New Nazis

(14) Schmoozing

In 2002 total defence spending in the world is 800 billion dollars. The US alone wastes 331 billion on arms, and Bush recently asked for an increase of 48 billion to finance this stage in his war on terror. Even tiny Israel suffers under New Militarism (Newsweek, June 10, 2002). During the past 20 months the Al Aqsa Intifada has profoundly changed the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Israeli militarism has been clearly revived. Before, Israeli soldiers and officers were disciplined for maltreatment of Palestinian civilians. Those days are gone. It's a free for all. So far during these 20 months, 1.600 Palestinians and 500 Israelis have been killed. It is only the beginning of another bloodbath. As lesser minds take over, the greater will be the number

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of casualties. Junior Bush and Sharon have brought the Middle East further away than ever from an acceptable solution for all.

The present White House is strictly run as a major corporation American style. Dick Cheney comes from Halliburton, the oil services giant. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil from Alcoa. Commerce Secretary Don Evans from a Denver oil-and-gas outfit. ‘The corporate criminals among us, the swindlers and profiteers, are now described in language once saved for bin Laden's legions,’ reported Time (July 22, 2002). ‘It is as if we have given the CEO's weapons of mass destruction at least economically?’ said professor Brian Shapiro of the University of Minnesota.

When the latest series of corporate scandals broke in America and as more details surfaced about Bush' obscure sale of stock, whilst he was director of Harken Energy in 1990, junior Bush looked, when defending himself against these allegations, ‘like a 5-year old losing a battle with an ice cream cone on a hot day,’ reported Bill Saporito in the same issue of Time. The then son of the president dumped 848.000 dollars worth of Harken stock two months before the company announced a 23,2 million dollars loss. On top of it, he was 34 weeks late in filing a form of this record sale with the Securities and Exchange Commission about this record sale as requested by law. Now, all of a sudden, being in the White House himself, Bush is preaching corporate morality following a series of major company scandals. Few are prepared to take him seriously anymore. Enron in Texas was one of the first conglomerates caught in a web of malpractices and falsifying the books.

The top military chief in the White House is former Enron vice-president Thomas White. He sold between June and November 2001 no less than 12 million dollars worth of Enron stock; well before the Enron scandals broke. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, was chairman of two technology companies, before he accepted to join the Bush team. Mitch Daniels, the Budget Director, was vice president of the Lily drugs company. Mr. Bush's personal lawyer, Robert Jordan, went as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Robert Zoellick, the US Trade Representative, was a member of Enron's Advisory Council. Lawrence Lindsey, the president's top economic advisor, used to be consultant to Enron. Even the Attorney General (Minister of Justice), John Ashcroft, had to excuse himself from the Enron investigation, because he had received a 58.000 dollar donation from Enron.

The management of the present White House is a hornet's nest of dubious dealings and inappropriate financial liaisons. The worst trouble is connected to vice-president Dick Cheney. When he left his post as CEO at the Halliburton oil services company to become the running mate of the junior Bush, Cheney made no less than 18.5 million dollars profit by selling his shares for more than 52 dollars

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each. Sixty days later the company announced it was doing much worse than expected. The very same shares went down 11 per cent in one day. The New York Times reported that Cheney's former shares are in July 2002 only worth 13.10 dollars. Therefore, even the vice-president is now being investigated by the SEC and sued by both shareholders and a group of lawyers belonging to Judicial Watch. What also helped bring down Halliburton shares was the fact hat CEO Cheney signed in 1998 a merger with Dresser Industries, when that company was heavily burdened by asbestos-contamination lawsuits. The Halliburton stock plummeted further after Cheney's foolish move.

By mid-July 2002, the White House expected a 165 billion dollars budget deficit. Public confidence in the economy and aggravated doubts about the immediate future with the announced military intervention by the Gang of Four in Iraq further increases the downward trend of the stock market. The economic fall-out of corporate scandals culminating in the collapse of World Com at this time of writing, affects the public deeply. A decade ago 30 percent of all US families owned stock. In 2002 half of all Americans invest at the stock market. Bush's approval ratings for the economy fell from 72 percent in the fall of 2001 to 58 percent in the summer of 2002. Analysts are already forecasting that dissention over widespread schmoozing between the White House and the corporate world will express itself in US politics, especially during the next presidential election in 2004. This Bush will be out after one term, just like his Dad.

Edward Alden asked in The Financial Times (July 13, 2002), whether the political fortunes of George Bush will take a similar trajectory as the current downward trend in the economy and the financial markets. Other comments expect junior to try to finish his father's crusade against Saddam Hussein in a desperate effort to unite the public behind his corporate oriented Republican Administration. But the signs are not favorable for this strategy. Father Bush scored in 1991 a smashing victory against Iraq. Yet, in the same year he was voted out of office. The elder Bush managed to defeat Saddam with an absolute minimum of military casualties among the 600.000 troops sent out to crush the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. An attack on Iraq in 2002-2003 will be a different matter. In 1991 Saddam was trying with the active assistance of Mikhail Gorbachev to escape military annihilation. He then succeed in rescuing most of his elite Republican Guard and other units. This time, the evil four in Washington are crazy enough to carry out their much-advertised war against Iraq. Yet, they might discover that this time the Iraqi leader is prepared to fight to the death. This could resort to the deployment of chemical and biological weapons, of which the Washington gang contends that he has plenty. Desperate needs lead to desperate deeds.

Meanwhile, James Dao reported in The New York Ti-

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mes that a growing number of Democrats, and even Republicans, in Congress are urging Bush to give more information about his war plans. Dao: ‘The lawmakers do not say that they oppose the idea of military action. In fact, nearly all of them support the action, or at least in concept.’ (July 19, 2002). During the 34 years, that I lived in New York, I learned with my work as an international journalist to accept, that US politicians and members of Congress usually talked utter nonsense about countries, which I had covered for years. Foreign leaders whom I had studied, met and interviewed were foul mouthed and misrepresented in the extreme by honorable members of the US Congress. The worst that can befall an overseas head-of-state is when American parliamentarians begin to compare them to Hitler. Sukarno, founding father of Indonesia, would be recklessly called from the floor of the House or Senate ‘a Hitler type Nazi’. After earlier failed attempts to shoot him the CIA ousted him in 1965 and replaced him with a full blown fascist military dictator. What Americans were saying or thinking about him was utter rot and had no relation to reality.

Father Bush used the same stupid lie when he launched his assault on Iraq. He denounced Saddam as a monster similar to Hitler. Most Americans mistake such nonsense for the gospel truth since it comes from Godfather in the White House. In our day the son of the liar is taking this heroically mad unfinished Iraqi business of Dad stoically and serious. The behavior of the present Gang of Four in Washington, or for that matter the Sharon regime, comes increasingly dangerously close to the way the Nazis considered it their duty to bring order into what they saw as European chaos. Americans are the new Nazis that intend to bring their Yankee order to the entire globe.

For the moment little is known about how Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld intend to go about replacing Saddam with a US puppet regime. They aren't saying. Their real aim is to extend, via local Quislings, total control by Houston oil barons over super rich Iraqi oil fields. Hitler managed German power in identically the same way. Simultaneously, the Bush polls are steadily going down. From 90 per cent on that fateful day of 09-11 to 70 percent a year later. Soon his overall popularity will sink to 50 per cent and even well below. The people can be fooled for some time, but not all the time. A further downward trend in public support could make a planned Iraqi invasion unlikely or even impossible. A parallel downward trend in economic prospects could further complicate the financing of further lunatic US adventures in the Middle East.

When, by the summer of 2002, stocks were sinking to new lows, Bush rushed to Wall Street in an desperate effort to calm down the markets. The more he spoke, however, the further share prices plummeted. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Fed (Federal Reserve Bank) tried to lighten the minds of investors by spreading an upbeat

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message. But he also referred to the ‘infectious greed’ that seemed to grip the business community. Reality in 2002 is much worse than the chairman has said. Americans are in the grip of consumer doubts all the way. ‘Understandably, investors rage about the deceptions they have suffered,’ editorialized The Financial Times (July 20, 2002). ‘They want the crooks punished. They should be. But it was the public's credulity that made the reign of the crooks possible. Chief executives gave investors what they wanted. If they failed to do so, they were punished. This is, alas, an old story, repeated in every generation.’

Likewise, what is being repeated by every single generation is that voters, just like investors, believe what they are being told by each new generation of crooked politicians. Each time they vote crooks into the White House again. Trust has become an endangered species like the central African giraffe or okapi. As Mark Twain wrote in 1901, ‘The blessings-of-civilization trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But christianity... has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the people who sit in darkness have noticed it ...and have become suspicious of civilization.’ President Harry Truman kept this thought of Mark Twain on his desk in the White House. Yet, by ordering two atombombs on open Japanese cities, Harry most certainly became the most celebrated massmurderer of innocent civilians in the 20^th century. Compared to Truman, Osama bin Laden (if he is responsible for 09-11 as Bush, the chronic liar, says he is) pales like a miserable amateur.

What we witness as happening in the realm of Big Business is equal to what is occurring in international politics, diplomacy and the conduct of US Foreign Affairs. The current White House is so totally interwoven with crooked business interests and greedy Arabian petroleum investments, that to assume that voters are being told the truth about anything anymore brings us back to the trusted days of childhood. We truly believed that the wolf in Little Red Ridinghood had eaten the loving grandmother. Few stop and think what could be the real reason for the Bush family and their looting friends to dispatch the big Yankee wolf to Iraq to eat Saddam alive. The new Nazis are preparing for a deadly Blitz assault on the Iraqi oil-fields by organizing staging areas and cooperation from American controlled and financed fascist police states in the region, for example Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It looks as if young American men and women will be asked again to sacrifice their lives for another unforgivable hoax. In Vietnam the mission was to kill communists. In Afghanistan to kill Osama bin Laden and as many Taliban as they could lay their hands on. That also hundreds of Afghan civilians got killed is seen in Washington as unavoidable collateral damage only. Where is a war there are corpses says the Gang of Four.

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The latest crusade will be the hunt for Saddam. Daddy Bush informed the people long ago that the mission was necessary to get rid of the Iraqi Hitler. Young men and women should refuse to be drafted and wasted once more as cannon fodder on orders of the White House. They should decline to become ordinary war criminals because of deranged minds of warmongering generals and admirals under the command of a gaga commander in chief. If the military personnel of the US armed forces knew the plain truth they would perhaps finally discover who is the worst Hitler of all in this.