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In reply to the discussion: C. Wright Mills: Sociological Imagination and the Power Elite [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)28. And the talking heads on tee vee wonder, ''What's the problem?''
Generation upon generation, knowing only service to power and property.
Kevin Phillips called them a ''multigenerational family of fibbers.''
The Barreling Bushes
Four generations of the dynasty have chased profits through cozy ties with Mideast leaders, spinning webs of conflicts of interest
by Kevin Phillips
Published on Sunday, January 11, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
EXCERPT...
During these years, Bush's four sons - George W., Jeb, Neil and Marvin - were following in the family footsteps, lining up business deals with Saudi, Kuwaiti and Bahraini moneymen and cozying up to BCCI. The Middle East was becoming a convenient family money spigot.
Eldest son George W. Bush made his first Middle East connection in the late 1970s with James Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama bin Laden relatives) - billionaire Salem bin Laden and banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put $50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership, probably using Bin Laden-Bin Mahfouz funds.
In the late 1980s, after several failed oil ventures, the future 43rd president let the ailing oil business in which he was a major stockholder and chairman be bought out by another foreign-influenced operation, Harken Energy. The Wall Street Journal commented in 1991, "The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were. But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken - all since George W. Bush came on board - likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."
Other hints of cronyism came in 1990 when inexperienced Harken got a major contract to drill in the Persian Gulf for the government of Bahrain. Time magazine reporters Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, in their book "The Outlaw Bank," concluded "that Mahfouz, or other BCCI players, must have had a hand in steering the oil-drilling contract to the president's son." The web entangling the Bush presidencies was already being spun.
CONTINUED...
http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kevin_phillips.htm
The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.
And they are the ones* screwing America now.
What's different today, is we don't have Smedley Butler or FDR to stop them.
Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush, share a moment and some information, back in the day.
* Of course, it's not just a few rich families's offspring who screw the majority today. They've hired help and built up the giant noise machine to continue their work overthrowing the progress FDR and the New Deal brought America for 80 years.
Why would the nation and world's richest people do that? Progress costs money. And they don't want to pay for it, even when they've gained more wealth than all of history put together. Instead, whey continue to work -- legally, through government and lobbyists -- to amass even more, transferring the wealth of the many to themselves.
And instead of an armed mob led by a war hero on a white horse, as planned in 1933, their weapon since Pruneface made his first payment to the Ayatollah has been "Supply Side Economics." To most Americans, that means Trickle-Down.
Rothschild and Freshfields founders had links to slavery, papers reveal
By Carola Hoyos
Financial Times
Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking familys 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.
Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.
Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.
JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the companys historic links to slavery.
CONTINUED (with registration, etc) ...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html
Thanks for grokking, Dont call me Shirley. With such "news," Americans may not even get a chance to wonder why Wall Street gets ahead. The thought could never occur to them.
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A class project -- organizing student protests@ '81 Reagan Inaugur - earned me an A and an FBI File.
leveymg
Jan 2016
#5
''We have more will than wallet.'' -- George Herbert Walker Bush inaugural address
Octafish
Jan 2016
#8
One thing I know: Mills wrote about the Military Industrial Complex before there was such a term.
Octafish
Jan 2016
#13
The elites murdered Caesar, overthrew the Republic, and did themselves in for greed.
Octafish
Jan 2016
#14
Power Elite was assigned reading in my poli sci days. Read this from Robert Reich:
groovedaddy
Jan 2016
#9
Reich reminds us Princeton study looked at US political scene before Citizens United.
Octafish
Jan 2016
#15
Have you found Parenti's theses to be confirmed by events over the past 35 years, hifiguy?
Octafish
Jan 2016
#19
yes, the triangle of power, the illusion of democracy, and the inactionary masses, nt
amborin
Jan 2016
#12
That explains why his story is seldom told any more, as JFK, who also addressed class and power...
Octafish
Jan 2016
#27
The power elite have been using all these same tricks and treasons upon us for thousands of years
Dont call me Shirley
Jan 2016
#20
A simple, few indviduals, yes. But propped up and hoisted on the shoulders of the many.
raouldukelives
Jan 2016
#24
When Mill tried to get his PE published at U. of Texas Press, the book was rejected....
Eleanors38
Jan 2016
#30