks for the kick, Karenina!
This information is known to you, but is news for 99-percent of The United States.

Thanks for helping kick out the jams, DU brothers and sisters*!



The MC-5

http://www.umich.edu/~bhl/bhl/refhome/jls/John.htm

* "Kick Out the Jams was censored in its LP release because they used a phrase considered too shocking for the polite society that was prosecuting an illegal war in southeast Asia.
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SpiralHawk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 08:47 AM
Response to Original message
25. The Family that Preys Together
Builds Massively Rotten Karma Together

Eventually, all bills come due. Fact of life #34.
- Wisdom from "A Trusted Source"
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 09:26 AM
Response to Reply #25
29. It's like Dorian Gray, except they'v hijacked my country...
... for the picture. These vampires don't go away, neither. Well, that is, until the seering spotlight of Truth shines on them and -- POOF! -- they're going, going, gone!

Those interested in learning more about the subject also might try:

Bush Family Values Photo Album

For more than a half century, members of the Bush family have been setting policy and making decisions for all Americans.  Let's look at the family that has had such an impact on the lives of human beings worldwide.

It all started with Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather.  In 1918 it is said that he robbed the grave and stole the skull of the Native American warrior Geronimo as part of an initiation into Yale's Skull and Bones Society.  The Skull and Bones society has long been important to the Bush Family.  George Bush Sr. and George W. Bush were also members of this secret society.  
 
Prescott Bush had a bit of trouble back in the 1940s.  While American soldiers were fighting the Nazis in WWII, a few of the companies Prescott managed were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act because they were selling fuel to and laundering money for Hitler's Nazis.

CONTINUED W/LOTS O' LINKS AND PURTY PICTURES...

http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

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devinsgram Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 09:12 AM
Response to Original message
26. Yep read the the book,
all the *'s are are liars, murderers and theives.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:28 AM
Response to Reply #26
31. Hey, DevinsGram! If people didn't read, they wouldn't know.
The Bush Crime Syndicate tolerates no opposition. Remember what Egil "Bud" Krogh said about the approach of the Nixon administration?

"Anyone who opposes us, we'll destroy. As a matter of fact, anyone who doesn't support us, we'll destroy."
— Egil "Bud" Krogh

Here's what Bud's boss Tricky Dick had to say about the Warren Commission:

"It was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1848157.stm

How would he know? Well, there's the matter of the Cubans and the Texans discussed in the Oval Office, as recorded on tape. A transcript from June 23, 1972...

PRESIDENT (NIXON): How do you call him in, I mean you just, well, we protected (DCI Richard) Helms from one hell of a lot of things.

(H.R. "BOB") HALDEMAN: That's what Ehrlichman says.

PRESIDENT: Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you will-that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves. Well what the hell, did Mitchell know about this thing to any much of a degree?

HALDEMAN: I think so. I don 't think he knew the details, but I think he knew.

PRESIDENT: He didn't know how it was going to be handled though, with Dahlberg and the Texans and so forth? Well who was the asshole that did? (Unintelligible) Is it Liddy? Is that the fellow? He must be a little nuts.

HALDEMAN: He is.

PRESIDENT: I mean he just isn't well screwed on is he? Isn't that the problem?

HALDEMAN: No, but he was under pressure, apparently, to get more information, and as he got more pressure, he pushed the people harder to move harder on...

PRESIDENT: Pressure from Mitchell?

HALDEMAN: Apparently.

PRESIDENT: Oh, Mitchell, Mitchell was at the point that you made on this, that exactly what I need from you is on the--

HALDEMAN: Gemstone, yeah.

http://www.totse.com/en/politics/nixon/165569.html


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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 09:21 AM
Response to Original message
28. Private Military Company/PMC connection.
Some even operate out of personal loyalty to command!
http://www.icij.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp?Section=Chapter&ChapNum=2
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:43 AM
Response to Reply #28
36. Privateers...sounds like legalized piracy.
Wow! The BFEE brings mercenary armies into the NYSE fold. Wonder who got the insider's scoop for shares in Murder, Inc.? Probably Jebthro, Neil and Marvin. Bunnypants is too busy raising money for his re-selection.

Back to the subject: These gangsters are helping build a fine, fine world for the ruling kleptocracy. Welllll. We do have one weapon on our side, the Truth. It's what makes the pen mightier than the sword, DU Friend bobthedrummer!

Thanks for the reminder about how to privatize war. Here's a reminder for those interested in knowing about their government at work in the killing of innocent civilians of a democratic country which had the audacity to elect a commie symp Prez:

http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/conspiracies/irancontra.htm
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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:34 PM
Response to Reply #36
44. Here's the work of School of the America's graduates
torturing and killing organized labor supporters in Colombia.:puke:

http://www.populist.com/02.7.Hirsch.html
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 01:45 PM
Response to Reply #44
46. It's not the Columbian's fault our oil is under their land.
... and these people want to work to build a fair and equitable society. That's -- that's Liberali- -- that's socia- -- what would happen to capitalism?

Thanks for the great article, 'drummer. Nothing makes me angrier than the murders the BFEE commits in the name of advancing our national interests, which, coincidently corresponds to the interests of the Rockefellers, duPonts, etc. So, yeah. Ten families controlling a country of 41 million people sounds very close to home.

An excerpt from Bob's article:

That is why union leaders and other defenders of workers' rights are targets. The economist said, "If the violence we live with were truly known in your country, it would be stopped." Paramilitary terror against Sinaltrainal, the Coca Cola workers union, drove union membership down from 5,600 to 2,000 in three years.

In Antioquia, when Isidro Segundo Gil refused to sign a company form renouncing the union, he was killed inside the plant. Then the "paras" took workers one by one into a small room and told them to sign, leave town fast, or die. Only seven of 157 workers remained in the union. In one plant paras killed six workers and burned the union office. The company then gave the paras money to rebuild the union office for their own use. A Coca Cola worker said, "We see paras in camouflage, in patrols with the military. They're the army's Sixth Division in this dirty war."

The danger level rose after Sept. 11, labeling union people "terrorists." Another worker said, "Fascism is more than an echo from the past."

CONTINUED...


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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:32 AM
Response to Original message
32. I missh the fish,
always great reading from Octafish, good I didn't see this last night, needed the sleep without the nightmares!

Le gra
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 11:44 AM
Response to Reply #32
39. You're a pal, seemslikeadream! I gotta read H.P. Lovecraft...
... to get to sleep, after reading about the BFEE. "At the Mountains of Madness." "Tales of Cthulhu Mythos." Hey, wait a minute...

Cthulhu for President. Why vote for a lesser evil?

This site is dedicated to the great old one, who should return from his slumber to take over the U.S. government and make this country a whole hell of a lot better as the leader of our executive branch. Or destroy it and drive everyone insane, kill us all, or something really nasty! Remember, Cthulhu for President, why vote for the lesser of two evils?

CONTINUED at the "Home Page for Evil"...

http://www.cthulhu.org/

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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 10:32 AM
Response to Original message
33. It boggles the mind...
Edited on Thu Dec-11-03 10:33 AM by Minstrel Boy
I used to take neocons like James Woolsey at their word when they would say the United States is waging "World War IV" ("a war that will last longer than World Wars I or II.") But not anymore.

The United States is not fighting World War IV; it's World War II. Still World War II.

The flag may look familiar, and persuade many that America must, even now, somehow be on the side of the angels, but the cause for which the flag now waves is that espoused by such great American fascists as the Fords, the DuPonts, the Harrimans and the Morgans. The striving clan of Bushes have made it so.

They couldn't overthrow FDR in a military coup.

After the war, the American military and intelligence communities welcomed, through Project Paperclip, thousands of valued Nazis like Col Ghelen. Exotic genetic research and mind control experiments, which would have been war crimes at Nuremburg, found a new home.

At the same time, politically, the Republican party embraced a wave of far-right Eastern Europeans:

"The Republican Heritage Groups Council, a part of the Republican National Committee, has had members like Laszlo Pasztor from the Hungarian Arrow Cross, Florian Galdau of the Romanian Iron Guard and Nicolas Nazarenko, the leader of a Cossack SS division. Other members include Walter Melianovich affiliated with the Belarus Brigade, Method Balco associated with Slovak fascists from their puppet Nazi government and Philip Guarino, an Italian fascist leader of the P-2 Masonic Lodge." http://www.theblackflag.org/2003/icon/icon030307.php

And not only former Nazis found influence in US Intelligence; so did Mafioso. Lucky Luciano became an asset, dropped into Sicily to reassert the power of the Mafia as a force against Communists. By the early 1960s, characters like John Rosseli could straddle the under- and overworld with ease, operating for both the great crime families and the CIA without conflict. And the shadow-side of the CIA, recognizing the value of off-the-books revenue, became itself a criminal venture, exploiting the global drug trade.

And what family do you find allied with the great fascist industrialists of the 1930s, financing the Nazis, laundering the money, running the guns, trafficking the drugs, and plugged into the dirtiest corners of the military-industrial-intelligence complex?

It's been 70 years coming, but the apotheosis of their labours is the world crisis known as George W Bush.


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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:12 PM
Response to Reply #33
42. Fighting International Communist Conspiracy United Fascists and USA.
Which is the key to understanding why things are the way they are. Thanks for pointing out the work by Russ Bellant and the good people at Political Research Associates. For understanding how it happened, DU readers also may want to check out Martin Lee's work on Robart Parry's Secret History Archives...

CIA's Worst-Kept Secret

By Martin A. Lee
May 16, 2001

"Honest and idealist ... enjoys good food and wine ... unprejudiced mind..."

That's how a 1952 Central Intelligence Agency assessment described Nazi ideologue Emil Augsburg, an officer at the infamous Wannsee Institute, the SS think tank involved in planning the Final Solution. Augsburg's SS unit performed "special duties," a euphemism for exterminating Jews and other "undesirables" during the Second World War.

Although he was wanted in Poland for war crimes, Augsburg managed to ingratiate himself with the U.S. CIA, which employed him in the late 1940s as an expert on Soviet affairs.

Recently released CIA records indicate that Augsburg was among a rogue's gallery of Nazi war criminals recruited by U.S. intelligence shortly after Germany surrendered to the Allies.

Pried loose by Congress, which passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act three years ago, a long-hidden trove of once-classified CIA documents confirms one of the worst-kept secrets of the Cold War – the CIA's use of an extensive Nazi spy network to wage a clandestine campaign against the Soviet Union.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/051601a.html

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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 02:04 PM
Response to Reply #33
48. The original intelligence failure was including all those PAPERCLIP nazis
as Americans working in national security as per The National Security Act of 1947, the founding of the CIA and NSA.

Here are but a few links documenting using nazis in the US to battle godless communism.

http://www.goordnance.apg.army.mil/OPpaperclip.htm

http://www.infoage.org/paperclip.html

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/ratlines.htm

Fascism in America. Militarism is a big part of that.
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never cry wolf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 11:43 AM
Response to Original message
38. A great thread deserves a big kick
:kick:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 12:06 PM
Response to Reply #38
41. Thanks, steviet_2003! Ever hear about the coup against FDR?
Any opportunity to spread the word about the kind of class the BFEE oozes is much appreciated. Here's a nice story not too many people may have heard about, the day the millionaires decided to steal back their country clubs:

The Attempted Coup Against FDR

By Barbara LaMonica

The John F. Kennedy assassination represents a theme in our political history. The causes, even the inevitability, of the assassination were born out of the power struggles among the ruling elite which are consistent throughout the American story. These struggles revolve around questions of what is the proper role of government vis a vis the business community’s pursuit of its own self-interest. Is the government’s role minimal or laissez-faire? Should government only provide a stable environment of "law and order", through increased police powers, conducive to the maximization of profits and the minimization of workers wages and benefits? Or does the government have a higher purpose? Is it responsible for the common good? Is it the one entity capable of implementing justice, equality, and a partial redistribution of wealth through the regulation and taxation of corporations in order to provide a cushion against the more egregious effects of the free market? Should it ensure the worker’s share in the profits they helped to create?

At various times factions of what has become known as "corporate America" have argued over which role of government is ultimately more advantageous to their own ends. Generally speaking, banking and Wall Street favor less government. Retail, light manufacturing and small to medium size corporations are more tolerant of an activist government which might put more money in the hands of their consumers, and protect small businesses against the unfair competitive practices of larger corporations.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression dramatically thrust the question of government’s role to the forefront of American political and corporate life. The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt represented a revolutionary realignment of political power: the ascendancy of the Democratic party facilitated by new voting coalitions of rural south and industrialized north which dislodged the Republican Party’s nearly seventy-year dominance, signaling the abandonment of laissez-faire economics in favor of state regulation. The losers in this political process coalesced into right-wing Republicanism, and the next sixty years of American history is, in part, the story of their attempt to regain power, reinstitute Lassiez-faire policies, and dismantle the New Deal.1 I would like to suggest that the forces behind the assassination of President Kennedy were born in the furies which the Great Depression unleashed between these competing sectors of American political and economic life.

I believe that in 1934 there was a foreshadowing of the JFK assassination. A conspiracy was uncovered in which right-wing elements of big business, namely the DuPont family and the Morgan banking interests, planned to finance and arm a veteran’s army to march on the White House and hold President Roosevelt captive.2 The conspiracy was reported by two- time Congressional Medal of Honor winner Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. Although the House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities found his allegations credible, it failed to call major conspirators to testify, and the Committee deleted crucial testimony from its final report to the public. The press relegated the story to the back pages, and discredited those, including Major Butler, who tried to alert the public to the threat against republican government. No prosecutions were forthcoming from the Justice Department, in part because the main witness who would have substantiated Butler’s claims died suddenly from pneumonia at the age of 37. In short, there was a cover-up, maybe worse.

CONTINUED with lots o' names...

http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr399-fdr.html
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 02:01 PM
Response to Original message
47. What do we know about Michael Boren Williams,
former campaign manager for Gary Hart?

He has some interesting things to say about GHW Bush.

For instance: "George Bush is a satanic, sadistic, brutal monster.
Compared to George Bush, Adolf Hitler was a true gentleman."
http://www.beachnet.com/~hoffman/Bush.html

In a leter to Sean Lennon, he writes "On 8. December 1980, a CIA mind-controlled assassin whose name is not worthy of mentioning (though we both know it well), acting on orders which originated with George Bush, assassinated your father, and, like the mind-controlled puppet he was, calmly awaited the arrival of the police, when he could have easily gotten away."

Williams adds a nightmarish list of legal and personal harrassment he has suffered, and concludes: "All of the above - and so much more - has been done to me because I was a political activist all my adult life and because I resurrected Senator Gary Hart's 1988 presidential campaign, and attempted to inform the American people who George Bush really is: the world's biggest drug dealer, who is linked to the assassination of everyone from your father to President John F. Kennedy...George Bush is a former CIA director whose father, Prescott, personally financed the political career of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis' rise to power in Germany."
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/v/williams.htm



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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 02:11 PM
Response to Reply #47
49. Thanx for the links, Minstrel Boy
:hi:
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 02:15 PM
Response to Original message
51. Bush Sr, Drug Czar
The CIA would eventually eradicate top leaders of the Medellin Cartel, killing Medellin founders Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa. Medellin co-founder Carlos Lehder and his associate Manuel Noriega would be sentenced to life terms. During Operation “Just Cause” in Panama, Bush replaced many Medellin allied bankers with political and financial leadership more closely allied with the rival Cali Cartel.

Trenton Parker said he secretly gave evidence of CIA criminality from 1976 to 1982 to Congressman Larry McDonald of the Joint Armed Services Committee. The files revealed corrupt activities of several presidents, numerous federal officials and the CIA. Immediately after McDonald let it be known that he was going to reveal the information, including information on the CIA’s drug smuggling activities, his plane was shot down.

Bush’s Zapata Petroleum Co. (later Zapata Offshore), with upwards of 600 branches worldwide, is reportedly used for the CIA’s intelligence gathering. (Bush had begun his career working for International Derrick and Equipment Company, a subsidiary of the Houston-based Dresser Industries—a long-time CIA cover. Dresser’s Chairman, Henry Neil Mallon, who offered Bush the job, was a friend of Prescott’s and a fellow Skull and Bonseman.) Some sources, including covert operatives interviewed by Stich, contend that Zapata’s offshore drilling rigs, located beyond the U.S. jurisdictional limit, are centers for transferring large quantities of illicit drugs and other contraband. CIA cable analyst Michael Maholy told Stich that he personally witnessed numerous drug flights while working on Zapata rigs, and was told to forget what he had seen. The operation was run through Rowan International. “Rowan International was a cover for a branch of Zapata Oil,” says Maholy. Three of the propietaries involved were the CIA-connected Evergreen (owned by Raytheon; see Chapter XX), Southern Air Transport, and Pacific Seafood.

...

On this pretext, the U.S. invaded (Panama), killing thousands of people, mostly civilians. Twenty-six U.S. servicemen also lost their lives to protect Bush’s drug trafficking operation and the $350,000,000 worth of Bush financial investments, laundered through the Bush-connected Japanese Aoki Corporation with the help of brother Prescott. The puppets installed by Bush included President Gullermo Endura, head of a Panamanian bank used extensively by the Medellin Cartel, Vice President Gullermo Ford, part owner of Dadeland Bank of Florida, reportedly involved in drug money laundering, and Attorney General Rogello Cruz, allegedly a Cali drug Cartel boss. As ex-CIA field officer John Stockwell noted: “Bush used to work with Noriega the drug-dealer. He has worked with a lot of other drug-dealers, in fact, but this one was screaming publicly.... In 1988, Noriega told Newsweek or a Newsweek interviewer that, quote: ‘I have George Bush by the balls!’ because he had the information on George Bush’s connections and ties and knowledge of drug smuggling. So Bush had to get rid of him!”
http://www.beachnet.com/~hoffman/Bush.html



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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 07:30 PM
Response to Reply #51
61. What Celerino Castillo III of the DEA said...
WRITTEN STATEMENT OF CELERINO CASTILLO III, (D.E.A., RETIRED) FOR THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

April 27, 1998

For several years, I fought in the trenches of the front lines of Reagan's "Drug War", trying to stamp out what I considered American's greatest foreign threat. But, when I was posted, in Central and South America from 1984 through 1990, I knew we were playing the "Drug War Follies." While our government shouted "Just Say No !", entire Central and South American nations fell into what are now known as, "Cocaine democracies."

SNIP...

We, ordinary Americans, cannot trust the C.I.A. Inspector General to conduct a full investigation into the CIA or the DEA. Let me tell you why. When President Clinton (June, 1996) ordered The Intelligence Oversight Board to conduct an investigation into allegations that US Agents were involved in atrocities in Guatemala, it failed to investigate several DEA and CIA operations in which U.S. agents knew before hand that individuals (some Americans) were going to be murdered.

SNIP...

The key to understanding the "crack cocaine" epidemic, which exploded on our streets in 1984, lies in understanding the effect of congressional oversight on covert operations. In this case the Boland amendment(s) of the era, while intending to restrict covert operations as intended by the will of the People, only served to encourage C.I.A., the military and elements of the national intelligence community to completely bypass the Congress and the Constitution in an eager and often used covert policy of funding prohibited operations with drug money.

SNIP...

In August 1982, George Bush hired Donald P. Gregg as his principal adviser for national security affairs. In late 1984, Gregg introduced Oliver North to Felix Rodriguez, (a retired CIA agent) who had already been working in Central America for over a year under Bush's direction. Gregg personally introduced Rodriguez to Bush on Jan. 22, 1985. Two days after his January 1985 meeting, Rodriguez went to El Salvador and made arrangements to set up his base of operations at Ilopango air base. On Nov. 01, 1984, the FBI arrested Rodriguez's partner, Gerard Latchinian and convicted him of smuggling $10.3 million in cocaine into the U.S.

CONTINUED TREASON (Thanks to Mike Ruppert for helping spread the Truth)...

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/contra1.html
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JNelson6563 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 02:31 PM
Response to Original message
52. just weighing in to say
This has got to be the first post you've written where I agree with every single word.

BFEE=world enemy.

:toast:

Julie
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 06:05 PM
Response to Reply #52
58. Well, there's a first time for every thing.
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Aries Donating Member (544 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 02:45 PM
Response to Original message
53. Then there's Dyncorp....
DynCorp – Bush’s Respectable Paramilitaries

Excerpt:

Beyond the law?

DynCorp’s contract is overseen by a team of officials in the State Department’s Narcotic Affairs Section (NAS) and the State Department’s Air Wing. Both cliques are staffed by a crew of ex- Cold War warriors and many names are familiar to those who remember US terror in Central America in the 1980s. It is no wonder then that no substantive investigation by these bodies has been launched following allegations of heroin smuggling by DynCorp staff. No arrests have been made, no investigation taken place. The rules of Dyncorps contract contain a multitude of clauses that allow DynCorp aircraft free transport across US borders with little surveillance. A senior Colombian police official told Semana magazine “no authority, whether the Civil Aviation Authority, police or army is authorized to search DynCorp’s planes. Nobody knows what they carry on their return to the US because they are untouchable”. Like their paramilitary cohorts in Colombia, mercenary contractors like DynCorp enjoy near total impunity before the law...

...Initially arguing for unlimited increases, Bush had to eventually accept a compromise that placed a limit of 300 civillian contractors and 500 military personnel in Colombia, though the number of civilian contractors is able to increase beyond 300 as long as the total number of personnel remains under 800....


and this:

Scandal-hit US firm wins key contracts

...A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can reveal.

DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US State Department.

The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation to a UN police officer it unfairly sacked in Bosnia for whistleblowing on DynCorp colleagues involved in an illegal sex ring....



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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 06:03 PM
Response to Reply #53
57. Brutes they are. Thanks for the reminder, Aries!
When it comes to pure manpower, nobody beats the BFEE. It's like Al Capone said:

"You can get more with a nice word and a gun than you can with a nice word."

Thank you for bringing to light the mission of a company that works best under cover. According to some, their employees do all sorts of terrible things in the dark to children. Here's a sampling of what's been reported:

DynCorp Disgrace

Posted Jan. 14, 2002
By Kelly Patricia O Meara

Americans were seen in Bosnia as defenders of the children, as shown here, until U.S. contractors began buying children as personal sex slaves. Middle-aged men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing business in Bosnia.

According to the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) lawsuit filed in Texas on behalf of the former DynCorp aircraft mechanic, "in the latter part of 1999 Johnston learned that employees and supervisors from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and other immoral acts. Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased."

Rather than acknowledge and reward Johnston's effort to get this behavior stopped, DynCorp fired him, forcing him into protective custody by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) until the investigators could get him safely out of Kosovo and returned to the United States. That departure from the war-torn country was a far cry from what Johnston imagined a year earlier when he arrived in Bosnia to begin a three-year U.S. Air Force contract with DynCorp as an aircraft-maintenance technician for Apache and Blackhawk helicopters.

For more than 50 years DynCorp, based in Reston, Va., has been a worldwide force providing maintenance support to the U.S. military through contract field teams (CFTs). As one of the federal government's top 25 contractors, DynCorp has received nearly $1 billion since 1995 for these services and has deployed 181 personnel to Bosnia during the last six years. Although DynCorp long has been respected for such work, according to Johnston and internal DynCorp communications it appears that extracurricular sexcapades on the part of its employees were tolerated by some as part of its business in Bosnia.

CONTINUED SICK BFEE ...

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/163052.html


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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 03:06 PM
Response to Original message
54. Speaking of George Bush Jr., the Dim Son
If we're examining Bush family crimes let's not skip over Bush Jr.'s early training in criminal enterprise. His ill-gotten fortune, his drug busts, his drunk driving arrests, his cheerleading.

He made his first real money in a scandal - the Texas Rangers Stadium rip-off:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol17/issue19/pols.bush.html

Bush Makes a Killing While Arlington Stuck With Fee
Governor Deadbeat
by Robert Bryce

Gov. George W. Bush and the other owners of the Texas Rangers are deadbeats. Rich deadbeats, but deadbeats nevertheless. Last week, Bush and his partners hit what can only be described as a towering home run by selling the Texas Rangers to Thomas Hicks for $250 million. Bush, in particular, made a killing. For his 1.8% share of the club, which initially cost him $605,000, Hicks will pay the governor between $10 million and $14 million. That is a return of up to 23 times Bush's original investment in less than nine years. (His contract included an accelerated equity clause.) But even though Bush and his cohorts are raking in the dough, making nearly three times what they paid for the club in 1989, they still haven't paid the $7.5 million they owe the city of Arlington.

The Rangers owners owe the money because of a court judgment against the Arlington Sports Facilities Development Authority (ASFDA), the entity set up by the city to condemn land for, and administer, the Ballpark at Arlington project. In May of 1996, a Tarrant County jury found that the ASFDA had not paid a fair price for 13 acres of land it condemned; the court subsequently awarded the owners of the land, the Mathes family, more than six times what the city had agreed to pay for the land. That $5 million award then sat in escrow with interest accruing at a rate of about $1,800 a day. A year after the jury's decision, the city finally decided not to appeal the verdict and paid the judgment. That's where the Rangers' obligation comes in.

When the Rangers and the city signed their deal in 1990, the Rangers agreed to pay any costs on the Ballpark at Arlington project that exceeded $135 million. The city of Arlington's position has been and continues to be, that the $7.5 million judgment should come from Bush and the Rangers.

<snip>

But let's forget about Bush's philosophical problems when it comes to property rights and the Ballpark deal. And let's set aside the notion that he may have earned exorbitant amounts of money on his investment. Instead, let's focus on the facts of the deal: Bush and his partners used the city's powers to condemn the land for the stadium. They relied on taxpayers to repay the bonds sold to build the ballpark, thereby getting what amounts to a direct $135 million subsidy. Now, after tripling the amount they paid for the Rangers, Bush et al are refusing to pay the city a measly $7.5 million. Talk about a debt to society.<more>
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 05:55 PM
Response to Reply #54
56. Wow, Stephanie! Smirk got the moolah by selling his HARKEN stock...
...so he could become a minor partner. Funny how the Big Money boys just happened to find him so useful, they made him the "General Partner" for all the PR hoopla.

To get into such an "opportunity," Smirk had to scrape up some cash, pronto. Too bad the crazy monkey forgot to report his stock sale to the SEC, despite the nose dive in value...



"That's not what we mean by 'Leave no child behind,' Mr. Bushler."

The Texas Rangers Connection

George W. Bush had connections to the Texas Rangers baseball team, which of course meant that UT had connections as well. Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks, a former UT regent and UTIMCO director, had bought the team for $250 million, Bush's share was around 15 million dollars. Even now, UTIMCO (unlawfully) has private meetings at the team's new ballpark; it was at one of these meetings in Arlington that Tom Loeffler and Tom Hicks decided to invest in the Maverick Capital Fund, run by the Wyly family.

Bush's dealings with the team

Fresh off of his insider trading deal of Harken Oil stock, George W. Bush was eyeing the Texas Rangers. Bush was offered a sizeable chunk of the Rangers for only $600,000 relatively soon after he gained a reported $848,560 from sales of stocks days before the company went under. The people who made this unusual offer were the people who also helped Harken through some hard times- "mainly friends of my uncle" (and of course his of his father).

Some of the names include Richard Rainwater, who was told by then Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth to join "out of respect" for President George H.W. Bush 1, Mercer Reynolds, William DeWitt, Rusty Rose, and his best friend Roland Betts. Later when Bush was dealing with the prospect of being President of the nation, he sold the team to Hicks in June of 1998.

Bush and his partners were looking to build a new stadium for the team, their wit generating the name the Ballpark at Arlington. There were some private owners of the land Bush and his partners were looking to build upon, and the owners were not interested in selling to these men for the astoundingly low offer they presented.

Instead of increasing the offer, Bush and his partners turned to a (conveniently) newly formed government agency, the Arlington Sports Facility Development Authority (ASFDA). The agency had foreclosed the land and paid only 1/6 of its worth to its rightful owners. The agency then floated the bonds to flip the bill for the acquisition, which was guaranteed and repaid by taxpayers.

CONTINUED CRONY CAPITALISM...

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

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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 06:11 PM
Response to Reply #56
59. But wait, there's more
This is from the blog of DU's maha:

http://mahabarbara.tripod.com/themahablog/id3.html

Another Bush benefactor was a man named Tom Hicks, who bought Bush's shares of the Texas Rangers. Paul Krugman explained in his New York Times column of July 16, 2002, how Governor Bush was able to funnel University of Texas endowment money to Hicks and other cronies.

First, he changed the rules governing the endowment so that Texas officials no longer had to tell the public what they were doing with public money. Then Mr. Bush privatized (his term) $9 billion in university assets, transferring them to a nonprofit corporation known as UTIMCO that could make investment decisions behind closed doors, Krugman said.

Next, Governor Bush made Tom Hicks the chairman of UTIMCO. Hicks saw to it that his friends and his political interests were well funded by Texas money. According to Krugman, at least $450 million went to funds managed by Hicks's business cronies and Republican Party donors. Such transactions were safe from public view, thanks to Governor Bush. An employee of UTIMCO who alerted auditors was fired.

Further, when Bush sold his shares of the Texas Rangers to Hicks, he was entitled to about $2.3 million from that sale, according to Paul Krugman. "But his partners voluntarily gave up some of their share, and Mr. Bush received 12 percent of the proceeds --$14.9 million. So a group of businessmen, presumably with some interest in government decisions, gave a sitting governor a $12 million gift."

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 07:22 PM
Response to Reply #59
60. Affirmative Action for Avarice


"Ya see, Stephanie, there's no need for havin' to help'n lift
up the, the, the down, the down, the downtrodden
when there's a level playing field to stand them up on
to tee 'em off of." — unimaginary George W Bush quote.

Regarding Bush's corruptability: Remember Joe Conason in Harper's, way back in early 2000? Joe warned us...

NOTES ON A NATIVE SON.

Harper's Magazine, Feb, 2000, by Joe Conason, Kevin P. Phillips

I. THE GEORGE W. BUSH SUCCESS STORY

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


By Joe Conason

FORTUNE'S CHILD

As George W. Bush's wealthy admirers continue to pack cash into the largest presidential war chest in American history (at last count a staggering $58 million). perhaps the time is ripe to examine how the would-be president became rich himself--quite rich, in fact, if not by the standards of H. Ross Perot or Steve Forbes, at least by the measure of most Americans. Bush, who received $15 million for his share of the Texas Rangers franchise, would be the richest Democratic or Republican nominee since Lyndon Johnson. On the June 1998 day that the baseball team was sold, Bush told reporters, "When it is all said and done, I will have made more money than I ever dreamed ..."

Indeed. The sum represented an enviable 2,400 percent increase on the $606,000 investment Bush had made in the team nine years earlier, with borrowed money, and a considerable improvement on his own record of losing millions invested by others. Together with his elation about the windfall there may also have been a feeling of vindication for the eldest scion of the Bush family. Although twice elected governor of Texas (in 1994 and again in 1998), the son known as "Dubya" had lived through nearly two decades of business failures, embarrassing bailouts, and eyebrow-raising favors that had besmirched his family's reputation.

The money, coming late in Bush's life, at age fifty-one, is understood not to have corrupted him, and his handlers depict him as a man of religious faith and moral character who will cleanse a White House soiled by scandal; Bush, in their audience-tested Calvinistic fable, is a once-upon-a-time hard-drinking ne'er-do-well transformed into a well-to-do teetotaler. The fact that his political rise has been crowned with material rewards might, in the metaphysics of American capitalism, very well be deemed a sign of righteousness and divine favor.

But viewed in less sentimental terms, the history of George W. and his millions is a success story about a privileged young man who grew up in proximity to money and political power, appreciated the relationship between them, and so learned to live happily ever after with his wealth and his conscience. Not only does the story explain why Bush is so attractive to the corporate leaders and Washington lobbyists now staging his nomination for the presidency; it is also a textbook lesson in modern American civics. We who might soon elect Bush should hear this story, to know how he might act should he achieve the Oval Office. Although the immediate mechanics of the Rangers deal were well-documented by the media, the sale of the team was but a moment in the governor's long and still-unfolding political and financial relationships with certain fortunate personages--some of whom, it can reasonably be expected, might be appointed to positions of authority in a new Bush administration. The numbers are complicated, and many of the sums imponderably huge, but the power is real and the outcome as observable as, well, a brand-new baseball stadium.



CONTINUED...

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1797_300/59086099/p1/article.jhtml?term=
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Aries Donating Member (544 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 09:17 AM
Response to Reply #60
71. Genesis of Bush's Fortune--Bin Laden associate James Bath
Edited on Fri Dec-12-03 09:29 AM by Aries
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD202B.html

"...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...

...Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had "no idea" BCCI was involved in Harken's financial dealings, the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Journal concluded their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: "The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken -- all since George W. Bush came on board -- raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son." Or even the president: Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations...."


Of course, nobody cares about BCCI anymore. And in the news today is a story about a GAO report criticizing U.S. efforts to track terrorist financing. The Treasury Dept. is quoted as saying "but that's HARD"...or words to that effect.

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 08:43 PM
Response to Reply #71
89. We care about BCCI, Aries! We'll clobber the BFEE with it!
And that's why I so much appreciate the fact you give a damn about getting these crooks rounded up, tried, and jailed ASAFP. Here's an interesting graphic linking Mr. Bath and Smirk. Seems they both got drummed off flight status for refusing physicals at the same time the TANG started testing pilots for drugs. That's almost ironic, at least as close as iron gets to the BFEE.



SOURCE:

http://www.awolbush.com/

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 11:07 PM
Response to Reply #71
92. Bush... Bath... bin Laden... BCCI...
Sorry, Aries! Didn't mean to make like I was throwing BCCI out with the James R Bath water. Must be shocked, in a way, that the trusted money man linking the Houses of Bush and bin Laden hasn't been "Baxterized." Wonder what's in the sealed envelope at Bath's lawyer's office...

Deals for Dubya

Bush’s family ties to shady bank BCCI help explain his “success” in the oil biz


by Bob Fitrakis

EXCERPT...

When Dubya organized Arbusto Energy Inc. in the 1970s, James R. Bath, a well-known Texas businessman, provided some of the financing. During George Bush senior’s tenure as CIA director, the agency allegedly used Bath, a business associate of the Saudi Khalid Bin Mahfouz—described by Truell and Gurwin as a “BCCI insider”—to buy CIA planes from Air America and other secretly held agency airlines.

Public records show that in 1976 the CIA sold several planes to Skyway, a firm managed by Bath. Bath denies it, but his former business partner Bill White has alleged the CIA’s role in Skyway in lawsuits and also attested that Bin Mahfouz was an owner of Skyway.

Criminal and civil suits against BCCI established that Bath invested money on Bin Mahfouz’s behalf and that he and Bin Mahfouz were part owners of Houston’s Main Bank with Ghaith Pharaon, the son of a royal advisor to Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal.

Dubya’s undercapitalized and floundering Arbusto received badly needed cash from an old Princeton pal of Bush political advisor James Baker, Philip Uzielli, who paid $1 million for a 10 percent share in a company valued at $382,376. “Uzi,” who made a fortune in Panama as the CEO of Executive Resources, claims he met Bush senior when he was CIA director.

CONTINUED...

http://www.columbusalive.com/2002/20020829/082902/08290208.html




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Aries Donating Member (544 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 01:11 PM
Response to Reply #92
114. Great link! and fairly recent too...maybe there is hope
that the BCCI story has legs. And this quote from the article brings the connections up to date:

"...Senator John Kerry’s BCCI investigatory committee established that BCCI was a conduit for opium money laundering from the Golden Crescent where Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan come together. The Arab oil sheiks were fronts to create the illusion of “petro dollars” funding the bank. Dubya and Harken Energy’s friends at BCCI were the core of a group of people—supported by the CIA, the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence Agency and the Saudi royal family—secretly funding the al Qaeda terrorist network and Islamic fundamentalist groups in their successful campaign to destroy the Soviet Union...."

Black money and black ops, the characters remain the same...doesn't this dwarf the Whitewater scandal that so much media coverage was devoted to? Or Hillary's commodities trades? Or Monica? Or Juanita Broaddrick? Or Paula Jones? Or the WH travel office? Or (fill in the blank) about Clinton?

Fortunately there's DU and the internet, otherwise we'd be much more in the dark than we are.
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starroute Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 11:44 AM
Response to Reply #59
107. Don't forget Clear Channel
Edited on Sat Dec-13-03 11:51 AM by starroute
"While President Bush now resides in Washington D.C., the nepotism continues, linking him with the largest commercial radio station group owner, Clear Channel Communications out of Texas. Lowry Mays, CEO of Clear Channel is very friendly with the Bush family, being a fellow Texan with a background in petroleum interests. Another link between Bush and Clear Channel exists between the deal that was made when Bush sold his interest in the professional baseball team, the Texas Rangers, to Tom Hicks, then CEO of AMFM Communications. Tom Hicks, of the leveraged buyout firm Hicks, Muse, Tate and Furst, has had substantial interests in the radio broadcast industry.

"After the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Hicks combined radio companies (Chancellor Media) with his brother Steve Hicks (Capstar Broadcasting) forming AMFM. which was then aquired by Clear Channel Communications bringing in the Mays family. Lowry Mays, the patriarch is CEO of Clear Channel. His two sons, Mike and Randy are also closely tied in as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer."

http://www.partytown.com/cmp/nepotism.htm

"The vice-chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks, who with his brother Stephen Hicks owned AMFM Communications, which Clear Channel bought in 1999. Tom Hicks is the man who bought George W. Bush's interest in the Texas Rangers for $15 million, that interest for which Bush had paid $650,000 five years earlier. Thereafter, newly elected Governor George W. Bush appointed Hicks chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Corporation, a position from which Hicks steered the University's investments into companies with close ties to Republican and Bush family interests. Lowry Mays, also sat on the UTIMCO board. Mr. Hicks was also part of the investment firm of Hicks, Muse, Tate, and Furst, George W. Bush's #4 all time contributor. Hicks' brother Stephen, who also made out like a bandit in the Clear Channel/AMFM merger, is a member of Bush's $100,000 Pioneers Club."

(Sorry, the link for this quote seems to have vanished.)


There's also an extensive page of UTIMCO links at http://www.utwatch.org/utimco/bibliography.html -- Bass Brothers, Tom Hicks, and much more.
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frank frankly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 08:14 PM
Response to Original message
62. back up top
lots to chew on here
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 09:27 AM
Response to Reply #62
72. The Carlyle Approach to Profitability through War.
Red meat for some Real Friends of the Commies and Capitalists, the Carlyle Group...

Carlyle's way

Making a mint inside "the iron triangle" of defense, government, and industry.


January 08, 2002

Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or Central Intelligence Agency interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group. And since September 11, this little-known company has become unexpectedly important.

That the Carlyle Group had its conference on America's darkest day was mere coincidence, but there is nothing accidental about the cast of characters that this private-equity powerhouse has assembled in the 14 years since its founding. Among those associated with Carlyle are former U.S. president George Bush Sr., former U.K. prime minister John Major, and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. And Carlyle has counted George Soros, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden's estranged family among its high-profile clientele. The group has been able to parlay its political clout into a lucrative buyout practice (in other words, purchasing struggling companies, turning them around, and selling them for huge profits)--everything from defense contractors to telecommunications and aerospace companies. It is a kind of ruthless investing made popular by the movie Wall Street, and any industry that relies heavily on government regulation is fair game for Carlyle's brand of access capitalism. Carlyle has established itself as the gatekeeper between private business interests and U.S. defense spending. And as the Carlyle investors watched the World Trade towers go down, the group's prospects went up.

In running what its own marketing literature spookily calls "a vast, interlocking, global network of businesses and investment professionals" that operates within the so-called iron triangle of industry, government, and the military, the Carlyle Group leaves itself open to any number of conflicts of interest and stunning ironies. For example, it is hard to ignore the fact that Osama bin Laden's family members, who renounced their son ten years ago, stood to gain financially from the war being waged against him until late October, when public criticism of the relationship forced them to liquidate their holdings in the firm. Or consider that U.S. president George W. Bush is in a position to make budgetary decisions that could pad his father's bank account. But for the Carlyle Group, walking that narrow line is the art of doing business at the murky intersection of Washington politics, national security, and private capital; mastering it has enabled the group to amass $12 billion in funds under management. But while successful in the traditional private-equity avenue of corporate buyouts, Carlyle has recently set its sites on venture capital with less success. The firm is finding that all the politicians in the world won't help it identify an emerging technology or a winning business model.

Surprisingly, Carlyle has avoided the fertile VC market in defense technology, which now, more than ever, comes from smaller companies hoping to cash in on what the defense establishment calls the revolution in military affairs, or RMA.  Thus far, Carlyle has passed up on these emerging technologies in favor of some truly awful Internet plays. And despite its unique qualifications for early-stage funding of defense companies, the firm seems to have no appetite for the sector.

CONTINUED...

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?f=Articles/Archive/vc/2002/0111/947.xml&hed=Carlyle's%20way

PS: Thanks, Frank! Much obliged for keeping this thread above water. Funny how I don't see any posts from DUers who tend to show up to shoot down inquiry into the criminal record of the BFEE. I guess the preponderance of evidence can be hard to explain as "conspiracy theory."

PPS: This FTL company makes me think of certain DUers for some reason. Anyone related to these good folk?
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lfairban Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 01:24 PM
Response to Reply #72
78. I have more links on the Carlyle group.
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9215 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 11:29 AM
Response to Reply #78
103. A must see video of Carlyle link to 9/11!!
This has to be one of the best vids on the mechanism of fascism there is likely to be. Those making this vid are highly reputable watchdog groups.

Note: the first couple of minutes are in Dutch and then the rest in English. At about 30 minutes into the tape see who makes an appearance with his arm around a Saudi elite.

To play in Real player right click the image. This will give you scrolling capability.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article3995.htm

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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 08:39 PM
Response to Original message
63. Have we discussed the Barrick gold heist? And what about Rev. Moon?
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=207&row=4

<excerpt>

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!

<snip>

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.

<more>



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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 08:56 AM
Response to Reply #63
69. BFEE are a slippery bunch...especially KHASHOGGI.
Edited on Fri Dec-12-03 08:58 AM by Octafish
Thanks, Stephanie, for bringing up the important mineral and public property thievery departments of the BFEE. Funny how those the Bush regime helps while in government help the Bushes when they return to the private sector. Adnan Khashoggi is one of those lucky people who seem to get all the Big Money "breaks" from the House of Bush. — Octafish

Bush the Elder’s Scheme to Sell Pardons and Get a Payoff –
Where is the Outrage Over a 10 Billion Dollar Taxpayer Ripoff?


February 26, 2001

By Jock Gill for Democrats.com

Bill Clinton wasn’t being either bold or creative in his use of the presidential pardon power. Compared to George Bush Senior’s incredible pardon fiasco, Clinton’s pardon scandal is boring.

In his last days as President, Bush Sr. sold U.S. government asset worth $10 billion to a friend for a mere $10 thousand dollars, pardoned his business colleagues, and then went on the company’s payroll for seven years.

At the very end of his presidency Papa Bush gave a sweetheart deal to the Canadian company Barrick Goldstrike. They got the rights to US land worth $10 billion in return for a nominal payment to the treasury of $10,000. But that does not seem to be all they got, or all they paid for either.

The money behind Barrick is from Saudi arms dealer and Bush family friend Adnan Khashoggi, who was identified as conduit in the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In 1986 he was arrested and charged with fraud but failed to be convicted. In one of his last acts as president Bush pardoned Khashoggi's alleged co-conspirators, who were key members of Bush's own cabinet. As a result, no case could be made against Khashoggi – or against Bush himself.

CONTINUED...

http://www.penfield-gill.com/presentations/bush_the_elder.htm

EDIT: Forgot da link.


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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 10:53 AM
Response to Reply #69
74. Barrick and Congo
Edited on Fri Dec-12-03 10:59 AM by seemslikeadream
Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold Corp., headquatered in Canada. It is the world's second-largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.

This company was able in 1996 to get the Mobutu regime's Gold Office of Kilomoto, a government monopoly, to transfer mining rights over almost all its 82,000 square kilometers of land to Barrick. The land is estimated to have 100 tons of gold in reserve.

George Bush Sr. sat on the board of directors of Barrick, according to Baracyetse.
www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabilal.htm

The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers' seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods has been fueling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is possibily the most minerial place on earth - though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, colbalt, zinc, manganasa, uranium (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, a substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resourse - used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and micro-capacitors.

The human costs of this conflict have been horrific. According to the UN, up until last September, in the five Eastern provinces of DRC alone, between 3 and 3.5 million people had died directly because of the war. Many were killed and tortured but most died of starvation and disease. The destruction of farms has resulted in malnutrition and starvation.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/issue13_part3.htm

War in Congo has claimed over three million lives since 1998 alone. Innocent civilians have been brutalized, massacred, raped, and tortured by all parties to the conflict. It began with the U.S. sponsored invasion of Rwanda in 1994, and followed with two subsequent U.S. sponsored invasions of Congo (in 1996 and 1998). These are not the simple "civil wars" declared by the western press. Even the Rwanda "genocide" (in 1994) has to some extent been manufactured in the American mind to serve the mythology of tribalism. Meanwhile, American green berets and military advisors and Pentagon officals have participated from blackboard to battlefield.

Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda and Congo are wars where factions are armed with U.S. made weapons (M16s, SAMs, tanks); where U.S. covert forces undertake brutal secret missions and psychological operations accountable to no one. They are wars where the CIA us deeply and maliciously entrenched as such by our dubious media. At the roots, however, these are wars like any other war.

Essential to the superalloys and weaponry of the global economy of war are Congo's cobalt, uranium and columbium tantalite (coltan). Colbalt is elemental to nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, tank armor, industrial furnaces and aerospace, and for 50 years the CIA has insured the free flow of cobalt out of Congo.
http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/showflat/cat/WorldNews/48471/3/collapsed/5/o/1
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 11:05 AM
Response to Reply #74
75. Canada's former PM, the justly reviled Brian Mulroney,
is also on the Barrick board. Mulroney invited his great friend Bush Sr to join.

Good stuff about Bush and Barrick in Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 11:32 AM
Response to Reply #75
77. Yes and so is Edward Neys
former U.S. Ambassador to Canada and chairman of Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest and most secretive public relation firms.

Burson-Marsteller is a billion dollar company that covers for organized crime. They are in the business of "perception management".
They covered for the Nigerian oil barons and Shell Oil during the Biafran War. The covered for Babcock & Wilcox and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the Three Mile Island nuclear rector melted down and irradiated the American landscape. They massaged the public and managed their perceptions as the Exxon Valdez supertanker greased the Alaskan wilderness with black crude. Burson-Marsteller covered for Union Carbide after the gas massacre in Bhopal in 1984. They have run public relations campaigns to shield extensive, state-orchestrated terror by the "governments of Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Singapore. They also are running Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress PR, hired in 1999.

Greg Palast writings are like the bible to me.
Democracy for sale
think twice archives 2002
Cambridge 23 March 2002
http://www.think-twice.org.uk/2002/palast

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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 09:26 PM
Response to Reply #63
91. The man who financed Bush's power-play in Ibero-America
is the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, with documented ties to gun-and drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and other nefarious activities. Thus, it is no surprise that Bush used his Ibero-American jaunt to champion the British colonial doctrine of free trade, and attack, as he did in Peru, the Clinton administration's anti-drug policy.
Everywhere he went, Bush tried to promote his image as a still-powerful former President and policymaker. But he didn't have an easy time of it, not least because of his ties to the filthy Moon empire, but also because he is under investigation back home for his role in directing the crack-cocaine flow into the United States in the 1980's to fund the Contras' war in Nicaragua. In every country, he was greeted by advertisements and press articles denouncing him and Moon for their crimes. Some of the coverage was taken straight from (EIR). In Peru, Bush became so unhinged by this publicity, that he had Peruvian police arrest three organizers of the Ibero-American Solicarity Movement (MSIA) who used (EIR) materials to leaflet against his presence.

His trip to Peru was arranged by Interbank, whose managing director, Ismael Benavides, led the campaign against a new banking law. Interbank is partly owned by Nicholas Brady, Bush's former treasury secretary and good friend who accompanied him in Lima.
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ontario-stories/2001-November/000198.html
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-11-03 09:10 PM
Response to Original message
64. Bush Sr. sells his soul (if he has one) to Rev. Moon for $10 million
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/101100a.html
October 11, 2000
Rev. Moon, North Korea & the Bushes
By Robert Parry

<excerpt>

One well-placed former leader of Moon’s Unification Church told me that the total earmarked for former President Bush was $10 million. The father of the Republican nominee has declined to say how much Moon’s organization actually paid him for speeches and other services in Asia, the United States and South America.

At one Moon-sponsored speech in Argentina in 1996, Bush declared, “I want to salute Reverend Moon,” whom Bush praised as “the man with the vision.”

Bush made these speeches at a time when Moon was expressing intensely anti-American views. In his own speeches, Moon termed the United States “Satan’s harvest” and claimed that American women descended from a “line of prostitutes.”

During this year’s presidential campaign, Moon’s Washington Times has attacked the Clinton-Gore administration for failing to take more aggressive steps to defend against North Korea’s missile program. The newspaper called the administration’s decisions an “abdication of responsibility for national security.”

A Helping Hand

Yet, in the 1990s when North Korea was scrambling for the resources to develop missiles and other advanced weaponry, Moon was among a small group of outside businessmen quietly investing in North Korea.

<more>

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 09:16 AM
Response to Reply #64
70. Rev. Moon sure is the guy with the "Vision Thing."
Thanks, Stephanie! Very important to get in writing this part of the story. Besides building the giant jungle redoubt in Paraguay where the BFEE members expect to ride out the Apocalypse watching reruns of "Walker, Texas Ranger," Rev. Sun Myung Moon helped develop the PTL ("Pass The Loot") model for ripping off followers. He invested the plunder well in ultra-conservative American politicians and commie hunters, paying millions to support the Bush regimes, including the time Bush was ostensibly the veep calling the shots for Geritol-soaked Ronald Witless Reagan. Remember, Pruneface called the Washington Times his favorite newspaper, boosting circulation and propaganda consumption. Well, I guess that's better than Smirk who doesn't read or understand. Otherwise Junior might ask why Moon uses his largesse to help arm the North Koreans and maintain the perpetual state of global war. Then again, that's the idea, a grand vision of big death and big money. — Octafish



Rev. Moon and Rev. Falwell co-pioneers of PTL business model.

BUSH , REV. MOON & Washington Times

By Carla Binion
11/09/99

In the 1970s, the Fraser Senate Investigating Committee looked into the "Koreagate" scandal. . .  Then-U.S. Representative Donald Fraser said the senate committee discovered that Moonie leaders were told Moon wanted to start political work in the U.S.  The Moonies were told that objection to Moon's goals would equal objection to God.  (Fraser Committee Report, page 320.)

President George Bush was head of the CIA when Koreagate broke in 1976 and knew the above details.  Despite that, Bush (1) Did nothing to oppose the Unification Church's deceptive, coercive, brainwashing tactics or designs on our political system, and (2) In 1995 spoke at a series of Moon rallies in the U.S. and Japan.  The rallies were hosted by Mrs. Moon's front group Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP).  (Jolen Chang, "Asian Fortune," March 1995.)  Bush received one million pounds for payment according to the "British Daily Mail."  ("Bush and '1M from Moonies,' "Daily Mail," September 5, 1995.)

George Bush claimed innocence and gave his only interview on the subject to the Moonie owned paper, "The Washington Times."  Bush praised the WFPF's "great emphasis on family" and told the "Times:"  "Until I see something about the Women's Federation that troubles me, I will continue to encourage them."  (Peter McGill, et al, "Ed Schreyer and the Moonies," "Maclean's," October 23, 1995; Andrew Pollack, "Bush Host In Japan Tied To Rev. Moon," "The New York Times," September 4, 1995.)

Because Bush headed the CIA during Koreagate, he knew that when the Moonies talk of "family" they mean the "True Family" of the Unification Church.  As former head of the CIA, he also knew of The Washington Times Moonie connections.

CONTINUED...

http://liberalslikechrist.org/about/bushmoon.html
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 09:38 AM
Response to Original message
73. A BFEE-Octopus required reading list:
Edited on Fri Dec-12-03 09:56 AM by Minstrel Boy
Some suggestions to keep you awake at night, pondering the interface of criminal and terror networks with arms merchants and oil barons, military and intelligence agencies, and the ubiquitous family Bush. Please add to the list.

The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro - Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith (newly revised)

The Mafia, CIA & George Bush: The Untold Story of America's Greatest Financial Debacle - Pete Brewton

Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed - Russell Bowen

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK - Peter Dale Scott

The Assassinations - James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, editors

Defrauding America: Encyclopedia of Secret Operations by the CIA, DEA and Other Covert Agencies - Rodney Stich

Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press and "Project Truth" - Robert Parry

Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery - Robert Parry

October Surprise - Gary Slick

October Surprise - Barbara Honegger

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Webster Tarpley (available online here: http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm)

The Franklin Cover-Up - John DeCamp

Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America - Peter Dale Scott

Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion - Gary Webb

Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press - Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy - Greg Palast

The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001 - Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 05:33 PM
Response to Reply #73
84. A few more, some going back to 22 November 1963...
You are well-read, Minstrel Boy, as shown by your observations, as well as the selections from your library. To your list, I'd like to add:

The Iran-Contra Connection:Secret Teams & Covert Operations in the Reagan Era — Jonathan Marshall, Peger Dale Scott and Jane Hunter

The Last Investigation — Gaeton Fonzi

The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA — Jonathan Kwitney*

Spider's Web: The Secret History of how the White House Illegally Armed Iraq — Alan Friedman

False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire — Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin

Conspiracy — Anthony Summers

Selections from Whitewash — Harold Weisberg

Plausible Denial — Mark Lane

Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and American Intelligence — Philip H. Melanson

JFK and Vietnam — John M. Newman

Oswald and the CIA — John M. Newman

Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case — James DiEugenio

* Have not read, but am asking Santa.
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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 11:16 AM
Response to Original message
76. I've searched for a model of what BFEE has in store for our country
I came across this old article about how The Ford Foundation and Harvard "built" an elite for Indonesia and William Hanna, the author called the result "a new form of government...military-private enterprise" which, IMO, closely resembles this administration.

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/internat/indo.html
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 01:46 PM
Response to Reply #76
80. good morning bob
interesting about Indonesia. I went looking for connections between Indonesia and Burson Marsteller and came across this , some of which is news to me.

With the Bush Goldstrike intervention, Barrick Gold shot up from insignificance, to world power status, and Bush himself climbed onboard.

President Bush's ambassador to Canada (1989-92), Edward N. Ney, had been for many years a Bush poltical operative and an international coordinator of Bush's "privatized" intelligence activities. In 1992, Ney quit as ambassador and became a director of the Barrick Gold Corp.
The following year, Brian Mulroney resigned as Canadian prime minister. Mulroney was the most unpopular Canadian politician; but, in power, he had directly aided Barrick's international ventures, and had worked closely with Bush to force through free trade agreements. Munk immediately hired the former primer minister as a Barrick step-n-fetchit. The approved biography explains Munk's point of view:
"Mulroney was the unhappy lightning rod for the angst of a whole nation, in office and out..... Munk was starting to salivate at the prospect of an inside track into the huge Chinese territory." Mulroney has been paid over $300,000 per year by Barrick. Barrick announced in May 1995, that a new international advisory board was being assembled, under the leadership of "honorary senior advisor" George Bush, the former U.S. President, who like Mulroney, had recently lost his job at the hands of the voters.

On Nov. 27, 1996, the French newspaper (Le Monde) leaked the news that Barrick had been granted a concession to prospect for gold in Zaire -- a lead which prompted the present (EIR) Barrick investigation.Canadian newspapers that same day reported that Barrick Gold had convinced the government of Indonesia to award to Barrick control over the world's largest gold find, and that (George Bush and Brian Mulroney had personally done the heavy lobbying) to accomplish this.

The Indonesia deal is indeed startling. The small Canadian mining company Bre-X Minerals Ltd. had intended to develop the Busand gold mine, on East Kalimantan. Suddenly, the government announced that it demanded that Barrick Gold Corp. be cut in to a 75% ownership stake in the mine, which is estimated to hold 57 million ounces of gold, with a current estimated value over $20 billion. The U.S. Republican Party, of course, has been attempting to use President Clinton's fund-raising relationship with Indonesian supporters as a scandal to break the President. Former President Bush, meanwhile, has been reportedly telling world leaders, privately, that the Clinton Presidency is destroyed; that his son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, will be the next President, reviving the Bush dynasty; and that, therefore, leaders would be smart to work with him now.

Lots of good stuff

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ontario-stories/2001-November/000198.html
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 02:52 PM
Response to Reply #76
81. Barrick Gold in Indonesia
On Nov. 26,1996 the small Canadian mining company Bre-X Minerals released a "guidance" from the government of Indonesia, which requeted that Bre-X sell the majority of its 80% holdings in what (MaClean's) magazine called the "mine of the century," the Busang goldmine in East Kalimantan state, to Barrick Gold. By Dec. 17, Umar Said, secretary general of Indonesia's Ministry of Mines and Energy, reported that Bre-X and Barrick had reached an agreement, whereby Barrick would take 67.5% to Bre-X's 20.25% share in Busang, and Indonesia would retain a 10% stake. Overnight, Barrick had outmaneuvered several other contenders, such as Placer Dome, to emerge as perhaps the world's premier golddiggers. Busang is currently valued at $21 billion, with estimated gold deposits of 57 million ounces, but which could end up nearer to 100 million ounces.

According to a Houstan-based spokesman for Barrick's "honorary senior adviser," former President George Bush, a Sept. 19, 1996 personal letter from Bush to Indonesian President Suharto clinched Barrick's advantage on the Busang mine deal. Bush's personal intervention was first revealed in the Dec. 21-23 (Financial Post,) a Toronto-based paper controlled by Bush's media ally Conrad Black, who in the same issue, declared Barrick CEO Peter Munk "newsmaker of the year."

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ontario-stories/2001-November/000198.html

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 08:08 PM
Response to Reply #81
87. Suharto: First, there is a Commie. Then there is no Commie.
Then there's Poppy. I'm just learning about the extent of his connections to Indonesia and the treatment of the "lesser-developed" indigenous people there. WARNING: Contains a most disturbing and graphic example of inhumanity...

Nightmare in Indonesia: The Roots of the Bush-Cheney's Oil Government

By Cheryl Seal

At Disney World's Epcot Center in sunny Orlando, Florida, crowds of well-fed, smiling children and their parents dressed in bright summer cottons, crowd into the Universe of Energy attraction. There, surrounded by a dizzying array of special effects, they are treated to "Ellen's Energy Adventure," featuring a very young Ellen Degeneres and Bill Nye the Science Guy, who take them on a tour of the wonder world of energy - a crowd-pleasing experience complete with life-like dinosaurs.(1)

A world away in the jungles of Sumatra in Indonesia, a bone-thin family of Aceh natives squat inside their tiny hut clad in worn rags, waiting to eat their meager midday meal. Suddenly, Indonensian soldiers burst through the door screaming "Where are the men? Where are the GAM (Gerakan Aceh Mer??, members ofthe Aceh freedom movement) hiding?" There is a terrified scream as one of the men seizes a tiny baby from the arms of its sister. He dashes
the child to the ground outside the hut. In an act of hideous brutality, he pours the boiling water used to prepare the family dinner over the screaming child. No one is allowed to go to the baby's aid. The next day at sunrise, after the soldiers have left, the baby dies. (2)

What do these two seemingly unrelated and grossly different scenarios have in common? They were both "sponsored" by Exxon. While linking its name to fun-filled all-American experiences such Disneyworld, Exxon soaks up PR and pushes its agenda (which, of course, is fossil fuel) to kids and their parents. In Indonensia, by applying pressure to the unstable government, Exxon (d.b.a. ExxonMobil) has triggered a wave of violence against the Aceh natives who have been fighting for their independence and control of their homeland and future for three decades. Why? Beheath the forest floor in the Aceh homeland lays a rich reserve of natural gas, while off its coast lays vast, untapped oil reserves.

But Aceh and Indonesia are not "just another" foreign conflict. In this struggle and its history is the darkly mirrored image of the present U.S. leadership, the past that shaped it, and, if nothing is done to prevent it, the future of our own nation.

CONTINUED…

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/bush-cheney.htm
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 08:46 PM
Response to Reply #87
90. Here's the link between Barrick and Iran Contra
In 1983, the Khashoggi-led group formed the gold company whose name was soon changed to Barrick Gold Corp. Sheik Kamal Adham was reportedly one of the new company's founding co-owners. Adham, the chief of Saudi intelligence, had coordinated royalist guerrillas in Yemen, with British arms secretly provided through Khashoggi.
Beginning in 1985, Khashoggi borrowed $21 million, using his Barrick stock as collateral, for the covert transfer of arms to Iran for the Bush-North group, during an offical U.S. arms embargo against the Khomeini regime. Khashoggi who allegedly provided the loan from his Cayman Islands company, president of Khashoggi's Triad American holding company.
Khashoggi used the Monte Carlo office of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International to launder money for Iran arms sales. Barrick Gold Corp. co-founder Kamal Adham was later prosecuted for fraud in the BCCI case, and paid a $100 million fine.

Khashoggi's Saudi royal piggybanks also underwrote George Bush's Central American "Contras" adventures, making payments through the Swiss Bank Corp. and a Cayman Islands bank, totalling about $27 million.

When the Iran and Contra scandals blew up in 1986, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese linked the two scandals in a Nov. 25 public revelation. The next day, Munk announced a shareholders' meeting to decide on an urgent restructuring plan. A new organization emerged, keeping the Khashoggi group in control, but easing Khashoggi out of the limelight and making Munk the sole public figurehead. Personnel were shifted into the Canada organization out of Khashoggi's Triad operations in Utah. Tariq Kadri, Khashoggi's longtime attorney, was made president of the Horsham holding company that was put over Barrick.

As the U.S. Congress took up the arms-for-drugs investigation and other trails leading to Vice President Bush, Khashoggi became too hot for the Canadian partnership and the Khashoggi group's shares were officially sold off. Khashoggi was himself arrested in 1989, in a fraud case involving the Philippines' Marcos regime. Taken from Switzerland and jailed in New York, Khashoggi was bailed out with a $4 million check from his partner, Peter Munk.
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ontario-stories/2001-November/000198.html
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:09 AM
Response to Reply #90
94. Khashoggi links Iran-Contra & PNAC Perle & Selection 2000
Adnan Khashoggi used his personal funds to institute one of Ollie "The Traitor" North's neat ideas for money making off-the-books foreign policy.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/US-Israel/Iran_Contra_Affair.html

Must of been quite profitable, as PNAC's Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle hit up Mr. Khashoggi for $100 million for a piece of Perle's appropriately named "Trireme Partners Ltd."

http://www.doublestandards.org/hersch1.html

And remember blm's "Good Friend" Theresa "Madame Butterfly" LePore, once the mighty county clerk of Dade recount fame in Florida? Turns out she once was a stew for Mr. Khashoggi.

http://www.slate.msn.com/?id=1006609

Small world, huh?



"And very, very bad."
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:18 AM
Response to Reply #94
95. Have you visited madcow lately?
www.madcowprod.com/indexbb.html

watch the video at the bottom
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:34 AM
Response to Reply #95
96. thanks for the head's up,
it's been a longtime since the last update.

Great to see Hopsicker's book "Welcome to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 Cover-Up in Florida" will be out in February.

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 09:35 AM
Response to Reply #96
97. Wow! Lots happened to Hopsicker since his last update!
The FBI's been busy too, applying the "interview & intimidation" techniques made famous during the Warren Commission.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 08:33 PM
Response to Reply #76
88. Monsters.
Some believe more than a million comsymps were murdered in 1965-66. Some liberal foreign policy you had there, LBJ. Readers, please note how we actually ENCOURAGED ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM, as long as they wanted to kill communists.

BUILDING AN ELITE FOR INDONESIA

EXCERPT...

At the funeral of General Nasution's daughter, mistakenly slain in the Untung coup, Navy chief Eddy Martadinata told santri student leaders to "sweep." The message was "that they could go out and clean up the Communists without any hindrance from the military, wrote Christian Science Monitor Asian correspondent John Hughes. With relish they called out their followers, stuck their knives and pistols in their waistbands, swung their clubs over their shoulders, and embarked on the assignment for which they had long been hoping."15 Their first move was to burn PKI headquarters. Then, thousands of PKI and Sukarno supporters were arrested and imprisoned in Djakarta; cabinet members and parliamentarians were permanently "suspended"; and a purge of the ministries was begun.

The following month, on October 17, 1965, Colonel Sarwo Edhy took his elite paratroops (the "Red Berets") into the PKI's Central Java stronghold in the Bojolali-Klaten-Solo triangle. His assignment, according to Hughes, was "the extermination, by whatever means might be necessary, of the core of the Communist Party there." He found he had too few troops. "We decided to encourage the anti-communist civilians to help with the job," the Colonel told Hughes. "In Solo we gathered together the youth, the nationalist groups, the religious Moslem organizations. We gave them two or three days' training, then sent them out to kill Communists."16

The Bandung engineering students, who had learned from the Kentucky AID team how to build and operate radio transmitters, were tapped by Colonel Edhy's elite corps to set up a multitude of small broadcasting units throughout strongly PKI East and Central Java, some of which exhorted local fanatics to rise up against the Communists in jihad. The U.S. embassy provided necessary spare parts for these radios.

Time magazine describes what followed:

Communists, Red sympathizers and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have executed thousands of Communists after interrogation in remote jails.... Armed with wide-blade knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of Communists, killing entire families and burying the bodies in shallow graves.... The murder campaign became so brazen in parts of rural East Java that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra, where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travelers from these areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies; river transportation has at places been seriously impeded.17

CONTINUED...

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/internat/indo.html

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ElementaryPenguin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 01:35 PM
Response to Original message
79. Excellent post, Big O!! Right on the money!
:toast:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 05:39 PM
Response to Reply #79
85. Thanks, Elementary Penguin! Have you ever been to the Bushfest?
Where've you been 'Penguin? I look forward to your posts! Please add to the BFEE Crimeline! Until then, I submit the following saga of the Octopus...

FEEDING THE OCTOPUS - AN OVERVIEW OF THE FINANCING MECHANISMS OF U.S.-SPONSORED DRUG TRAFFICKING, ARMS DEALING AND COVERT MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE ACTION (1935-1985)

May 6, 2003

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historical position, and I feel that we need to correct it. - Harry S. Truman, December 22, 1963

In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipotent, teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If government becomes a lawbreaker it breeds contempt for law: it invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Introduction
The Octopus is a term coined by an investigative journalist to describe a tiny clique of people operating at the nefarious intersection of drug trafficking, arms dealing, covert military operations, intelligence, high finance, organized crime, diplomacy and the media. (The journalist, writing a book on the topic, was murdered in manner reminiscent to CIA "wet operations" much like the one attempted against Ronald Rewald in a West Virginia hotel room on his way to interview an informant.) This small group has acheived a power vastly disproportional to their numbers by their highjacking of the national security state apparatus which they use to mask criminal and unconstitutional activities, including flooding America with heroin and cocaine.

Many of the very people who controlled the Octopus during the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom were cited (and convicted) in the Iran-Contra scandal, have returned to government as members of the administration installed by judicial coup d'etat in 2000. They could very well be continuing their operations in much the same manner as they did over the last three decades. If so, they remain a clear and present danger to democracy, prosperity, security, the environment, the rule of law, the integrity of the social fabric and the ongoing evolution of consciousness. They may very well wind up dragging America to the deepest reaches of a hell of its own making.

The Deep Politics of International Drug Trafficking
To adequately understand the Rewald case, we have to understand the deep politics of international drug trafficking in the 20th century. In 1936, Thomas Dewey's investigation into organized crimes netted a jail sentence for mob kingpin Lucky Luciano. As Prohibition headed for repeal, Luciano and his ally and financial genius Meyer Lansky began diversifying into heroin procured in China through key Chiang Kai-shek supporters, the Shanghai heroin cartel. A brutal vendetta by Mussolini against Sicilian mobsters and the overall effect of World War II disrupted the traditional transit routes and institutional players to point of virtually eliminating the trade in opium and heroin. (Lernoux 1984, 81) Instead of capitalizing on a unique opportunity to decimate it once and for all, American intelligence instead cooperated with Mafiosi like Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese.

CONTINUED...

http://www.democracyunbound.com/remrewald.html
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 05:14 PM
Response to Original message
83. one more kick at the BFEE
because it's what we oughta do.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-12-03 11:34 PM
Response to Reply #83
93. Bush and 9-11: Compelling Evidence for Complicity
Remember the Kent State Phys Ed professor? While it's not perfect, he did made one of the most understandable cases for pinning blame of 9-11 on where it belongs: The BFEE. A must-read if we want to destroy the Monster.

September 11th and the Bush Administration:
Compelling Evidence for Complicity


by Walter E. Davis, PhD, Kent State University
October 29th 2003

Abstract

Why 9/11 was not prevented is one of the most critical questions in current times, because answers may well reveal to more people than ever before, the true nature of the U.S. corporate global empire – the most extensive and most destructive in human history. Newspapers across the U.S. called for an investigation into Bush's lies about the reason for war on Iraq. While it is relatively easy for the American people to accept deception for the killing of the Arab people in distant lands, few people will be as accepting if it is shown that this Administration was complicit in acts of atrocities against its own people.

The evidence I present in this article suggests that the most plausible explanation of the events surrounding September 11, 2001, is that the Bush Administration was complicit in the terrorist attacks and has orchestrated its cover-up. The sources cited contain extensive detailed information, additional sources, and analysis beyond what is possible to provide in this summary. I hope that this information will incite public outrage leading to full accountability.

SNIP...

Even after more than two years, investigations stop far too short, the public is left in the dark on too many questions easily answered, and no one in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for any actions surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001. The National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States, formed at the insistence of the families of some of the victims, is continuing to hold hearings and a final report is expected by May, 2004.

It remains to be seen if, after a nearly three-year delay, they will come close to the truth about September 11th. I believe that this will occur only if tremendous public pressure is brought to bear from numerous sources to demand accountability from the Bush Administration. Accountability for any atrocity should attract the attention of serious investigative reporters, media critics, and even news commentators. That is their chosen responsibility. It is well known that the U.S. corporate media ask few probing questions, which aides in government cover-up. But why there has been so little coverage in the alternative press, with obvious exceptions, is a mystery. Too many of these outlets (e.g., Z Magazine and Mother Jones) have ignored the issue of accountability for 9/11. The failure of accountability should be a national and international scandal. Questions of why journalists and others in the mass media are failing the people of the U.S. and the world need to be answered.

CONTINUED...

http://physics911.org/net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=19
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starroute Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 10:13 AM
Response to Original message
98. The Bushes, oil, and the CIA form one important nexus
Edited on Sat Dec-13-03 11:01 AM by starroute
"Bush and the Liedtkes had been very lucky with the Jameson field, but they could hardly expect such results to be repeated indefinitely. In addition, they were now posting losses, and the value of Zapata stock had gone into a decline. Bush and the Liedtke brothers now concluded that the epoch in which large oil fields could be discovered within the continental United States was now over. Mammoth new oil fields, they believed, could only be found offshore, located under hundreds of feet of water on the continental shelves, or in shallow seas like the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. By a happy coincidence, in 1954 the US federal government was just beginning to auction the mineral rights for these offshore areas. With father Prescott Bush directing his potent Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones network from the US Senate while regularly hob-nobbing with President Eisenhower on the golf links, George Bush could be confident of receiving special privileged treatment when it came to these mineral rights. Bush and his partners therefore judged the moment ripe for launching a for-hire drilling company, Zapata Offshore, a Delaware corporation that would offer its services to the companies making up the Seven Sisters international oil cartel in drilling underwater wells. 40% of the offshore company's stock would be owned by the original Zapata firm. The new company would also be a buyer of offshore royalty leases. Uncle Herbie helped arrange a new issue of stock for this Zapata offshoot. The shares were easy to unload because of the 1954 boom in the New York stock market. 'The stock market lent itself to speculation,' Bush would explain years later, 'and you could get equity capital for new ventures.'

"1954 was also the year that the US overthrew the government of Jacopo Arbenz in Guatemala. This was the beginning of a dense flurry of US covert operations in central America and the Caribbean, featuring especially Cuba."

http://www.tarpley.net/bush8.htm


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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 10:52 AM
Response to Reply #98
101. Media, Oil, and Politics: Anatomy of the Venezuelan Coup
Thanks for bringing up some very important connections, starroute! When it comes to the BFEE, the press and the People MUST be just like oil — not free. A most illustrative report of how oil, information and democracy aren't for the people to own. Just like in the United States...

Media, Oil, and Politics: Anatomy of the Venezuelan Coup

by Eric Quezada

"Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." "stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader." New York Times Editorial, April 13, 2002

SNIP...

In fact, it appears that the U.S. embassy in Caracas has been a busy meeting place of coup plotters and that the attempt to overthrow the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez and end the reform-minded government has been in the works since the Bush administration took office. A closer look at the events that led to the coup reads like a modern day saga of Allende or Arbenz, except that in this episode of U.S. intervention the media has taken on an unusually direct and destructive role.

When the popularly elected Hugo Chavez and the left-leaning Quinta Republica Movement were swept into power in 1998, they promised to reform a hopelessly corrupt government and redistribute wealth in a society where 80% of the population lives in extreme poverty while the middle class and oligarchy squander Venezuela's oil and natural resources. Endorsed by voters in six national elections, the Bolivarian Revolution, as the Chavista project is known, has created: (1) a new progressive constitution, (2) a new national assembly and Supreme Court, and (3) development banks for poor communities, small businesses, and women. The government has also increased spending on health and education and instituted a moderate program of land reform, which pays cash at market rate for unused land. In addition, the Chavez government has called for regional integration and cooperation in opposition to the U.S.-proposed free trade policies. All of this has made it clear that Venezuela is offering an alternative to the neo-liberal policies that have impoverished the majority of Latin Americans in the past two decades.

SNIP...

The role of the Venezuelan media prior to and during the coup is one of the more ominous developments. Far from being objective observers, the media establishment and the moguls who own it are overtly biased and active political players. All the major media outlets regularly ran free ads encouraging the middle class to take to the streets. But Henrique Otero, publisher of one of the two main dailies, is arguably the worst offender, playing a key role in organizing the coup in addition to demonizing Chavez and inciting demonstrations. Another far right and seditious media mogul instrumental to the coup is Gustavo Cisnero of the Cisnero Group, which owns Venevision, Caracol Television (the local Direct TV affiliate), and the U.S.-based Spanish language network, Univision. He is Venezuela's wealthiest man and a close friend of George Bush.

CONTINUED...

http://www.media-alliance.org/mediafile/21-3/venezuela.html


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starroute Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 11:23 AM
Response to Reply #101
102. Messing with Venezuela goes back a long ways
A little while ago, I did some research on General Robert E. Wood, grandfather of William Stamps Farish III. (Farish is a close friend of George H.W. Bush and is the current American ambassador to Great Britain who was responsible for setting up last month's shindig there.)

An online biography of Wood states:

"He served with the Third Cavalry during the Phillippine Insurrection and returned to West Point as an instructor in 1903. In 1905 he was assigned to the Panama Canal and served under General Goethals in the building of the canal. Wood rose rapidly, reaching the position of chief quartermaster in 1912, having the responsibility of hiring thousands of workmen, erecting numerous buildings, and distributing huge quantities of supplies. MAJ Wood retired in 1915 due to a provision of a law that rewarded a few officers who had been responsible for major accomplishments. His next job was with E.I. DuPont De Nemours Co., as an assistant to the vice president. He next worked for General Asphalt Co., in charge of operations in Trinidad and Venezuela."

http://www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research/historicalmaterials/other/wood.htm

All I've been able to find out about General Asphalt is that it was a holder of oil concessions in Venezuela at the time. (There are a few websites which cover them, but only in Spanish.) However, it seems striking that they would need a military man -- and one who had served during the suppression of the Philippine Insurrection -- to run their operations.

(Wood himself is of interest to me because he forms a link between the Bush family, whose members have been close to his daughter and grandson, and the extreme right-wing, of which he was an active member in the 1940's and 1950's. The page linked above includes a listing of his major correspondents, as represented in a collection of his papers, and it reads like a who's-who of prominent rightists and revisionist historians of the period.)

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:15 PM
Response to Reply #102
109. Few anywhere know this story, starroute!
Thank you for the heads-up from history. The BFEE cares zero for the common man and everything for real property.

Poppy Bush, as head of CIA, was the invisible führer of Capitalism's Invisible Army. The wimp was the first head of the nation's secret police to become President, head of the nation's "visible" government. Too bad his head was too small to wear both hats, let alone one well.

Poppy had no high regard for Democracy or Human Rights. Remember when Haiti’s first democratically elected leader, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was deposed by a junta of generals in the early 1990s? Poppy Bush didn’t life a finger to help him, not even for a telephone call, even though the generals would have returned the government to civilian control, had he done so, according to Aristide.

So later Congress had to debate Clinton's first, meager, attempt to use the USMC to kick the generals out. Later, Aristide was smeared by Jesse Helms, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and noted racist and conservative stooge. Helms said Aristide was a communist who “necklaced” his victims with burning tires.

Aristide, for those who don't know, was a Roman Catholic priest who survived an assassination attempt while celebrating Mass. Maimed by the loss of an eye in the attack, Aristide had been found guilty of preaching “Liberation Theology." That's the original Liberals Like Christ, wherein the teachings of the New Testament form the basis of pro-democratic popular movements in Third World nations.

Aristide’s enemies, the generals and friends of Poppy and Jesse (and by extension the BFEE, including Phil Gramm, Wendy Gramm, the Saudi Oil sheikhs, the Pakistani intel, etc, etc.)? Well, they’re the rent-a-cops charged with keeping the masses’ hands off the 99-percent of the property on Haiti owned by 1-percent of its people. In exchange, the elites let their police protectors enjoy the lucrative drug trade.

Hmmm. Drug dealing. Illegal war. Perverted Democracy. Sounds more and more like the United States is turning into Haiti. And soon, thanks to Smirko's tax cuts and $44 Trillion debt forecast, 1 percent of Americans will OWN 99 percent of America.

That's what happens when property is more important than people. And like in “Animal Farm,” some property is worth more than others. Like corporations, the biggest pig in the sty.

— Octafish
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:28 PM
Response to Reply #101
110. News out of Toronto (Canada) this morning that Barrick Gold
Sept.11 2003

News out of Toronto this morning that Barrick Gold Corp has appointed Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros to its board of directors. A press release states that Cisneros is the Chairman of CEO of the Cisneros Group of Companies, one of the world's largest privately-held conglomerates. He is also widely held to be the shadowy financeir behind the April 2002 coup d'etat against President Hugo Chavez Frian and uses his broadcasting and media interests in Venezuela and North America in a continued campaign against the legitimate government of the country to which his father had originally fled from Cuba. The appointment is seen as kissing goodbye to any short-term hopes that Barrick might have had of entering the gold mining industry in Venezuela where likewise Toronto-based Crystallex International Corporation is today presenting a feasibility study on development of the $500 million Las Cristinal contract.

Barrick founder and chairman Peter Munk says "our board will benefit from Gustavo's extensive business experience and knowledge, particularly involving Latin America where we have significant assets...Barrick is committed to implementing the new standards for boards of directors set out by the US Securities & Exchange Commission and the New York Stock Exchange. Gustova;s appointment reflects our determination to meet the new corporate governance guidlines and strenghten our board geographically as a global company."
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_1521.shtml
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starroute Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 10:28 AM
Response to Original message
99. The Bass Brothers
"Lee, Ed, Sid, and Robert Bass have been fortunate from early on. It has been estimated that their uncle Sid Richardson, who UT has an auditorium in his name, was worth around $800 million. Following in their father's footsteps, each of the four attended Yale University; Ed and George W. Bush were classmates and friends there. . . .

"Based out of Fort Worth, they know others from the Metroplex. Tom Hicks proposed in 1998 that UTIMCO invest $20 million in the Bass Brothers Enterprises through the limited partnership of Prime Enterprises II. . . .

"The Bass brothers pumped $210,000 into Bush's gubernatorial campaigns, via their PAC's (Political Action Committees) and their personal donations of roughly $273,000. The billionaire Bass family is Bush's number 5 career patron. As Governor, Bush appointed Lee Bass as Chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). Amazingly, Bush later received $202,000 from the organization. TPWD made news when it was found to be passing out brochures at park entrances that contained tobacco and alcohol advertisements. TPWD also granted permits for their land that allowed hunters to make money from killing wild deer on Texas lands.

<snip>

"In 1990, when George W. Bush was on the board of directors at Harken, he was told that the company was going under. He sold over 200,000 shares of Harken stock weeks before the value plummeted. The overall gain was $848,560; roughly $600,000 of this went towards buying a piece of the Texas Rangers. So, who doled out $850k for a company that could potentially go under at any point directly after the sale? A search of company memos returned only one name, and they can't be sure to whom or what it refers, naturally, the name is 'Lee.' "

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


"Which brings us to one of the interesting conundrums encountered in Bush finances. The contract with Bahrain would have been impossible to carry out by Harken alone; it needed big, big bucks. These were supplied by the Bass family of Fort Worth, a clan of billionaires. Was this a quid pro quo or just a happy coincidence? Of course, the Basses may have simply wanted to take a gamble, as they often did. On the other hand, they may have felt some obligation to help George W.’s company as a kind of payback; after all, his father’s administration had given $2 billion in tax-exempt subsidies to a group of “vultures” (to use Newsweek’s generic term) headed by Robert Bass, to help pick the carcass of the $16.3 billion American Savings and Loan, the biggest insolvent S&L in the country, but still very fleshy.

Robert Bass’ good fortune on that occasion may have had something to do with the fact that he was a member of Vice President Bush’s 'Team 100,' a knot of rich men, each of whom contributed $100,000 or more to Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign. On the other hand, so much money, so many favors have been passed back and forth over the years between the Bushes and their incredibly wealthy backers, it is probably foolish to try to figure out all the quid pro quos that tie their daisy chain together."

http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/fertilize_bushes.html

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 11:30 AM
Response to Reply #99
104. Pug Winokur and Harvard also love HARKEN…
… just like Lay, Murchison, Bass, Mosbacher, Baker & Bush. These folks and the organizations they run have a lot in common. They are passionate about accumulating private property and they are ultra-conservative to the point of embracing fascism, politically. Personally, they practice socialism, asking the US taxpayers to take the risk, while they assume the profits. Gee. For people who call themselves patriotic, they really are very un-American.

While Pug’s no longer on the board, here’s the story of Winokur and Harvard’s HARKEN ties…

HARVARD WATCH: A PULITZER IS IN ORDER

EXCERPT…

Harvard Watch, a group of students and alumni at Harvard has done an outstanding job of illuminating Harvard tax-exempt investment activities in connection with Harken, Enron and Russia as well as the use of Harvard academic resources and prestige and Harvard rainmakers who cycle through government and corporations to rig policies and deals that enrich Harvard Endowment and a small circle of private investors.

Life gets interesting when Pulitzer Prize win-worthy investigative journalism comes from a volunteer network of students at Harvard University or from journalists whose stories and careers are intentionally sabotaged by the corporate media but are successfully publishing in New Zealand through Scoop Media ( http://www.scoop.co.nz/) and numerous upstart sites like it in the US and abroad. This is another sign that the upstart "real deal" media is indeed poised to capture significant market share from the corporate media.

*************

HARVARD: ROBIN HOOD IN REVERSE

Harvard Watch's explosive disclosures this week on Harken are a wonderful case study of how much money it takes to subsidize rich folks who are not good at their fundamental business. When you connect the dots to Harvard Watch's other stories, you start to appreciate how much money needs to be fraudulently stolen from everyone else to accumulate the capital it takes to float companies like Harken and successful business resumes for men like George W. Bush.

Unfortunately, this increasingly describes all of our corporate and government leadership. The more they rig the game to look good, the more expensive it gets for the us to subsidize their "success".

CONTINUED…

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0210/S00089.htm

MORE here (a few expired links at various media, but it’s there for those willing to look…)

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mackinn/harvardwatch/


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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 11:44 AM
Response to Reply #99
106. The Bass Brothers and Mickey Mouse and Pug Winokur
Edited on Sat Dec-13-03 11:47 AM by seemslikeadream
Strangely enough, Arvida remained a part of Penn Central and was managed by it until 1983 - at least three years after Pug Winokur went to work for Victor Palmieri, who headed Penn Central and its subsidiaries. According to John Taylor in Storming the Magic Kingdom: Wall Street, the Raiders and the Battle for Disney (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), Penn Central emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1978 "with what to many seemed an excessively bureaucratic management." One of Arvida's executives, Chuck Cobb, joined with Richard Rainwater in a leveraged buyout on behalf of the Bass Brothers. With an investment totaling $20 million, they arranged financing of $183.6 million, secured by Arvida's assets. Six months later they marketed the company to Disney, a corporation which already owned 17,000 acres of land in Florida. The eventual deal with Disney would result in giving Bass Brothers a big block of Disney stock. The land package which Disney had bought in around Orlando, Florida, in the 1950's had been put together for him by Paul Helliwell, former OSS chief of the Far East Division, who was recommended to Disney by William J. Donovan. Disney's investment banker for many years was J.P. Morgan, a firm which worked with Donovan. Helliwell also set up the Castle Bank in the Bahamas to launder money flowing from the sale of drugs from Burma and Thailand used to finance Chennault's airline. Castle Bank would eventually he connected to Billy Melon Hitcock's profits from selling LSD to California college students.
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/lm4,30,02,harvardtoenronpt4.htm
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starroute Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:05 PM
Response to Reply #106
108. Who is Richard E. Rainwater?
His name wasn't previously familiar to me, but he's also mentioned on a page I linked to in post #99 -- and there, too, it's in connection with the Bass Brothers. Is Rainwater a significant part of the BFEE story?

"One may also fairly conclude that the Bushes are blessed and protected beyond reason by those portions of the public’s brain that have turned to mush. What other explanation but public stupidity explains the denouement of the Texas Rangers deal? As everyone knows, George W. used $600,000 from the Harken stock sale to buy a tiny slice of the Texas Rangers; and when the Rangers were sold last year for $250 million, the second-largest amount ever paid for a baseball team, George W. emerged with more than $14.9 million. What had made the ball club so valuable was a gift from the public — a $200 million stadium mostly paid for by a sales tax that the citizens of Arlington, Texas, had overwhelmingly voted to assume.

"Incredible. Ordinary folks — most of whom probably have a hard time meeting their mortgage payments — dug into their pockets to make George W. a rich man. But wait. It’s worse than that. Forget George W. for a moment. His reward was penny-ante compared to what some of his fellow owners got — men like Richard E. Rainwater, the mastermind of it all, the guy who allowed George W. to buy into the Rangers in the first place. Rainwater, rated by Fortune magazine as one of the 400 richest men in America, is the sorcerer who devised the investment strategy that elevated the Bass family from millionaires in the 1970s to billionaires in the 1990s. He probably owns the U.S. Treasury. And yet Texans are paying a sales tax to make him richer? Unbelievable."

http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/fertilize_bushes.html
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:38 PM
Response to Reply #108
111. Conason pegged him, Bass, Smirk and UTIMCO...
Check out the printable version of Conason's awesome Harper's article from Feb. 2000. If more Americans had, we wouldn't be in this mess today...

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1797_300/59086099/print.jhtml

PS: Cough -- referenced in #60 of this BFEEfest...

PPS: Great thinks mind alike!

:toast:
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:44 PM
Response to Reply #108
112. Here's the first thing I found - Medicare!
Columbia/HCA is a partnership of financier Richard Rainwater of Ft.Worth and lawyer Richard Scott. Scott was recently terminated by Darla Moore, the wife of Richard Rainwater, according to Fortune Magazine.

The new CEO in place of Richard Scott is Thomas Frist, the former head of Hospital Corporation of America.

Rainwater also owns a large stake in Magellan Health Care which controls Charter Medical. Magellan, run by Darla Moore, is the largest network of psychiatric hospitals in the country. They are becoming more and more involved in obtaining government money for services formerly not covered as health care.

http://www.angelfire.com/de/jehudi/hospital.html


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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 01:35 PM
Response to Reply #112
116. Frist?
Tom wouldn't be missing a cat named Bill?
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starroute Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 12:55 PM
Response to Reply #108
113. More on Rainwater
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/brambles/499/Bush/Rainwater/rainwater.html

For more than a decade, George W. Bush - the sitting Texas governor, son of the ex-president, and possibly the Republican nominee for president in 2000 - has not made a move without consulting The Man … and I don't mean his father.

Down here in Texas we call him Shrub, as in little bush, and a shrub needs watering to grow up, right? So, in steps a man by the name of - we kid you not - Richard Rainwater. The national media has yet to probe into Bush's business dealings, but if and when they do, they'll find this man Rainwater. He's a billionaire speculator and money manager who ranks among the wealthiest 100 Americans. It's well known that Rainwater has been a major financial backer of Bush's political career, but it's a little-known fact that he's also largely responsible for Bush's personal wealth.

<snip>

Bush is nothing if not loyal to Rainwater, who has done very nicely while his pal has been governor. Among the favors Rainwater has enjoyed:

State buildings sold to Rainwater's real estate company at bargain basement rates;

State college and public school funds invested in Rainwater's company;

A Bush-sponsored tax cut that failed, but would have cut millions in annual taxes for Rainwater; and

A stadium-financing bill backed by Bush that gave a $10 million bonus payment to a Rainwater company.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/121700-01.htm

America's President-elect, George W. Bush, held an investment in a company that leased a chain of psychiatric hospitals where patients died and the conditions were so appalling that many were shut down, The Observer reveals today.

The hospital chain - Charter Behavioral Health Systems - was exposed by a CBS television documentary last year after the deaths were reported. CBS had filmed widespread malpractices, acknowledged by government regulators. This led to a criminal investigation of Charter, which continues.

<snip>

The Charter connection leads to the heart of Bush's business network in Texas. Crescent was founded by his closest business partner and the man who made him rich: genius investor and Texas billionaire Richard Rainwater. Rainwater was the major investor with whom Bush bought into the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989 during his father's presidency. The investment was the source of Bush's biggest windfall and his folk hero status in Texas. He sold the baseball stock for a profit of $14.9 million, and Rainwater became part of the Bush circle.


http://www.tpj.org/pioneers/edward_rose.html

Rose is the founder and president of Cardinal Investments, which he now operates with his Pioneer partner Marshall Payne. The company has major stakes in Ace Cash Express (which cashes checks for the working poor for up to 6 percent of face value) and aviation and defense electronics firm Sierra Technologies. Rose was Cardinal’s sole owner in ’86, when he participated in a sneaky deal with one of Bush’s biggest donors. Richard Rainwater, an ex-investment advisor to the oil-rich family of Pioneer Lee Bass, arranged to borrow $300 million at high interest rates to buy Darling-Delaware Co. and other animal-fat rendering companies. Darling-Delaware had been a profitable, tax-paying company. After the takeover it was swamped with huge debt payments. Meanwhile, its new owners rewarded themselves with $180 million in “special dividends.” Suddenly, the company was operating at a loss. It stopped paying taxes and even collected a multi-million-dollar refund from the U.S. Treasury. Taxpayers got bilked while Rainwater, Rose and their cronies divvied up the $180 million in “special-dividend” fat.
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Aries Donating Member (544 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 01:29 PM
Response to Reply #113
115. Deleted dupe link : check out the Bass brothers above
Edited on Sat Dec-13-03 01:31 PM by Aries
Sorry...this thread is getting LONG!
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starroute Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 10:45 AM
Response to Original message
100. Terror-bombing and psychological warfare
"Robert A. Lovett, Prescott Bush's partner at Brown Brothers Harriman, had been Assistant Secretary of War for Air from 1941 to 1945. Lovett was the leading American advocate of the policy of terror-bombing of civilians. He organized the Strategic Bombing Survey, carried out for the American and British governments by the staff of the Prudential Insurance Company, guided by London's Tavistock Psychiatric Clinic. . . . Their Strategic Bombing Survey failed to demonstrate any real military advantage accruing from such outrages as the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. But the Harrimanites nevertheless persisted in the advocacy of terror from the air. They glorified this as 'psychological warfare,' a part of the utopian military doctrine opposed to the views of military traditionalists such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

<snip>

"A central focus of the Harriman security regime in Washington (1950-53) was the organization of covert operations, and 'psychological warfare.' Harriman, together with his lawyers and business partners, Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, wanted the government's secret services to conduct extensive propaganda campaigns and mass-psychology experiments within the U.S.A., and paramilitary campaigns abroad. This would supposedly ensure a stable world-wide environment favorable to Anglo-American financial and political interests.

"The Harriman security regime created the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) in 1951. The man appointed director of the PSB, Gordon Gray, is familiar to the reader as the sponsor of the child sterilization experiments, carried out by the Harrimanite eugenics movement in North Carolina following World War II (see Chapter 3).

"Gordon Gray was an avid Anglophile, whose father had gotten controlling ownership of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company through alliance with the British Imperial Tobacco cartel's U.S. representatives, the Duke family of North Carolina. Gordon's brother, R.J. Reynolds chairman Bowman Gray, Jr., was also a Naval Intelligence officer, known around Washington as the 'founder of operational intelligence.' Gordon Gray became a close friend and political ally of Prescott Bush; and Gray's son became for Prescott's son, George, his lawyer and the shield of his covert policy."

http://www.tarpley.net/bush4.htm

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9215 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 11:32 AM
Response to Original message
105. A must see video of Carlyle link to 9/11!!
This has to be one of the best vids on the mechanism of fascism there is likely to be. Those interviewed in this vid are highly reputable watchdog groups.

Note: the first couple of minutes are in Dutch and then the rest in English. At about 30 minutes into the tape see who makes an appearance with his arm around a Saudi elite.

To play in Real player right click the image. This will give you scrolling capability.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article3995.htm
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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 04:57 PM
Response to Original message
117. Kick.
:dem:
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number6 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 06:53 PM
Response to Original message
118. Bush Crime Family.. with" Ma Barker" Bush.. who
makes death threats agianst Democrats..
"mess with the Bush family and you dead !"
Larry King interview ...
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-13-03 09:54 PM
Response to Reply #118
119. She reminds me of someone who's name rhymes with Jeb.


Comrade Col. Rosa Klebb gets her kicks.

Didn't Michael Beschloss report last month that Babs took Duhbya to watch the motorcade in Dallas? No wonder Poppy can't remember where the heck he was that day.

Or-well. Bush Sr never did have to explain to anyone other than Mr. Hoover how his name was in George de Mohrenschildt's address book, a few pages before Lee Harvey Oswald's.
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Cleita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Dec-14-03 08:55 PM
Response to Original message
122. Kick!
:kick:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-15-03 12:26 AM
Response to Reply #122
123. Neil Bush aiming to rip-off Houston public schools (NEWS).
Thanks, Cleita! Here's some BFEE News about Less Dim Son Neil:

HISD wary in deal with Bush brother

By RON NISSIMOV
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

As Neil Bush's soap-operatic life took another twist in France last week with his engagement over chocolates and champagne, he hoped that a business deal back in Houston would help him move forward with his new calling.

On Thursday, the Houston Independent School District board was scheduled to seal a deal that could have given Bush's fledgling educational software company, Ignite, an important edge over competitors in the $7 billion-a-year industry.

The board in June already had approved spending $115,000 this academic year to use the company's eighth-grade U.S. history curriculum in 23 schools, on the condition that Bush and the HISD Foundation come up with an additional $115,000 to fully fund the program. Bush and the foundation, a philanthropic organization, lived up to their end of the bargain, persuading several wealthy Houstonians and major corporations to pony up the funds.

But the board voted 5-3 to delay accepting the donations, with some board members saying they worried they might be accused of helping Bush cash in on his family name.

CONTINUED same old same old BFEE...

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2292184


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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-15-03 12:03 PM
Response to Reply #123
124. Took your advice, slept like a baby!
There are those who will say Danforth and I were utterly mad not to flee for our lives after that; since our conclusions were now - notwithstanding their wildness - completely fixed, and of a nature I need not even mention to those who have read my account as far as this. Perhaps we were mad - for have I not said those horrible peaks were moutains of madness? But I think I can detect something of the same spirit - ableit in a less extreme form - in the men who stalk deadly beasts through African jungles to photograph them or study their habits. Half paralyzed with terror though we were, there was nevertheless fanned within us a blazing flame of awe and curiosity which triumphed in the end.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-15-03 06:04 PM
Response to Reply #124
128. Great! Thanks for the great (and most appropriate) HPL passage...
... I used to read his stuff growing up. Now that I've been around the block a few times, I really appreciate the treasures from his mind. Would that everybody was twisted so properly.



BTW: If you like Lovecraft, your third eye might appreciate Jorge Luis Borges & Stanislaw Lem.
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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-15-03 12:35 PM
Response to Original message
125. Whereas President Clinton pursued Nazis Bush is in bed with them
no matter what they call themselves today, this administration is infested with a purer form of fascism through corporate globalism.
But President Clinton stood up against Nazis.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/hr071498/holtzman.html

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

The Bush family fortune in part derives from Auschwitz via Thyssen
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/bushies.htm
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-15-03 07:20 PM
Response to Reply #125
129. Interview with Bertram Gross, author of "Friendly Fascism"
A political scientist specializing in economic, labor and urban affairs, Dr. Gross described what was happening to the USA in the early 1970s. It's too bad no one who could really do something about it listened. Here are some excerpts from Friendly Fascism, courtesy of our friends at Third World Traveler:

FRIENDLY FASCISM

p229
Murray B. Levin
"No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the facade of democratic institutions. "

SNIP...

p230
In the constitutional democracies, capitalist establishments have tended to use the democratic machinery as a device for sidetracking opposition, incorporating serious opponents into the junior and contingent ranks, and providing the information-the ``feedback"- on the trouble spots that required quick attention. As pressures were exerted from below, the leaders of these establishments consistently-in the words of Yvonne Karp's commentary on the British ruling elites-"allowed concessions to be wrung from them, ostensibly against their will but clearly in their own long term interests." Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx's youngest daughter, described their strategy (often opposed by the more backward corporate types) in these pungent words: `'to give a little in order to gain a lot." Throughout the First World the Ultra-Rich and the Corporate Overseers have been in a better position than anyone else to use the democratic machinery. They have the money that is required for electoral campaigns, legislative lobbying, and judicial suits. They have enormous- technical expertise at their beck and call. They have staying power.

Hence it is-as Dye, Ziegler, and a host of political scientists have demonstrated-that the upper-class elites of America have the greatest attachment to constitutional democracy. They are the abiding activists in the use of electoral, legislative, and judicial machinery at all levels of government. It is their baby. Ordinary people-called the masses by Dye and Ziegler-tend to share this perception. The democratic machinery belongs to them, "the powers that be," not to ordinary people. It is not their baby.

What will happen if more ordinary people should try to take over this baby and actually begin to make it their own? How would the elites respond if the masses began to ask the elites to give much more and gain much less-particularly when, under conditions of capitalist stagflation and shrinking world power, the elites have less to give. Some radical commentators claim that the powers that be would use their power to follow the example of the classic fascists and destroy the democratic machinery. I agree with Murray Levin that this would be stupid. I see it also as highly unlikely. No First World Establishment is going to shatter machinery that, with a certain amount of tinkering and a little bit of luck, can be profitably converted into a sophisticated instrument of repression.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Subvert_Demo_Machine_FF.html

Excerpt Selections:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html

A fair and balanced review:

http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_friendly.html



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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-15-03 05:03 PM
Response to Original message
126. The thread that must not die
This is required reading.

:kick:
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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 11:07 AM
Response to Reply #126
131. It sure beats the preperations for the first Bush show trial in election
year currently playing in the media.
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 09:58 AM
Response to Original message
130. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in the news today
Edited on Tue Dec-16-03 10:06 AM by seemslikeadream
So lets remember his role in "The gold heist of the century".

As soon as he took office, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt called the Barrick deal "gold heist of the century." He swore he would make sure the taxpayers received something for federal gold. He slapped a de facto moratorium on new patents, by abolishing the expedited process and requiring that he personally approve each patent.

Babbitt's office held up Barrick"s patent, on the dubious grounds that its pumping would harm an endangered species. In August 1993, Barrick sued in U.S. District Court in Nevada. The verdict in favor of Barrick came through in March 1994. Babbitt immediately granted the patent, made a big show of indignation, and abandoned all pretense of ending mining giveaways.

The approved biography of Peter Munk explains a bit of what happened: "For much of 1993, (Munk) spent a lot of time in the District of Columbia....lobbying. At that stage Brian Mulroney, Canada's former prime minister, had just joined the Barrick board and he immediately went down to Washington to establish contact with key senators, using his close relationship with George Bush to good advantage."

Once Barrick had clear title to Goldstrike, Barrick lobbyists worked with Hocker and other environmentalists for "reform" legislation that would impose royalties on companies which had not cleared the patent hurdle (on Sept. 29, 1994, royalty legislation was killed in a House-Senate conference). And, with unrestricted property rights over the $10 billion Goldstrike, Barrick Gold had the collateral for the explosive worldwide expansion it suddenly began, months after the patent was granted.

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ontario-stories/2001-November/000198.html

Mr. Dean ask Bruce about this when you meet with him today. I'm not sure this is a dog you should be sleeping with.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 11:07 PM
Response to Reply #130
136. Small world. Dean 'n' Babbitt, huh?
According to blm, Dean is clean and I agree with her. But if he's going to be a player at the Presidential level, there will be plenty of people like Poppy, Babbitt and Khashoggi around. Dean's a good guy. He might not know he was being used...
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-17-03 03:15 PM
Response to Reply #136
140.  Bruce Babbitt: Man Without Shame
Before leaving the Department of Interior, Babbitt promised that he wouldn't cash in on his years of government service by becoming a high-priced DC lawyer. Then he promptly took a job with Latham and
Watkins, a big Washington law firm whose clients include some of the roughest enviromental pillagers in the business. Babbitt defended his about-face by saying that he needs to make money to pay off his legal bills stemming from an independent counsel investigation into whether or not he committed perjury when he said did not try to shake down Indian tribes for campaign contributions.

Within days of landing his new job as a counsel in the firm's Environmental Litigation shop, Babbitt could be found at the annual gathering of the Nuclear industry, cheerleading for the planned Yucca Mountain Nuclear Wasted Dump, on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada. The Clinton administration opposed the dump, acting more out of a desire to keep Nevada Sen. Harry Reid happy than any sudden seizure of ecological conscience. "It's a safe, solid geologic repository, "Babbitt proclaimed, evoking a standing ovation from the massed nukers, something even Dick Cheney had failed to do when he spoke to the NEI earlier that morning.

Among Babbitt's present clients are two of the biggest developers on The California coast: Washington Mutual, developers of the Ahmanson Ranch in Ventura County and the Hearst ranch at San Simeon below Big Sur. In his last year as interior secretary Babbitt resisted protective measures for the endangered red-legged frog and San Fernando spineflower as endangered species......

http://www.counterpunch.org/babbitt2.html
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 01:56 PM
Response to Original message
132. A kick for the dittoheads and the WSJ
Learn something.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 09:55 PM
Response to Reply #132
134. Live and Learn.
...and the Truth shall set you free. Case in point: 9-11. There seem to be two explanations why George W Bush has zero interest in investigating the events leading up to that horrible day. First, he seems criminally negligent in his role as commander-in-chief. Second, he seems engaged in a conspiracy of treason. If this is news, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, especially all the young Republicans'. — Octafish

9/11 Cover-up Two-Page Summary

Was 9/11 Allowed to Happen?


Summary of 9/11 Timeline Developed by Paul Thompson

SNIP...

America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in US cities to trick the public into supporting a war against Cuba in the early 1960s. Approved in writing by the Pentagon Joint Chiefs, Operation Northwoods even proposed blowing up a US ship and hijacking planes as a false pretext for war.

CONTINUED with lots o' links...

http://www.wanttoknow.info/911timeline2pg


Here's the work of a crew dedicated to discovering the Truth about 9-11, THE COMPLETE 9-11 TIMELINE:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/


Here's an archive chock full o' mainstream media coverage on 9-11, much no longer available online:

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/archiveprior_knowledge.html
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SaintLouisBlues Donating Member (755 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 03:03 PM
Response to Original message
133. Kick
To the front where this belongs
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 10:10 PM
Response to Reply #133
135. Thanks, SaintLouisBlues! Didya ever hear about MK/ULTRA?
...This brainstorm was intended to create better cannon fodder through chemistry and behavior modification. Real sweethearts, these Cold Warriors. Do you think these sick NAZI-CIA "doctors" had problems with their mothers, like the fictional Raymond Shaw*?

MK-ULTRA

from the book

The CIAs Greatest Hits

by Mark Zepezauer

The CIA says its mind-control experiments were a strictly defensive response to Chinese 'brainwashing" of US POWs during the Korean War (captured US pilots were making public statements denouncing US germ warfare against civilians). Actually, US brainwashing experiments predate the CIA itself.

CIA mind control activities (also called behavior control) did accelerate in 1953, under a program that was exempt from the usual oversight procedures. Code-named MK-ULTRA, many of its files were destroyed by CIA Director Richard Helms (who was with it from the start) when he left office in 1973, but the surviving history is nasty enough..

MK-ULTRA spooks and shrinks tested radiation, electric shocks, electrode implants, microwaves, ultrasound and a wide range of drugs on unwitting subjects, including hundreds of prisoners at California's infamous Vacaville State Prison.

The CIA saw mind control as a way to create torture-proof couriers (by implanting memories that can only be retrieved with a prearranged signal) and programmed assassins, as in The Manchurian Candidate. There's evidence Sirhan was treated by a CIA-linked shrink before killing RFK.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/MKULTRA_CIAhits.html

Here's a bit more:

Project Mind Kontrol:

Did the U.S. Government Actually Create Programmed Assassins?


by Curt Rowlett

EXCERPT...

During their investigation and research into the history of LSD, authors Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain were allowed access to a special reading room at the Hyatt Regency in Rosslyn, Virginia. Documents pertinent to the CIA's MKULTRA program were being opened to the public as the result of a Senate subcommittee led by chairman Senator Ted Kennedy. In the prologue to their book, Acid Dreams, they write:

In the course of our inquiry we uncovered CIA documents describing experiments in sensory deprivation, sleep teaching, ESP, subliminal projection, electronic brain stimulation, and many other methods that might have applications for behavior modification. One project was designed to turn people into programmed assassins who would kill on automatic command. (1)

Most conspiracy researchers are familiar with the CIA's mind control program MKULTRA. It was led by creepy scientist-spook Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who testified before the same subcommittee only after receiving a grant of immunity from criminal prosecution. MKULTRA was launched in April of 1953 as a continuation of mind-control experiments that originated in the Nazi death camps of such notoriety as Dachau. (MKULTRA, ARTICHOKE and other CIA projects became possible because of Project Paperclip, a US Army scheme that smuggled Nazi scientists, intelligence personnel and other war criminals to the United States from Europe at the end of WWII.)

CONTINUED...

http://labyrinth13.com/Mkultra.htm

* The Manchurian Candidate



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SaintLouisBlues Donating Member (755 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-18-03 03:03 PM
Response to Reply #135
141. I did not know that
The hits just keep on coming. Keep up the good work Octafish!
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bobthedrummer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-18-03 04:25 PM
Response to Reply #135
142. There was a covert "arms race" between the US and USSR
to develop these mind control systems and since the military always has the pick of the litter when it comes to scientific and technological advancements the US won this war too.
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~welsh/book.htm

This stuff is very real and only Dennis Kucinich has ever even referenced it in the language of the original text of The Space Preservation Act of 2001/HR2977, yet for unknown reasons that portion of the original language that mentioned "exotic weapons" was disappeared from the revision, The Space Preservation Act of 2002/HR3616
http://www.raven1.net/govptron.htm

As progress in controlling human behavior increased many of the sub-projects of MK ULTRA took on lives of their own and spawned things like remote viewing, the use of prescription drugs outside of what they were meant to treat, thought inference and subliminal messaging, hypnosis, directed energy weapons and a lot of other evil things from the shadow government of BFEE.

Hell, aerial mind control has been used to "influence" foreign elections {hint, hint...}
http://www.raven1.net/commsolo.htm

Some of this MK ULTRA documentation was not destroyed by Richard McGarrah Helms, http://www.rcfp.org/news/2002/0819kellyv.html in any event some of these programs are still around in the hands of that darkest corner of realpolitik-national security.
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Zorra Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 11:13 PM
Response to Original message
137. Argue?
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-17-03 12:03 AM
Response to Reply #137
139. No argument from me, except Bush doesn't care if the trains run on time.
Bushler's into the power and property thing, Big Time. This is a nice place to remind people of Operation PAPERCLIP, the NAZIs of which helped form a division of the BFEE, one tentacle of the Octopus. These "ethnic" supporters of Poppy Bush once helped us "cleanse" our country of undesirables like communists, etc.

http://anderson.ath.cx:8000/911/bc01.html
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oasis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-16-03 11:54 PM
Response to Original message
138. Kick the Chimperor out of the White House.
:kick:
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