Posse Comitatus: What it is and Why it's bad

President Bush, showing in full bloom the instincts that make it clear that whatever he is politically he is not a conservative of the traditional limited-government or Constitutionalist variety, has lofted a trial balloon to promote the idea of having the military play a more extensive, earlier and perhaps even primary role in handling future disasters. The fact that he has mentioned it more than once, and that press secretary Scott McClellan has discussed both that idea and the idea of bypassing governors when disaster strikes, suggests that the notion is not just something that popped into his head on the spur of the moment.
The president (like most presidents but to an exaggerated degree) almost always seeks to expand and enhance the power of the national government when an opportunity presents itself in which such power grabs can seem like a relatively logical response. We see a pattern explained most thoroughly by Robert Higgs in his now-classic (at least in certain circles) book, Crisis and Leviathan.
At least during the 20^th century Higgs discusses, federal power has expanded during times of crisis – mostly wars but also economic emergencies like the Great Depression – when such expansion seemed at least tolerable, even plausible, to most Americans. When a war or crisis ended, gestures were made toward returning to a constitutional republican form of governance by offloading some of the "emergency" powers. But some of the extraordinary powers remained in place and became not only permanent, but part of the status quo that seemed "normal" to most Americans once they got used to it – or simply the way things are for younger people or those without much sense of history.
Thus over the course of the century not only has the power of the central government expanded exponentially, but a central government whose power and prerogatives the founders would not recognize, and which would frighten most of them, has come to seem just the way things are – indeed, the very definition of "freedom and democracy" that most Americans assume we have and which is the best and freest form of government possible. So more power for the feds has become the "natural" first-reach instinct of almost every national politician of either major party in the face of a perceived crisis (even a crisis arguably caused or at least contributed to by bloated government, as I have argued both 9/11 and Katrina were).

MILITARIZING SOCIETY

The ongoing recognition of denizens of the state apparatus that, as Randolph Bourne recognized so memorably during World War I, that "war is the health of the state" has ensured that we have had a plenitude of military conflicts during the century just past. The habit of declaring "war" on such long-term and perhaps insoluble problems as poverty and government-disapproved drug use has not only compounded the trend, it has contributed to an ongoing militarization of society.
Whenever you see a police response to a major (or minor) criminal incident these days, the gendarmes assembled don't look like the friendly cop on the beat some of us remember from (possibly) more innocent days. They look like armored warriors, even the imperial "storm troopers" of the Star Wars movies, with their body armor, automatic weapons, shields, and tight formations. No wonder some neighborhoods in America feel more like occupied territory than like places where the people rule themselves.
In a crisis like the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans, the presence of troops can seem comforting. Even though it is now widely acknowledged that many of the early stories about murders, rapes and gang violence in the Superdome and convention center were outright false, it was a stressful time. Violence, hunger, fear and uncertainty, compounded by lack of food and water and the knowledge that everything you owned was probably destroyed, were commonplace. So any number of Americans, including many of those stranded or trapped, welcomed the people in military uniforms.
And so Americans became a little more accustomed to seeing people on the streets with military uniforms and automatic weapons or imposing vehicles, and beginning to process that presence as not only normal but perhaps even comforting.
This doesn't mean we'll be pushed into a military dictatorship the day after tomorrow. But it makes the prospect just a bit more thinkable.
It would behoove Americans, then, to remember or learn why we have a Posse Comitatus law and how it has served to protect American freedoms and our constitutional order.

POWER OF THE COUNTY

Posse Comitatus is a Latin term meaning "power of the county." Black's Law Dictionary defines it this: "Posse Comitatus: the power or force of the county. The entire population of a county above the age of fifteen, which a sheriff may summon to his assistance in certain cases as to aid him in keeping the peace, in pursuing and arresting felons, etc. Besides the old English common law of which Black was probably the prime exponent, Americans catch a whiff of the Old West in the concept. Sheriffs in real history probably didn't gather a posse to go after bad guys as often as happened in Hollywood movies. But it happened.
The idea that every able-bodied person is ultimately responsible for keeping peace, that it is not solely the task of designated professionals, especially when something approaching a crisis is imminent, is not only part of our heritage as Americans. It is a bedrock of republican liberty, not just in America but wherever it has been reasonably successful.
The Posse Comitatus law was passed in 1878, not only in response to some of the abuses committed by federal troops during the Reconstruction period in the South after the Civil War, but more specifically after many suspected that federal troops influenced the election of 1876, in which Rutherford B. Hayes was chosen by the Electoral College and federal troops ran some polling places in the South. Specifically, Hayes won the disputed electoral votes of South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida, states where President U.S. Grant had sent troops as a posse comitatus by federal marshals at the polls if deemed necessary.
I've read some about that election but don't have a settled view as to whether it was really stolen or not. But the use of federal troops in an election, the most central event in any democracy, bothered even many in Congress who didn't think it was stolen (or perhaps welcomed the theft). The Posse Comitatus Act was enacted in 1878. It reads as follows (as revised in 1956):
"Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both."
A regulation by the Department of Defense includes the Navy and the Marine Corps as bound by the act. The Coast Guard, which until the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was under the Department of Transportation, has always had some domestic law enforcement responsibilities, even though it has some quasi-military functions as well.

NO MILITARY LAW ENFORCEMENT

What the act does is to ensure that the military is not used for domestic law enforcement. This is an important safeguard for individual liberty and citizens' rights. When military forces are used to enforce domestic laws on citizens, the danger of a military or military-dominated dictatorship is not necessarily inevitable. But it is a constant danger.
The fact that the law was passed in 1878 does not necessarily mean that it was only then that U.S. citizens abruptly discovered the potential dangers of military domination. The attitudes of the colonists who eventually broke away from Great Britain was profoundly influenced by the fact that the British quartered troops forcefully in the homes of civilians and that the military often operated independently of civilian authorities. The Declaration of Independence also attacked the very idea of keeping of a standing army in time of peace.
The Articles of Confederation restricted the raising of armies and navies and reserved the appointment of officers below the rank of general to the states, thus limiting the power of the central government. The constitution mandated civilian control of the military, in part by making a civilian, the president, the commander-in-chief, and in part through governmental structures. It restricts military appropriations to two years and empowered Congress to regulate the armed forces. Some aspects of the Bill of Rights, including the Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted search and seizure, were also inspired by abuses by the British military during the colonial period.
Prior to the Civil War, many Americans opposed having a standing army at all, as Arthur Ekirch's too-little-known book, Civilian and Military: A History of the Anti-Militarist Tradition in the United States documents in detail. However, as this paper shows, authorities gradually began to use the military domestically. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 permitted federal marshals to call on the military to help return slaves to their "owners." In Kansas, federal troops were used to quell disorder between pro-slavery and anti-slavery mobs. The heavy military presence in the South after the war increased distaste for military rule over civilians. The use of the military to guard polling stations in the election of 1876 was something of a final straw.

DEADLY, BLOODY, MISSIONS

All this makes sense in a government of laws. Military people, as any of them will be pleased to inform you, are trained to kill people and break things. Within the confines of strategy and tactics, that's how you win wars. Civilian law enforcement officers are expected not only to go after bad guys, but to remember that they are considered innocent until proven guilty and to respect their rights – including rights like Miranda warnings that have been added since the Posse Comitatus Act was passed. They are different kinds of jobs – both difficult and with their own subtleties, but decidedly different.
Nobody has been convicted under the PCA and few have been prosecuted, but it has protected our liberties nonetheless. The downside of this, however, is that there is very little case law to help courts interpret the law. The little existing case law, however, suggests that the law is flexible enough to permit the use of the military in times of riot or natural disaster. At first the test was active-versus-passive, that is the military could furnish equipment and supplies but couldn't actively police Americans. In 1975 a somewhat looser test emerged, whether "military personnel subjected ... citizens to the exercise of military power which was regulatory, proscriptive, or compulsory in nature."
Prohibiting the military from engaging in civilian law enforcement not only protects us from the admittedly probably remote danger of a military dictatorship, it also protects the effectiveness and integrity of the military. If the military were asked on a regular basis to engage in civilian law enforcement (or even disaster relief) it would soften the warrior mentality and take resources and training time from the primary mission of being ready to fight an actual war. Weakening the Posse Comitatus Act, as has been suggested before by politicians of both parties, would almost certainly reduce the respect citizens have for the military, which has gradually increased since the act was passed, not coincidentally in my view.
Posse Comitatus is a Latin phrase that sounds obscure to most people, so it might not seem like a big thing to amend the act to make it easier to deploy the military in essentially civilian dutie


Think about IRAQ for a moment from the perspective of the IRAQI citizen. THE US Military comes in, kills all the bad guys, and restores order. GREAT!!! Good news, everyone is happy. Now, the US Military hangs around just to make sure nothing else bad happens.

Great, Good News.

Now time passes and the US Military are still here except now they are telling you that you and your family can't go here and can't go there. Then they tell you that your sons are a possible threat to the stability of IRAQ. So, they imprison your sons for your safety.

Then, the US military tells your boss and the company you work for that they can no longer produce or sell their goods without US Military approval.

Then, the US Military accidentally kills some of your neighbors by mistake. You go to the local police but they are powerless against the US Military. The only way to feed your family is to beg for supplies from the US Military who inform you that you will have to begin informing on your friends and neighbors. Who, by the way, will be doing the same thing to you.

Now, you are living in a neighborhood that use to yours, shopping at a grocery that use to be stocked with food, but now sells ONLY US military food rations. You use to have a job but the US Military shut down the company that allowed you to feed and support your family.

Now, everything you need to live and survive comes from and is issued by the US Military. If you do not do what the US Military says, if you get out of line, or speak against the US Military, you will not be able to feed your family.

The free country you once lived in is NOW completely controlled by the US Military. There is no one who can assist you in your grievances against the US Military. The US Military has complete POWER over your life now and there is NOTHING you or any one you know can do about it.
The worst part about it was you welcomed them in NOW you can't get them to leave.



That's the rub



Once the Military, foreign or domestic, has seized control of a country in the guise of a  
'HELPING RESTORE ORDER' 
 there is only one way to get them to leave.....


In order for the Afghans to get the Russians to leave Afghanistan, it cost the Afghans 2 million plus dead with another 1 million wounded, maimed, blinded, crippled, or murdered.  Add to that 10 years of constant blood shed, starvation, extreme poverty, destroyed families, and determined will.

Martial Law HAS BEEN DECLARED !!!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi HAS DECLARED MARTIAL LAW

which went into effect at 1:30 PM yesterday Eastern Standard Time.

EVERY member of the US Congressmen has been ordered to total SILENCE!

In perfect timing the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division of the NEW North American Army is NOW in place to suppress the US populace and to seize control from civil authorities.


The hidden coup de tau is moving forward just as they have planned....

Martial Law Coming very Soon.....

'Martial Law' In The
House Of Representatives

Under the martial law procedure, long-standing House rules that require at least one day between the unveiling of significant legislation and the House floor vote on that legislation so that Members can learn what they are being asked to vote on are swept away. Instead, under "martial law," the Leadership can file legislation with tens or hundreds of pages of fine print and move immediately to debate and votes on it, before... Members of Congress, The Media, or The Public have an opportunity to understand fully what provisions have been altered or inserted into the legislation behind closed doors. This is the procedure that the Leadership intends to use to muscle through important bills in the next two days.

Economic Black Mail by the FED...

Market Ticker has provided charts from the Federal Reserve that prove that the FED Chairman Bernanke has withdrawn $125 billion from the US banking system “in the last four days” to deliberately create a manufactured crisis situation that will incite credit market mayhem and FEAR forcing the US Congress to pass the Bailout bill.

This is BLACKMAIL most Foul!

Financial industry rep. Paulson is the ringleader in a Banker’s coup the results of which will decide America’s economic and political future for years to come. The coup leaders have drained tens of billions of dollars of liquidity from the already strained banking system to trigger a freeze in interbank lending and hasten a stock market crash. This, they believe, will force Congress to pass Paulson’s $770 billion bailout package without further congressional resistance. It’s bold faced economic blackmail.

As yet, no one knows whether the coup backers will succeed and further consolidate their political power via a massive economic shock to the system, but their plan continues to move jauntily forward while the economy follows its inexorable slide to disaster.

The bailout has galvanized grassroots movements which have flooded congressional FAX and phone lines. Callers are overwhelmingly opposed to any bailout for banks that are buckling under their own toxic mortgage-backed assets. One analyst said that the calls to Congress are 50 percent “No” and 50 percent “Hell, No.” There is virtually no popular support for the bill.

From Bloomberg News: “Erik Brynjolfsson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School, said his main objection ‘is the breathtaking amount of unchecked discretion it gives to the Secretary of the Treasury. It is unprecedented in a modern democracy.’”

“‘I suspect that part of what we’re seeing in the freezing up of lending markets is strategic behavior on the part of big financial players who stand to benefit from the bailout,’ said David K. Levine, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies liquidity constraints and game theory.” (Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis)

Brynjolfsson’s suspicions are well-founded. “Market Ticker’s” Karl Denninger confirms that the Fed has been draining the banking system of liquidity in order to blackmail Congress into passing the new legislation.

Here’s Denninger: “The effective Fed Funds rate has been trading 50 basis points or more below the 2% target for five straight days now, and for the last two days, it has traded 75 basis points under. The IRX is demanding an immediate rate cut. The Slosh has been intentionally drained by over $125 billion in the last week and lowering the water in the swamp exposed one dead body -- Washington Mutual -- which was immediately raided on a no-notice basis by JP Morgan. Not even WaMu’s CEO knew about the raid until it was done. . . .

The Fed claims to be an ‘independent central bank.’ They are nothing of the kind; they are now acting as an arsonist. The Fed and Treasury have claimed this is a ‘liquidity crisis’; it is not. It is an insolvency crisis that The Fed, Treasury and the other regulatory organs of our government have intentionally allowed to occur.”

This has happened before in US history and now it is happening again. All because Congress has surrendered it's Constitutional Authority and Power to FOREIGN Powers via the Central Bank known as the FED.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878

US Army deploys combat troops inside the US mainland for coming PLANNED economic meltdown.

Civil unrest will be instigated by plants from within the US government. This will allow the President to declare martial law and begin rounding up all those who will not willing surrender to the NEW WORLD ORDER.


For the first time ever, the US military is deploying active duty regular Army combat troops inside the United States for the express purpose of subduing, murdering, and torturing US citizens.

Beginning on October 1, the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Division will be placed under the command of US Army North, the Army’s component of the Pentagon’s Northern Command (NorthCom), which was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 False Flag terrorist attacks.

The unit—known as the “ Bloody Raiders”—is among the Army’s most “savagely blooded.” It has spent nearly three out of the last five years deployed in Iraq, leading vicious assaults on Baghdad civilians in 2003 and carrying out house-to-house genocide with in the city of Ramadi. It was the first brigade combat team to be sent to Iraq three times. All so that they could be prepared to defend those who would deny the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.

While active-duty units previously have been used in temporary assignments, such as the combat-equipped troops deployed in New Orleans, which was effectively ILLEGALLY placed under martial law in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, this marks the first time that US Army combat troops has been given the assignment to attack and arrest US citizens on US soil.

The Pentagon’s official pronouncements have stressed the role of specialized units in a potential response to US citizens standing up for their constitutional rights set forth by the Founding Fathers.

U.S. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, attended a training exercise last week for about 250 members of the unit at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The focus of the exercise, according to the Army’s public affairs office, was to bla..bla..bla... Does any one really believe anything they have to say?

However, the mission assigned to the nearly 4,000 troops of the First Brigade Combat Team does not consist merely of rescuing kittens from trees. An article that appeared earlier this month in the Army Times (“Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1”), a publication that is widely read within the military, paints a different and far more ominous picture.

“They may be called upon to forcefully with extreme intent to smash civil unrest” the paper reports. It quotes the unit’s commander, Col. Robert Cloutier, as saying that the 1st BCT’s soldiers are being trained in the use of “the first ever stealth lethal package the Army has fielded.” The weapons, the paper reported, are “designed to subdue US citizens who are unwilling to allow a Fascist take over of the Continental US.” The equipment includes microwave weapons, satellite beam weapons, nano particle weapons, as well as viral and bacteriological weapons.

It appears that as part of the training for deployment within the US, the soldiers have been ordered to test some of these stealth-lethal weapons on US citizens.

The brutalizing effect of US combat troops fighting against US citizens should help subdue the Us population quickly. These particular US combat troops have been trained to have ZERO sympathy for the pain and suffering they WILL inflict on the civilian population.

According to military officials quoted by the Army Times, the deployment of regular Army troops in the US begun with the First Brigade Combat Team is to become permanent, with different units rotated into the assignment on an annual basis.


The Bush administration has worked to tear down any barriers to the use of the military in domestic repression. Thus, in the 2007 Pentagon spending bill it inserted a measure to amend the Posse Comitatus Act to clear the way for the domestic deployment of the military in the event of natural disaster, terrorist attack or “other conditions in which the PRESIDENT determines the need to declare martial.

The provision granted the president sweeping new DICTATORIAL powers to impose martial law by declaring a “public emergency” for virtually any reason, allowing him to deploy COMBAT troops anywhere in the US and to take TOTAL control of state-based National Guard units WITHOUT the consent of state governors.”

Given the sweeping powers claimed by the White House in the name of the “commander in chief” in a global war on terror—powers to suspend habeas corpus, carry out wholesale domestic spying and conduct torture—there is no reason to believe it would respect legal restrictions against the use of military force against US citizens.

It is noteworthy that the deployment of US combat troops coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.


The domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a DIRECT response by the US RULING ELITE to smash the threat of political or popular opposition.

Under conditions of PLANNED economic crisis, with the brutal arm of the US military to subdue the US populace, the once great American experiment, will have come to a bloody and failed end.

BAILOUT = LAND GRAB / ASSET SEIZURE

Theft of the Highest order is about to occur right before the eyes of the enslaved American people.

It has happened before during the Civil War, then again in the year 1929.

No truer words were ever spoken then these...

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1802

The BUSH Cabal Part IIV

Team Bush, Team War Profiteers

Earlier this month, the President also asked for an additional $20 billion for Iraqi reconstruction as part of his larger supplemental appropriations request. Unfortunately, the President provided no assurances that the billions of dollars in new contracts will not be awarded through similarly secretive processes.
United States Senators Joseph I. Lieberman & Frank R. Lautenberg, Sept. 23, 2003.

Many other lesser members of Team Bush or the official Bush administration too numerous to list here have for the past five years (nearly) been working the revolving door of war business and government, to great personal financial advantage. In Part Three we will also detail how various Bush relatives are personally benefitting from the war in Iraq and the "War on Terror".

The grim truth is that the threat President Eisenhower warned about in 1961 is today the primary reality of the Bush governance, and the carpetbaggers of Washington are setting the tone for an era of war profiteering without equal in all human history. Only an aware and committed citizenry can hope to stop them.

Latest News...

In a radio address on 27 August 2005, President Bush called for Americans to be prepared for "more sacrifice" in Iraq. But who is to do the sacrificing? Not the President or any of his relatives and associates, that's for sure. They don't send their sons and daughters to fight in Iraq, they have "better things" to do. Mr Bush's "haves and have mores" prefer to rake in enormous windfall war profits generated by companies they have investments in, and which offer many of them high-paid jobs and extraordinary perks in the scandalous "revolving door" between the current US government and the big business corporations now profiting so hugely from this war.

We've all heard of Halliburton, so closely associated with Vice President Cheney. But here are a group of giant American corporations now doing "very nicely indeed thanks" out of the Iraq war as at the second half of 2005: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Honeywell and United Technologies. Behind them come dozens of medium-sized companies and hundreds of smaller ones for whom, far from sacrifice, war is a bonanza.

Lockheed Martin's net profit, for example, jumped 41 percent in the first six months of 2005. With orders worth US$73 billion to hand, their gravy train looks like rolling on for quite some time. Boeing's military division reported sales of US$15.3 billion in January-June 2005, with operating profits rising 16 percent to US$1.7 billion. Northrop Grumman's half-year earnings rose no less than 45.3%...

The latest Bush appointments on the blood money gravy train:
The new Deputy Secretary of Defence Gordon England, (replacing prominent Iraq war advocate Paul Wolfowitz, who became president of the World Bank), has previously held executive positions with both Lockheed Martin Corp and General Dynamics Corp. Below him, being nominated by President Bush as Secretary of the Air Force is Michael Wynne - even though the US Senate has previously refused to confirm Mr Wynne as the Pentagon's acquisition chief, because of concerns about a whole range of Air Force weapons-buying scandals. And who has the White House put forward for a replacement Secretary of the Navy? None other than Donald C. Winter, a current executive of Northrop Grumman Corp. Remember them from the windfall profits list?

And what happens to the honest ones? A senior contracting official, Ms Bunnatine Greenhouse, who criticised the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was sacked at the end of August 2005 for "poor performance". Yes indeed, the people in power find any criticism of all this revolving door corruption to be a very "poor" show, from their point of view. The dismissal, described by her attorney as bearing "the hallmark of illegal retaliation," handily scotches the investigation into her embarrassing finger-pointing at the thieves in action. Said Ms Greenhouse, "I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR (a division of Halliburton) represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years working on government contracts.

One Last Dismal Word

Many of the big corporations that own much of the US media are doing their best to avoid letting you read, see, or hear information they don't want you to know about, or try to ensure that such information is at any rate relegated to obscurity. The Web, and the publishing of books (both physical and e-books), remain the last free bastion of "the inconvenient truth". If sites like this one are forced off the Web, you'll know why. We hope that a kinder, more globally responsible America will eventually triumph over the military-corporate elite who have at present usurped government and fooled many of the American people into supporting them.

The BUSH Cabal Part IV

The Carlyle Group

This huge investment company (it manages over US$13 billion in assets) is headed by Frank Carlucci, a former Defence Secretary and National Security Council head under President Reagan. Carlucci was also Donald Rumsfeld's college roommate at Princeton. Richard Darman, formerly President Bush Sr's director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the managing director. Highly paid "consultants" to the company include several retired world leaders. If you ever wonder why some world leaders support the Iraq war so strongly against the wishes of their populations, the retirement rewards can be considerable.

Not the least of the retired leaders is President George Bush Sr., who is a large Carlyle stockholder, sometime Carlyle board member and has earned substantial fees working for Carlyle since he left office. Indeed he has received at least US$80,000 per "speaking engagement", although it seems to be his personal contacts and presumed ability to influence the powerful that prompted such generous compensation.

Bush senior's connection with the company presumably began when his son, George W. Bush, was offered a director's position on the board of a Carlyle subsidiary, Caterair, in 1990 when his father was President. Bush Sr. is also senior advisor of Carlyle's Asia Advisory Board. As well, the first President Bush twice visited the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia (November 1998 & January 2000) on Carlyle business besides other meetings with family members elsewhere.

Another key Carlyle figure as a "senior counsellor" is James Baker (James A. Baker III), a former Republican Secretary of State and close Bush family friend. Baker was leader of the final "Team Bush" grab for office during the disputed election process in Florida in 2000 (he was notorious for dropping the mask briefly on TV & snarling outright the Bush determination to seize power).

A huge Carlyle investment has been in the United Defence company, suppliers of many of the armoured vehicles for the Iraq war. Carlyle is now finally selling out of that company, but not before making enormous profits (the bin Laden family were earlier offered a 40% return on their investment in Carlyle).

Other lucrative benefits for Carlyle's investments deriving from the Bush wars have come from USIS, a privatised former federal agency that does security vetting for a huge range of sensitive positions, and EG&G, a weapons testing & related services company recently sold by Carlyle for a handy US$675 million.

Aircraft components subsidiaries of Carlyle such as Vought Aircraft and Composite Structures also promise well for the group's bottom line, in the light of the critical use of aircraft in the Bush administration's wonderfully profitable business of the "war against terror". Among other current Carlyle investments are Lier Siegler Services, providing logistics and maintenance, and Federal Data Systems, selling information technology to the US Air Force and other government agencies.

The Carlyle Group gave some US$358,000 to Republican candidates in 2000. They have since profited handsomely from their investment.

Carlyle, the Bush family and the Saudis

Perhaps the most embarrassing single detail about Carlyle is that on the morning of September 11 2001, it was holding its annual investor's conference at the Washington Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a gathering that included Shafiq bin Laden, half-brother of Osama. Following on from that is the scandal of how numerous members of the Bin Laden family were able to leave America after 9/11 on a special flight approved by the White House, without any adequate cross examination. But we should not really be surprised at that, considering the considerable ties between the Bush family and the bin Ladens. (Later the bin Ladens withdrew their Carlyle investments, or so we are told. With the secretive Carlyle Group you have to rely on their word).

However numerous other Saudi investors, including the Saudi royal family, continue to have large amounts of capital invested in Carlyle. Given that nearly all of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals and none were Iraqis, it would have been more" logical" - given the new Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes - for the US to invade Saudi Arabia rather than Iraq in order to quell Al Qaeda and cut off its funding sources and recruiting ability.

Instead, ties of profit by Bush family & administration members ensured that the Saudi regime would be protected at all costs, even though it funds the Wahabist Islamic evangelical push around the world, from which nearly all Al Qaeda members derive. When it comes to religion versus family profit, born-again George has no hesitation in short-changing his own Christian evangelical constituency in favour of underwriting rich Saudi Islamic fundamentalists instead.

The current President Bush also has an uncle, a brother of his father, named William Bush. William Bush, nicknamed "Bucky", holds a director's seat on the board of a St Louis, Missouri-based company called Engineered Support Systems Incorporated (ESSI). ESSI has recently done "very well thank you" as a military contractor to the Pentagon.

Uncle Bucky personally has done even better. In fact in January 2005 he sold 8,438 share options in the company for around $450,000 as just one benefit. No-bid contracts relating to the Iraq war have helped the company to record profitability. An interesting point is that in 2003, ESSI was granted contracts for equipment to help search for, and protect US soldiers from Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, the ones that didn't exist. Of course no one involved in trumping up a fictitious case for the Iraq invasion knew that - or did they? If they did, it's interesting how cleverly you can perpetuate a scam within a scam if you have the right connections.

And in a final Team Bush irony, key Carlyle figure James Baker, who is one of the closest friends and political operatives of the Bush family, has donned his lawyer's hat to represent members of the Saudi royal family against family members of 9/11 victims who are suing them. When it comes to family values the Bushes leave no victims unburned. The President has also selected a former partner of Baker's law firm, Bob Jordan, as his ambassador to Saudi Arabia (confirmed in this position on 5 October 2001).

The BUSH Cabal Part V

Stolen - AMERICAN money, social services, jobs - and lives

US citizen's taxes fuel the war profits of a secretive group of people growing ever richer at their expense. This "government of thieves" practises a revolving door of war for business and business for war. The Bush administration has promoted a huge increase in military spending for purposes such as invading Iraq, providing an enormous source of extra profit for big defence contractors and military-corporate shareholders, who at the same time have also been given large tax cuts by Bush & his cronies.

All this money is in effect stolen from the remaining 90% of the population. As a consequence, education, health, social welfare and many other useful or vital areas of government must be cut back. As well, numerous jobs are lost in these fields. Many ordinary people were suckered into voting for Bush by appeals to patriotism and religion - this from the family that has failed to find Osama bin Laden, but which protects the Saudi elite whose oil dollars work to promote Islamic fundamentalism against more moderate forms of Islam and all other religions and creeds.

How this theft affects Americans was brought home vividly in the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The best resources of the local National Guard, intended to protect their communities, had instead been diverted to the imperial war in Iraq, along with much money meant to secure the levees of New Orleans against floods. As well, an incompetent director who later had to be sacked had been appointed to the FEMA body meant to respond to civil emergencies, because he had contributed a large amount to the Bush campaign coffers. New Orleans inhabitants paid a terrible price because of these scandals.

Again, the Bushes are so tied in with wealthy Arab oil money that they could not understand why Americans might be alarmed early in 2006 that control of their major ports was to be given to an Arab-owned company. President Bush even threatened to veto any attempt to scuttle the deal, before being forced into a humiliating back down by members of his own party. Living in his own fantasy universe, George Bush could not see that having started a war based on lies and stoking anti-Arab "terrorist" hysteria through fear-mongering, "Patriot Act" laws and so on, Americans would not exempt "big-money" Arabs from the anxiety he himself had sought to fan.

Stolen - the lives and limbs of America's young as cannon fodder

Over four thousand dead and over thirty thousand wounded US soldiers already in Iraq (by April 2008), with no end in sight. More than half of US wounded are under the age of 24, many suffering permanent and crippling disabilities. How many more will be sacrificed for corporate interests? Is it reasonable to defame lives lost already by using them as an excuse to squander thousands more? There is no light at the end of this tunnel - instead the oil flares of Iraq illuminate a US occupation that more & more resembles a Vietnam-style guerilla war that is going down the tube.

It's the poor who serve, while the rich just get richer on the "patriotism of scoundrels" The Bush administration represents a corrupt group of people who together with a few toadies abroad have stolen control of Western civilisation by deception.

In President Bush's own words, his personal "base" is "the haves and the have mores". He finds that amusing, while the young men and women of America suffer and die for him and his ruthless, moneyed corporate elite. The children of this elite do not suffer and die in Iraq, that fate is reserved for the financially downtrodden. That's why rising unemployment does not bother the elite, for a lack of jobs elsewhere makes it easier to recruit poorer young people into the armed forces, and to keep "lesser folk" fearful for their future and so more compliant to authority.

The BUSH Cabal Part IIII

The German Ships

*Meanwhile in 1920 the Harrimans had initiated their "German connection", relaunching Germany's Hamburg-Amerika Line, whose steamships the Harrimans had somehow acquired after the ships were confiscated by the US at the end of WWI. They now took a half share in the line, & until 1940 had complete control of the US end.

At the other end was to be Baron Rudolph von Schroeder, vice president and director of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, treasurer of the support organization for the Nazi Party's private armies and a gentleman who sent his grandson Baron Johann Rudolph for a tour of Prescott Bush's Brown Brothers Harriman offices in New York City in December 1932, shortly before Hitler took power in Germany.

When the elected German government tried (unsuccessfully) to make the Nazi Party private armies disband in 1932, the Hamburg-Amerika Line distributed propaganda attacks against it for doing so. After the Nazi takeover, Hamburg-Amerika was henceforth to provide free passage to individuals going abroad for Nazi propaganda and spying purposes, to subsidise pro-Nazi newspapers in the USA, and in general act as a conduit for the Nazi cause.



Bush, Soviet Russia, the Thyssens and the Nazi Connection

*But shipping was just the beginning. WA Harriman & Co. linked with the Hamburg-based Warburg bank to make widespread investments in the new German Republic in the 1920s. Germany was then democratic, but from Berlin they also made huge secretive oil & mining deals with Soviet Russia through commissar Leon Trotsky and KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, helping advance the Soviet state so detested out loud at the time by the Republican Party.

The start of the Great Depression saw heavy financial losses by both Bush and the Harrimans. Indeed Prescott Bush was soon in deep water as a partner. The German Government's moratorium on debt repayments put his own business accounts heavily into the red. The Harrimans had deep pockets though, & magnanimously compensated their protégé Prescott for his shortfalls. In the nature of bankers this was not a straightforward gift however, and relied on new income for the company to resolve the money owed, although Bush was also paid a generous salary to live on in the meantime.

Losses were not the name of the game for long, however. Despite the ruinous Depression there was still money to be made out there, and in Germany soon a whole new political order to make it from. Germany had given the Harrimans and Bush a problem, and Germany could resolve it. The opportunity was made the most of.

While in Berlin in 1922 W. Averell Harriman had become acquainted with leading German industrialist and steel magnate Fritz Thyssen, and agreed to set up a bank for Thyssen in New York. As a result the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was established in August 1924 in the Manhattan offices of WA Harriman & Co., with George Herbert Walker as president.



Thyssen with Hitler

The UBC was no ordinary bank. It was a front in the US for Thyssen, who bankrolled & boosted Adolf Hitler from his early days of the beer hall "putsch" of 1923 onwards, and without whose money and support Hitler could not have come to power. Moreover the Thyssen industrial group became leading builders of the German war machine. In the end (late 1938) Thyssen, a Catholic, rejected Hitler and resigned his State positions after Hitler's murderous intentions towards the Jewish race (and any opposition) became crystal clear. Thyssen fled Germany in 1939. He was eventually arrested in France by the Vichy regime, intending to flee to South America but having failed to leave soon enough during the rapid fall of France, and was sent back to imprisonment in Germany. However his confiscated companies remained in Nazi hands and their Harriman-Bush connection continued as before.

Prescott Bush, his pal "Bunny" Harriman and six others were directors of the UBC from 1934 to 1943, wholly within the Nazi era. Moreover it was Prescott who ran the business day-to-day. Prescott and W. Averell Harriman were also the sole directors of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, which occupied the prestigious address of 1 Wall Street New York (Prescott's father-in-law George Herbert Walker was the company president). Much of Harriman Fifteen's investments were in the Silesian Holding Company, which owned mining operations in Poland. In the Nazi era, Silesian was to boost its profits using slave labor from the death camps.

On 4 January 1933, in the midst of a political crisis and struggle for the Chancellorship in Germany, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler and his crony Rudolf Hess met the influential politician Franz von Papen, a former Chancellor, at the office of merchant banker Kurt von Schroeder, in Cologne. Schroeder, some of whose other family connections are mentioned above, was amongst other things a co-director of theThyssen-Huautte foundry. The other co-director was Johann Groeninger, who also happened to be on the board of the Union Banking Corporation with Prescott Bush.

At this time the Nazi's funding was exhausted from fighting two general elections in seven months. As well, in the second of those elections the Nazi share of representatives elected to the Reichstag had fallen significantly (from 230 to 196). Yet Hitler emerged from this meeting with two trump cards. First, an understanding with von Papen that was to lead to Hitler assuming the Chancellorship on January 30. As a result, a murderous demagogue was soon able to seize dictatorial power, with appalling future consequences for humanity. Secondly, the Nazis received substantial funding to revitalise their party, from a source unknown.

Indeed no one since has ever been able to identify the source of this particular critical payment. For like many other trails of our investigation, any relevant paperwork has conveniently vanished. Given the von Schroeder connection however, there is an obvious candidate.



Fritz Thyssen

In his book "I Paid Hitler", published in several Allied countries in 1941 after his imprisonment by the Nazis he had now broken with, Thyssen confessed "For ten years before he came to power I supported Hitler and his party. I myself was a National Socialist (Nazi)". Much of the book is in fact a rather transparent attempt by Thyssen to distance himself from "Der Fuhrer" in retrospect, and downplay his own role while "dishing dirt" on other prominent figures of the era. However Thyssen did support Hitler financially from 1923, and in the critical 1930-33 period donated possibly over three million German marks to the Nazis (the amount is disputed & he admits only to a million, but there are no doubts the figure was substantial). In return Thyssen gained control of the German steel industry and was given high-sounding positions in the Nazi regime. His American operations were managed during the Nazi era by Prescott Bush, until seized by the US government in late 1942. After WWII Thyssen regained control of his companies, less a 15% "fine", but died in 1951 while visiting his daughter in Argentina.

If the Harrimans & Prescott Bush were not directly involved in promoting Hitler to power they were certainly remarkably quick to take advantage of the new situation. For in May 1933 negotiations were concluded in Berlin between Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's new economics minister, and a US international attorney (John Foster Dulles) to coordinate Nazi-American trade. Coincidentally or not, Kurt von Schroeder was one of the principal German advisers assisting this negotiation. A syndicate of 150 firms and individuals was formed as a result, and it was headed by none other than the Harriman International Company.



On the Side of the Enemy

*As war approached in Europe, Prescott Bush & the Harrimans continued to happily rake in the profits from various enterprises that were "in the possession of and have been operated by the (Nazi) German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country in its war effort" (as described in a US Govt. investigative report).

Bush held at least thirteen other directorships, including the board of the Simmons Company (later a major financial contributor to the campaigns of both Bush presidencies), the Continental Bank & Trust Company of New York, and United States Guaranty Trust. Why did Prescott Bush & the Harrimans not stick to those, and divest themselves of their Nazi connections, disassociate themselves once it was clear what was really happening in Germany? After all, even Thyssen himself had finally rejected Hitler.

But no, on the contrary the shameful truth is they went on during the 1930's as if nothing was changed, and continued to make money from banking for the Nazis, and from being closely involved with the companies that were building the German military might that was to overrun Europe and threaten to annihilate free Western civilisation.

After Germany invaded Poland, the US Govt. blocked Nazi payments to the Silesian-American Corporation's US bondholders. Undeterred, George Herbert Walker tried three times to arrange subterfuge schemes so the money could come in through Switzerland. The next year (1940), the UBC's US assets were frozen, so Prescott Bush & the Harrimans tended to the Thyssen US affairs allegedly for nothing, as a gesture to their client. It seems unlikely that they were not well compensated later, after Thyssen was freed.

Once US soldiers were dying in a war for which the Thyssen companies were providing much of the physical means, the US authorities could no longer stomach what was in effect treason. After October 20 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. Government ordered the seizure of Nazi German operations in the US. Companies seized that Prescott Bush was heavily involved with included the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Holland-American Trading Corporation, the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation & the Silesian-American Corporation. All property of the Hamburg-Amerika Line had already been sequestered two months before.

W. Averell Harriman was also chairman of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, an American group owning one-third of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland, in which one Friedrich Flick owned two-thirds. Flick, later imprisoned after the Nuremberg war crimes trials, was with Fritz Thyssen the major co-owner of the German Steel Trust, and from 1932 contributed large sums to the Nazi Party. Like Thyssen, Flick's money helped finance the Nazis private armies, the black-shirted S.S. (Schutzstaffel) and the brown-shirted S.A. storm troopers (Sturmabteilung), who together destroyed German democracy on the streets, paving the way for Hitler's rise to absolute power.

Prescott Bush concentrated on the Harriman's German activities, and with his father-in-law George Herbert Walker directly supervised the Flick-Harriman operations. Some have claimed that Bush had consciously promoted a "Hitler Project" as being good for Germany and business, others that he was just blinded by greed.


There is no proof that Prescott was himself ever a Nazi or identified with their beliefs - just unassailable evidence of an amoral banker and businessman happy to make money out of the Nazis and to assist their foreign financial dealings in any way possible, as long as there was profit in it.

As to the charge that Bush and the Harrimans personally and intentionally worked to bring Hitler to power, because they thought it would be best for Germany, business and their own pockets, the minimum we can say is "not proven, but cannot be excluded, and circumstantial evidence must cast them under a cloud". Fortunately for Bush and the Harrimans, their ubiquitous circle of friends and Bonesmen kept their names out of the official announcements concerning the seized companies. No charges were ever laid against them, moreover.

Most Americans today have never heard of the Bush-Harriman involvement with the Nazis, and to this day the major media of the USA have generally not investigated these matters, for reasons their corporate directors seem reluctant to discuss.

In this context we note that:
*Prescott Bush was a director of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System, the large media network). *E. Roland Harriman was a director of Newsweek magazine. He also purchased the New York Daily Herald in 1924 and later made further media investments. *Barbara Bush (wife of President Bush Snr.) is the daughter of Marvin Pierce, who was executive vice-president and later head of the McCall Corporation magazine publishing group. *Samuel Bush's son James Bush married Janet Newbold, daughter of the owner of the Evening Star newspaper of Washington. *The Fox TV network and News Corp. newspaper empire are controlled by Rupert Murdoch, an ardent Bush supporter. *Clear Channel Communications fields 1,200 pro-Bush radio stations across the USA. *There are many other US media connections influenced by Bonesmen, and by relatives and friends of the Bushes, Walkers & Harrimans. So the doubtful "independence" of the large US media on an issue like this could only be resolved by its investigatory actions proving otherwise. So far it has failed the test miserably. Unless this situation is reversed, the charge "corrupt and biased" in this area is difficult to refute.

Nor did it end there. After WWII, a further eighteen additional Brown Brothers Harriman and UBC-related client assets were seized under The Trading with the Enemy Act. Some showed a continued relationship with the Thyssen family after the first 1942 seizures. Worse, after the war Bush and the Harrimans did further business for related concerns moving assets into Switzerland, Panama, Argentina & Brazil. This flight of Nazi capital, especially to Latin America, was to lead to much corruption there and protect & assist Nazi holdouts for many years.

How time blurs memories. Today the name Thyssen is more often remembered in connection with the wonderful art collections of Fritz's younger brother Baron Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon, and his younger wife the ultra-glamorous Baroness von Thyssen. And the Bushes parade themselves as the defenders of civilisation against totalitarianism, when they made a fortune being exactly the opposite.



The Legacy

*Many people might believe that Prescott Bush should have been punished for his misdeeds. Most would say that if the profits and blood money he gained from dealing for the Nazis were not confiscated that would be an outrage.

But Prescott Bush got away with it all. He was by now extremely well-connected in general, plus his Skull and Bones membership gave him hidden high-placed allies throughout the decision-making levels of Government. So not only did he keep all the money he had made from his Nazi front company dealings, in 1951 Prescott Bush also received US$750,000 (worth about US$5.3 million in today's values) for his single share in the UBC bank.

Some of all this money was used to help fund both his son George Herbert Walker Bush's first business enterprise, and to support his (Prescott Bush's) own political campaigns. With his big money connections it was an easy step for Prescott to become (1947 -1950) Connecticut Republican finance chairman. He could also easily afford a first unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1950, followed by a triumphant bid in the second of two contests in 1952. The Bushes were now launched onto the stage of public power.

The nauseating truth then is that the present US President's family fortune was largely built on corrupt arms trading and Nazi profits, which have helped propel two Bushes to the White House. Worse, the present President's grandfather's efforts had the effect of helping put Hitler in power. The family for whom it seems that "it's all just business" apparently has no qualms even today about its past*. Which is perhaps not so surprising when we look at the later dealings of the Bush dynasty, their Saudi-Bin Laden connections, their scandalous business activities and their willingness to start a war which benefited them personally but which has plunged America into a Vietnam-style maelstrom.

In summary, there is considerably more circumstantial evidence today to suggest that President Bush's grandfather helped put Hitler in power than there was ever genuine evidence in the hands of George W. Bush when he took America to war in Iraq, claiming a threat of current and developing weapons of mass destruction. If this comparison is not instructive to the voters of America, then we must despair for the future of Western democracy.

And if these same facts do not persuade the US media to examine the Bush background more closely, then those same media that followed the war-at-all-costs bandwagon in 2003 without critically examining its credentials have already weighed themselves in the balance and been found wanting.

*Although President Bush Sr. may have kept a few secretly. An interesting sidelight in a family in which dynastic names are carried forward proudly is that George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife Barbara Bush named their daughter Dorothy after George's mother, another daughter (Pauline Robinson) after Barbara's mother, one son after Barbara's father (Marvin), another son after George's mother's father & himself (George), a third son (Jeb, actually John) probably after his brother Jonathan, but omitted his own father's name entirely.

Instead he called his other son Neil Mallon, after the man who gave him his first big job. However the name Prescott has been used again elsewhere in the Bush line, and true to form it crops up most dishonourably on Presidential election night 2000 in the amazing Fox News scam of that evening. (see Part Three).

** On 1 October 2004 the US Air Forces's No.2 weapons buyer, Darleen Druyun, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment after admitting to inflating prices on a Boeing contract and giving Boeing confidential pricing data from a European rival, in connection with future employment at the giant aerospace company. The corruption investigation was pushed by" honest John" Pentagon watchdog Senator John McCain. However the Bush administration is refusing to allow Senate Armed Services Committee investigators access to over 100 emails connected to Marvin Sambur, the No.1. Air Force weapons buyer. Meanwhile Air Force Secretary James Roche, a former vice-president of the huge Northrop Grumman aircraft and weapons systems conglomerate, and White House official Robin Cleveland are also under investigation for a "conflict of interest"...

The BUSH Cabal Part III

Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 -1972)

US Senator/ Failed Presidental Bid due to support of Hitler

Father of President George Herbert Walker Bush

grandfather of current President George Walker Bush.


Prescott Bush

Prescott Soldiers On

*By the time Prescott Bush was a teenager, the Bushes were sufficiently established to be regarded as part of the aspirational elite who were shaping the new, booming economy of the United States in the early twentieth century. Although regarded by some as still a "minor league" family in the New England aristocracy of wealth and power, their children were now able to attend the "right" schools and universities, and be in a position to advance further should the opportunities arise.

Prescott Bush attended Yale University. There the tall (6 ft 4 in), athletic and handsome young man formed an advantageous close friendship with E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, younger son of the immensely wealthy Harriman family. "Bunny's" father, railroad baron & stock broker E.H.Harriman was denounced by President Theodore Roosevelt as an "undesirable citizen" guilty of "deep-seated corruption" for issuing tens of millions of dollars of fraudulent railroad stock; but Harriman had managed to keep the cash and become one of America's richest men.

As a close chum of "Bunny" Harriman, Prescott was "tapped" (recruited) with him for the infamous
Skull and Bones Society, whose many wealthy and well-placed "Patriarch" graduates were to assist him throughout his rise in life.

Skull and Bones


The Tomb, New Haven

At a number of private US colleges there are "secret societies" where the children of the rich form hidden and often snobbish cliques, to establish lifelong networks of advantage. Some of these groups practise bizarre initiations, regular group bonding ceremonies with weird mumbo-jumbo rituals, and the usual extreme horseplay of overprivileged adolescents with time on their hands. Of all these the most powerful and secretive is the Skull and Bones Society of Yale.

Founded by the scion of an opium trader, Skull and Bones is notorious for its focus on death rituals and perverse sexual interrogation. The group houses a collection of stolen skulls and other macabre objects - reputedly including Hitler's silverware - in its windowless headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, a building known to members as the Tomb. Outsiders are never permitted entry, and those attempting to investigate Skull and Bones may be discouraged by subtle or less than subtle means.

The Skull and Bones society is immensely wealthy. For example it possess its own private island (Deer Island) with an exclusive "retreat", and owns much property at Yale. Members include many leading corporate and financial figures, senior lawyers and justices, some ranking FBI and CIA personnel (the CIA has been a haven of Bonesmen), and politicians. Both President's Bush are "Patriarchs" (graduate members) of Skull and Bones, many of whose alumni have assisted and protected their family's rise from the days of Prescott Bush at Yale. "Bonesmen", as with similar networks, are sworn to assist each other wherever possible in life. However in the real world they sometimes become enemies or even political rivals. The current President Bush has appointed at least eleven "Bonesmen" to important positions.




The Geronimo Incident

*Prescott Bush graduated BA from Yale in 1917. He had enlisted in the Connecticut National Guard in 1916 and then attended US Army Officer training. Now he joined the army as a captain of field artillery, and in 1918 was posted to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. There, with fellow Skull and Bones members Neil Mallon, Ellery James and four other novice captain accomplices, he led a grave-robbing incident involving the remains of the famous Chiricahua Apache chief Geronimo, who had been buried at Fort Sill in 1909.

Geronimo's skull, elbow bone and some belongings were taken to the Tomb (Skull & Bones HQ) in New Haven, and are evidently still there, on display in a glass cage. Despite Apache grievance, law enforcement officers have never entered the Tomb to reclaim them, so powerful is the Skull and Bones in the legal and judicial worlds (most members in any case regard it as their duty to deceive outsiders to protect their secrets).

Postscript: An attempt to negotiate a settlement to this shameful issue with Jonathan Bush, President George H. W. Bush's brother, in NYC in 1986 ended without agreement, and the Skull and Bones Society lawyer Endicott P. Davison then blandly denied all, despite the existence of substantial physical evidence supplied by a "Bonesman" with a conscience. In the Bush world, truth is what you can get away with.

With Prescott gone off to play soldier boy, his chum E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman hurriedly married a Miss Gladys Fries. It's interesting to note that although he and Prescott were frequently in each other's company throughout their lives thereafter, neither managed to attend the other's wedding. The newlyweds then departed for Washington, for Roland in a singular coincidence had secured a position in the War Department in connection with munitions ordnance, the same area of occupation as that of Prescott's father Samuel Bush.



Don't Mention the War

*Later in 1918 Captain Prescott Bush was sent to the European War, by now running towards its last bloody days. He was attached to the 158th Field Artillery Brigade in France, and later to the occupation forces in Germany. When evidently bored from a lack of wartime "action", Bush amused himself & he thought his readers by writing a humorous letter in which he claimed to have been awarded the Victoria Cross, the Legion of Honor, and the Distinguished Service Cross, under circumstances that were clearly preposterous.

However in the fevered war atmosphere of the time the letter was taken seriously, & published in a newspaper as factual. This led to a scandal as a result of which Bush was unable to remain in his hometown of Columbus Ohio when he returned there in mid 1919. The "phony war hero" label, though unjustified, was a permanent humiliation thereafter. However there is no evidence to support the view that bitterness over this incident pushed Bush towards Nazi sympathies.



Seeking Employment

*Now at a loose end, Bush attended the 1919 reunion of his Yale class, where fellow Skull & Bonesman Wallace Simmons offered him a job in his St. Louis, Missouri, railroad equipment company. Bush accepted, and moved to St. Louis, where his" fortunate connections" were soon to offer him further and better opportunities.

In 1919 wealthy Missouri corporate wheeler- dealer George Herbert Walker obliged the Harriman family patriarch by forming the W.A. Harriman & Co. private bank for the Harriman sons to have something to do. Walker, who took the posts of bank president and chief executive, was a "colourful" character, a former champion boxer whose hobbies were described as "golf, hunting, drinking scotch and beating his (four) sons to a pulp." However he was more polite towards the far richer Harrimans, whose elder son W. Averell Harriman was made chairman of the bank, and joint owner with his younger brother, Prescott's friend " Bunny".

At this time Prescott Bush met George Herbert Walker's daughter Dorothy, wooed her, & married her in 1921. They were to have four sons - George, Prescott Jr., Jonathan and William - and a daughter Nancy. With little success from his own business efforts, Bush was tapped by his old Yale chum "Bunny" to work firstly for the Harriman-controlled U.S. Rubber Co. in 1924, & then in 1926 directly for the W. A. Harriman bank itself.

In 1931 the Harriman bank was to merge with the British-American firm Brown Bros. and Co. to form Brown Brothers Harriman, with E.Roland Harriman as vice-president and Prescott Bush now a full partner. "Bert" Walker retired from the bank to his own G.H Walker & Co. Prescott Bush, who had gradually come to run the day-to-day operations of WA Harriman & Co., now became a managing partner of the merged entity. BBH was to be eventually the most important private banking house in America. Prescott Bush had reached the zone of serious money.



W (William) Averell Harriman, as a young man

W.Averell Harriman was the elder of the two heirs of railroad baron and stock market manipulator E H Harriman. The Harriman brothers were handsome, influential and immensely rich. Averell Harriman later formed an association with the Democratic Party, becoming at various times Governor of New York State, Ambassador to Moscow and Special Presidential Envoy. His brother remained a registered Republican. It is believed that embarrassment over Harriman's Democratic Party connections (resented by many in the party) is the reason the US Democratic Party has refused to raise the Bush-Harriman Nazi connections as an election issue, despite ample evidence.



Averell Harriman (centre), Special Presidential Envoy, with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Moscow Conference, August 1942



The First Sniff of Oil

*As a result, Prescott also sat on several corporate boards alongside "Bunny" Harriman, including
(1929 -1952) Dresser Industries. Dresser was an oil equipment company, on whose board the pair installed Yale classmate Henry Neil Mallon as chairman. Mallon was a fellow Skull and Bonesman and one of the Geronimo grave-robbers. In 1948 Mallon was in turn to hire Prescott's son George Herbert Walker Bush, later the first President Bush, to work at Dresser. (George H.W. Bush later named one of his own sons, Neil Mallon Bush). In September 1998, Dresser merged with Halliburton, a company much in the news recently.

The Bushes, the Walkers, the Harrimans and their connections remained close socially as well as in business. If we dip into the New York Times social pages of December 12 1941 for example we see the annual "Gay Thirties Dinner Dance" for charity being held on the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. At this event we find that the rollcall includes E.Roland "Bunny" Harriman present as President of the Boys' Club of New York, and the Prescott Bushes as guests at his table.

Another glance at the NYT shows a wedding on November 11 1950 uniting a Miss Marie Abbie Walker, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Charles Herbert Walker, with a John Malcolm Lilley, late of Yale. One of the bridesmaids is a Joan Harriman. The bridegroom, it transpires, is an employee of the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil Co. and the grandson of a Samuel Bush.

The BUSH Cabal Part II

The League of THIEVES

This period saw the first real establishment of the "military-industrial complex" President Dwight D. Eisenhower was later to warn against. In his 1961 farewell address to the American people, perhaps after reflecting sombrely on what was casually revealed during his many golf matches with Samuel Bush's son Prescott, Eisenhower cautioned: " we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."

What he meant was a network of arms makers, politicians, military officers, bankers, media owners and compliant journalists who together could distort the whole policy of a nation for their own selfish advantage. Of course the USA was not unique in such corruption - in "Mother England" things were equally as bad in the run-up to the Great War.

In Britain, after arms manufacturers successfully fooled the public with the "big Navy Scare " of 1909, rampant behind- the-scenes corruption burst into the public view for the first time when Vickers Ltd. was caught out bribing Rear Admiral Fujii of the Imperial Japanese Navy, to place an order with their company for the construction of warships. Visiting Canadian Government ministers Sir Frederick Borden and Louis Brodeur were also shocked by a Vickers official who told them "the Empire is going to the dogs for lack of a war and, worst of all, there is not even one small war in prospect". Vickers's roving salesman, the sinister Sir Basil Zaharoff, received extraordinary "expenses" and "special commissions", enabling him to bribe foreign officials with considerable success.

An analysis in 19l1 by a financial paper found 13 members of Parliament, 43 military/naval officers and 17 newspaper owners and journalists on the boards of directors of three leading arms makers. The highly respected retired Civil Service and Treasury head, Lord Welby of Allington, was so angered by all this that he declared "We are in the hands of an organisation of crooks. They are the politicians, generals, manufacturers of armaments and journalists. All of them are anxious for unlimited expenditure and go on inventing scares to terrify the public...".

The situation he spoke of bears an uncanny resemblance to the present Washington government of George W. Bush, where both politicians and military personnel move freely back and forth from public employ to highly paid positions with defence contractors, under the cover of enthusiastic media endorsements, all with the inevitable -and to them welcome -consequences** (see Part Two).

In 1913 the great arms cartel fell apart, and the arms makers began competing open slather with each other. Within a year Europe was at war.

The "Great War" - gas masks, trench slaughter , misery and - money for jam

World War I was enormously beneficial for the rich of America. Twenty-one thousand new millionaires were created. Du Pont stock became fifty times more valuable, and the banker J.P. Morgan became rich beyond his wildest imaginings. In 1917 Bethlehem Steel paid a dividend of an astounding 200% of its stock (share) value.

Selling munitions to Europe was a major part of this earnings boom. Under war conditions the opportunities to engage in profiteering were far greater than usual, and were eagerly seized upon. European munitions purchases from the USA rose from $40 million in 1914 to $2,340 million in 1918, for a war total of over four billion dollars (worth many times more in today's values). US entry into the war in April 1917 also created a home-grown bonanza for the arms makers.

In his new official position Samuel Bush helped organise munitions for the US Government's war effort, and channeled Government assistance to needy weapon makers (though why they needed it was a profound mystery to outsiders). Although only a relative 'small fry' in business himself, he was now perfectly placed to give the nod to particularly profitable contracts for others and receive "kickbacks" in return, from transactions that were handily shrouded in wartime secrecy. And sure enough, fat war contracts now flowed to Buckeye Steel. It was Samuel Prescott Bush, then, who began the long tradition of the" patriotic" Bushes, the proud American family who just happen to be always making money from war.



The aftermath

After World War I there were enquiries into the huge and senseless slaughter during that monstrous conflict, and into those who benefited by it. In one such, people such as Samuel Bush were labeled Merchants of Death when it became clear both that large armaments companies had deliberately fostered an arms race to stimulate their business and that some officials had conspired to assist their wholesale profiteering.

Strangely, most (but fortunately not all) of the detailed US records of the Samuel Bush wartime transactions later disappeared from the relevant Archives and have never been recovered. This pattern was not to be unique. The present President has busily censored damaging reports, tried to block enquiries, and sealed off many records from public scrutiny, some permanently. Wherever the Bushes have been, "cleaners" seem to follow them.

In 1944 Samuel Bush's Buckeye Steel was to be awarded a huge government arms contract, to make armor casings for shells. For a second time this Bush was to profit from" fighting the Germans", this time a Nazi state that his own son had been instrumental in founding and nourishing.

The revulsion that followed World War I led to attempts to regulate the arms trade, and prevent arms dealers from ever again entering into corrupt alliances with politicians and military personnel. Today, however, under the Presidency of George W. Bush the appalling situation that existed prior to W.W.I now prevails again in America. A Government of "war from business and business from war" now controls the world's only superpower. And once more the Bush family thrives as others suffer and die. Let's continue the full story with the next generation of the Bush family.

The BUSH Cabal Part I

The Founders of TPTB which fell the Once Great American Empire...

1. Samuel Prescott Bush (1863 -1948)


Samuel Bush

Early Days

The founder of the modern Bush dynasty was Samuel Prescott Bush, an Ohio steel executive, whose Buckeye Steel Castings Co. business projects included making parts for the Harriman railway empire. Before becoming President of Buckeye (1905-1927), Samuel Bush held a railroad position in Pennsylvania. He was the son of the Rev. James Smith Bush and Harriet Fay. Samuel graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1884, and ten years later married Flora Sheldon, with whom he had four surviving children, Prescott, Mary, Margaret and James. Of these his son Prescott Sheldon Bush was to be his father's dynastic successor. Samuel's money was not to give him immunity from personal tragedy however, for his wife Flora was to be killed when struck by a car in 1920. Samuel later remarried Martha Bell Carter of Milwaukee.

For many years Samuel was a leading member of the National Association of Manufacturers, and for a time was President of the Ohio Manufacturer's Association. Later he was to be an advisor to the disastrous Depression-era President Herbert Hoover on business and unemployment issues. He began the Bush family's abiding interest in golf, baseball, tennis and football. His old company Buckeye Steel endured for many years, but under new ownership filed for bankruptcy reorganization in Dec. 2002.

After the US entered World War I in April 1917, Samuel Bush obtained a position as head of the War Industries Board's Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section. This is surprising, considering he had no background in armaments. There was a hidden logic. As an apparent 'cleanskin' suitable for a sensitive official position, Bush already had powerful patrons eager to put his name forward. We can note for example Frank and Percy Rockefeller, whose famous family had moved to gain control of the Remington Arms Company in 1914. (Frank Rockefeller, a brother of clan head John D. Rockefeller, was the previous President of Buckeye Steel).

Then there was a certain George Sheldon, a director of the huge Bethlehem Steel Corp., which like Remington benefited enormously from World War I. George Sheldon was also a vice-president of the Navy League, which was subsidised by steel & arms makers to agitate for a massive naval expansion advantageous to them.

Finally, the War Industries Board was itself headed by Bernard M. Baruch, a Wall St. speculator who had close personal and business ties to E.H. Harriman, father of the closest friend of Bush's son Prescott at Yale. Sometimes the associations of their children can bring advancement to parents just as readily as the reverse. In Samuel Bush's later years he was to remain closely associated with the high-flying Baruch. In the America of the day, big money stuck together closer than clotted cream.

So the link between the Bushes, war, patriotism and profits was now firmly established through an informal network of influence. It has continued ever since.



The Merchants of Death

The period following the Civil War in the US and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe opened both a great general industrial expansion and the largest explosion of arms manufacturing ever known until the modern era. It was a time of huge fortunes being built by ruthless industrialists and bankers. These gentlemen, later styled the "robber barons" by historians, look little better than gangsters in retrospect. However many of them founded family dynasties whose descendants were to become not only rich but also eminently respectable. In some cases, like that of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, much of their fortunes were later to be used worldwide for considerable good. In other cases, like the Bush family, the further accumulation of money and power remained the primary goal.

The most evil aspect of the unregulated free-for-all that characterised the 1865 -1914 period of rapid industrial expansion was the development of an arms trade which did not just sell weapons but actively promoted war tensions and conflict to do so. The "trick of the trade" then for the arms manufacturers was to manufacture not just munitions but also regular "threats" and war scares. The idea was to keep populations supportive of greater expenditures on arms, and to prevent effective political challenge to those who advocated spending ever more taxes on weapons.

Fear was in fact the greatest weapon the arms dealers peddled. And they had no compunction about firing it from the shortest range possible. An example of their cynicism in action was shown as early as 1879, when the Remington Arms Co. was selling ammunition to both Russia and Turkey when they were at war with each other. Closer to home, they sold rifles to Cuban revolutionaries and at the same time ammunition to the Spanish Govt. fighting them.

Remington later topped this when Colombia and Venezuela were at war, but both states were also facing civil insurrections. There Remington achieved a quadruple sales bonanza by having all four parties firing at each other with Remington rifles loaded with Remington UMC bullets.

In Bullets we Trust

Beginning in 1894 an international arms cartel was formed, enabling leading arms manufacturers to jointly exploit markets worldwide without the annoyance of risking undercutting each other's profits. Disguised under the innocuous title of the Harvey United Steel Co., the "Harvey Syndicate" brought together many leading arms majors. The largest of these were UK firms Vickers Ltd. & Armstrong-Whitworth; from Germany Krupps and Dillingen, France's huge Schneider Co., Italy's Terni and from the USA Bethlehem Steel. Some of the companies had numerous national subsidiaries or associated businesses with interlocking directorships, and behind them stood big bankers such as John Pierpont Morgan. The companies sold in all markets to friend or potential foe, without reservation. Yet within their home countries each put their efforts forward as the essence of patriotism.

Arms panics in 1889 & 1892-3 created by agents of the weapons manufacturers resulted in huge surges of military spending in Britain and France, kicking off a corresponding rise in Germany. This tactic was regularly and successfully repeated, often by the deliberate preading of false or misleading information about what potential or actual enemies were doing. Weapons agents sallied back and forth between national leaders and governments, intentionally provoking them in turn. The resulting arms race made Europe a "powderkeg" ready for the fatal conflagration that occurred in 1914, the most disastrous and bloody war in all human history.

Modern Day Warfare via American Capitalisim

One of the crucial pillars of support for today's Dollar System is Washington's control of the International Monetary Fund, commonly known as the IMF. The way this actually works is carefully disguised, behind a facade of technocrats and economic theory of free market ideology. In reality, the IMF is a modern era collection agency for the Dollar Empire. It collects its tribute, through major international banks, who use the dollars to further extend the power of American financial and corporate hegemony, in effect the driving motor of what is globalization.

Ironically, though the IMF is a main prop of the Dollar System, it's nominally headed by a European, today a German, Horst Koehler, and before him, by a Frenchman, Michel Camdessus. The real power is carefully concealed behind the facade. Under the constitution of the IMF, no major decision is possible without 85% support of the board of directors. The United States, which drafted the original IMF charter at Bretton Woods New Hampshire in 1944, made sure it had the decisive veto control with an 18% vote share. That veto remains to today. Insiders know well that the IMF is run by Washington. It is no accident that its headquarters is also there.

The IMF was originally created in the 1944 Bretton Woods New Hampshire international monetary conference, called by President Roosevelt to set up a postwar monetary and trade system. It was intended as a fund to support stability of currencies and trade of the postwar European allied countries. At that time Washington held the vast bulk of world gold reserves and expected to lend dollars to rebuild Europe. The original IMF idea was to pool a share of reserves of member states, which any single state could then borrow, in event of a short term payments crisis, to stabilize their currency. Ten years after the Great Depression, the major industrial nations, including the USA, were concerned with creation of a stable, growing Europe, not least as an export market for US products. The first member to borrow was Great Britain after the war. The last European state was Italy in 1977.

The IMF was given sharper teeth in 1980s

Since 1977, no European or G7 country has gone to the IMF to borrow. Instead they have borrowed from private banks or issued state debt. They know all too well how destructive the IMF conditions are. By the end of the 1970s some people were suggesting the IMF had outlived its role, much as some argue with NATO after the end of the Cold War. Washington had other ideas for the IMF however.

The role of the IMF changed dramatically in the early 1980s, under US pressure. Instead of serving as a stabilizing fund for industrial countries of Europe or Japan, the IMF became the decisive agency controlling economic policy of underdeveloped countries. What evolved since the first Latin American debt crises of the early 1980s, was an entirely new role for the IMF to act as policeman to collect dollar loans for private New York and international banks. The IMF became the driving motor for what came to be called "globalization."

After the first oil price rise of 400% in the 1970s, many developing countries such as Brazil, Argentina, or most of Africa, borrowed heavily to finance needed oil imports, or trade deficits. They borrowed dollars from major international banks operating in the London Eurodollar market. London was the center for, in effect, the recycling of the large sums of petrodollars from Arab OPEC countries to US and other major banks.

The major banks took the new oil dollars and immediately relent them at a nice profit, to countries like Argentina or Egypt. Before the 1970s Argentina had been a fast-growing economy developing modern industry, agriculture and a rising standard of living for its people. It had almost no foreign debt. Ten years later, the country was under control of the IMF and foreign banks. The US changed the rules, in the process causing the very debt crisis it promised to fix in the first place.

In October 1979, a dramatic shock occurred for the debtor countries. Overnight their cheap dollar loans cost them 300% more interest charge. Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve Bank in the US, unilaterally changed US interest policy to force the dollar higher against other currencies. The effect was to raise US interest rates 300% and rates in the London bank market by even more. The bank loans to Argentina and other countries had been made in "floating" rate agreements. If the key international rate in the London bank market, LIBOR, was low, Argentina would pay a low rate on its dollar loans. But when it suddenly rose 300% in 1979-1980, many countries suddenly faced a payments crisis.

It took until 1982 for the crisis to reach default level. At that point, Washington demanded the IMF be brought in to police a debt collection process on developing debtor nations. This came to be called the Third World Debt Crisis. The impression was created that countries like Argentina were guilty for mismanagement. In reality, whatever political corruption may have existed in the debtor countries, the corruption of the IMF system and the petrodollar recycling was far greater. The Volcker interest rate shock completed the package of destruction of living standards on behalf of dollar debts.

How did the IMF act in the third world debt crisis? Here is where it becomes clear that the role of the IMF was to support the dollar hegemony of the United States, and not to help poor countries get through a temporary debt problem.

The 'Washington Consensus'

The IMF has been described by some as a sledge hammer of neo-colonialism. That is too mild, as 19th Century British or European colonialism, however harsh, never managed to accomplish the extent of devastation and destruction of health and living standards the IMF has done since the 1970s.

The IMF operates as a supranational agency to take control over helpless debtor states, to impose economic policies that force the country ever deeper into debt, while opening the market to foreign, often US capital and global corporate exploitation. The fact that debtor countries never get out of their dollar debt, only deeper in, is deliberate. IMF policy in fact insures this. The dollar debt is a major prop of the dollar system and of private international banks. When that debt is repaid, banks lose power and credit contracts. So long as debt grows, bank credit can grow, the paradox of modern banking.

The tip-off that the real purpose of the IMF is quite different from its public claims, is that despite repeated proof of the destructiveness of its policies, called "conditionalities," the IMF has never changed the method it uses in a target country. There is a reason for that.

Take Argentina as a case in point. In early 2002 Argentina defaulted on repaying $141 billion in foreign dollar debt. One of the most devastating economic collapses in modern history ensued. The IMF was crucial. In early 2000 Argentina had turned to the IMF for emergency credit to prevent a collapse of its currency, then fixed to the strong US dollar. As the dollar rose, Argentina found its exports trade collapsing. The country went into recession. The IMF stepped in with a $48 billion "rescue" package. But there were conditions.

First the government had to agree to severe IMF-dictated cuts in government spending before it would get any money. State subsidies on food for low income were ended, triggering food riots. Interest rates exploded in a vain effort to convince foreign banks and bondholders to not sell. That only worsened the economic depression. State companies were forced to privatize to raise money and "promote free market" liberalization. The Buenos Aires water system was sold for pennies to Enron, as was a pipeline going from Argentina to Chile.

Washington insisted all the while that Argentina hold to its fixed currency value, arguing that the trust of foreign bondholders and creditors was the priority. Meanwhile the country sank into its worst depression in memory, as millions lost jobs, and bank accounts were in the final stage frozen, so ordinary citizens could not even draw savings for life necessities.

What exactly does the IMF do when it comes into a crisis country that asks for emergency lending to overcome a debt or currency crisis? The IMF always uses the same program, regardless of whether it is Russia or Argentina, Zimbabwe or South Korea, all very different cultures, economies and situations. The IMF demands are often referred to as the Washington Consensus, the name given in 1990 by a US economist and IMF backer, John Williamson, to describe the IMF method of attack.

IMF medicine almost always includes demands to privatize state industries, to slash public spending even on health and education, devalue the national currency against the dollar, and open the country to free flow of international capital-both in and, especially, out.

First the IMF demands the government in question sign a secret Memorandum of Understanding with the IMF, in which it agrees to a list of "conditionalities", the pre-condition for getting any penny of IMF aid. Under today's globalized free capital markets, banks do not invest in a country that does not have the IMF seal of approval. So the IMF role is far more than giving some emergency loan. It determines if a country gets any money from any source at all-World Bank, private banks and other.

The conditions of an IMF deal are always the same. Privatization of state industries is top on the list. The effect of privatization with a cheap Peso or Ruble currency is that foreign dollar investors are able to buy up the prime assets of a country dirt cheap. Often the politicians involved in the country get corrupted by the lure of under-the-table deals in privatizing their national assets. Foreign multinationals can grab profitable mining, oil, or other national treasures with their dollars.

The case of the Yeltsin government in Russia is classic, with dollar billionaires emerging overnight on the looting of national assets via IMF-dictated privatization. The Clinton Administration backed the process fully. They knew it turned Russia into a dollar zone, and that was the intent.

The second demand of the IMF is that a country liberalize, that is open, its financial and banking markets to foreign investors. This allows high-profile speculators like George Soros or Citibank or Credit Suisse to come into a country, run up asset prices in a speculation, take huge profits, as in Thailand in the mid-1990s, and quickly sell, then exit with huge gains, as the local economy collapses behind them. Then Western multinationals can come in after, and take prime assets at very low cost.

This is what happened to Asia in the 1990s. The IMF and US Treasury, which actually determines US IMF policy, began strong pressure on the fast-growing East Asia "Tiger" economies in 1993, to remove national controls on capital flows. They argued it would help Asia get large sums of money to invest. What it did was give US pension funds and big banks a huge new market for speculation. Too much money flowed in, and an unhealthy real estate bubble grew. It burst when Soros and other US speculators deliberately pulled the plug in 1997, triggering the Asia crisis. The end result was that for the first time, Asian economies were forced to turn to the IMF to be rescued.

But the IMF did not "rescue" any Asian economy in 1998. It rescued international banks and hedge fund speculators. In Indonesia, the IMF demanded the government raise interest rates to 80%, on the argument that would keep foreign investors from leaving, and stabilize the situation. In fact, as critics like Joseph Stiglitz charged at the time, the IMF interest rate demands guaranteed a full-blown collapse of the Indonesian and other Asian banking systems.

Once the IMF got control of South Korea, one of the strongest industrial economies in the world, it demanded breakup of large industry conglomerates, charging "corruption" and "crony capitalism." In fact, Washington hoped to weaken a growing competitor and open the door for US companies like GM or Ford to take over. In part it worked, until Korea and other regional economies were strong enough to re-impose national controls. Malaysia openly defied the IMF demands and imposed currency controls during the crisis. The damage to Malaysia was minimal as a result, a great embarrassment to the IMF.

The next step for IMF conditions, is the demand a country turn to "market-based" domestic prices. This is code for eliminating government subsidies or price controls. Often developing countries have state-subsidized fuel or food or other necessities for their people. In 1998 the IMF demanded, for example, that Indonesia remove state food subsidies for the poor. The idea of "market-based price" is itself a fiction. A market is man-made. The market in Switzerland or Denmark or Japan is different from the market in Cuba or Cameroon. What the IMF is after is a slashing of state budgets to minimize the state role in the economy and make a target country defenseless against foreign takeover of its key assets. The government share in the fragile economy is cut also, in order to insure foreign banks get their "pound of flesh."

Finally the IMF demands the country devalue its currency, and massively, often by 60-70% or more. Here the argument is that this will make its exports "more competitive" and bring more income to repay the foreign dollar debts. This is a crucial part of the IMF Washington Consensus medicine. If, say, Chile devalues the Peso in half, or the Republic of Congo, it must export twice as many tons of copper to earn the same dollar of export surplus. For the giant multinationals in the industrial world, it means the cost of raw materials has become cheaper by half.

Over the past twenty years since the IMF stepped in to play the major role in reorganizing developing countries, world raw materials prices have been dramatically depressed, even though demand has risen. The reason is that countries of Africa, Latin America and elsewhere are mainly raw materials exporters, and their commodities, like oil, are all exported in dollars. They need to earn dollars to repay dollar debts. The IMF policies have driven their raw material prices, measured in dollars, drastically lower. This has been deliberate, but is never admitted. The IMF is an agency of American dollar domination of the global economy, not an agency to help developing countries.

The IMF's Bloody Record

None of this is exaggeration, unfortunately. IMF defenders claim that "market liberalization" has resulted in major economic growth over the past 20 years in developing countries. The reality is opposite. In a study done by Joseph Stiglitz when he was at the World Bank, between 1989 and 1997 the GDP of every country in the former Soviet Union had fallen to levels of 30% to 80% of that before the collapse of state controls, with the sole exception of Poland. The level in Russia was only 60% that in 1989. GDP had collapsed 40%, and unemployment went from 2 million to 60 million. The rapid privatization without adequate legal and institutional safeguards such as unemployment insurance or health insurance, led to social catastrophe comparable to wartime. IMF demands to free capital movement allowed new Russian dollar oligarchs such as Berezovsky to plunder billions of dollars and put it into secret bank accounts in Cyprus or Liechtenstein, while they bought luxury villas in Monte Carlo.

The IMF record in Africa is as outrageous and destructive. In Zimbabwe, the IMF demanded the government privatize certain state companies and cut subsidies on food, education and health care to get IMF aid. The government complied with most demands, and then the IMF accused it of funding the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, using that as an excuse to deny giving Zimbabwe loans. In Kenya the IMF earlier demanded that specific individuals be named to the government of Moi, people friendly to Western interests. Washington then charged these governments being "corrupt," which conveniently blinds Western opinion from realizing the moral travesty taking place under IMF auspices.

Forever deeper into debt ...

Take the official World Bank debt statistics and it becomes obvious that the IMF game is to support the dollar. The first debt crisis in the Third World erupted in 1982. The IMF stepped in to "stabilize" the debt problem. Since then, the foreign debts of developing countries have risen exponentially. In Argentina, the earlier "success" of the IMF, foreign debt stood at $62 billion in 1990. In 2000 it was $146 billion. Brazil's foreign debt has gone from $120 billion to $240 billion in the same time. Iran, isolated from the IMF system by US sanctions, is one of the few developing countries which has managed to reduce its foreign debt.

The total foreign dollar debt of all low and middle income countries rose from $1.4 trillion in 1990 to $2.5 trillion in 2000, almost double. In most cases, the unpayable interest costs on the debts were merely added to the amount of principal owed foreign lenders, at compound interest rate, of course. With compound interest charges often 10% to 15% per year, the debt grows exponentially.

The result is a Ponzi debt pyramid, in which the more a country pays, the more it owes. Bankers call it "interest capitalization." It is no different from the plight of a poor shopkeeper debtor who is forced to turn to a mafia loan shark to survive and ends up paying more and more at ever more interest, until he is bankrupt and the mafia takes all his possessions. The IMF and banks know only some 80% of Third World debts can ever be repaid. They care only about the legal fiction and the ability to use the debt as a lever to grab assets cheaply. According to the World Bank, between 1980 and 1986, for a group of 109 debtor countries, payment of interest alone to the creditors on foreign debts totaled $326 billion. Repayment of principal on the same debts totaled another $322 billion, for a combined capital flow out to the New York and other creditor banks, in debt service, of $658 billions on an original debt of $430 billion. Yet, despite this enormous effort, these 109 debtors still owed the banks a sum of $882 billion in 1986. This was because of the pyramid effect of compound interest, interest capitalization and Volcker's floating rate policy.

In 1990 the developing world repaid some $150 billion in interest on dollar debt, three times all aid received. This was a huge boost to the dollar credit system, which lends on the basis of assuming it will be repaid the entire $2.5 trillion third world debt. The IMF allows that myth to continue. Occupied Iraq today must still "honor" billions in debts of the Hussein era, many to the former Soviet Union, despite its devastated situation. Russia is still forced to admit billions in debt from the Soviet era to Western agencies. Under the IMF system, debt is more sacred than human life.

The vicious trick in all IMF-led "debt restructuring," is that so long as a debtor is able to pay interest on its loans, the creditor banks in New York or London or elsewhere do not have to declare their loan in default. Even if they know it never will be repaid, they treat it as if it were a fully good credit, and use it as capital collateral for further bank lending. The banking system of the dollar world is to a major degree propped up by the pyramid of unpayable third world loans from Africa to Indonesia to Argentina to Croatia.

There has been a dramatic slowdown in economic growth in developing economies over the past two decades since the IMF was brought in to police the debtor states in 1982. There is a direct link. In Latin America, if we take per capita GDP growth, there was a growth of 75% between 1960 and 1980. In the following 20 years to 2000, per capital GDP grew a mere 6%.

In Sub-Sahara Africa, per capita GDP grew by 36% in the two decade period to 1980. Then, it fell by a staggering 15% the next two decades. According to the World Bank itself, some 300 million Africans, almost half of the Continent, survive on less than ? 0.65 a day. IMF-dictated cuts in national health care have resulted in rising infant mortality across the Continent. In 2002 Malawi underwent famine. It coincided with the April 2002 decision by the IMF to suspend Malawi on allegations of "corruption." The IMF had ordered Malawi's government to sell its grain reserves in order to repay a South African bank loan of the National Food Reserve Agency. The IMF also ordered export of maize to service debt, ignoring a developing famine crisis. The IMF piously denied it played any role in the famine crisis however.

For Arab states, including Algeria, Morocco, GDP growth per capital swung from a plus 175% between 1960-1980 to a minus 2% in the following two decades, a staggering collapse.

The only apparent exception to this negative trend is East Asia including China. Here growth was faster between 1980 and 2000. But the reason is the including of China, which saw a 400% increase in GDP and accounts for 83% of the region's population. China has adamantly refused any dealings with the IMF, and runs a controlled state-guided economy with full currency controls, hardly an IMF model state.