From the Daily Bell, sapphic is lesbian and yes I had to look it up. Recommend you read this in the morning otherwise you may have a hard time sleeping unless properly anethised with ethanol.
FDR, Lincoln … and a Disturbing Supposition Regarding Barack Obama
Here’s a new dominant social theme: US presidents are good and they ought to be in movies.
Of course, it helps if you are a socialist leader and make maximum use of the awesome power of Leviathan. The two presidents currently being lionized – surprise, surprise – are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
Roosevelt presided over the initial, massive expansion of the welfare state – the same one that has brought the US some US$200 trillion in payables and will eventually spell the end of the US as a going concern. Lincoln paved the way for the activist leader Roosevelt by insisting that the Union was indivisible and doing his part to murder or otherwise maim about a million people to prove it.
The movies that portray these leaders don’t provide us with this stark – if historically realistic – point of view, of course. The bloody-minded decisions and subsequent ramifications are presented as historical necessity.
These are sympathetic portrayals and it is hard not to come to the conclusion that once again Hollywood is sending us a message about the Way the World Works, and US power politics especially. More on that in a moment.
Presumably, we are to walk away from these movies believing US presidents are bold visionaries who are willing to move their often warlike policies forward for the “greater good.” And there is certainly an audience for this sort of perspective. Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” was just released and has already taken in more than US$13 million.
There is another movie out there on Lincoln that attracted a good deal of attention, as it featured Lincoln as a vampire killer. This isn’t strictly speaking a biopic but it is surely a kind of hagiography.
Two movies about Franklin Delano Roosevelt are currently being distributed. The one that hasn’t got much attention is called “FDR, American Badass.” It is described by Wikipedia as “a slapstick comedy that has the 32nd President of the United States riding a ‘wheelchair of death’ to stop the world from werewolves who carry the polio virus, including werewolf versions of Hitler, Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito.”
The “important” FDR film – just released – is called “Hyde Park on Hudson.” It’s about a social event hosted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (at his country home) for the King and Queen of England. The tension of the movie is in part derived from the mission of the Royals, who seek support for the war against Germany that had just started.
The movie seeks to portray FDR as a sly and charming mastermind who understands that the Royals need to be humanized if they are to win over the US populace. By feeding them hot dogs and otherwise presenting the weekend with the Royals as an informal event, Roosevelt presented the King and Queen of England as “just folks” who needed help facing the juggernaut of the German military machine.
The result, the movie implies, was the initial turning point in what was to become World War II. An incident little-noted by historians, this weekend of entertainment provided by FDR would generate enough US public sympathy for England to allow Roosevelt to begin the process of entering the war on England’s side.
Of course, Roosevelt’s masterful public relations manipulation was aided by the same media that protected his image by refusing to photograph or otherwise portray him below the waist throughout his three terms. Roosevelt was paralyzed as the result of what was once considered the effects of polio but is now thought to have been Guillain-Barré syndrome.
The media was also complicit in covering up Roosevelt’s extramarital dalliances as well as his wife’s apparent Sapphic ones. One of the titillating aspects of “Hyde Park on Hudson” is centered around Roosevelt’s complicated sex life and many mistresses.
Roosevelt is played by the famous comic actor Bill Murray and “Hyde Park on Hudson” is supposed to do for FDR what he intended to do for the King and Queen of England – humanize them and introduce them to a US audience that did not have a great deal of familiarity with them. The New York Post‘s Lou Lumenick reviewed the movie sympathetically as follows:
Half as long and twice as much fun as the self-important “Lincoln,’ Roger Michell’s charming sex-and-politics comedy “Hyde Park on Hudson’ is basically a frothy tabloid take on presidential history. And for my money, that’s a good thing in a season filled with puffed-up prestige pictures.
Anchored by a thoroughly delightful performance by Bill Murray, the film shows President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrestling with two problems as World War II looms in the spring of 1939.
The far weightier one is considerable sentiment against Great Britain by an American public that fears our World War I ally will drag the US into another costly worldwide conflict — one the president knows is absolutely necessary to stop Adolf Hitler …
History tells us this was one of the biggest public relations coups of FDR’s career, convincing the American people that the English were “like us’ and deserving of support when World War II erupted just two months later.
The big problem with this review is that its premise is faulty. Today, we know that much of Hitler’s military buildup and indeed his rise to power was supported by same Western financial forces that are today pursuing “the war on terror” and apparently for much the same reasons.
Thanks to what we call the Internet Reformation, we can see the scope of history more fully. The information is finally available. It seems to show us that the real reason both the first and second world wars were fought was in part to generate global governance, a process that remains underway today.
And we can see that after every large war, the West lost considerable freedoms. Under Lincoln, the free press was suspended, politicians and journalists who opposed the war were jailed. The result of an exceptionally bloody war was that states could not secede without facing military retaliation. History shows us that once a regime is emplaced by force, empire (of a sort) is inevitable and then, eventually, a downfall.
This is certainly the process that is underway in the US – and Europe, too, where an EU empire is a-building … and tottering. The two US presidents most responsible for the current US empire are Lincoln and Roosevelt. (One could make a case for Woodrow Wilson, as well, but he was not as charismatic, it would seem.)
As students of elite dominant social themes, we long ago came to the conclusion that social and media trends are often deliberate rather than coincidental. The spate of movies portraying activist and warlike US presidents in a sympathetic light may well be intended to set a certain tone.
If so, this is a disturbing supposition. It would seem to be indicating that something is to unfold in President Barack Obama‘s second term that may replicate some of the same sort of events that took place under FDR and Lincoln.
What those events are to be is not yet clear. But it is a most disturbing supposition.
SSS says:
“The two US presidents most responsible for the current US empire are Lincoln and Roosevelt.”
—-from the article
Well, I disagree.
I just got back from watching Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which focused on passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, a few months before Lincoln was assassinated. The movie didn’t sugarcoat the seedy backdoor deals to get this done. Anyway, Lincoln was handed a piece of shit called slavery that was the proverbial can kicked down the road since the founding of the Republic. He just happened to be president when the issue blew up at Ft. Sumpter.
As for the U.S. “empire,” one can make a better case for presidents like James Knox Polk, he of the Mexican-American War, in which we gained enormous territory. Not sure where Roosevelt fits into the empire picture, despite the fact that I believe that he was one of the worst presidents ever.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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8th December 2012 at 12:41 am
Colma Nerding says:
Here’s the trailer for “FDR, American Badass”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs2m2DJybD4
I’ll check ‘flix for it later and give a review….
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8th December 2012 at 1:08 am
Steve Hogan says:
SSS, you might disagree, but it doesn’t mean you’re right.
Lincoln was clearly America’s first elected dictator. His actions as president were undeniably tyrannical, and they had nothing to do with abolishing slavery.
This notion of Abe as the great emancipator is laughable. The man was a rabid racist, as his views on the negro race were well known and documented. To say otherwise is ignorance personified.
Also to suggest that he somehow inherited the conditions that led to the Civil War are equally fallacious. Much like FDR after him, Lincoln precipitated the conflict. He wanted an excuse for unleashing hell on those who wanted to secede. Fort Sumpter provided him with political cover for the slaughter that he helped to produce. To suggest otherwise means you’ve swallowed the Kool-aid.
You’re as clueless about history as you are about the fucking stupid drug war. Pull your head out.
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8th December 2012 at 1:21 am
Zara says:
I’ll just say that I long to transform the Lincoln memorial into a petting zoo.
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8th December 2012 at 3:40 am
Stan says:
And so we have these 3, Lincoln, FDR, and Obama, but the greatest of these is Obama.
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8th December 2012 at 5:51 am
flash says:
Super Sleuth
I hope this articles provides the lubricant for which to easily extract your over-sized government pwned melon from your overtly constricted anus.
Spielberg’s Upside-Down History: The Myth of Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Recently by Thomas DiLorenzo: Why the Totalitarians Among Us Love Lincoln
“Armies of scholars, meticulously investigating every aspect of [Lincoln’s] life, have failed to find a single act of racial bigotry on his part.”
~ Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, p. 207.
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people . . . . I as much as any man am in favor of the superior position assigned to the white race.”
~ Abraham Lincoln, First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Ottawa, Illinois, Sept. 18, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol.3, pp. 145-146.
Steven Spielberg’s new movie, Lincoln, is said to be based on several chapters of the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns-Goodwin, who was a consultant to Spielberg. The main theme of the movie is how clever, manipulative, conniving, scheming, lying, and underhanded Lincoln supposedly was in using his “political skills” to get the Thirteenth Amendment that legally ended slavery through the U.S. House of Representatives in the last months of his life. This entire story is what Lerone Bennett, Jr. the longtime executive editor of Ebony magazine and author of Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, calls a “pleasant fiction.” It never happened.
It never happened according to the foremost authority on Lincoln among mainstream Lincoln scholars, Harvard University Professor David H. Donald, the recipient of several Pulitzer prizes for his historical writings, including a biography of Lincoln. David Donald is the preeminent Lincoln scholar of our time who began writing award-winning books on the subject in the early 1960s. On page 545 of his magnus opus, Lincoln, Donald notes that Lincoln did discuss the Thirteenth Amendment with two members of Congress – James M. Ashley of Ohio and James S. Rollins of Missouri. But if he used “means of persuading congressmen to vote for the Thirteeth Amendment,” the theme of the Spielberg movie, “his actions are not recorded. Conclusions about the President’s role rested on gossip . . .”
Moreover, there is not a shred of evidence that even one Democratic member of Congress changed his vote on the Thirteenth Amendment (which had previously been defeated) because of Lincoln’s actions. Donald documents that Lincoln was told that some New Jersey Democrats could possibly be persuaded to vote for the amendment “if he could persuade [Senator] Charles Sumner to drop a bill to regulate the Camden & Amboy [New Jersey] Railroad, but he declined to intervene” (emphasis added). “One New Jersey Democrat,” writes David Donald, “well known as a lobbyist for the Camden & Amboy, who had voted against the amendment in July, did abstain in the final vote, but it cannot be proved that Lincoln influenced his change” (emphasis added). Thus, according to the foremost authority on Lincoln, there is no evidence at all that Lincoln influenced even a single vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, in complete contradiction of the writings of the confessed plagiarist Doris Kearns-Goodwin and Steven Spielberg’s movie (See my review of Goodwin’s book, entitled “A Plagiarist’s Contribution to Lincoln Idolatry”).
Lincoln’s First Thirteenth Amendment Gambit
There is no evidence that Lincoln provided any significant assistance in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the House of Representatives in 1865, but there is evidence of his effectiveness in getting an earlier Thirteenth Amendment through the House and the Senate in 1861. This proposed amendment was known as the “Corwin Amendment,” named after Ohio Republican Congressman Thomas Corwin. It had passed both the Republican-controlled House and the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration, and was sent to the states for ratification by Lincoln himself.
The Corwin Amendment would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery. It read as follows:
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State,, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
“Person held to service” is how the Constitutional Convention referred to slaves, and “domestic institutions” referred to slavery. Lincoln announced to the world that he endorsed the Corwin Amendment in his first inaugural address:
“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution – which amendment, however, I have not seen – has passed Congress to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service . . . . [H]olding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable” (emphasis added).
Believing that slavery was already constitutional, Lincoln had “no objection” to enshrining it explicitly in the text of the U.S. Constitution on the day that he took office. He then sent a letter to the governor of each state transmitting the approved amendment for what he hoped would be ratification and noting that his predecessor, President James Buchanan, had also endorsed it.
Lincoln played a much larger role in getting this first Thirteenth Amendment through Congress than merely endorsing it in his first inaugural address and in his letter to the governors. Even Doris Kearns-Goodwin knows this! On page 296 of Team of Rivals she explained how it was Lincoln who, after being elected but before the inauguration, instructed New York Senator William Seward, who would become his secretary of state, to get the amendment through the U.S. Senate. He also instructed Seward to get a federal law passed that would repeal the personal liberty laws in some of the Northern states that were used by those states to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which Lincoln strongly supported. (The Fugitive Slave Act forced Northerners to hunt down runaway slaves and return them to their owners).
As Goodwin writes: “He [Lincoln] instructed Seward to introduce these proposals in the Senate Committee of Thirteen without indicating they issued from Springfield [Illinois]. The first resolved that ‘the Constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states.’” The second proposal was that “All state personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law be repealed.”
So, go and see Spielberg’s Lincoln movie if you must, but keep in mind that it is just another left-wing Hollywood fantasy.
November 30, 2012
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe, How Capitalism Saved America, and Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today. His latest book is Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government.
Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
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8th December 2012 at 6:30 am
flash says:
“The big problem with this review is that its premise is faulty. Today, we know that much of Hitler’s military buildup and indeed his rise to power was supported by same Western financial forces that are today pursuing “the war on terror” and apparently for much the same reasons.”
Shit floats….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today’s president
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
The Guardian, Saturday 25 September 2004 18.59 EDT
George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator’s action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush’s behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the “Bush/Nazi” connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis’ plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler’s rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush’s dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush’s business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen’s US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler’s efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen’s international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush’s links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen’s American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush’s involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush’s ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that “since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country’s war effort”.
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
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8th December 2012 at 6:43 am
Novista says:
SSS
A few quibbles. Re slavery, his first inaugural address … and then, for Fort Sum(no p)ter, Buchanan had _also_ sent a resupply ship to the fort — it was fired on, they retreated. Nothing happened. Don’t forget LIncoln’s preferred solution: colonization (although that would have solved many problems).
As for FDR, he presided over the birth of the MIC.
Stan
I agree with you 100%. And will go out on a limb to predict he achieves the greatest body count by orders of magnitude.
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8th December 2012 at 6:48 am
Roy says:
The US Congress has declared war eleven times.
/
This was extracted from http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/forces.htm
The above link is a chronology of the hundreds of times the US has invaded Foreign Countries, mainy to protect US Corporate interests. Yes there is a lot of lipstick on that pig and turd polishing but note it is a Government publication.
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8th December 2012 at 6:59 am
sangell says:
@flash
Are you suggesting that without the influence of a minor American political figure having business ties to a major German steel company, Adolf Hitler would not have become Chancellor? BTW Hitler wasn’t a mass murderer in 1933 or even 1939 so preferring his leadership over that of a Stalin would have and did seem reasonable to many as Stalin’s crimes dwarfed those of Hitler prior to the war.
In fact, giving Hitler a free hand in the East was probably the wisest policy the US ( and UK ) could have taken. Why Churchill was so eager to fight Hitler was a mystery. Why Roosevelt accomodated Churchill’s war mongering another. Having the two great totalitarian systems fighting each other to the death was almost a too good to be true situation. It would have been in our interest to tilt towards Germany as Nazism almost certainly would not have survived Hitler.
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8th December 2012 at 9:55 am
flash says:
sangell ….nothing minor about the influence of money in politics..Thyssen was Hitler’s #1 cash cow.
He didn’t rise by being broke…thats for damn sure.
BTW, I’ve read most of the arguments against attacking Germany during either World War and I wholly agree the Churchill was an insidious pugnacious POS , but this does not negate the fact that Wall Streets was playing both sides against the middle as has been the case for banksters in all wars. Feeding the flames of war is a disgusting endeavor regardless of who the hell you are.
Two good books I highly recommend for Christmas reading.
Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Hitler-Unnecessary-War-Britain/dp/0307405168
Great Wars and Great Leaders
A Libertarian Rebuttal
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Leaders-Large-Print-Edition/dp/1478385472/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355067441&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=ralph+raicco
Bush Family Funded
Adolf Hitler
Iraq War.ru
8-26-3
Have you ever wondered how Adolph Hitler – a mediocre painter of Austrian origin – transformed himself into Germany’s Fuhrer during the 1930s and 1940s?
The Nazi phenomenon was no historical coincidence, and far less a philosophical whim made real by just one man. Nazism had its followers, many of them exceptionally wealthy, veritable alchemists of the financial world back then.
According to research carried out over the last few years, Wall Street bankers (amongst others) financed Hitler’s rise to power whilst making large profits at the same time. What is yet still more deplorable is the fact that relatives of the current U.S. president were amongst this group of individuals.
U.S. authors Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Cheitkin reveal in the recently published George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography that Prescott Bush (George W. Bush’s grandfather) and other directors of the Union Banking Company (UBC) were Nazi collaborators.
The book relates how in 1922 – when national socialism was emerging – railroad impresario W. Averell Harriman traveled to Berlin and interviewed the Thyssen family with a view to founding a German-U.S. bank. The Thyssens were already behind-the-scenes owners of several financial institutions that allowed them to transfer their money from Germany to the Netherlands and from there onto the United States.
The banks in question were the August Thyssen Bank whose headquarters were located in Berlin; the Bank voor Handel (Netherlands) and the Union Banking Corporation (New York). At the beginning of the 1920s, one of the members of this family, Fritz Thyssen – author of I Paid Hitler – contributed some $25,000 USD to the recently formed German National Socialist Workers’ Party, becoming the prime and most important financier of the Fuhrer in his ascent to power.
According to the book’s authors, Thyssen was fascinated by Hitler, citing his talent as a public speaker and his ability to lead the masses. However, what impressed him most was the order that prevailed at his rallies and the almost military discipline of his followers.
And so, in 1931 Thyssen joined the Nazi party, becoming one of the most powerful members of the Nazi war machine.
At that time, the magnate presided over the German Steel Trust, a steel industry consortium founded by Clarence Dillon, one of Wall Street’s most influential men. One of Dillon’s most trustworthy collaborators was Samuel Bush: Prescott’s father, George Senior’s grandfather and great-grandfather of the current U.S. president George W. Bush.
In 1923, Harriman and the Thyssens decided to set up a bank and appointed George Herbert Walker – Prescott’s father-in-law – as president. Later, in 1926, they established the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) with Prescott Bush at the helm. That same year, he was also named vice president and partner at Brown Brothers Harriman. Both firms allowed the Thyssens to send money to the United States from Germany via the Netherlands.
U.S. economist Victor Thorn has noted that although a large number of other corporations aided the Nazis (such as Standard Oil and Rockefeller’s Chase Bank, as well as U.S. automobile manufacturers) Prescott Bush’s interests were much more profound and sinister.
Thorn adds that UBC became a secret channel to protect Nazi capital leaving Germany for the United States via the Netherlands. When the Nazis needed to retrieve their funds, Brown Brothers Harriman sent them directly to Germany.
In this way, UBC received money from the Netherlands and Brown Brothers Harriman sent it back. And who was on the executive of both of these companies? Prescott Bush himself, the Nazis’ first money launderer.
In their book, Tarpley and Chaitkin explain that in this way a significant part of the Bush family’s financial base is related to supporting and aiding Adolph Hitler. Therefore, the current U.S. president, just like his father (former CIA director, vice president and president) reached the peak of the U.S. political hierarchy thanks to his great-grandfather and grandfather and generally his entire family, who financially aided and encouraged the Nazis.
Some time later, in October 1942, the U.S. authorities confiscated Nazi bank funds from the New York UBC, whose then president was Prescott. The firm was condemned as a financial and commercial collaborator with the enemy and all its assets were seized.
Later, the U.S. government also ordered the seizure of the assets of a further two leading financial agencies directed by Prescott through the accounts of the Harriman banking institution: the Holland-America Trading Corporation (a U.S.-Dutch commercial firm) and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.
Then on November 11, 1942, an embargo was imposed on the Silesian-American Corporation – another firm headed by Bush and Walker – under the same Trading with the Enemy Act.
However, in 1951, the embargo was lifted and the enterprising businessman recovered some $1.5 million USD, earmarked for new investments largely to swell the Bush family’s patrimony.
To this should be added a resumé of files belonging to Dutch and U.S. information services confirming the direct links between Prescott Bush, the German Thyssen family and the blood money of a group of rich U.S. families from the Second World War.
Tarpley and Chaitkin affirm that the great financial crash of 1929-1931 affected the United States, Germany and Britain, weakening their respective governments. At the same time, Prescott Bush became even more diligent, still more desirous of doing everything that was necessary to safeguard his place in the world. It was during this crisis that some members of the Anglo-U.S wealthy class supported the installation of Hitler’s regime in Germany.
To sum up, the authors categorically state that the Bush family’s fortune arose as a result of its unconditional support for Adolph Hitler’s political project.
The UBC, under Prescott Bush’s direction and with the long-term cooperation of Fritz Thyssen’s German Steel Trust participated in the emergence, preparation and financing of the Nazi war machine through the manufacture of armored vehicles, fighter planes, guns and explosives.
The Bush family’s habit of dominating territories and wealth is nothing new. Their fascist genes were generated during the 1930s. Therefore defining the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the threats to other countries as a continuance of blitzkreig offensives as fascist is no blunder. Neither is convening an anti-fascist front is a rhetorical exercise.
Astrid Barnet/Granma International
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8th December 2012 at 10:40 am
Kill Bill says:
The civil war was more about states rights than slavery.
Today many a rethug or a dumcrat would say that “…no state has the right to secede. [Scalia 2005]”
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-secession-legal/
And so yes, either a republican, like Lincoln, or a Democrat, Like Obama, would move to stop secession which could very well include military actions.
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8th December 2012 at 12:31 pm
Stucky says:
Relying on Oliver Stone for History …. is like going to Elizabeth Taylor for marital advice.
If you want to see ‘Lincoln’ for its ENTERTAINMENT value that’s one thing ….. but for the love of God, don not for one second see it for its historical value,
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8th December 2012 at 12:40 pm
Stucky says:
Fuckme.
The SAME holds true for Master Revisionist, Steven Spielberg.
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8th December 2012 at 12:49 pm
SSS says:
@ Steve Hogan
Here’s my restrained, polite response to that drivel you wrote. I’m on my best behavior here. Let’s try and keep this civil.
“This notion of Abe as the great emancipator is laughable. The man was a rabid racist, as his views on the negro race were well known and documented. To say otherwise is ignorance personified.” I NEVER PRAISED LINCOLN IN MY COMMENTS, YOU DENSE DICKHEAD, NOR DID I CLAIM HE NEVER MADE COMMENTS ABOUT BLACKS WHICH WOULD BE CONSIDERED RACIST TODAY.
“Also to suggest that he somehow inherited the conditions that led to the Civil War are equally fallacious. Much like FDR after him, Lincoln precipitated the conflict.” JESUS CHRIST, HOW FUCKING STUPID CAN YOU GET? THE FUCKING ISSUE OF SLAVERY WAS A HOT BUTTON ISSUE IN THE VERY FIRST FUCKING CONGRESS CONVENED IN THE U.S., YOU FUCKING IDIOT. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SUGGESTED INTRODUCING LEGISLATION TO OUTLAW SLAVERY. IT WAS FUCKING IGNORED. ANDREW JACKSON FUCKING THREATENED TO INVADE SOUTH CAROLINA WITH 50,000 FUCKING FEDERAL TROOPS AFTER SOUTH CAROLINA RAISED A LOCAL MILITIA OF 5,000 VOLUNTEERS AND THREATENED SUCCESSION. NOW, WHAT THE FUCK DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE PHRASE “KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD,” YOU CLUELESS CUNT?
“He wanted an excuse for unleashing hell on those who wanted to secede. Fort Sumpter provided him with political cover for the slaughter that he helped to produce. To suggest otherwise means you’ve swallowed the Kool-aid.” AN EXCUSE? WHERE’S THE BEEF, BUTT WIPE? PROVE IT TO ME AND THE REST OF THE LINCOLN-HATERS ON THIS SITE THAT LINCOLN WAS JUST ITCHING FOR A WAR WITH THE SOUTH, YOU SORRY SACK OF SHIT. FT. SUMTER WAS A FUCKING MILITARY ATTACK ON A FEDERAL INSTALLATION, SHIT-FOR-BRAINS. IT WAS NOT, I REPEAT NOT, A GODDAMN “POLITICAL COVER” FOR WAR. FEDERAL TROOPS WERE KILLED DURING THAT ATTACK. WAS 9/11 A “POLITICAL COVER” FOR THE WAR ON TERROR? WELL, WAS IT, PUNK?
“You’re as clueless about history as you are about the fucking stupid drug war. Pull your head out.” BACK AT YOU, DICKWEED. BRING IT, FENCEPOST.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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8th December 2012 at 6:27 pm
SSS says:
@ Stucky, who said, “If you want to see ‘Lincoln’ for its ENTERTAINMENT value that’s one thing ….. but for the love of God, do not for one second see it for its historical value.”
I know exactly where Spielberg is coming from politically and have known for a long time. I went to the fucking movie because my wife wanted to go. In my opening remarks, I made NO judgments about the movie other than what it was about, a focus on the passage of the 13th Amendment. That’s it.
Now if you want a personal judgment on the movie, here it is. Daniel Day Lewis’ performance as Lincoln was Oscar worthy. Guaranteed he will be in the running for the Best Actor award.
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8th December 2012 at 6:42 pm
Stucky says:
SSS
Man you are in a pissy mood. I wasn’t even talking to you. Here’s how you can tell if I’m talking to you; I will first type “SSS” … just like above.
You’re trying to bring me down, man. But it won’t work.
I just got back from my dad’s annual Christmas concert. They even sang a Negro Spiritual — “Sweet Little Jesus Boy … we didn’t know who you was.” Imagine that; a German immigrant singing a Negro spiritual in a predominantly Hispanic town. God love America. BTW, it brought the house down …. helps that the soloist is a member of the New York Met.
They allowed audience members to sing the Hallelujah Chorus, so for the first time ever I went up and stood next to my dad (and sang as low as possible.)
The show closed singing Silent Night, lights out and candle light only, 200+ people holding hands, alternating verses in German and English.
So, you ain’t getting me down today. However, I will deal with you tomorrow, harshly.
Dad is in there somewhere.
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8th December 2012 at 7:09 pm
Administrator says:
This might explain SSS’ pissy mood.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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8th December 2012 at 7:19 pm
Stucky says:
The Federal Government back them had basically just one source of income; the States.
Seccession would have starved Washington DC and the North of money … and all kinds of other shit that brings. That’s probably one of the biggest reasons Lincoln was against seccession..
I read that on Delorenzo’s website.
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8th December 2012 at 7:23 pm
SAH says:
@Stucky – “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” as sung by Mahalia Jackson is my favorite Christmas tune. Glad for you that you got to enjoy such a nice concert with your dad.
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8th December 2012 at 7:29 pm
Stucky says:
SSS
You said —- “YOU LINCOLN-HATERS ON THIS SITE …”
Are you a Lincoln lover? How would you rate his Presidency specifically? And where would you place him overall relative to all other presidents?
Short answers are fine. Just want to know where you’re coming from. It seems to be a sore subject for you.
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8th December 2012 at 7:30 pm
Stucky says:
SAH.
Thank you. My eyes welled up more than once. Who knows if this is the last one my dad ever does? It could be. My sis and hubby were there, mom too even though she was embarrased that I had to carry her up the stairs and almost didn’t go. So today was very very special. Thanks again.
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8th December 2012 at 7:35 pm
Llpoh says:
Stuck – SSS said “prove it to me and the rest of the Lincoln haters”. I interpret that as he has no love of Lincoln.
I rushed through all of the posts to see SSS response to Steve. Stevedrew a long bow and created facts not evident out of thin air and got hammered for it.
The Burning Platform way.
BTW – hope Admin did not run off AWD. He contributes. Lot, and no one is right every time.
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8th December 2012 at 8:36 pm
Stucky says:
SAH
For you (and me) — “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” by Mahalia Jackson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5_w2XpG7DI
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8th December 2012 at 8:51 pm
SSS says:
@ All the Lincoln-haters on this site
You cannot judge people from the distant past from a 21st Century viewpoint. Judging Lincoln FAIRLY can only be done from immersing yourself into mid-19th Century widely held perspectives and beliefs, which were reflected in elected representatives of that time.
Abraham Lincoln was a tragic figure in the lineage of the the American presidency. I do not hold him in the highest regard, as I do Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Eisenhower, and Truman, in that order. And one of those presidents, Truman, was a bitterly partisan political hack who excelled in office at one of the most critically challengingly moments in our history, post-WWII.
Let me give you a stark example of what people, including Lincoln, thought about blacks during the 19th Century. It’s called the Supreme Court ruling, Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. Fixate on that date. On a national level, that ruling VALIDATED segregation of whites and blacks 30 fucking years AFTER the Civil War.
Why did the Supreme Court come to that decision? The answer is quite simple. Nearly 100% of white Americans at that time did not want their children to come into contact with black children, much less go to school with them. The court obliged and came up with the “separate but equal” doctrine. Plessy vs. Ferguson had nothing to do with school segregation, but the separate but equal doctrine quickly transformed itself into just that, and worse. Based on Lincoln’s own words, he would have been a major cheerleader for Plessy vs. Ferguson.
So I try my best to view Lincoln as a man of HIS times, not mine. And I try my best to place into perspective of what he inherited when he became president in March, 1861. It wasn’t pretty.
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8th December 2012 at 9:57 pm
Colma Rising says:
Hey Primo:
I’m with you on this one.
You eviscerated the anarchistic Hogan. Your view of the matter holds more weight than the handfull of armchair generals’ combined.
Fuck em.
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8th December 2012 at 10:16 pm