March 2009, Literacy For All, Hope and Hitlers Financiers

Hi Georgia and All,

We are going quite a bit beyond Carol's initial post about the book, which I have ordered and am going to read. My note was to quarrel with the authors of the book, arguing that it is not just bad people, but a bad social system, capitalism, which produces crises like we face today. Even so, the devil is in the details and perhaps there are details in that book that will open up new ideas. I respect Carol, her work, life, and courage, and want to see what she saw.

It troubled me that the book was so focused on the Bush family and fascists. I do not see the Bushes as the prime connection between US capital and German Nazis. I know assertions have been made, but will have to check the book to see.

I also sought to show how popular fascism has been in the past, popular among poor and working people who have nothing to gain from it. Why that is, why people (including teachers) act in ways that rebound on them, damage them in terrible ways, troubles me a lot. Proctoring the NCLB's exams without a serious protest, in my eyes, conducting obvious child abuse, is an example. Eventually, teacher pay and benefits are attached to racist anti-working class test scores. Teachers in poor areas get hit first, but teachers everywhere get hit eventually. At the short end of the stick are kids. A good question on the other side it, "what causes people to resist when it looks like they may not win?"

For references on some of your questions, please see the article I pasted in my initial post. Here it is http://eserver.org/clogic/4-1/gibson.html It is pretty well referenced and published online in Cultural Logic, free.  It is long. Sorry.

That article answers most of your questions. I will try to answer some others below. One quick aside, however.

I don't think we can completely resolve our differences about this stuff . At the end of the day, you will wind up with God and the Church and I wind up with Imaginary Friend and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And, who cares? I know you are a good, kind and decent person doing all you can for the common weal, and I am trying, in different ways, to do the same thing. I offer you the last word on this on the list, and then we should probably just chat between the two of us. I may misquote, but I think the Christians were on to something when they said, "we are lambs among wolves." We are nice. That is a good start for sticking together.

To me, your key point was about HOPE. Where are we to find it?

I think we, worldwide, headed into a very dark era in which fascism ( http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/What_Is_Fascism_Gibson.html ) is rising in some new ways, but with the same essence. It may be that fascism is going to be very, very popular among masses of people for some time, until they realize, again, that fascism cannot solve their problems as it is simply an extension of capitalism, clearly a failed social system now. If that is the case, if my main estimate is correct about the popularity of fascism, then I simply cannot write down what needs to be done or where hope is as writing it down would put me in jeopardy from the Patriot Act. I won't offer myself up that easily.

It is possible, however, to see other paths opening up. If, for example, people like you, me, the people on this list, and others, can continue to mount an effort that connects reason to passion and passion to collective action and that to power, then I think we have an outside chance.

As I think this list represents a good sampling of people, in many very different ways, trying to do that, and there are other groups doing similar work (Historians Against the Wars, Rouge Forum, Substance, Calcare, etc) and if we do not just quit in despair, then we have a shot. Hacking at the walls of the empire (like showing up to teach well each day) with different tools can, as we have seen, slowly tumble them down. That is my plan of action and while I am aware it may not work, it is the best I can do. We may be in a situation slightly akin to what black people faced in the south in, say, 1934, when hope was very hard to see, when as Kathy Emery says, the project was "getting ready to be ready."

Whatever your analysis of the past, present, and future, we largely wind up in the same boat. We are not rich (distinguishing us from Bush, Clinton, Gates, et al), we are teachers, we want to see some kind of social justice rising out of mutual kindness and care. So, we need to figure out how we can see these things as primary and our other differences as secondary.

Some responses to your questions:

The Vatican "rat lines" which I do not think are referenced in the piece linked above, brought wanted Nazi war criminals into the US. See Chris Simpson, "Blowback," but it is a very well known fact. The Vatican, the Office of Strategic Services (which became the CIA) had very close ties, and do now. As I indicated before, the US government through the OSS and the Vatican joined together in supporting these fascists. Later, the Vatican and the US, Ronald Reagan, led the charge in Poland, with the profoundly Catholic, anti-semitic Solidarity Movement.

Frank Wisner was an OSS officer, among many, involved in setting up the rat lines. He was also the fellow who recruited the head of Nazi intelligence, Gehlen, to work for the US in 1943, yes, 1943, to target the US ally, the USSR. He continued that work for most of his life, though much of his work was demolished by a top British intelligence officer, Kim Philby, who was also a Soviet spy.

Now, in 2008, Frank Wisner's son, who I assert is either a CIA agent or asset, is up to his neck in the crisis in Kosovo, the false independence movement led by the Kosovo Liberation Army which I know from personal experience is an organized crime operation with deep ties to the Mafia (which you may remember was also tied to the CIA in WWII), a drug gang, and a really fanatic nationalist terrorist group. The past, present, and future, always connect.

Also not in the piece above in any detail: on The Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, see "Radio Priest" by Warren. I grew up in Detroit, ten miles from that church, the Shrine of the Little Flower, and know that it was not only a haven for fascists and the KKK, but also an organizing center against unionism. It is not surprising to see Catholicism aligned against labor organizing since most of the largest unions in the US were built by people who thought of themselves as communists and who the Church targeted as enemies (Dorothy Day played a minor role pushing in the other direction).

For the relationship of St Theresa and fascists, see the book "Hitler's Pope." See that, as well, for one of many studies of the Concordat the Vatican signed with the fascists. Church intellectuals have attacked the book, and others, which is no surprise.

Today, I live less than one quarter mile from the San Diego Shrine of the Little Flower. All the streets around the church are named after streets in Lisieux, France, her hometown (the French, you know, for the most part did not display exemplary anti-fascism during the Vichy period, though some did, mostly communists). It takes power to name geography, public space, and power to shield the child rapists who operated out of that specific church for decades. After a multi million dollar settlement to the victims of that church, church bosses demanded more money from the congregation to pay for their crimes. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20071006-9999-1n6diocese.html The Little Flower is not so powerful that this was prevented.

There is a tenuous, but logical line from St Theresa of Lisieux and fascism, especially in her "turn inward" and "little deeds" philosophy, but that line can also lead in other, dramatically different, directions. Whether her story was hijacked by fascists, or it leads reasonably to some elements of fascism, is surely debatable.

I cannot really debate the levels of power held by varying forms of irrationalism.

Zionism (which is not the same as Judaism) holds a state, Israel, and some power, but the US and its power wags the Israeli Zionists, many of whom oppress the Palestinians in horrendous, almost fascist, ways.  Inside Israel, there are many good people, many Jews, opposing the Zionists. The Palestinians and many others often conflate Zionism and Judaism, and respond to their oppression with anti-semitism, doubling the tragedy. Other Palestinians work with Jews seeking a peaceful accord. With religion, territory, and oil in the mix, I think we can look at them and feel very lucky.

Islam has produced its share of fascists (though I think of fascism as being a modern movement and the Taliban et al are feudalists) and today those forces are rising, as is Evangelical Christianity. Islamic areas for a time also produced some of the most brilliant thinkers, historians and mathematicians, ever. I do not know, but I suspect, that many of those good thinkers came under harsh criticism from religious leaders. I know of no particular contributions from Evangelicals except some swell stump speeches and good music.

The Mormons do control a lot of Utah, and they have considerable money in owning hotel chains, lots of land in Florida, etc.

The Catholic Church is an extraordinarily sophisticated operation with two thousand years of history. It has disciplined operatives world wide and lots of money. Fair disclosure: Jesuits were key to my schooling, though I never went to a Catholic school nor was a Catholic.

Some Zionists were part of the Judenrat, a group that operated to betray Jews during WWII.

Some Mormons are profoundly racist. I knew George Romney, Mitt's father, pretty well as we were on opposite sides of some bargaining tables. I was a state employee union leader and found the Mormon, George, to be one of the most honest opponents I ever had. But George was a Mormon leader when Mormons believed that black people are not human. Some contradiction.

Many Catholics were Nazis. If the Catholic Church had mounted a real resistance to fascism in Germany, which it did not, I doubt the fascists could have come to, or remained in, power. Some Catholics did resist. In one instance, in rural Germany, the Nazis came to a church and removed all the crosses. The local priest organized the peasants to go stand in front of the nearby Nazi office and just say, "crosses, crosses, crosses." They got their crosses back.

In each instance, in every religion, some decent people operated in ways that defied the direction of their leaders, but they were a small minority, and we can see the huge gap between the current Pope and the "do unto others," view he is supposed to promote.

Every religion I know of, like capital, oppresses women and fears sexuality as a form of pleasure. Sexual exploitation and organized religion seem to run together. Those who can be taught to fear their bodies are, per Freud and Reich, set up to be loyal and obedient, the ethics of slaves.

The Nazi top leadership was, at the outset, rather oddly anti religious yet deeply mystical, but they made their separate peaces with organized religions and their membership base was religious.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has little power but lots of fun.

My point in raising the issue of the Catholic Church and its relationship to fascism and the Nazis was to demonstrate the widespread popularity of the fascist movement in the US and around the world. Others were surely involved. Lutherans in Germany, for example. But Japan's Shintoism produced something very similar.

In Germany after WWII, there were the trials at Nuremburg and although most of the German ruling class that had backed Hitler remained in power, there was a notable effort in Germany to push back fascism (philosophically, in science, in the schools, etc). That was not the case in Japan where the old rulers were just put back in power, and little substantive anti fascist activity was carried out. The Japanese ruling classes were used as US puppets aimed at the USSR. That remains true today. Japan is rearming. Germany and Japan control most of the US steel industry today, an interesting if disturbing turnabout, and something to consider when the US offers perpetual war on the world. See Chalmers Johnson on that. His work is outstanding in connecting past, present, and future.

What did all these Shintoists, Lutherans, Catholics and other religious fascists have in common that led them to, tragically, fall for fascism (which serves a tiny, tiny, minority of the population) in the past? Irrrationalism. What is that? I have to turn to the Hungarian, George Lukacs, who says it best.

On Irrationalism

"Now irrationalism always begins with this (necessary, irrevocable, but always relative) discrepancy between the intellectual reflection and the objective original. The source of the discrepancy lies in the fact that the tasks directly presented to thought in a given instance, as long as they are still tasks, still unresolved problems, appear in a form which at first gives the impression that thought, the forming of concepts, breaks down in the face of reality, that the reality confronting thought represents an area beyond reason (the rationality of the category system of the conceptual method used so far).
Hegel...analyzed a..real road to a resolution of these difficulties...
"..What if (however) a virtue is made of ...the inability to comprehend the world intellectually? That if a virtue is made of this necessity and the inability to comprehend the world intellectually is presented
as a 'higher perception as faith, intuition, and so on? Clearly this problem will crop up at every stage of knowledge and social development, ie., each time that social evolution and hence science and philosophy are forced to make a leap forward in order to answer the real questions arising. ..It is not chiefly intellectual and philosophical considerations which decide a thinker's choice between the old and the new, but class allegiance...(which is often) halted at the threshold of knowledge and turned round and fled in the opposite direction". 
Georg Lukacs (1952) Destruction of Reason, Humanities Press, New Jersey p100.

What else did the irrationalists have in common? They all hated the communists, the reds. Why? Not all the reds were godless. So, why?  Because inequality is as deeply rooted in religion as it is in the system of capital. When people determine that they cannot comprehend the world and make a fetish of what they do not know, rather than continue investigating, and then pay others to interpret that fetish for them (priests, ministers, etc), they have abandoned their own critical abilities and are subject, immediately, to being exploited by the interpreters who, typically, set up their own exploitative hierarchies (Popes over Bishops over Priests over Nuns, etc). It is a very dangerous process. People make gods. Gods do not make people.

Clearly, most people in the US, and maybe many on the list, do not agree. I go back to my opening paragraph. So what? We are not rich. We are nice. Kind. Many of us believe in the theme of equality that is written all over the Christian bible and most other religions--though it vanishes in the church bureaucracies. We have a lot in common, if serious secondary differences to sort out (like, is this a democracy, or capitalism? That leads to diverging actions). We are lambs among the wolves. We need to know who they are, figure out how to pull ourselves together, and act.

Two things we can do: Help organize the test opt outs, led by Calcare. March on March 19 and on Mayday in opposition to the war

All the best, r



 


At 11:32 AM 3/1/2008, you wrote:

First I thought I should write and send this off-list, then I decided no because you posted your opinion on Lit for all..Everyone on the list could read it.

Rich--explain what this is meaning, please.
  here are your words:
"Fascism had a broad popular base in the US, as in the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak Michigan and its radio priest, Father
 Coughlin, so much a fascist that he was silenced by  the Pope who had
 made his own peace with the Nazis."

What years are you talking about when you talk about some  "Pope who had
 made his own peace with the Nazis". What Pope?  What kind of peace--a forgiveness peace, or a 'go ahead, I won't say anything' peace?  How can the Shrine of the Little Flower(St.Theresa of Leisieux-that's France, you know--not Germany ) and I know my spelling is off on the L word--have anything to do with facism?

And I really need to know where you got this iinfor from:
"After the war the US with Vatican assistance brought thousands of
 wanted Nazi war criminals into the country and gave them cover:"

Maybe this is general knowledge to you, but not to me it isn't.  And so I want to know your sources of course. 

It does annoy me that you pick on the 'Shrine of the Little Flower'--although St. Theresa can pretty much take care of herself, I think. What does that location have to do with anything in this discussion.? 

Don't ping on people in a roundabout way, please, who are well-respected in my Faith, please, as Little Theresa is.  As to talking about the Vatican, since it is all a state where the headquarters of the Catholic Church are (not the Catholic Faith) just the Church is, it needs some 'opening up'.

   The Vatican, teeny-weeny little state that it is, to me protects some masterful pieces of art.  Outside of that, the guys wearing all those silly red robes and hatpieces are another story.  I'd like to tell them that if all the nuns across the world had to get rid of their Habits (and they did need getting rid of for health and common sense reasons), then why aren't they dropping the garb? Nope.  They are still playing 'dress-up'. Yes, I know:  so far, it is a man's Church, but it seems like you love to bring it into extremely heavy-duty discussions. And as to Ratzinger being elected Pope, oh Lord, to me he is the exact very person I NEVER EVER wanted to see in charge.
    Maybe he'll have a heart attack or something.
 

   Why bring the Vatican into a discussion about fascism, anyway?  I ask: didn't the Jewish Church do anything fascist, like maybe the state of Israel? How about the Mormon Church--go to Utah, Salt Lake City especially, some day.  Get the feel of the area and you will know what I mean.  Or any Protestant denomination---not one did anything fascist?  How about Islam, and it's Radical wing--aren't they exhibity some form of fascist?

    Yes, I get protective of home base, I do.  I just want documentation as to your sources, that's all. 
 
   We do not have very many good people running loose in this world today, but there are a few. Rosalie Rendu.  What a woman during the French Revolution and after.  But, it doesn't matter what the Faith they live by is.  Steve Orel, in my book, whether he likes it or not, is a Saint today in Heaven--so what if he didn't believe in heaven, I don't care. So what if he was Jewish.  He's still there.  He worked with a Christian Brother to form the WOO, too..  There are others, still alive, who are very good people.

    Your write-up seemed to me to be angry and sad  although  very informational, for sure, My very first thought after reading it all was: "There's no hope--anywhere.
Give me my hemlock juice!"  But since I don't have any, here I am asking for your sources for the above declarations.

 I think a lot of what you wrote is very solid stuff.  I have long thought that we are not a Democracy of sorts--we are a Corporatocracy.  Without corporations, we'd disappear.  I am still waiting for the day I'll see these words: UNITED STATES of AMERICA, inc.

And alliegence to a FLAG????  That is more nonsense.  Alliegence to the Constitution, I understand, a flag???  I could go on and on. But it's not important.

Also, if it seems like I am rambling, forgive me.  Something is not right in my head and my sight right now.  My head is very dizzy. I took, by mistake, my dilantan and phenobarb that I should take at night.  Or maybe, I am just a dizzy broad.  Also, forgive bad spelling.  I have to squint to see straight.

But I have to know sources.  It bothers me greatly not to know.  gh
 Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com> wrote:                               Not having read the book, and from Carol's analysis agreeing that it
 is at least worth reading, I can only claim the low ground, but I
 think there is another side to this.
 
 I will get to that in the next paragraph but will first note, as
 well, that Tarpley, one of the two authors, is an associate of Lyndon
 Larouche, the only person who was ever thrown out of sds (for
 supporting, under the sds name, the racist New York Teachers strike
 of Ocean Hill Brownsville) who later organized street gangs who
 sought to kill leftists, including me, and who took contracts out on
 leaders of sds, who used the aka of Lyn Marcus because he thought he
 was the sole inheritor of Lenin and Marx, who served as a police
 agent for a variety of US intelligence agencies, who is now a
 conspiracy theorist of the weirdest order, and who served some time
 for tax evasion. The book was first published by a Larouche front
 group. Tarpley has been controversial on the left as I remember him,
 attacking Cindy Sheehan among others. That does not mean, however,
 that the details in the book are all lies. But there is a bigger
 point to be made.
 
 That is, capitalism and fascism are directly related and we should be
 careful about laying the blame for its dominance (ebbing and flowing)
 on "bad people in powerful positions."
 
 They are,  the Bush's et al, of course, bad people. It could be true
 that what Bush did in treating Sept 11 as an act of war rather than a
 crime, and invading Afghanistan and Iraq (clearly oil wars for
 regional control) was the most stupid thing that a powerful world
 leader has ever done and that someone else, presumably Gore, might
 have done otherwise. That we do not and cannot know.
 
 But the crux of the matter is the system of capital itself, which
 they (Bush Gore, Kennedy's, Clintons, Fords, Rockefellers, Gates,
 etc) personify in varying ways perhaps, but operating as a ruling
 class, always on the side of empire, racism, sexism, irrationalism,
 and exploitation, though they may trample on one another from time to time.
 
 These wars over oil and regional control were going to happen whoever
 was in office. It was easy to see it coming, if not to foresee the
 terrorist billionaire's work on the World Trade Center.
 
 The US ruling class, as well as the Brits, was deeply involved in
 fascist movements and in backing Hitler, from Henry Ford's backing of
 the fascist "International Jew," which Hitler quoted, to the US
 geneticists who gave Nazi scientists the "proof" of genetic
 inferiority, to the British Royal family (note Prince Harry's
 fondness for Nazi uniforms today). Ford plants operated inside Nazi
 Germany throughout the war, never bombed. The Bush family was a
 player, but only one among many.
 
 Hitler came to power with the full support of the German ruling
 class, from the Krupps to the Thysens and nearly all in between. That
 is who financed Hitler. While he did have a disenfranchised base in
 the middle class, his money came from the top. As did his direction.
 Starting out as a "socialist", he quickly became a national socialist.
 
 Fascism had a broad popular base in the US, as in the Shrine of the
 Little Flower in Royal Oak Michigan and its radio priest, Father
 Coughlin, so much a fascist that he was silenced by  the Pope who had
 made his own peace with the Nazis. The German Bund in the US was very large.
 
 During World War II, in 1943, US intelligence recruited the Nazi spy
 chief, Reinhold Gehlen, and used him to target the US ally, the USSR.
 After the war the US with Vatican assistance brought thousands of
 wanted Nazi war criminals into the country and gave them cover:
 Werner Van Braun among others. They never ceased operations, had a
 terrific impact on both US intelligence agencies and Interpol (what
 we see going on in Kosovo/Servia now is mostly a result of
 that)  And, as we know, the US has been importing fascists ever
 since, from East European fascists to Indonesian fascists to
 Vietnamese to Guatemalan to Chilean fascists, etc. There is a
 sizeable base of people in the US who have a very serious, practical,
 history of fascist activity.
 
 And, as some on this list know, I see the emergence of fascism around
 us today. This is a fully bi-partisan project, class rule, from the
 NCLB to the wars to the eradication of civil liberties and labor law
 and the existence of secret prison camps, open willingness to
 torture, abolition of habeus corpus, to the profoundly fascist nature
 of daily life in, for example, black ghettos like Detroit, to the
 popularity of a fascist outlook in the population at large, steeped
 in consumerism for two decades (and mysticism for a century or more)
 then denied the goodies. Who knows what this, what may be the most
 dangerous population in history, might be willing to do to keep their
 play stations?
 
 Part of the problem with attacking "bad people in powerful
 positions," is that it leads people to simply want to replace them
 with good people, as if capital cared about the attitude of the
 people who seek to ride it. It doesn't. Obama may operate slightly
 differently from Bush, or from Clinton, but even if he was a decent
 and honest man, which I sincerely doubt, he is trapped in a social
 system that is in full scale decay, desperate straights, running into
 competing, rising empires, like China, and rebuilding, bitter,
 empires, like Russia, and other empires that need the oil just as
 badly, if not more so, than the US, like Japan, Germany (think twice
 about the last 100 years) and the Europeans. Obama/Clinton is not
 going to give up the oil fields and s/he is not going to change the
 regimentation of schools, perhaps conduct the drill in new ways, but
 not likely.
 
 The idea that fascism is the result of bad people in powerful
 positions is not new. We have reviewed the history of that idea on
 this list before. To shorten the story, in the mid thirties there was
 a debate about fascism, what it is and what to do about it, inside
 the group that had the most to worry about, the Comintern. In the
 Comintern, two competing views came forward (Trotsky was in exile and
 had a third, not terribly different, view).
 
 One position was put forward by the Brit, R. Palme Dutt. His view had
 been the position of the Comintern since about 1929. It was that
 fascism is the logical and necessary working out of the system of
 capital which is born in imperialism, in war, exploitation and, over
 time, can result in nothing else but fascism. More, every capitalist
 democracy (which is hardly what most people think of as democracy)
 has always relied on fascist colonial adventures for most of its
 goods and, when in peril, capitalist democracies immediately turn to
 fascism, overnight, a la Detroit, summer of 1967. Dutt concluded that
 only the overcoming of capitalism itself could end the relentless
 appearances of fascism.
 
 The opposing view came from the Bulgarian, Dimitroff. Dimitroff
 arrived at the Comintern meeting with plenty of panache. Working as a
 Comintern spy in Germany, he had been arrested for burning down the
 Reichstag (rather like torching the US capital). The Nazis, in German
 fashion, gave him a trial. At the opening of the trial, he made a
 speech that lasted more than a day. Before he concluded his oratory,
 the Nazis suspended the trial and threw him out of the country rather
 than allow him to talk more.
 
 Dimitroff came with the position that fascism is the result of bad,
 greedy, people inside a given ruling class taking power (not unlike
 the view that the Bush's had a coup) and, therefore, the thing to do
 about fascism was to make alliances with "good" capitalist rulers and
 drive out the bad. For example, the USSR , which ran the Communist
 Party USA, had called Roosevelt a "social fascist" for about five
 years before the Comintern meeting. Dimitroff posed Roosevelt as an ally.
 
 Dimitroff won the day. Stalin sided with him, mostly because
 Dimitroff's position fit the needs of the USSR at the moment.
 Communist parties world wide switched their thinking and got on board
 with the "bad people in powerful positions " line.
 
 Without going over the poisonous history of the CPUSA, Bolshevism
 (which both had nearly nothing in common with Marxism), we can see
 the result of that thinking today. Fascism emerges in various ways,
 as a world wide movement. Unfortunately, the CPUSA and its fronts
 (UFPJ etc) are now leafletting wings of the Democratic Party.
 
 Never in history have the masters ever adopted the ethics of the
 slaves. Neither fascism nor capitalism will ever be voted away. This
 is not just a problem of bad people. It is a problem of a completely
 failed social system that can offer nothing but endless war,
 meaningless work, inequality, segregation and, it follows, relentless
 attacks on reason itself. Getting rid of this social system (which
 sets up every breath of life in schools)  takes a fight. What would
 it mean to fail to recognize that?
 
 All the best, r
 
 What is fascism?
  http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/What_Is_Fascism_Gibson.html
 References on the fascist US geneticists
  http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~rgibson/SATFascistOrigins.htm
 Teaching about fascism and the Nazi Holocaust
  http://clogic.eserver.org/4-1/gibson.html
 
 All welcome at the Rouge Forum in Louisville, March 14 to 16
  www.rougeforum.org
 
 At 04:44 PM 2/29/2008, you wrote:
 >i'm just reading a book by webster tarpley and anton chaitkin called
 >george bush: the unauthorized biography [1992], published by executive
 >intelligence review.  i ordered it because i heard tarpley and chaitkin
 >interviewed on public radio in san francisco.  reading it feels like
 >catching a medicine ball--it socks me in the stomach.  the evidence
 >seems pretty legitimate--govt. documents, ny times/washington post
 >articles, nye committee documents, copies of correspondence, etc.
 >
 >what i've read so far is about how the bush family [prescott bush,
 >grampa sam bush, grandfather herbert walker] and the harrimans
 >[averill, bunny] were major share holders in german banking and
 >shipping enterprises, german/british/american banking [brown
 >harriman--at one time the largest financial institution in the world]
 >that they not only were big board members but were also 'diplomatic'
 >emissaries to the fascists in germany and italy and also at the same
 >time to the stalinists in the soviet union--all during WWII when the
 >u.s. was at war with germany.  when the u.s. govt seized german banks
 >in nyc under the 'trading with the enemies act', the media named the
 >thyssen family and the german families as owners but then only said
 >'other american interests' --and never named the bushes, the harrimans,
 >and other highest-level financiers in the u.s.  the german steel trust
 >[interlocked with bush's nazi-front bank in nyc] made over 50% of the
 >nazi's materiel for the german war effort in WWII.  the bush financial
 >interests made huge loans to hitler's forces to beef up that army.
 >
 >a hideous shocker to me is the connection with max warburg.  the
 >warburg family controlled the american jewish committee during WWII.
 >in 1933, prescott bush made warburg the official representative of the
 >hamburg-amerika shipping line [that lined shipped arms from america to
 >germany].  warburg urged his american sponsors [harriman and bush] to
 >see the hitler government as good for germany, and asked warburg
 >relatives in the u.s. to stop all anti-nazi activity.  that was 1933.
 >the american jewish committee and the b'nai brith kept up this
 >'no-attack-on-hitler' stance all through the 1930s, 'blunting the fight
 >mounted by many jews and other anti-fascists' [p. 37].  the authors say
 >one reason the bushes and harrimans have never been 'found' by the
 >professional nazi-hunters is that the nazi-hunters would also have to
 >'find' the warburg family who also played a part in fortifying hitler.
 >
 >this connection with jews is just a tiny part--more of a footnote-- of
 >what the book is about.  but of course it stood out for me--and
 >revolted and shocked me.  the whole book is about the not just dirty
 >but filthy-beyond-imagining roots of the bush dynasty's fortune and the
 >enormous impact that family and their friends have had on international
 >activity [e.g., the carving up of western and eastern europe, the
 >'invention' of the 'cold war', other wars, national boundaries, etc.].
 >
 >what stuns me is that i've never seen this information in progressive
 >and left magazines and other sources, and have never seen anything
 >about it in anti-bush literature.
 >
 >this is a history book that needs wide dissemination, scrutiny,
 >discussion.
 >carole