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News :: Education |
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US Commander: "War Not Over In Iraq" |
Current rating: -1 |
by BILL AKA DAN "Trips the 'bot Again" Disinfo
(No verified email address) |
30 May 2003
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Didn't I Say Something Like This A Month Ago? |
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Baghdad, Iraq -- [Bill: I think about a month ago I said that the war on Iraq would restart as Russian-backed pro-Saddam forces and Iranian-backed Shi'ites launched separate guerilla campaigns against US-Zionist occupation. Was I right or not?
BTW -- I must be important all of a sudden, because I've had a tail for the past few nights. Last night they photographed me as I left the National Press Club's Silver Owl Dinner. I saw part of the Recruit today, and for all the high-tech gizmology, generally speaking, when an FBI agent wants to photograph you at night, he stands about 50 - 100 yards away from you with a flash camera and just snaps your photo in broad daylight -- no sneakiness involved. ;-D
Also note that the US has suffered as many KIA in the past month as it did in the first month of the war -- something few papers have picked up on.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/articles/A53491-2003May29.html?nav=hptop_ts
U.S. Commander Says War Not Over in Iraq
Lt. Gen. McKiernan Signals the Start of a New Military Push
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 29, 2003
BAGHDAD, May 29 -- After an attack today that left another U.S. soldier dead, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq acknowledged that "the war has not ended" and signaled the start of a new military push to root out what he described as die-hard supporters of Saddam Hussein.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said he was considering plans that would send troops from the Third Infantry Division, which fought its way into Baghdad on April 9, against an armed Iraqi resistance that has killed five U.S. soldiers this week. A U.S. soldier was killed this morning on a highway north of Baghdad when a military convoy was attacked in a roadside ambush.
The division was relieved of its responsibility for Baghdad today and had been expecting to head home soon after. Instead, it was told earlier this week to expect at least two more months in Iraq, an extension that will likely leave at least 160,000 U.S. and British troops in place through the time when U.S. officials hope to begin the delicate task of selecting a new Iraqi-led interim government.
The attacks, conducted with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades in a country awash in them, are occurring in a crescent of towns northwest of Baghdad where the ruling Baath Party enjoyed great clout. McKiernan said he did not view the resistance as "a new political movement in Iraq," but rather the guerrilla tactics of Hussein supporters seeking to undermine the seven- week U.S. occupation.
"These are not criminal activities, they are combat activities," McKiernan told an afternoon news conference. "We're going to address those activities by applying every resource available to us. The war has not ended, that's a point I need you to understand."
The armed resistance is coalescing a month after President Bush declared victory in Iraq and an end to major combat operations. It is rising on the frustrations of many Iraqis -- even those who welcomed the U.S. invasion -- after an uncertain start by U.S. officials in the enormous task of remaking the country.
In recent days, U.S. officials have made progress restoring many public services and security in much of the country, especially here in the capital whose populace of 5 million was hit hard by the war and the widespread looting that ensued. In recent days, electricity has returned to more of Baghdad and a fresh troop deployment here has brought a greater sense of security.
But the delay in forming an interim Iraqi government, a key step toward the country's first experience in self-rule, has been a source of frustration and suspicion among many Iraqis who now are increasingly willing to view the United States as an occupying power. U.S. officials have portrayed the resistance as the work of former Hussein loyalists angry that the U.S. invasion has cost them privileged lives, but it at times has appeared to be a broader phenomenon that is growing among Iraq's various ethnic and religious groups who earlier celebrated the U.S. invasion for deposing Hussein.
Today, a group of Shiite clerics, a group oppressed for years by Hussein's Sunni-led government, marched in downtown Baghdad. In a small demonstration, they wore the white shrouds used in Muslim burial, and they chanted their willingness to die as part of a movement to drive out U.S. troops.
McKiernan drew the distinction today between large-scale combat against defined enemy formations that marked the initial invasion, and the more loosely knit units that U.S. troops now are confronting across a sweep of Iraq that once was the heartland of Sunni power. U.S. military officials said elements of the Third Infantry Division are already on their way to Fallujah, a city 30 miles west of here where four U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday in an ambush.
"As opposed to fighting a conventional army that's wearing uniforms, you're in an environment where there are those who still oppose the coalition that are now in civilian clothing and will attack through a variety of terrorist techniques," McKiernan said. "We adapt to the techniques we see them use."
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Someting To Keep In Mind As Bush Vists Granddays Death Camp |
by vana whit AKA DAN "I Shouldn't Use My Recycled Hate Pictures" Disinfo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 3
31 May 2003
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He personally financed the building of over 40 concentration camps including Auschwitz. How did he do this and how does this relate to "Junior?" Let me explain.
"On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, three Nazi executives and two other associates of Bush."
(Chaitkin and Tarpley, George Bush: the Unauthorized Biography)
If you don't think it's important that Prescott Bush had four companies seized including the Holland-American Trading Corporation or the Seamless Steel Equipment Association as well as the Silesian-American Corporation, then you are in denial. The fact is that President Bush's family played a pivotal part in financing Adolph Hitler's takeover of Germany. Prescott Bush was a legal front man for the Nazis and the entire Bush fortune was built off of the Hitler Project. The New York Tribune had exposed Bush, whom it called "Hitler's Angel."
What does this have to do with Junior you might say? Well, it's elementary my dear Watson. Prescott's son George Bush followed suit by being the first to sell the Japanese the gasoline that was used on the attack on Pearl Harbor . (Glen Yeadon, From the Street of Little Beirut)
George the first has finished his father's work and retained many of the family's connections with Nazi associations, the same associations that have benefited George Junior. Could it be that naming a "department of homeland security" after the S.S.'s famous reference as being the "department of Home Nation Police" is just a coincidence?
There is also the Reichstag fire in Germany, in which Hitler allowed a few famous German buildings to be torched by a feeble-minded simpleton who he aided and abetted beforehand, then later used the fires as an excuse to "tighten security" and "suspend the German constitution." This is just as Bush is using 9-11 as an excuse to pass the Patriot Act and suspend our constitutional rights. In the same vein he is blocking out any meaningful debate on the mainstream media such as Fascist A.M. radio where Clear Channel, which has tight Republican connections, owns most of the radio stations.
No, you will never see any of this in the mainstream media, even if you yell it from the rooftops. Even if you scream it at the top of your lungs, the bewildered herd will pass you as it stops-up its ears to protect denial. Yes, George Bush became a master propaganda artist and one can tell that he took extra time studying Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, which got him his best C at Yale ever.
"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction."
Well, I guess that says it all in a nutshell. Only one place can say it better, with entertaining music from A Clockwork Orange, an interesting photo collage and funny lyrics in one comical Internet documentary: www.takebackthemedia.com/bushnonazi.html.
I highly recommend it if you want to develop a sense of humor about the whole situation. Until then, Heil Bush!
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Army Troops Gang-rape Four Adolescent Girls |
by JUAN AKA DAN Disinfo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 1
31 May 2003
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26.05.2003 (By Maria Engqvist, ANNCOL Stockholm) On May 5 armed individuals--identified by survivors from the indigenous Guahibo reservation as National Army troops wearing armbands of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)--raped four adolescent girls and massacred four people, including a pregnant teenager who was one of the rape victims.
According to the Regional Indigenous Council of Arauca, witnesses from the reservation in Betoyes, Tame municipality, saw the soldiers cut open the teen's belly, cut up her unborn baby and threw both mutilated corpses into the river.
The following week, a group of 327 Guahibo indigenous people peacefully occupied a church in the town of Saravena, in the eastern Colombian department of Arauca, to demand that the government guarantee their safety and allow them to return home.
The commander of the troops responsible for the atrocity is the US trained Army general Carlos Omairo Lemus Pedraza, who graduated from the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) "Small Unit Tactics" course in 1978, while a lieutenant. It is believed, that the dirty war tactics used by the Colombian armed forces in this region is intended to terrorize the population into not forging links with the leftist rebel groups that control large chunks of eastern Colombia.
According to the US-based "News Update on the Americas", The Association of Indigenous Leaders and Authorities of Arauca accuses members of the army's Navas Pardo Battalion, led by Lt. Col. Alberto Padilla Torres, of repeatedly attacking the indigenous Genareros, Julieros, Velazqueros and Parreros communities in Betoyes. The battalion belongs to the National Army's 18th Brigade.
Last December a patrol from the Colombian Army's Navas Pardo Battalion entered Betoyes under the command of Capt. Oscar Murillo. Among the troops was a man who called himself "Remache" and who claimed to be a deserter from a leftist rebel group. The same man, "Remache," appeared among alleged AUC members in another incursion in Betoyes on Dec. 31.
In that incident, according to the regional campesino organisation ADUC, the "paramilitaries" murdered Nilson Delgado Lopez of the Genareros community, and abducted another man and woman. ADUC also reports that a military patrol led by Capt. Murillo detained and tortured five campesinos last December in the village of La Florida, in Tame. The tortures were carried out by "Remache," whose real name is Alfonso Rios Monterrey.
On Jan. 18 of this year armed men wearing AUC armbands entered Betoyes; witnesses say one man's armband slipped, revealing the words "Navas Pardo Battalion" underneath, printed on his sleeve.
According to the Departmental Association of Campesinos (ADUC) of Arauca, the incursion took place a day after National Army troops began a massive operation in the area, codenamed "Cathedral." During the month-long operation, army troops launched operations
with helicopters and planes in Tame municipality, dropping explosives and firing weapons in numerous communities.
The army killed Carlos Juo Barbosa and seriously wounded Nicolas Gomez Vargas, telling the media the two campesinos were rebel fighters.
On Feb. 8, armed men identified as AUC members entered the community of Corocito, just five minutes from the urban center of Tame, and abducted eight community members. Three were released the same day; the fate of the others remains unknown. Military patrols, often disguised as paramilitaries, occupied Betoyes for over a month starting in late March, during which time they murdered five people; seriously wounded a two-year old boy; and repeatedly robbed, detained and tortured community members.
On Apr. 3 the Air Force bombed the Velazqueros and Julieros communities. Residents have reported the attacks to authorities, without results.
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The Colombian Paramilitaries And Israel |
by Jeremy Bigawoodie AKA DAN Disinfo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 Jun 2003
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According to his recently published autobiography, Carlos Castaño was only 18 years old when he arrived in Israel in 1983 to take a year-long course called "562." Castaño, a Colombian, had come to the Holy Land as a pilgrim of sorts, but not to find peace. Course 562 was about war, and how to wage it, and it was something Carlos Castaño would eventually excel at, becoming the most adept and ruthless paramilitary leader in Latin America’s history.
Castaño was propelled down this path a few years earlier, after the killing of his father, a cattle rancher who was being held for a "tax" ransom by the FARC - Colombia’s strongest left-wing guerrilla army. As a 1994 DEA document put it, "Colombian guerrilla groups traditionally have supported their activities through extortion and kidnapping, with ranchers and other wealthy individuals being the primary victims."
Bitter over their father’s death, the result of a botched rescue attempt by the Colombian army, Carlos and his older brother, Fidel, vowed revenge, a vengeance that would dovetail with both the interests of the Colombian landholding classes, and, to a large extent, U.S. foreign policy. It is a vengeance that continues unabated to this day.
The Castaño brothers first offered their services as scouts for the Colombian Army’s Bombona Battalion - fingering FARC sympathizers, providing intelligence and even participating in military operations. But Fidel - some 14 years older than Carlos - concluded that by merely working for the army, they were going to get nowhere. One of the battalion’s majors introduced them to a local paramilitary death squad called "Caruso," with whom they started a killing spree. When local police started to investigate them, they found it necessary to operate even more clandestinely. Unlike in many other third-world countries under the U.S.’s shadow, Colombia’s police and judiciary have sometimes played a role independent from the Army.
Later, according to press reports, Fidel started his own paramilitary death squad called "Los Tangueros," named after his ranch, "Las Tangas." Los Tangueros was responsible for more than 150 murders during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In his book, Castaño talks openly about murders he has committed or ordered during this period, making his habit of killing what he calls "guerrillas in towns" routine. In one massacre alone, the Tangueros captured dozens of campesinos from a neighboring town. Back at the ranch, "they tortured them all night with crude instruments before shooting some and burying others alive." Los Tangueros, along with other death squads dispersed throughout the country, would evolve into the present 9,000-strong paramilitary force in Colombia, which is now killing an average of up to thirteen civilians per day.
During the time Castaño’s father was been captured by the FARC, rural Colombia was rife with small diverse paramilitary units working for the army and the landholding upper classes. Many of these groups were merely the enforcers and protectors of the local wealthy, while others worked protecting the "new rich" of the cocaine trade from the "taxation" of the left-wing insurgencies. Some of these groups bore the names of petty criminal gangs or the names of their leaders. They called themselves "self-defense" or "auto defense" groups, but because of their propensity to operate in coordination with the Colombian Army, the term ‘paramilitaries" more accurately describes them and will be used here.
In the 1980s, these paramilitary groups were disparate and poorly trained, sometimes involving themselves in bloody internecine turf battles. In order to take the offensive against the steady advances of the leftist guerrillas, the paramilitaries needed both unification and political/military training. While these paramilitaries essentially worked towards the same goals as US foreign policy, the US government could not directly support them because of their death squad tactics. But others could.
Exactly how Carlos Castaño got to Israel is still a mystery, as is precisely which entity trained him there. But whoever set it up, the Israeli course "562" definitely had a strong effect on Castaño. "Something clicked in me, and I began to behave differently...My perception of this war changed radically after my trip to Israel," he said in his best-selling autobiography, which is a series of interviews edited by Spanish journalist Mauricio Aranguren Molina.
In Israel, Carlos Castaño was clearly a good and highly motivated student. Of his studies there, he reminisces:
"Unlike what one might think, we studied in the classroom more enthusiastically than in the military training. The classes emphasized the regular and irregular ways in which the world operates... It was there that I rounded out my education... [The teachers] insisted on us carrying ourselves well, in both the way we dressed and in the way we spoke in public. I also received a class on how to enter and register in a hotel and we analyzed how to behave around immigration police in airports. We read in libraries and spent long sessions on both the self-esteem and the security that an individual should have. This was an invaluable process which taught me to respect and have confidence in myself, to triumph during tough intimidating moments."
Most importantly for the eager student, he "received lectures on how the world arms business operates, and how to buy arms."
And of course, there was also a military component:
"I received instruction in urban strategies, how to protect oneself, how to kill someone or what to do when someone is trying to kill you... We learned how to stop an armored car and use fragmentation grenades to enter a target. We practiced with multiple grenade launchers, and learned how to make accurate shots with RPG-7s, or shoot a cannon shell through a window."
"We also took complementary courses on terrorism and counter-terrorism, night vision equipment, and parachuting. We also learned how to make homemade bombs. In short, we learned what the Israelis know, but, in all sincerity, very little of all of this has been applied to the war in Colombia. I got a very good basic education, and there I learned how to do the most important thing – I learned how to control fear..."
Castaño also describes training that could not have taken place without the express permission of the highest authorities of the Israeli Defense Forces, such as when he performed "airborne maneuvers and [we] parachuted at night over islands of the Mediterranean. I had to carry weights as ballast to adjust my free-fall speed." However, sources in Israeli daily Ha'aretz doubted the veracity of this story, when this author asked them about it.
According to his book, not all was study for Castaño in Israel, and he used his free time to meet with Colombian soldiers undergoing regular military training there – soldiers of the worst human rights violators in the western hemisphere were being trained by some of the worst human rights violators in the Middle East. But these were precisely the connections that would prove so useful in the future.
"In the Sinai desert, I also had the opportunity of meeting military men from our country, the men of the Colombia battalion [of the Colombian Army]. I did not meet the battalion as a whole, but on my R & R days, we went to the same places, and I spent time in the company of sergeants and officers."
Castaño summarizes his epiphany in Israel in the following terms: "Upon returning to Colombia, I had become another person... I learned an infinite amount of things in Israel and to that country I owe part of my essence, my human and military achievements, although I repeat, in Israel I didn’t only learn about things related to military training. There I became convinced that it was possible to destroy the guerrillas in Colombia. I started to understand how a people could defend itself against the whole world. I understood how to bring into the "cause" a person who had something to lose in the war, with the aim of converting him into the enemy of my enemies."
By 1985, shortly after Castaño returned to Colombia, some of the paramilitary groups that were springing up had become completely dependant on the monies from drug trafficking. Indeed, some paramilitary units had merely evolved as such from drug protection rackets. In fairness it is true that some of the paramilitary groups were not involved in illicit drug protection or other aspects of the business: some were formerly the guards of rich landowners, cattle ranchers and the like. A secret 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence document includes a section on the "Contamination of the Paramilitaries by Drug Trafficking," even places a time and a place on this event, although there is other evidence (below) that this took place earlier. "The economic crisis facing the paramilitary forces in 1985 was resolved by an alliance with drug trafficking... This alliance came about in mid-1985 when the Paramilitary intercepted a camper full of cocaine... After conversations with the drug traffickers through the initiative of HENRY PEREZ, the Paramilitary forces returned the camper and the drugs to their owners, receiving in exchange for it a four-door Toyota pickup..." It should be noted that Henry Perez was part of the Caruso paramilitary gang, at the time also known as the Autodefensas del Magdalena Medio (Paramilitary Militia of Magdalena Medio)- as were the Castaños. In fact, Castaño calls Henry Pérez one of the "fathers" of the paramilitaries, along with his brother Fidel (who is mentioned in the DAS document), and the previously mentioned Bombona battalion Major Alejandro Álvarez Henao, who had introduced the brothers to their first death squad.
From this point onwards, these paramilitaries expanded, protecting operations of the Medellín cartel and others, including that cartel’s competition in Cali.
The DEA was also watching: Its agents had noticed a paramilitary/drug trafficking connection at least as early as1993: "Intelligence indicates that some of Colombia's private paramilitary groups have been co-opted by cocaine trafficking organizations. Throughout the 1980s, the Autodefensas del Magdalena Medio (Self-Defense Militia of Magdalena Medio), one of the most important of these groups, had close ties with the Medellín Cartel's organization."
A year later, in another report, the DEA looked at the relationship between the left-wing insurgencies and the drug trade, accurately stating: "Despite Colombian security forces’ frequently claim that FARC units are involved directly in drug trafficking operations, the independent involvement of insurgents in Colombia’s domestic drug production, transportation, and distribution is limited...No credible evidence indicates that the national leadership of either the FARC or the ELN has directed, as a matter of policy, that their respective organizations directly engage in independent drug production or distribution. Furthermore, neither the FARC nor the ELN are known to have been involved in the transportation, distribution, or marketing of illicit drugs in the United States or Europe." In other words, the left-wing insurgencies taxed the production of coca or its products’ transportation through insurgent-controlled areas, but were not involved in its processing to cocaine, shipping or marketing – as opposed to the paramilitaries who ran and still run processing factories and were and still are actively involved in shipping it out of the country. There are some, yet unproven indications of greater insurgent involvement in the trade since the time of that report.
Paramilitary leaders also set upclandestine training schools in Colombia, or "schools for assassins" as they were called by the previously mentioned secret 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence report. The first such school that was discovered was called "El Tecal," and it trained the first of the paramilitary forces, and as these extended themselves deeper into the countryside and received greater funding form the drug trade, they formed other schools in other areas. For instance, "Cero Uno [Zero One] located at kilometer 9 of the Puerto Boyocá-Zambito road," and "El Cincuenta" Number 50" - called "La 50" in Castaño's book] located on the road between El Delirio and Arizá (Santander)." There were also "satellite schools" with names like "Galaxias" reminiscent of bars and brothels. According to the DAS report, "Personnel graduated from these schools to incorporate into the ‘paramilitary-narcotrafficking’ structure with an aim to undertaking four specific jobs:
Protect the community and the properties of narcotrafickers from the guerrillas and rival groups...
Be responsible for the personal protection of the heads of the cartels and those of the paramilitary forces, functioning as bodyguards.
Produce cocaine in the laboratories of that organization...
Attack members of the Unión Patriótica [a leftist legal political party affiliated with the FARC that was the only party on the continent to have been decimated by political murder] and members of the government or political parties that opine against the drug trade."
To qualify as a candidate for training in these "schools for assassins" one had to be interviewed by narco Henry Perez and his cohorts, all friends of the Castaño brothers. Students were selected by "the express recommendation of a rancher, farmer or narcotraficker from the region." with questions like "What is your ideology? Are you capable of killing your father, mother or brother if it can be confirmed that they are guerrillas?" The candidates were told that the war may go on forever and that the only enemy was communism. And "upon the evaluation and verification of all of the information supplied by the candidate, the candidate is given a medical exam and placed in a basic training course. During the first stage of training, recruits are selected to work in the financial apparatus (drug production) or security (bodyguards, patrolmen). The training course includes: a.) Camouflage techniques, b.) Handling small arms and parading, c.) Explosives, d.) Personal defense, e.) Identity preservation, f.) Body guarding, g.) Intelligence, h.) Counterintelligence, i.) Communications, j.) First Aid."
But apparently this training by fellow Colombians was not enough, and in 1987 the Israelis were called in to help, probably through Colombian Army intermediaries.
In the mainstream media the 16 Israeli and some British trainers were presented as "mercenaries," perhaps because of the bias of the Colombian DAS agents who wrote a report on them. These foreign military trainers were far too well connected to be ordinary "mercenaries"—they clearly acted with some government approval, most definitely that of Israel, and probably of some US entity also – as we shall see below. Castaño, who attended these courses, said that members of the Colombian Army had actually arranged the courses, which featured the training by a famous Israeli officer, Yair Klein.
Again, it was Castaño ally Henry Perez who picked the candidates - along with drug kingpin Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. According to his book, Carlos Castaño took part in the courses, and their organization occupied five of the 50 scholarships. According to the DAS document:
A group of five Israelis taught the course called "PABLO EMILIO GUARIN VERA" in the "El Cincuenta" school of Puerto Boyocá.
The instructors were in the area for a period of 45 days after having entered the country through Cartegena (Bolivar). Initially, they stayed in the "El Rosario" residence of Puerto Boyocá and later in a rustic house on the Isla de la Fantasía (Fantasy Island)...
Another thirty scholarships were awarded so that the best students could undergo further training in Israel, just as Castaño had done: "According to what these instructors said, they were going to send the best 30 students for further schooling in a special course that would be taught in Israel." Thirty paramilitaries being sent to Israel would have clearly required the permission of the Israeli Defense Forces - the Israeli government. It is hard to imagine anything else for a country continually at war.
And there was also a Nicaraguan Contra connection: "TEDDY, the Israeli interpreter told our source that they should shorten and speed up the course because they had promised to train the Nicaraguan Contras in Honduras and Costa Rica." Anyone who thinks that these were simple "for hire" mercenaries would do well to analyze this quote. At the time, only with express US government approval – particularly that of the State Department and CIA – could one get into the contra camps located in Honduras or Costa Rica, let alone a group of men bearing arms. These Israelis were clearly trusted at the highest levels of both the Israeli and US governments.
During this time, and even up until the present, the Colombian state has not shown itself to be a monolith. Even today, in spite of all of the US influence, one still finds government ministries, such as that of the Environment and the Human Rights Ombudsman's office that refuse to go along with the official line crafted by the US State Department and filtered through the presidency or some other ministry. This explains why part of the Colombian state -justice and police – were so clearly disturbed by the paramilitaries’ advances that in 1990 police units raided a Castaño property and exhumed 24 decomposed corpses, some showing signs of torture.
And there were other troubles too: competition was growing between the Medellín and Cali drug cartels. According to a DEA Intelligence Report from 1993, "By 1990, for reasons that are still unclear, the Autodefensas del Magdalena Medio and the Medellín Cartel emerged as bitter foes." Former ally, Medellín cartel drug-kingpin Pablo Escobar was now being hunted by the Colombian state, aided by US intelligence agencies and the DEA. The Castaño brothers, under a new organizational name "MAS" helped the Colombians and the U.S. in the hunt for Escobar, which resulted in Escobar’s death. Carlos even had lines of communication to the police squad that killed Escobar, as he had known "the brother of the famous police colonel, Hugo Martínez Poveda, commander of the Search Team that killed Pablo Escobar" from time both of them had spent in Israel.
After Escobar was out of the picture, the Castaño brothers consolidated and unified the paramilitaries under the name "Auto-Defensas Unidas de Colombia" (Unified Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), known by its Spanish acronym AUC. As the Washington Post's Scott Wilson reported:
"From these death squads grew the Peasant Paramilitary Force of Cordoba and Urabá (ACCU), the oldest and largest of the AUC's confederation of privately funded armies across the country. This was a result of Carlos Castaño's new leadership: He transformed a regional protection force into a national political movement."
The effect was dramatic. The paramilitaries grew in size from a few thousand to nine thousand or more, and as Time magazine reported in 2000: "Fear of AUC vengeance is one reason at least 1 million peasants fled their homes during the past decade." Like the Nicaraguan Contras, the Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads, the paramilitaries were known for using excessive violence to terrorize the population, and on at least one occasion paramilitary units used chainsaws to torture and kill their victims.
But there were also losses for the paramilitaries. In 1994, Carlos’s elder brother Fidel or "Rambo" as he was known – then the paramilitaries’ leader – was – according to Carlos -- killed in a chance combat with FARC guerrillas in northern Colombia. However there exists some doubt as to whether he is really dead. There are those in the State Department who apparently believe that he may still be alive - and a recent article rumours him to be living in Israel.Whatever the truth may be, Carlos took over the top paramilitary position at that point, and the movement grew even more, even acquiring a rudimentary air force, something that CIA black propaganda was always trying to pin on the guerrillas, so it could induce the mainstream press to argue for more military aid to bolster the Colombian government.
Galil: The Israeli Presence in Latin America
In Colombia you see the black assault rifles everywhere. Both the US-backed Army and the National Police use them. These are not, as you might imagine, US M16s, but they are the famous Israeli Galil assault rifle, an imitation of the Russian Kalashnikov series but marketed in Latin America using the smaller, but faster (and messier) .223 round - the same as the M16. The Galil has been manufactured by the Israeli Military Industries since 1972 and has been a considerable success. But the Israelis themselves do not use many Galils in their own operations inside (and outside) Israel, because they get M16s free from the US.
But in Latin America, the Galil is the main weapon of both the Guatemalan and Colombian governments. In the Guatemalan case, the US did not wish to be seen overtly supplying the Guatemalan military as it conducted countless massacres in the countryside during the 1980s. So Israel stepped in and not only supplied the weapons, but also built a munitions factory in Coban, a mountainous, but relatively unconflicted region of the country. While the Israelis made out well on the deal, it was not so sweet for the Guatemalans: the factory was most of the time immersed in humid clouds, and the resulting ammunition was often damp, producing misfires.
But in Colombia, Israeli Military Industries didn’t merely set up a munitions factory to make bullets; they set up an entire Galil assault rifle factory in Bogotá. Of the Colombian version of the weapon, only the barrel is imported from Israel. Who pays for this? Colombia? Think again. The Isreali assault rifles are paid for through US military aid to both Israel and Colombia. As such, it is yet another way the unwitting US taxpayer is underwriting the Colombian bloodletting.
-JB
In reality, the insurgents didn’t have an air force, but the paramilitaries did and still do. By the late 1990’s, the paramilitaries had acquired several helicopters, along with maintenance mechanics and pilot training. Helicopters are extremely costly to purchase and maintain, but are very useful in this type of war, as Carlos was soon to find out. According to his autobiography, his life was saved during the Christmas holidays of 1998 when a large FARC contingent attacked his base-camp in a surprise assault. It was the Sicilian-born Israeli-trained pilot and paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso who rescued him in a paramilitary helicopter.
According to his own autobiography and dozens of press reports, Castaño has often met in secret with government officials. By 2000 the meetings were being openly reported. On November 6, 2000, he met with Colombia’s Interior Minister Humberto de la Calle of then-President Andrés Pastrana’s Government. As a result of the meeting, Castaño released two of seven legislators that his paramilitaries were holding captive. Indeed, at the time of this writing, as we shall see later, Castaño and Mancuso are in negotiations with the new Colombian government.
As the paramilitaries expanded, continuing to absorb other paramilitary organizations, it needed arms, and probably had several sources for them, one of which came to light last May. It should come as no surprise to the reader that the major suppliers were Israelis. Israeli arms dealers have long had a presence in next-door Panama and especially in Guatemala. While some of the details of this particular deal have been contested and are still sketchy, one thing is clear: by a series of misrepresentations, GIRSA, an Israeli company associated with the IDF and based in Guatemala was able to buy 3,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition that were then handed over to the paramilitaries in Colombia through a Colombian port controlled by a US banana company.
This may remind us of what Carlos Castaño said about his course in Israel – when he received "lectures on how the world arms business operates, and how to buy arms." Was Israel where he also made the connections to do so?
This arms deal, like most, featured many layers of deniability and smokescreens. Although Colombian police uncovered the deal, no one has been indicted over it. The only players who appear to have known what was going on were the Israelis and the paramilitaries. The Nicaraguan police who sold the arms thought they were trading them for Israeli mini-Uzis and Jericho pistols, although the OAS, led by former Colombian president César Gaviria blamed the Nicaraguans in its report. The US State Department, which had recently placed the Colombian paramilitaries on its "terrorist" list claims though spokesperson Wes Carrington that the department was under the impression that the fully automatic assault rifles were going to collectors in the US!
The President Uribe – Castaño Connection
Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, like Castaño, also lost his narcotrafficking father to the FARC, but in the case of Uribe, the father died fighting on his ranch that was attacked by the insurgents. And there are other similarities, too: like Castaño, the Uribe family has had close ties to the cocaine trade, even renting out a helicopter to the business. In fact, Uribe’s father was once indicted for his role in the notorious Tranquilandia cocaine-processing lab, after it was taken out by a combined DEA-Colombian police operation. From 1980 to 1982, Uribe was head of Civil Aviation (Aerocivil) in Colombia and controlled all of the aviation licensing throughout the country at a time when small planes did most of the drug running.When Uribe was governor of Antioquía department in the mid-1990s, he helped set up a paramilitary force called Convivir, in which paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso is rumored to have served.
Legitimizing the paramilitaries
During the last Colombian presidential elections, a "cleansed" Uribe was voted into power and applauded by the US State Department. Many of the plans for his government are based upon a US-generated Rand Corporation study. A major part of both the Rand study and Uribe’s plan involve the creation of a large civil defense/government informer force that will be beholden to the Colombian state. The Rand report, like all things "Plan Colombia," was first written in the United States. It bases a new Colombian Civil Defense counterinsurgency structure on the Peruvian "Ronda" system or the old Guatemalan "PAC" system – in which "civilians" must serve as local counterinsurgency fighters under Army supervision. In both Peru and Guatemala these were greatly responsible for reducing the size of the guerrillas but at an extreme cost: committing a multitude of human rights abuses. When this idea was first floated during the unveiling of the Rand Report on June 13th, 2001 by authors Angel Rabasa and Peter Chalk, Rabasa indicated that the present paramilitary structures could be dissolved and re-enrolled in the new "civil" defense forces, but now under direct Army control.
Castaño/Mancuso indictment
To make sure of the AUC leadership’s compliance in this restructuring plan, and to keep US liberal Congressmen on board with Plan Colombia by feigning to initiate the prosecution of the paramilitaries, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on September 24, 2002 that Carlos Castaño, Salvatore Mancuso and Juan Carlos Sierra were under indictment by the US government for arranging the transport of some 17 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and Europe since 1997. Not that the smuggling of cocaine by the paramilitaries was actually news to the US – since US documents as early as 1993 confirmed this allegation. But did the Colombians arrest the AUC leadership? After all, the Colombian government is receiving millions in US AID and in most cases works hand-in-glove with the US. Instead of arresting Castaño and company, by November 24, 2002, the news from Colombia revealed that the US-backed Colombian government was now involved in direct full-scale negotiations with them!
Castaño and Mancuso also came through for the Colombian government: they announced a "ceasefire" with the army – a farce as the paramilitaries have always fought alongside the army and have only come to blows when there has been a local dispute between the two over control over some kind of criminal enterprise. But this "ceasefire" had good propaganda value in both Colombia’s cities, and more importantly in the US Congress.
As it stands now at the time of this writing, if Uribe and the US Embassy have their way, the AUC paramilitaries will now be demobilized as the AUC per sé and then transformed into legal entities of the Colombian state as "peasant soldiers;" trained by the army, but living in villages and not at military bases. Thus Castaño’s men will become retrained and legitimized and continue the counterinsurgent war under the aegis of the Colombian Army with the direct assistance of the United States, their bloody hands washed in State Department PR.
At that point, the Israelis will no longer be needed in Colombia, although the will keep their Galil rifle business alive there (see sidebar). And indeed, they would prefer their presence to be forgotten, as there can be no doubt that Israeli interests share some blame for the many years of ongoing bloodbath in Colombia, which kills as many as 20 people a day – some 70% or more of which is attributed to the paramilitaries, totaling tens of thousands over the last decade- most of whom are killed for merely being suspected of sympathies to the insurgency, not for being actual combatants. Unfortunately, in other new places around the world, we can expect the training of right-wing paramilitary groups to continue, as the Israeli state and its agents gleefully continue to undertake operations that are deemed too distasteful for its US counterparts.
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G8 PROTESTER WAS CUT OFF A ROPE BY POLICE AND FELL ON HIS HEAD DEAD |
by Dron AKA DAN Disinfo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 Jun 2003
Modified: 06:30:07 PM |
There were five activists filiming and who can testify to what happene.d They went topolice in Lausanne who didn't want their testimony. Now they are dicussing with lawyers what to do. Now even the police confirm they cut the rope, at the recent press conference. We have photos of the cut rope and the dead activist.
There were about fifteen people. the nationalities UK, irish swiss spanish american. Around 11 AM they went to bridge and created two lines, one with a banner 'G8 illegal' and the other, a line with the rope. At the extremities of the rope there were two people hanging on either side of the highway (pics). The bridge was about 30m high.
When the police came, they couldn't deal with the pressure of the traffic jam. they came with only two police cars at the beginning, they started pushing the activists and shouting. The activists were explaining that the situaion was delicate because people were risking their lives.
Then the policeman started to raise the rope in order to let cars through - already a dangerous move. After a while, the policeman simply cut the rope, letting Martin Shaw fall to the ground.
It took over an hour for the necessary emergency services, fire brigade, ambulance, helicopter. In the meantime the other climber, who does not want to be named, was still hanging. She hung there for 15 minutes or so.
Martin Shaw was a professional climber, with years of experience in preparing such tactical blockades. Others involved were in an affinity group of trained activists. It was a well prepared action. Six people were arrested ultimately. Five from IMC Italy were called for their testimonies. Other activists were helping with the medical situation, and were close to Martin when the police came. At the moment Martin is at Lausanne morgue. He fell on his head and is dead.
The people who gave the testimonies have now been released unhurt and are in Lausanne and Geneve, available for interview.
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Re: Protestor Is Alive And Concious |
by via IMC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 Jun 2003
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DAN is, as usual, spreading bogus information. The protestor who fell was injured, but is "alive and conscious," according to a report from the G8 protest legal team:
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=323650&group=webcast |
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A Bit Of Bush Family History. |
by jACK AKA DAN Disinfo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2003
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In fact, Bush was never "independent." Every career step in his upward climb relied on his family's powerful associations. The Bush family joined the Eastern Establishment comparatively recently, and only as servitors. Their wealth and influence resulted from their loyalty to another, more powerful family, and their willingness to do anything to get ahead.
For what they did, Bush's forebears should have become very famous, or infamous. They remained obscure figures, managers from behind the scenes. But their actions--including his father's role as banker for Adolf Hitler--had tragic effects for the whole planet.
It was these services to his family's benefactors, which propelled George Bush to the top.
Prescott Goes to War
President George Herbert Walker Bush was born in 1924, the son of Prescott S. Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush. We will begin the George Bush story about a decade before his birth, on the eve of World War I. We will follow the career of his father, Prescott Bush, through his marriage with Dorothy Walker, on the path to fortune, elegance and power.
Prescott Bush entered Yale University in 1913. A native of Columbus, Ohio, Prescott had spent the last five years before college in St. George's Episcopal preparatory school in Newport, Rhode Island.
Prescott Bush's first college year, 1913, was also the freshman year at Yale for E. Roland ( "Bunny" ) Harriman, whose older brother (Wm.) Averell Harriman had just graduated from Yale. This is the Averell Harriman who went on to fame as the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II, as a governor of New York State, and as a presidential advisor who was greatly responsible for starting the Vietnam War.
The Harrimans would become the sponsors of the Bushes, to lift them onto the stage of world history.
In the spring of 1916, Prescott Bush and "Bunny" Harriman were chosen for membership in an elite Yale senior-year secret society known as Skull and Bones. This unusually morbid, death-celebrating group helped Wall Street financiers find active young men of "good birth" to form a kind of imitation British aristocracy in America.
World War I was then raging in Europe. With the prospect that the U.S.A. would soon join the war, two Skull and Bones "Patriarchs" , Averell Harriman (class of 1913) and Percy A. Rockefeller (class of 1900), paid special attention to Prescott's class of 1917. They wanted reliable cadres to help them play the Great Game, in the lucrative new imperial era that the war was opening up for London and New York moneycrats. Prescott Bush, by then a close friend of "Bunny" Harriman, and several other Bonesmen from their class of 1917 would later comprise the core partners in Brown Brothers Harriman, the world's largest private investment bank.
World War I did make an immense amount of money for the clan of stock speculators and British bankers who had just taken over U.S. industry. The Harrimans were stars of this new Anglo-American elite.
Averell's father, stock broker E.H. Harriman, had gained control of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1898 with credit arranged by William Rockefeller, Percy's father, and by Kuhn Loeb & Co.'s British-affiliated private bankers, Otto Kahn, Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg.
William Rockefeller, treasurer of Standard Oil and brother of Standard founder John D. Rockefeller, owned National City Bank (later "Citibank" ) together with Texas-based James Stillman. In return for their backing, E.H. Harriman deposited in City Bank the vast receipts from his railroad lines. When he issued tens of millions of dollars of "watered" (fraudulent) railroad stock, Harriman sold most of the shares through the Kuhn Loeb company.
The First World War elevated Prescott Bush and his father, Samuel P. Bush, into the lower ranks of the Eastern Establishment.
As war loomed in 1914, National City Bank began reorganizing the U.S. arms industry. Percy A. Rockefeller took direct control of the Remington Arms company, appointing his own man, Samuel F. Pryor, as the new chief executive of Remington.
The U.S entered World War I in 1917. In the spring of 1918, Prescott's father, Samuel P. Bush, became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board.@s2 The senior Bush took national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies.
This was an unusual appointment, as Prescott's father seemed to have no background in munitions. Samuel Bush had been president of the Buckeye Steel Castings Co. in Columbus, Ohio, makers of railcar parts. His entire career had been in the railroad business-- supplying equipment to the Wall Street-owned railroad systems.
The War Industries Board was run by Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street speculator with close personal and business ties to old E.H. Harriman. Baruch's brokerage firm had handled Harriman speculations of all kinds.@s3
In 1918, Samuel Bush became director of the Facilities Division of the War Industries Board. Prescott's father reported to the Board's Chairman, Bernard Baruch, and to Baruch's assistant, Wall Street private banker Clarence Dillon.
Robert S. Lovett, President of Union Pacific Railroad, chief counsel to E.H. Harriman and executor of his will, was in charge of national production and purchase "priorities" for Baruch's board.
With the war mobilization conducted under the supervision of the War Industries Board, U.S. consumers and taxpayers showered unprecedented fortunes on war producers and certain holders of raw materials and patents. Hearings in 1934 by the committee of U.S. Senator Gerald Nye attacked the "Merchants of Death" -- war profiteers such as Remington Arms and the British Vickers company --whose salesmen had manipulated many nations into wars, and then supplied all sides with the weapons to fight them.
Percy Rockefeller and Samuel Pryor's Remington Arms supplied machine guns and Colt automatic pistols; millions of rifles to Czarist Russia; over half of the small-arms ammunition used by the Anglo-American allies in World War I; and 69 percent of the rifles used by the United States in that conflict.@s4
Samuel Bush's wartime relationship to these businessmen would continue after the war, and would especially aid his son Prescott's career of service to the Harrimans.
Most of the records and correspondence of Samuel Bush's arms- related section of the government have been burned, "to save space" in the National Archives. This matter of destroyed or misplaced records should be of concern to citizens of a constitutional republic. Unfortunately, it is a rather constant impediment with regard to researching George Bush's background: He is certainly the most "covert" American chief executive.
Now, arms production in wartime is by necessity carried on with great security precautions. The public need not know details of the private lives of the government or industry executives involved, and a broad interrelationship between government and private-sector personnel is normal and useful.
But during the period preceding World War I, and in the war years 1914-1917 when the U.S. was still neutral, interlocking Wall Street financiers subservient to British strategy lobbied heavily, and twisted U.S. government and domestic police functions. Led by the J.P. Morgan concern, Britain's overall purchasing agent in America, these financiers wanted a world war and they wanted the United States in it as Britain's ally. The U.S. and British arms companies, owned by these international financiers, poured out weapons abroad in deals not subject to the scrutiny of any electorate back home. The same gentlemen, as we shall see, later supplied weapons and money to Hitler's Nazis.
That this problem persists today, is in some respect due to the "control" over the documentation and the history of the arms traffickers.
World War I was a disaster for civilized humanity. It had terrible, unprecedented casualties, and shattering effects on the moral philosophy of Europeans and Americans.
But for a brief period, the war treated Prescott Bush rather well.
In June, 1918, just as his father took over responsibility for relations of the government with the private arms producers, Prescott went to Europe with the U.S. Army. His unit did not come near any fire until September. But on August 8, 1918, the following item appeared on the front page of Bush's home-town newspaper:
High Military Honors Conferred on Capt. Bush
For Notable Gallantry, When Leading Allied Commanders Were Endangered, Local Man is Awarded French, English and U.S. Crosses.
International Honors, perhaps unprecedented in the life of an American soldier, have been conferred upon Captain Prescott Sheldon Bush, son of Mr. and Mrs. S.P. Bush of Columbus.
Upon young Bush ... were conferred: Cross of the Legion of Honor, ... Victoria Cross, ... Distinguished Service Cross....
Conferring of the three decorations upon one man at one time implies recognition of a deed of rare valor and probably of great military importance as well.
From word which has reached Columbus during the last few days, it appears as if the achievement of Captain Bush well measures up to these requirements.
The incident occurred on the western front about the time the Germans were launching their great offensive of July 15.... The history of the remarkable victory scored later by the allies might have been written in another vein, but for the heroic and quick action of Captain Bush.
The ... three allied leaders, Gen. [Ferdinand] Foch, Sir Douglas Haig and Gen. [John J.] Pershing ... were making an inspection of American positions. Gen. Pershing had sent for Captain Bush to guide them about one sector.... Suddenly Captain Bush noticed a shell coming directly for them. He shouted a warning, suddenly drew his bolo knife, stuck it up as he would a ball bat, and parried the blow, causing the shell to glance off to the right....
Within 24 hours young Bush was notified ... [that] the three allied commanders had recommended him for practically the highest honors within their gift.... Captain Bush is 23 years old, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1917. He was one of Yale's best- known athletes ... was leader of the glee club ... and in his senior year was elected to the famous Skull and Bones Society....@s5
The day after this astonishing story appeared, there was a large cartoon on the editorial page. It depicted Prescott Bush as a small boy, reading a story-book about military heroism, and saying: "Gee! I wonder if anything like that could ever truly happen to a boy." The caption below was a rehash of the batting- away- the-deadly-shell exploit, written in storybook style.@s6
Local excitement about the military "Babe Ruth" lasted just four weeks. Then this somber little box appeared on the front page:
Editor State Journal:
A cable received from my son, Prescott S. Bush, brings word that he has not been decorated, as published in the papers a month ago. He feels dreadfully troubled that a letter, written in a spirit of fun, should have been misinterpreted. He says he is no hero and asks me to make explanations. I will appreciate your kindness in publishing this letter....
Flora Sheldon Bush.
Columbus, Sept. 5.@s7
Prescott Bush later claimed that he spent "about 10 or 11 weeks" in the area of combat in France. "We were under fire there.... It was quite exciting, and of course a wonderful experience." @s8
Prescott Bush was discharged in mid-1919, and returned for a short time to Columbus, Ohio. But his humiliation in his home town was so intense that he could no longer live there. The "war hero" story was henceforth not spoken of in his presence. Decades later, when he was an important, rich U.S. Senator, the story was whispered and puzzled over among the Congressmen.
Looking to be rescued from this ugly situation, Captain Bush went to the 1919 reunion of his Yale class in New Haven, Connecticut. Skull and Bones Patriarch Wallace Simmons, closely tied to the arms manufacturers, offered Prescott Bush a job in his St. Louis railroad equipment company. Bush took the offer and moved to St. Louis--and his destiny.
A Thoroughbred Marriage
Prescott Bush went to St. Louis to repair his troubled life. Sometime that same year, Averell Harriman made a trip there on a project which would have great consequences for Prescott. The 28- year-old Harriman, until then something of a playboy, wanted to bring his inherited money and contacts into action in the arena of world affairs.
President Theodore Roosevelt had denounced Harriman's father for "cynicism and deep-seated corruption" and called him an "undesirable citizen." @s9 For the still- smarting Averell to take his place among the makers and breakers of nations, he needed a financial and intelligence-gathering organization of his own. The man Harriman sought to create such an institution for him was Bert Walker, a Missouri stock broker and corporate wheeler- dealer.
George Herbert ( "Bert" ) Walker, for whom President George H.W. Bush was named, did not immediately accept Harriman's proposal. Would Walker leave his little St. Louis empire, to try his influence in New York and Europe?
Bert was the son of a dry goods wholesaler who had thrived on imports from England.@s1@s0 The British connection had paid for Walker summer houses in Santa Barbara, California, and in Maine-- "Walker's Point" at Kennebunkport. Bert Walker had been sent to England for his prep school and college education.
By 1919 Bert Walker had strong ties to the Guaranty Trust Company in New York and to the British-American banking house J.P. Morgan and Co. These Wall Street concerns represented all the important owners of American railroads: the Morgan partners and their associates or cousins in the intermarried Rockefeller, Whitney, Harriman and Vanderbilt families.
Bert Walker was known as the midwest's premier deal-arranger, awarding the investment capital of his international-banker contacts to the many railroads, utilities and other midwestern industries of which he and his St. Louis friends were executives or board members.
Walker's operations were always quiet, or mysterious, whether in local or global affairs. He had long been the "power behind the throne" in the St. Louis Democratic Party, along with his crony, former Missouri Governor David R. Francis. Walker and Francis together had sufficient influence to select the party's candidates.@s1@s1
Back in 1904, Bert Walker, David Francis, Washington University President Robert Brookings and their banker/broker circle had organized a world's fair in St. Louis, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In line with the old Southern Confederacy family backgrounds of many of these sponsors, the fair featured a "Human Zoo" : live natives from backward jungle regions were exhibited in special cages under the supervision of anthropologist William J. McGee.
So Averell Harriman was a natural patron for Bert Walker. Bert shared Averell's passion for horse breeding and horse racing, and easily accommodated the Harriman family's related social philosophy. They believed that the horses and racing stables they owned showed the way toward a sharp upgrading of the human stock--just select and mate thoroughbreds, and spurn or eliminate inferior animals.
The First World War had brought the little St. Louis oligarchy into the Confederate-slaveowner-oriented administration of President Woodrow Wilson and his advisors, Col. Edward House and Bernard Baruch.
Walker's friend Robert Brookings got into Bernard Baruch's War Industries Board as director of national Price Fixing (sic). David R. Francis became U.S. ambassador to Russia in 1916. As the Bolshevik Revolution broke out, we find Bert Walker busy appointing people to Francis's staff in Petrograd.@s1@s2
Walker's earliest activities in relation to the Soviet state are of significant interest to historians, given the activist role he was to play there together with Harriman. But Walker's life is as covert as the rest of the Bush clan's, and the surviving public record is extremely thin.
The 1919 Versailles peace conference brought together British imperial strategists and their American friends to make postwar global arrangements. For his own intended international adventures, Harriman needed Bert Walker the seasoned intriguer, who quietly represented many of the British-designated rulers of American politics and finance.
After two persuasion trips west by Harriman,@s1@s3 Walker at length agreed to move to New York. But he kept his father's summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Bert Walker formally organized the W.A. Harriman & Co. private bank in November 1919. Walker became the bank's president and chief executive; Averell Harriman was chairman and controlling co-owner with his brother Roland ( "Bunny" ), Prescott Bush's close friend from Yale; and Percy Rockefeller was a director and a founding financial sponsor.
In the autumn of 1919, Prescott Bush made the acquaintance of Bert Walker's daughter Dorothy. They were engaged the following year, and were married in August, 1921.@s1@s4 Among the ushers and grooms at the elaborate wedding were Ellery S. James, Knight Woolley and four other fellow Skull and Bonesmen from the Yale Class of 1917.@s1@s5 The Bush-Walker extended family has gathered each summer at the "Walker country home" in Kennebunkport, from this marriage of President Bush's parents down to the present day.
When Prescott married Dorothy, he was only a minor executive of the Simmons Co., railroad equipment suppliers, while his wife's father was building one of the most gigantic businesses in the world. The following year the couple tried to move back to Columbus, Ohio; there Prescott worked for a short time in a rubber products company owned by his father. But they soon moved again to Milton, Mass., after outsiders bought the little family business and moved it near there.
Thus Prescott Bush was going nowhere fast, when his son George Herbert Walker Bush--the future U.S. President--was born in Milton, Mass., on June 12, 1924.
Perhaps it was as a birthday gift for George, that "Bunny" Harriman stepped in to rescue his father Prescott from oblivion, bringing him into the Harriman-controlled U.S. Rubber Co. in New York City. In 1925 the young family moved to the town where George was to grow up: Greenwich, Connecticut, a suburb both of New York and of New Haven/Yale.
Then on May 1, 1926, Prescott Bush joined W.A. Harriman & Co. as its vice president, under the bank's president, Bert Walker, his father-in-law and George's maternal grandfather--the head of the family.@s1@s6
The Great Game
Prescott Bush would demonstrate strong loyalty to the firm he joined in 1926. And the bank, with the scope and power of many ordinary nations, could amply reward its agents. George Bush's Grandfather Walker had put the enterprise together, quietly, secretly, using all the international connections at his disposal. Let us briefly look back at the beginning of the Harriman firm--the Bush family enterprise--and follow its course into one of history's darkest projects.
The firm's first global lever was its successful arrangement to get into Germany by dominating that country's shipping. Averell Harriman announced in 1920 that he would re-start Germany's Hamburg- Amerika Line, after many months of scheming and arm-twisting. Hamburg-Amerika's commercial steamships had been confiscated by the United States at the end of the First World War. These ships had then become the property of the Harriman enterprise, by some arrangements with the U.S. authorities that were never made public.
The deal was breathtaking; it would create the world's largest private shipping line. Hamburg-Amerika Line regained its confiscated vessels, for a heavy price. The Harriman enterprise took "the right to participate in 50 percent of all business originated in Hamburg" ; and for the next twenty years (1920-1940), the Harriman enterprise had "complete control of all activities of the Hamburg line in the United States." @s1@s7
Harriman became co-owner of Hamburg-Amerika. The Harriman-Walker firm gained a tight hold on its management, with the not-so-subtle backing of the post-World War I occupation of Germany by the armies of England and America.
Just after Harriman's public statement, the St. Louis press celebrated Bert Walker's role in assembling the money to consummate the deal:
"Ex-St. Louisan Forms Giant Ship Merger"
"G. H. Walker is Moving Power Behind Harriman-Morton Shipping Combine...."
The story celebrated a "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...." @s1@s8
Bert Walker had arranged a "marriage" of J.P. Morgan credit and Harriman family inherited wealth.
W.A. Harriman & Co., of which Walker was president and founder, was merging with the Morton & Co. private bank--and Walker was "[p]rominent in the affairs of Morton & Co.," which was interlocked with the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Co.
The Hamburg-Amerika takeover created an effective instrument for the manipulation and fatal subversion of Germany. One of the great "merchants of death," Samuel Pryor, was in it from the beginning. Pryor, then chairman of the executive committee of Remington Arms, helped arrange the deal and served with Walker on the board of Harriman's shipping front organization, the American Ship and Commerce Co.
Walker and Harriman took the next giant step in 1922, setting up their European headquarters office in Berlin. With the aid of the Hamburg-based Warburg bank, W.A. Harriman & Co. began spreading an investment net over German industry and raw materials.
From the Berlin base, Walker and Harriman then plunged into deals with the new dictatorship of the Soviet Union. They led a select group of Wall Street and British Empire speculators who re-started the Russian oil industry, which had been devastated by the Bolshevik Revolution. They contracted to mine Soviet manganese, an element essential to modern steelmaking. These concessions were arranged directly with Leon Trotsky, then with Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet dictatorship's secret intelligence service (K.G.B), whose huge statue was finally pulled down by pro-democracy demonstrators in 1991.
These speculations created both channels of communication, and the style of accomodation, with the communist dictatorship, that have continued in the family down to President Bush.
With the bank launched, Bert Walker found New York the ideal place to satisfy his passion for sports, games and gambling. Walker was elected president of the U.S. Golf Association in 1920. He negotiated new international rules for the game with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland. After these talks he contributed the three-foot-high silver Walker Cup, for which British and American teams have since competed every two years.
Bert's son-in-law Prescott Bush was later secretary of the U.S. Golf Association, during the grave political and economic crises of the early 1930s. Prescott became USGA President in 1935, while he was otherwise embroiled in the family firm's work with Nazi Germany.
When George was one year old, in 1925, Bert Walker and Averell Harriman headed a syndicate which rebuilt Madison Square Garden as the modern Palace of Sport. Walker was at the center of New York's gambling scene in its heyday, in that Prohibition era of colorful and bloody gangsters. The Garden bloomed with million-dollar prize fights; bookies and their clients pooled more millions, trying to match the pace of the speculation-crazed stock and bond men. This was the era of "organized" crime--the national gambling and bootleg syndicate structured on the New York corporate model.
By 1930, when George was a boy of six, Grandpa Walker was New York State Racing Commissioner. The vivid colors and sounds of the racing scene must have impressed little George as much as his grandfather. Bert Walker bred race horses at his own stable, the Log Cabin Stud. He was president of the Belmont Park race track. Bert also personally managed most aspects of Averell's racing interests-- down to picking the colors and fabrics for the Harriman racing gear.@s1@s9
From 1926, George's father Prescott Bush showed a fierce loyalty to the Harrimans and a dogged determination to advance himself; he gradually came to run the day-to-day operations of W.A. Harriman & Co. After the firm's 1931 merger with the British-American banking house Brown Brothers, Prescott Bush became managing partner of the resulting company: Brown Brothers Harriman. This was ultimately the largest and politically the most important private banking house in America.
Financial collapse, world depression and social upheaval followed the fevered speculation of the 1920s. The 1929-31 crash of securities values wiped out the small fortune Prescott Bush had gained since 1926. But because of his devotion to the Harrimans, they "did a very generous thing," as Bush later put it. They staked him to what he had lost and put him back on his feet.
Prescott Bush described his own role, from 1931 through the 1940s, in a confidential interview:
I emphasize ... that the Harrimans showed great courage and loyalty and confidence in us, because three or four of us were really running the business, the day to day business. Averell was all over the place in those days ... and Roland was involved in a lot of directorships, and he didn't get down into the "lift- up-and-bear-down" activity of the bank, you see-- the day- to-day decisions ... we were really running the business, the day to day business, all the administrative decisions and the executive decisions. We were the ones that did it. We were the managing partners, let's say.@s2@s0
But of the "three or four" partners in charge, Prescott was effectively at the head of the firm, because he had taken over management of the gigantic personal investment funds of Averell and E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman.
In those interwar years, Prescott Bush made the family fortune which George Bush inherited. He piled up the money from an international project which continued until a new world war, and the action of the U.S. government, intervened to stop him.
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Notes for Chapter I
1. Washington Post, Aug. 16, 1991, p. A1.
2. Gen. Hugh S. Johnson to Major J.H.K. Davis, June 6, 1918, file no. 334.8/168 or 334.8/451 in U.S. National Archives, Suitland, Maryland.
3. Bernard M. Baruch, My Own Story (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1957), pp. 138-39. Baruch related that "our firm did a large business for Mr. Harriman.... In 1906 Harriman had [us] place heavy bets on Charles Evans Hughes in his race for Governor of New York against William Randolph Hearst. After several hundred thousand dollars had been wagered, [our firm] stopped. Hearing of this, Harriman called ... up. `Didn't I tell you to bet?' he demanded. `Now go on.'|"
4. Alden Hatch, Remington Arms: An American History, 1956, copyright by the Remington Arms Co., pp. 224-25.
5. The Ohio State Journal, Columbus, Ohio, Thursday, Aug. 8, 1918.
6. The Ohio State Journal, Friday, Aug. 9, 1918.
7. The Ohio State Journal, Friday, Sept. 6, 1918.
8. Interview with Prescott Bush in the Oral History Research Project conducted by Columbia University in 1966, Eisenhower Administration Part II; pp. 5-6. The interview was supposed to be kept confidential and was never published, but Columbia later sold microfilms of the transcript to certain libraries, including Arizona State University.
9. Theodore Roosevelt to James S. Sherman, Oct. 6, 1906, made public by Roosevelt at a press conference April 2, 1907. Quoted in Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931), p. 452. Roosevelt later confided to Harriman lawyer Robert S. Lovett that his views on Harriman were based on what J.P. Morgan had told him.
10. See The Industries of St. Louis, published 1885 by J.M. Elstner & Co., pp. 61-62 for Crow, Hagardine & Co., David Walker's first business; and p. 86 for Ely & Walker.
11. See Letter of G.H. Walker to D.R. Francis, March 20, 1905, in the Francis collection of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri, on the organization of the Republicans and Democrats to run the election of the mayor, a Democrat acceptable to the socially prominent. The next day Walker became the treasurer and Francis the president of this "Committee of 1000." See also George H. Walker obituary, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 25, 1953.
12. Letter of Perry Francis to his father, Ambassador David R. Francis, Oct. 15, 1917, Francis collection of the Missouri Historical Society. "... Joe Miller left for San Francisco last Tuesday night, where he will receive orders to continue to Petrograd. I was told by Mildred Kotany [Walker's sister-in-law] that Bert Walker got him his appointment through Breck Long. I didn't know Joe was after it, or could have helped him myself. He will be good company for you when he gets there...."
13. Private interview with a Walker family member, cousin of President Bush.
14. Prescott Bush, Columbia University, op. cit., p. 7.
15. St. Louis Globe Democrat, Aug. 7, 1921. 16. This is the sequence of events, from Simmons to U.S. Rubber, which Prescott Bush gave in his Columbia University interview, op. cit.,) pp. 7-8.
17. Public statement of Averell Harriman, New York Times, Oct. 6, 1920, p. 1.
18. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 12, 1920, p. 1.
19. Sports-as-business has continued in the family up through George Bush's adult life. Bert's son George Walker, Jr.--President Bush's uncle and financial angel in Texas--co-founded the New York Mets and was the baseball club's vice president and treasurer for 17 years until his death in 1977. The President's son, George Walker Bush, was co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball club during his father's presidency.
20. Prescott Bush, Columbia University, op. cit., pp. 16-22.
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Israel Seeks Formal "Jewish" State Label |
by Joshua Brilliant reposted by DAN Disinfo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2003
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JERUSALEM, - Israel is trying to convince President Bush and Arab leaders that attend this week's Middle East summit meetings to publicly unequivocally accept their nation as "a Jewish State."
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is seeking such recognition at Tuesday's summit of moderate Arab states and the American president in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt although Israel has turned town an offer to send its own delegation to the meeting, a well-placed official confirmed Sunday.
Israel's diplomatic efforts appear to be focused on U.S. officials who are helping prepare Bush's subsequent meeting Wednesday in Aqaba, Jordan, with Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, and Jordan's King Abdallah II expected to attend.
The plan for the Aqaba summit calls for separate meetings between Bush and Sharon, then Bush and Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), and finally a joint press conference in which each side will read their own statement.
The U.S. is working separately with each side and appears to be keeping details of their statements from the other side. A senior Israeli official told reporters Sunday that the Israeli government does not know what is in the Palestinian draft.
Foreign Minister Shalom, who spoke to reporters at a joint press conference with visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio, said Israel was seeking a "clear statement by Bush of the need to preserve Israel as a Jewish state."
"We expect Abu Mazen to say so as well. We expect the Sharm el-Sheikh summit to express an Arab undertaking to recognize Israel as a Jewish state," Shalom added.
The Israelis are raising that point because the roadmap for peace that the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia have presented calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders -- before the refugee issue is resolved.
The Palestinians are also demanding the right for Arab refugees to return to their old homes inside Israel. Arabs already account for 19 percent of Israel's population -- not including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- so an influx of millions of refugees would significantly alter Israel's demographic character.
Israeli officials argue that recognition of the state's Jewish nature would signal the refugees would not return. A well-placed Israeli official confirmed to United Press International they were looking for a workable formula that would resolve the issue.
Diplomats are also discussing a reference to the need to evacuate illegal settlements that Israel has established in the West Bank.
The proposed roadmap says the Israeli government should "immediately" dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001 and then freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth.
Sharon Sunday told his cabinet "it is very possible" that the final statement at the Aqaba summit would include a reference to the settlements.
"Why must there be a reference to it when there is no quiet (in the territories)?" the tourism minister, Benny Elon of the hawkish National Union, asked at the session, according to a participant.
"I don't know how it will be formulated," Sharon reportedly answered. "In any event there will be a reference to the fact that there would be no progress unless terror, violence and incitement stop," he added.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the ministers that Israeli military and intelligence had foiled three attempted car bomb attacks in recent days and several attempts to penetrate Israel.
Abu Mazen said Friday the Palestinians needed time to reorganize their security systems and that it would take 2-3 weeks before they could assume responsibility in the northern Gaza Strip. It would require even more time, he said, to establish a security hold on the West Bank.
Israel has reportedly rejected a request that, at the summit, Sharon undertake to end the occupation. A senior Israeli official pointed out that after Sharon openly said Israel could not continue as an occupying authority over 3.5 million Palestinians, Sharon has decided he will not be pressured into repeating the controversial statement.
Sharon's latest moves have stunned Israeli hawks who began reacting in ways that recalled the charged atmosphere that had led to the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, by a Jewish extremist. Critics accused Sharon of treason and Transport Minister Avigdor Liberman of the National Union reportedly warned of a possible civil war if settlements are removed.
"Lower the tones," Sharon urged his hawkish allies in the cabinet. "The tensions caused are damaging."
President Moshe Katsav urged party leaders "to make it clear to their supporters that they should not be tempted to follow prohibited paths."
Meanwhile, a senior Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed that the Egyptians very much wanted Israel, or at least Sharon, to attend Tuesday's summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. The source said that no official invitation was sent, most likely due to the fact that Israel had already indicated it would not attend.
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